Lefse 2011

This past Saturday was lefse making day at my mom's house.  Yum.  For those that are not of Norwegian descent, it's pronounced "Lef-sa".  It's spelled D-E-L-I-C-I-O-U-S.

We've been making these batches for a few years now and we've slowly gotten better.  A couple years ago Maddie joined in and this year Jake was added to the group.

It's a messy business, let me tell you.  Tracy and I both realized NOT to wear black this year (as opposed to previous years).

So we all had our jobs.  Mom kneads and cuts the dough she prepared the night before.  Tracy and I roll it out (Which we rocked on this year!  Whoo-hoo for progress!)  Jake and Maddie were in charge of the griddles.  These cookers are hot!  I know we had them turned on to 500 degrees when we started - I'm not sure what they ended up at, but I would guess around 400.

At one point Jake said, "Yikes!  I just burned my arm!"  That was it though.  No tears, no screams, no wails.  So, I thought it was small and no one said anything.  A little while later he mentioned how his arm still really hurt.  Tracy looked at it and told him to go put it under water...

We told him it was initiation into Lefse making.  We've all got our lefse scars.

Well, water wasn't good enough and we thought Jake should get it covered up to no flour or miscellaneous junk got in it.  Grandma covered it with some gauze and tried to get everything to stay in place with band-aids.  Then she got a phone call.  Jake bent his arm and his "bandage" fell off.  Tracy and I were covered in flour so I told him to find grandpa and have him help Jake.

Grandpa's emergency kit includes electrical tape:

Pretty soon Jake was rolling the dough, then getting it on the lefse stick, then transferring it to the griddle where Maddie took over.  Read: Kerry's out of a job.  Boredom.  A bit later Tracy left her "station" to do something and I stepped in and didn't give her job back.  Eventually Jake got bored and we were all back at our original jobs and we one mean assembly machine!

This year's accomplishments: most pieces were a consistent size.  AND...most pieces were actually round!!  I think we ended up with about 150 full sized pieces which we split up.

When I got home I broke into a bag - or two.  Smaker godt! ("Tastes good!" Yes...I had to look that up, but I can sing the first line of "I am so Glad on Christmas Eve" in Norwegian).


Anyway - I think it was our best batch yet and Tracy has suggested we start making it quarterly because these bags aren't going to last very long!