Christmas Socks

Now imagine that in the baritone and seldom heard voice of Mr. Bean.... I just got home from a family weekend at my sister's lovely home in Rochester. My brother in law cooked us a ham dinner and we exchanged gifts and opened our stockings the following morning. I always try to knit socks for the women every year at Christmas and I drew my brother's name so I knit him a pair as well. Here they all are for the compulsory blog photo. The four socks on the left were knit from "Licorice" which is a thick and thin plied 100% wool yarn from Sensations brand yarn, distributed by Jo-Ann Fabric stores. They are a nice, thick, wooly sock and were very comfy. I will have to knit myself a pair out of the remnants of these since it took 2 and a bit of a 3rd ball for each pair. I knit them with my basic sock formula but I used only 36 stitches instead of 48 on size 9 US dpn's. They knit up quickly too: you can easily knit one whole sock in an afternoon. Thank you everyone for such a fun family weekend! Happy Late Christmas!

Christmas Spoilers!

We are getting together as a family officially later today in Rochester so I feel I can safely post pictures of some of my gifts...

I knit this pair of busy Fraggle looking socks out of my skein of Mango Moon yarn edged with a little Lion Brand Fun Fur. I thought they would capture the attention of a 6 year old! These are for my older niece who recently had a birthday and will be given to her as a belated gift.

Here is a picture of her actual birthday gift in this AWESOME cowboy boots gift bag! She is going through a major cowboy/cowgirl/horse phase right now so I think she'll like the bag! I also found some awesome faux leather fabric and made a box bag for her with some western-y trim. I used 2 different shades of the leatherette and it's the exact same embossed design as the gift bag! And since it is for my cowgirl niece, I started calling it a "saddle bag"!

My baby niece was a bit trickier this year as far as gifts. I got her some baby dishes and a sippy cup because she is eating more solids, and I bought her two nice books, but she was kind of tricky as far as making things because she is growing so fast. This baby bonnet was knit from a pattern in Last Minute Knitted Gifts (I absolutely LOVE this book!) from some Lamb's Pride worsted in a Martha green and edged with an I-cord of some remaining hand dyed Lamb's Pride. I love this yarn because it is a mohair blend and it gets fuzzier the more you wear it! It is very soft too and will keep her nice and warm!

I couldn't resist making her a pair of elf slippers! This is a pattern I found over at Allsorts and was just a snap to make! I enlarged the pattern though to fit a 5 1/2 inch little foot! I'm tempted to try enlarging it for MY foot! She is just starting to walk so I might need to take along some elastic to hand sew into them to help keep them on her feet!

We have started drawing names for our family gift exchange, but I usually make a little something for the women. These are some felt candle mats with tiny confetti buttons sewn on. Each mat has about 120 buttons sewn onto the top piece which is then blanket stitched onto a bottom piece to hide the button stitching. I was very pleased with they way they turned out. I was going to make a green one for myself but ran out of buttons so I'll have to think of another way to decorate mine. I thought about using the remainder of the buttons on my niece's elf shoes, but I hate to sew too much of anything onto them for fear she'll pull them off and put them in her MOUTH!
We also have the tradition of having Christmas crackers on the table every year for Christmas lunch. We've done this for several years now. I used to order them from Absolutely Crackers every year but it got to be a challenge to find a package large enough (we needed over 12) and frankly, the best part of the cracker is the PRIZE! ;) Then I found Olde English Crackers where you can order the snaps and hats individually and I've made them every year since. I ordered a gross of snaps and hats which will keep us in crackers for some time! I always have my eyes open for a nice foil wrapping paper for them, and not only do you have to save your toilet paper centers for MONTHS, but all year you have to watch out for prizes that will fit INSIDE the rolls!
And here are the finished crackers! I found some appropriate mottos and riddles and typed them up to put inside with the hat, snap and prize, cut out the wrapping paper to 15 x 6" and rolled them up using double sided tape. The secret to crimping them smoothly is to roll up an extra toilet paper roll on either side of the wrapper edge. Then pull the extra roll out to create 2" gap between the cracker roll and your extra roll. Then you gently twist the two while pushing them together. This will crimp off the paper over the edge of the actual cracker roll to keep the contents inside. Then remove the extra roll. This way your wrapper end of the cracker stays nicely shaped and smooth. Do this on either side. The paper was cut 15" wide but after crimped they were about 12" wide because so much is used to twist and crimp over the edges of the cracker roll.

