Author: Gary Legwold

It’s party time!

As we approach the February 4^th Super Bowl with NFC and AFC Championship games this weekend, think about taking to your extravagant football parties one of the 13 lefse wraps in Keep On Rolling! Life on the Lefse Trail and Learning to Get a Round.

Just as I can guarantee a Minnesota Vikings victory, I can also guarantee your lefse wraps will be the talk of the table because:

• Everyone loves a tasty wrap. It’s fun finger food, and you don’t fill up on a lot of carbs—just the savory combinations inside.
• A lefse wrap is the tastiest of all wraps. Most other types of wraps have wrappings with no taste—zilch. But velvety, toasty, potato-y lefse adds to the texture and the ensemble of flavors. Plus, lefse is pretty with its brown spots and freckles against a golden background.

So forget all the same-old, same-old dishes you’ll find at typical football feasts. Wow revelers with this simple, can’t miss lefse-wrap:

Hamlet and a Pickle

• Danish ham-and-cheese lefse wrap
• 4 tablespoons stone-ground mustard
• 1 pound thinly sliced Danish ham
• ¾ pound thinly sliced Havarti cheese
• 8 crisp kosher dill pickle spears

Spread 4 lefse rounds with stone-ground mustard. Cover lefse with a layer of ham, and then cover with a layer of cheese. Lay two pickle spears across the diameter of each lefse. Roll up lefse and cut into pinwheels.

Enjoy, and enjoy the games. Skol Vikes!

One of the joys of the marketplace is listening to customers. It’s gratifying to hear praise for my books, and it’s a joy to keep learning from other aficionados about the art of making lefse.

Example: When I was selling my books at the Linden Hills Holiday Market in Minneapolis in November, I had the pleasure of meeting Rev. Charles Colberg of Minneapolis, who gave me two tips that have pleased my feet and especially the consumers of my lefse.

First, Rev. Colberg turned me on to Darn Tough socks, which are unconditionally guaranteed for life. Can’t kick about that guarantee, so I asked for and received a pair for Christmas. I love the fit, feel, and warmth.

The second tip from Rev. Colberg has lifted my lefse to the next level — and I already made very good lefse. The tip: Switch to King Arthur Flour.

This tip was so simple that I pooh-poohed it initially. After all, flour is flour, right? Well, no, as I discovered. There are reasons why King Arthur Flour is twice as expensive as the flour I have been buying. It is never bleached and has a protein content (gluten) that is carefully calibrated so that you have the same results every time you bake.

I was not put off by the price. I will pay what is asked if it makes my lefse better. And it did. When I rolled lefse for customers in the week before Christmas and for the Christmas Eve family gathering, my dough was velvety but tender. And my rounds were round with edges that were reliably smooth and not ragged. Same recipe I’ve always used but different flour.

So that is my tip: Switch to King Arthur Flour. It is arguably the second best tip I can offer lefse makers striving to improve. My best tip? It’s not mine but a tip from Bonnie Jacobs, who owns Jacobs Lefse Bakeri in Osakis, Minnesota. “Here’s my best advice on trying to make perfectly round lefse,” Bonnie told me in Keep On Rolling. “Do it more than once a year.”

After years of writing about lefse and teaching lefse classes and, upon occasion, selling lefse to friends for special events, I have decided to hang my shingle and sell Keep On Rolling Lefse!

I hang my shingle knowing my limits. Keep On Rolling Lefse will not be big enough — it’s just my daughter, Kate McIntosh, and me — to compete with the six commercial lefse makers I chronicle in Keep On Rolling! The big factories ship just about anywhere and make enough to supply grocery chains and church dinners. We cannot. We’re for the local Twin Cities individual market; we can ship if you are willing to pay the two-day shipping cost.

But our advantage is Keep On Rolling Lefse is fresh and made to order. Just tell us how many rounds you want and the pick-up date, and the lefse will be rolled and grilled on the pick-up date or the day before. Lefse is so much better when it is fresh! If your order is so large that it requires filling with some frozen lefse, your cost is lowered. That’s a fair deal. And we can do lefse-wrap lefse rolled at a thickness that’s perfect for the juicy ingredients of lefse wraps.

So give Keep On Rolling Lefse a try. Tis the season!

In the bridge of the lefse song “Keep On Rollin’”, which I co-wrote with Erik Sherburne, the lyrics are:

A lefse maker I once knew/She said “Here is what you do/

When in a storm/Just let your faith take form/

Keep on a rollin’/The sun will shine anew/

So stand tall, be true/Stay strong, be you!”

I came upon this story called “Lefse Apron.”

