by Kelli Bowen
From my childhood, there are some constants, and most of them are food. Around holidays, there were certain things we would eat: Easter ham, Thanksgiving turkey, Christmas meatballs, etc. One side of my family is Norwegian. I remember going to Great Grandmother’s house for sandbakkels, krumkake, fattigmann and of course, lefse.
I remember my grandmother ricing potatoes and making lefse. The kitchen would get hot and humid from all of the boiling potatoes and the windows would be open, even though it was cold outside. I remember my godmother making lefse. She had a little kitchen, so every surface was covered with something involving the process, but it always turned out so good! A couple times I remember making lefse with my parents, and once as a young adult with my mom and sister. I remember my sister and I threatening each other with lefse spatulas but not much about the process.
Hubby came from German and Norwegian stock so we also had lefse when we went to his grandmother’s house. Hubby’s mom isn’t particularly fond of it, so she never took up making it, so his grandmother was his main lefse-making connection. Both of us remember vaguely helping with the making lefse, but neither of us could put the process together from beginning to end.
Hubby and I decided we wanted to keep the lefse tradition alive, so we took a class this fall. This adorable older woman named Ila (which is a GREAT name for a grandma-figure) taught the class and she was the epitome of the midwestern grandma as she talked about the hundreds of batches she’s made and answered with a shrug and “eh…that looks close” as we asked if our dough was looking right. After being covered in flour, successfully filling a bag with newly rolled and grilled lefse, we left class and knew we are going to add lefse making to our children’s memory banks.
I was gifted my friend’s grandmother’s lefse skillet, and Hubby and I went to the local hardware store and bought the rest of the supplies. That’s right, you aren’t in a good North Dakota town unless you can buy all the supplies to make lefse, except the ingredients, at the local hardware store. Truth-be-told you can sometimes get the ingredients too! Armed with Ila’s recipe, some limited know-how, and the hardware, we boiled batches of potatoes. The next day we made lefse.
Miss A enjoyed rolling the balls of dough. Miss E turns out, is an expert flipper. Both Hubby and I commented that all of her ancestral Scandinavian blood must have been rising to the surface because she was pro level with a lefse turning stick in no time. Both girls seemed to be unnaturally good with rolling pin – word of warning to future significant others.
We made a triple batch which yielded us about 5 dozen by the end of the day. It went pretty quick but still seemed to take a good portion of the day. We froze some lefse for Christmas, sampled plenty, and kept some in the refrigerator to eat leading into December. As we all worked in the kitchen, with the window open, I commented, “My heart is full.”
I have an ongoing argument with a friend about the necessary lefse toppings. I am Team Butter & Sugar, which is the proper way to eat lefse, that is unless you have meatballs handy and want to wrap them into lefse. Now that’s settled: on to krumkake!!
Kelli makes her home in Cass County with her husband, two daughters (10 and 7) and two dogs. She works for a regional seed company by day and tries to be an alright mom, wife, friend and writer by night.
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