I am so excited to go and spend 2 days with my family! I hope everyone had a good Christmas this year! And I got flexed tonight from work so I'd better take advantage of this extra time that was given me! Happy Late Christmas Everyone!

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas everyone! I had Christmas Eve off but I work tonight and very soon will don my kerchief and settle my brain for a short winter's nap. We will be getting together to celebrate as a family this coming Saturday at my sister's home. I am keeping busy with last minute preparations and finishing up a few stray projects. Tonight I am bringing a gallon of spiced cider (well, less the amount I spilled on my kitchen floor while trying to pour it back into the jug!) and my tupperware full of frosted sugar cookies! And I think tonight you get to have anything you want from the canteen as your Christmas meal! Have a wonderful day everyone! Travel safely and exercise food safety! ;) Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

I'm tired of baking!

Never thought you'd hear me say that, did you? I had some fun fooling around in my kitchen on my last days off. All this lovely, chocolatey goodness is part of an experiment I've been wanting to try for some time. Anyone who knows me well knows that I am just crazy for McVities biscuits from the UK! We have a recipe from Skogfjorden for some crackers/flatbread made with crushed corn and bran flakes, as well as oatmeal. Normally you roll them out thinly and just cut them into crackers with a pizza cutter and bake. But I was thinking how similar they kind of are to McVities and how lovely they'd be if they were thicker and coated with some milk chocolate (what WOULDN'T be lovely with a coating of chocolate?!?) Instead of crushing the flakes, I pulverized them as WELL as the oatmeal in my blender and mixed them up, rolled the dough to 1/8"ish thickness and cut them into rounds and baked them.
Here is the finished product and I was quite pleased with them. Of COURSE, the only suitable chocolate could ONLY be Cadbury's and I had a stash of Dairy Milk bars I had been saving for this express purpose. I thought they turned out quite well and I sent the batch home with my dad when he stopped in on his way through town on Wednesday. I baked these crackers and entered them in the local county fair when I was a young 4-Her! :) I got a "Super Blue" on them as I recall. And I also remember that my judge had actually BEEN to Skogfjorden and was excited about them after reading my little write-up that accompanied them. Ah the days of the 4-H fair...
I just made a triple batch of THESE fussy things at my parents house earlier in the week. They are safely tucked in their chest freezer in the garage. I kind of cheated on MY cookies because I didn't make any star shapes! They are my LEAST favorite to frost! And I'd always frost them blue, and really blue isn't a Christmas color. I am pleased with the assortment I arrived at though. Just think of all the carcinogens in those artificial colors! I will bake some EASY round cookies in January and frost them in different shades of Martha Blues for our Urban Family Winterfest. They will be "Winter Solstice" cookies! And then in February we have hearts. I like easy-to-frost shapes! We are having pot luck at work tonight and I will bring these and a gallon of spiced cider. It is heating/mulling on my stove as I type and smelling up the whole house! Num num!

Lefse Tutorial

This weekend I tried to commit Suicide-By-Baking! I had to call on my friends Deedee and Rick Rack to get me un-STUCK from my driveway so I could get to Aldi's and buy ingredients in BULK! I had another "I AM CRAZY" moment when I piled them all up in my living room and just HAD to take a picture of it! I slept that afternoon and got up and began baking around 0000. I baked FORTY as in 4-0 DOZEN kringlas! It only took about 14 hours and my feet were KILLING me by the time I finished! Then I loaded up the car with half of my kitchen including but NOT limited to: my trusty stockpot, my HUGE steel bowl, my lefse spoon, my lefse griddle and stick, my footed rolling board, my pastry cloth and sock, my potato ricer, all those FLIPPING kringlas, and everything you see here! It must have taken 82 trips out to the car!

Now, to start lefse, you need to peel, cook, and drain 10 pounds of potatoes. I had boiled a batch that morning and had them sitting in the car next to me on the ride home. I had set the pot out in the front seat while I showered so they'd cool a little faster (they HAVE to be cool before you start to mix them) and honest to god, I'd STIR them every now and then while I was driving home so they'd keep cooling! My childhood babysitter and surrogate Grandmother Daisy had ordered 6 dozen kringlas and I delivered them to her on my way home and I mentioned this to her and she just LAUGHED. She also said that she had a potato ricer that she would loan me in case I wanted to RICE them during the remainder of my drive! I got a real kick out of that!
Now the RICING! If you have carpal tunnel, you probably should recruit someone to do this FOR you! Or if you are a man and you plan on having kids, you probably shouldn't do this either because I swear I could feel veins standing out in my NECK as I did this! This is the fussiest part! But you rice them TWICE so they are SMOOO-T (smooth in Iowegian). The second ricing is my favorite because it is SO much easier! My hands hurt more than they do after a day of Temari stitching or spinning!