It’s an excerpt from “New Land, New Life,” produced by the St. Paul Sons of Norway Lodge, Synnøve Nordkap. Members shared stories about their Norwegian ancestry. Erna McGuire embodies the faith, gratitude, strength, and resilience that are often fundamental to our elder lefse makers.

As you make your lefse for Thanksgiving, listen to this podcast. Oh, it’s OK if tears fall upon your lefse.

 

I have an intriguing chapter in Keep On Rolling! that I call “The Lefse Revolution!” That chapter celebrates five very good lefse makers who have bucked tradition. I celebrate them because, too often, lefse makers get locked into THE WAY, rigidly rejecting all other recipes and ways to make lefse.

Well, in writing two lefse books, I have interviewed more lefse makers than any writer, and I will say there are many ways to make lefse—and one is not superior. But too often we grow up intimidated or put off by the rigidity of THE WAY promoted by an elder, fearing being scolding by not following THE WAY.

In my lefse classes, which start Monday and continue for two weeks, I preach openness and experimentation. I give you my way—which is traditional and has worked for me for years but is different from THE WAY—and I pass on methods and recipes I have picked up over the years that intrigue me. Three examples:

1. We will try rolling lefse made with instant potatoes. Whoa!
2. We will try rolling lefse dough that is warm and has not cooled overnight, which is the traditional way.
3. We will try rolling lefse dough made with olive oil, not butter or cream.

So I give you a mix of tradition and revolution. What do you expect from a Gemini?

Two of my classes, November 8 and 9, are full, but please join the “traditional revolution” fun in my other lefse classes.

Wanna know how to scare the krumkake out of most true-blue, traditional lefse makers on Halloween? Tell them they have to make lefse using instant potatoes!

This has been a forbidden ingredient in lefse because, say traditionalists, instant potatoes are not real (although the box says the contents are 98 percent potatoes), and using instant potatoes is perceived to be cheating.

Part of lure of lefse is in the anticipation that is increased with the time required to boil potatoes, mash them, rice them, make the dough, and then cool the dough overnight. This potato-prep time is a nostalgic labor of love that connects us to those who made lefse before us, to grandmas and aunts in the “good old days.” But with potatoes that are instant (can’t you just see the sneer as traditionalist sputter that word), the anticipation is diminished, and the connection to grandma is hurried by an unquestioned and unwelcomed need for speed.

On the other hand, there are times when you don’t want—or physically cannot pull off—the big production; you just want a little lefse. Why not use instant potatoes and get right down to some fun rolling?

When I wrote The Last Word on Lefse 25 years ago, I was one who sneered at instant potatoes. But with age and with the writing of Keep On Rolling! this year, I no longer sneer. Over the years, I have interviewed too many lefse makers who make excellent lefse using instant potatoes.

So for the first time I am going to explore using instant potatoes as an experiment in my lefse-making classes, which begin next week. We’ll make dough with “real” potatoes and dough with instant potatoes, and we’ll see how the lefse rolling and baking go, and how the lefse tastes. I’ll let you know.

This morning I look out my window, and a howling north wind is shoving treetops severely south, and slushy snow is slanting sideways. Ah, lefse season has begun!

Lefse is the ultimate comfort food, and pausing to eat it with a cuppa tea underscores the fact that you are nice and cozy and warm when the world outside is not. I maintain that making lefse has the effect of an anti-depressant. Rather than being subject to the dim, bleak, gray conditions that characterize foul weather, lefse makers defiantly thumb their nose and merrily roll a few rounds.

So, I welcome the first snowfall just as I welcome my annual appearance at Ingebretsen’s. Last week, I spoke there about lefse and lutefisk, signed books, and talked shop with Julie Ingebretsen, pictured.

I remember the first year I signed books at Ingebretsen’s in 1992. The Last Word on Lefse  was brand new, and the outside temperature on the day of my signing was frigid. And yet, as I approached to the store in my car, I could see a line of rather cheery pre-Thanksgiving shoppers coming out the door.

I quickly set up my table, which Julie had positioned right inside the store door so that shoppers could not miss me as they entered. Let’s sign some books!

And yet, bundled-up shoppers would invariably enter the store and move right past my table to the market section. Their primary mission in coming to this grand, old establishment was to purchase lefse, lutefisk, cheese, polse, smoked ham, meatballs, herring, blood sausage “klub,” and liver pate.

I waited, crestfallen, thinking something was wrong with my book or me.

Nothing was wrong. After shoppers had succeeded with their primary mission and allowed their bones to thaw in the warmth of the store, they relaxed and roamed—and eventually found my table full of lefse books. They’d smile, pick up that beautiful blue book, and say, “You wrote a whole book on lefse, then?”

In the end, sales were brisk, and it was a very good day. Bad weather, but a good lefse memory.