Next you add your liquids which consists of cream, butter and some salt (only the FINEST ingredients! ;) Note my AWESOME lefse spoon! I got that at Gold Rush Days in Rochester! It is my tallest and most sturdy spoon and I just love that it is an antique! It is perfect for mixing BIG batches of stiff dough because you can brace it against your forearm and get some fulcrum action going! After you mix in all that lovely fatty goodness, you have the most DELICIOUS mashed potatoes you've ever tasted. It's also about this time that my mother will come and dish out a bowl for herself to EAT! The big wooden spoon also comes in handy to BEAT interlopers like mothers to get them away from the bowl!

Next you add your flour. Lefse is a VERY Norwegian food and it is made differently all over the country depending on the region. One of the fun things Mom and I did was to go through ALL of her cookbooks. You know how EVERY church/community/Ladies' Circle has their own cookbook. Mom dug out at least a dozen and most of them belonged to my late Grandmother. Some recipes call for yeast, some call for whole wheat flour, some are crispy, etc. We had fun looking through all those old cookbooks. My mother truly has a goldmine on her kitchen counter. Almost an oral history of Norwegian cooking (but it can't be oral because it's printed!) But for the most part, I think most midwestern Norwegians are familiar with the generic lefse we make. My mother made a good point, "Lefse should taste like POTATOES, not like flour," and I concur. So the flour part is not always absolute. There has to be enough where you can roll it out, but not so much that flour is all you taste. The mixture should resemble a VERY STIFF mashed potatoes and just be the slightest bit sticky. I swear you use more flour rolling it out than you do in the actual mixture.
A 10 pound potato batch will make 60-72ish pieces of lefse, depending on how how big you want them to be. We made 12-14" pieces. They are rolled PAPER thin. Note all the flour all over the counter. I can't stress enough to be liberal with the flour as you roll them or you will have a MESS. Your pastry board and rolling pin sock should be impeccably clean too. Any little dough booger on your pin sock will tear holes in your

lefse. It is handy to keep a butter knife next to your work area to scrape off any 'acquired' boogers. I always like to use stainless steel scoops to portion out the dough (especially if I'm cooking for the Public so that the pieces are uniform).

Roll your piece of dough up onto your pin to transfer it to the griddle. Your griddle should be 500 degrees. I have a Bethany griddle, made right here in Cresco, IA. Mine is teflon coated and I just LOVE it! I remember as a little girl standing on a chair in front of the stove and flipping over Mother's flat stovetop griddle. This electric one is SO slick!
Here is my mother demonstrating her "Swish and Flick" technique! She is using the traditional lefse stick. This stick is also a Bethany brand stick and it has a lovely blunt end so you don't tear your lefse. Bethany grills and accessories can be purchased in the Decorah and Rochester Walmarts--or I suppose anywhere there is a large Scandinavian population (or online of course).

We got some weather while we were baking! We had my mother's 20 cup electric coffee maker (ANY self respecting Lutheran woman has one of these for when she hosts a luncheon!) full of cider and mulling spices and we sipped on it all day to fortify ourselves! What a lovely thing to do during a snow shower! We stayed nice and warm huddled around the lefse grill! :)
And FINALLY.....we had labored to produce.....a stack of lefse! We made 3-60ish pieces of lefse batches and piled them 20 to a stack (any more than that and they get too heavy and SQUISH and you'll never get them separated) and kept them covered in towels until they were cooled. Then we separated them and folded them up into quarters and packaged them 6 per bag. We had a really good response from the community and my dad was SO GOOD and DELIVERED them to people! I felt like I had been a good Norwegian girl! It was a lot of work and I was falling asleep in my chair at 2200 but I was glad I had done it! I had a lot of people ask if we'd do it again in the spring! We even got a MAIL ORDER! A woman in Williamsburg, IA called and wanted us to send her 4 dozen kringlas! We sent them Priority Mail and I talked to her on the phone and assured her that they'd get there OK because I had mailed kringlas to Iraq in AUGUST and they'd gotten there OK.

I guess I had forgotten how fussy lefse is. I still had 10 dozen or so kringlas left and I know many people will make their own kringlas, but not too many people make their own lefse. I am so thankful I grew up surrounded by so many proud Norwegians and I was lucky enough to learn about our traditions and I am proud to carry them on. When I first started making lefse, my Grandpa Maynerd gave me his hobnail lefse rolling pin. It was carved out of a branch from a tree that grew on the Family Farm. I nearly cried when he gave it to me. I miss him dearly. His brother is in Colorado and Mother and I sent him a box full of kringlas and lefse! :) That was our good deed for the whole MONTH!
Merry Christmas everyone! I know it is still early, but I am just feeling so Christmassy! I love all the preparations! Christmas seems to be the time when all our family traditions come out. We should try to make family traditions all the year through. We can be thankful and remember the reason for the season all year. We must remember and thank Him all year. Christmas is a nice reminder though. So now you know everything you'd ever wanted to know about lefse, so go and BAKE SOME!

Oh, and as an added note...our Dear neighbor Bill came and had lunch with us. He is in his ninety's and is a Good Norwegian. We put some fresh and hot off the griddle lefse in front of him to eat. It was SO GOOD to visit with him. His wife was Swedish and we talked about Lutefisk and traditions. Bill used to come down to our basement during Christmas dressed in his Santa costume and we have pictures and fond memories of him. And Mother talked about the varieties of lefse in Norway. My Grandpa Maynerd and his wife Grandma Joann had family backgrounds totally different because of the area in which their parents grew up in Norway. It was so awesome to hear about how their families arrived in the United States (Mom talks about how when my Grandma's family arrived in Canada and traveled south, it was during the Fall and they saw pumpkins growing on the vine and they thought they were oranges! Because remember how 100 years ago the talk of America was so wonderful--the streets are paved with gold and there are pigs running thru the streets with forks stuck in their backs calling "Eat me! Eat me!" Just ask Lillebjorn Nielsen!) And eating Lutefisk is an event in and of itself! Mother said how my grandpa ate his lutefisk on a plate with the potatoes and you'd just roll up your lefse and use it to push your fish onto your fork, but the ROGALAND area of Norway (where Grandma was from) would lay the lefse on a plate, pile your potatoes and fish onto it and then roll it up and eat it.....and how Grandpa thought Grandma was just a BARBARIAN because she ate it that way! My OTHER favorite story about them is that Grandpa and his sister Thelma and brother Stewart could all speak Norwegian but my Grandma Joann could NOT. Grandpa's parents would always say that "Joann can't be very smart because she can't speak Norwegian". Can you IMAGINE?! My grandpa started school not being able to speak English. And he didn't ever SPEAK Norwegian when I knew him, but he could always understand me when I'd speak it to him. :) I know he is proud of me. And I know he watches over me. :) Jeg elsker deg Morfar! Og jeg savner deg!

Glede Jul!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ZAK!

We MISS you! Call us! We couldn't have Urban Family Christmas in December due to an Urban Family Emergency, so we're going to all get together in January sometime and have Urban Family Winterfest! Melissa has a turkey, and I don't have my gifts sewn yet (are you SURPRISED?!) and we'll have it at Melissa's house when our schedules mesh. And I have a card for you but I don't know your address and I can't get ahold of you or Summer. I miss you and love you both!

I am the luckiest sister!

I have the best sister in the WHOLE world! :) Because I work as a nurse, and NIGHTS at that, it is a BIG DEAL when I get to celebrate a holiday ON THE DAY. And even then I don't usually get to be with family because I would have to travel to get to them and be awake during the day, etc. So needless to say, I was off on Thanksgiving, but I was here alone. That is Ok though. I don't need to eat a big meal and then take a nap to be Thankful, but I really missed my family that day. Oh well. Every year it seems Thanksgiving is just a chore as far as getting to celebrate with my family. But my sister had a weekend off and so did I and she came down here to stay with me! She hasn't slept here for YEARS so it was nice to have her here! We get miffed with each other and we argue like normal sisters do, but we TRULY are close. She knows me better than anyone on this earth. I was SO excited that she was coming for a visit, but she totally surprised me! She brought a box of stuffing mix, a box of scalloped potato mix, french fried onions, green beans, corn muffin mix and creamed corn for scalloped corn, and a turkey loaf! All so she could cook me a Thanksgiving Dinner! I was SO pleasantly surprised! And she used to live with me in this apartment while we went through nursing school so she knows where EVERYTHING is! We ate like kings and watched Christmas specials! I love my sister!