Last week I was in Hudson, Wisconsin, selling books, prints, and lefse rolling pins at the Scandinavian Food Fest, which is put on annually by Bethel Lutheran Church. I was invited by Pam Oman (pictured), who greeted me with small blue book that she wrote: Chapter Three.

This is an irresistible, brave book on grief. I know that sounds odd—an irresistible book on grief—but we all have had and will have grief. Chapter Three helps readers get through it. Pam pulls no punches as she writes of her husband’s battle with Parkinson’s Disease, her challenges with epilepsy, and then her growth as a woman and a writer over the two years following her husband’s painful death.

As I read the book, I see the healing power of writing as Pam works through grief. There is nothing like the act of writing.

There was a hand-written note from Pam tucked in the front of her book. In the note, she commented on how the themes of resiliency, gratitude, and faith are common to Chapter Three and Keep On Rolling! Life on the Lefse Trail and Learning to Get a Round.

The part of the note that really touched me was near the end when she commented on my lyrics in the song “Keep On Rollin’”. Pam wrote: “I especially love, “When in a storm just let your faith take form/Keep on a rolling’/The sun will shine anew/So stand tall, be true, stay strong, be you!”

I am grateful that this song, once just a silly notion, has been a balm to people like Pam.

 

When you make a lefse friend, you make a friend for life.

In the research and writing of Keep On Rolling! Life on the Lefse Trail and Learning to Get a Round, I’ve made oodles of lefse friends—and have added to my ever-growing list of lefse friends that started 25 years ago when I wrote The Last Word on Lefse.

This past week or so I’ve renewed lefse friendships and made new lefse friends in Story City, Iowa, and Sacred Heart, Minnesota. I was in each town to speak; sing my lefse song “Keep On Rollin’”; and sell my books, prints, and heirloom lefse rolling pins.

In Story City, I enjoyed getting to know members of a very vibrant Sons of Norway chapter, Kong Svrre. And many of the names of lefse friends from my first trip there 25 years ago were raised, including Merv Tieg, Marian and Ray Skartvedt, Muriel and Marval Melling, and Alice Miller. All have passed on, but some of their descendants were there to say hi. And one lefse maker I interviewed for Keep On Rolling!, Carolyn Yorgensen of Ames, Iowa, was there demonstrating how to roll Hardanger lefse (hard lefse), which Story City is known for.

And then in Sacred Heart, it was wonderful seeing Rev. Dan Bowman (pictured) again, one year after I had first interviewed him for Keep On Rolling! His church, Hawk Ridge Lutheran Church, is known for its Lefse Ministry because Pastor Dan (the “Holy Roller” in Keep On Rolling!) heads up a huge team of volunteers who make thousands of lefse rounds (most rolled by Pastor Dan) for donations and church fundraising. Inside each lefse package is a prayer or an inspirational message written by Pastor Dan. What outreach—irresistible!

I must say that I get a faith injection whenever I am around Pastor Dan. He oozes faith, and I am grateful that he has made a firm connection between faith and lefse. It is this connection that inspired me in writing the lyrics to “Keep On Rollin’”, which includes this repeating line in the chorus: “Keep the faith, oh give thanks, and you’ll be fine.”

I cannot tell you how many times I’ve heard this story about resourceful folks making their own lefse stick. People who wanted to save money on lefse-making equipment would use the long, thin, wood strip that’s in the sleeve at the bottom of window shades. They’d slide out the strip, bevel off one of the ends, and use the stick for flipping and carrying lefse rounds. I have done this for demonstration purposes in my lefse classes, and it works fine. You could also do the same thing with a yardstick.

You can get by with whatever as a lefse stick. When I first bought my narrow-handled, 2-foot-long lefse sticks for under $5 each, I was satisfied. They did the trick, and I didn’t give them another thought over decades of use.

And then this week I came upon the lefse stick pictured that was made by Dan Larson, a Minnesota woodturner who also made the beautiful lefse rolling pin that is on the cover of Keep On Rolling! Life on the Lefse Trail and Learning to Get a Round. Dan puts thought into every piece he makes, and before making his lefse stick, he saw the major shortcoming with lefse sticks: the handle. Most handles are skinny extensions of the lefse stick. They may have a design painted on them, but they don’t feel all that good in the hand, and the handle doesn’t make for easy flipping of rounds.

Dan’s stick is wide and flexible, and the ergonomic handle is large and rounded and smooth and good looking. It feels good—really good—and the calm you draw from it when holding the stick is as good as meditation.

Chances are you’ll only use one lefse stick in your life, so why invest in one that adds comfort and joy to lefse making? The Best Handle Ever Lefse Stick.