The coronavirus pandemic is causing the world to stop and shelter and wait as the public health storm clouds build. It’s quiet, once inside your shelter, with no sports or concerts to distract and very little human contact to help soothe your troubled soul.

Normally, this is a quiet time in Lefse Land, the off-season when grills and turning sticks are shelved. But this is not a normal time, and I sense that all is not quiet on the lefse front. Just today, I received an email from lefse and rosemaling rock star Shirley Evenstad of Minneapolis, who was featured in my book Keep On Rolling! Life on the Lefse Trail and Learning to Get a Round. She wrote that she was thinking about me today as she boiled five large russets, cut into long strips for cooking, which only took 10 minutes in salted water. Then for ricing she put them through her new Kitchen Aid grinder using the smallest grinding disk, thus only running the spuds through once. In other words, she was tweaking her method. “A person can learn a lot about procedures,” she wrote, “if you are always trying to improve your efficiency. … I do love making lefse!

I have no doubt Shirley is not alone. People love making lefse, and if there was ever a time to steep yourself in the calming rituals of making this traditional food, it’s now.

Lefse is a touchstone in my life, so I’ve been trying lefse recipes that I had heard about but had considered too weird and therefore unworthy of my lefse efforts. Last Sunday, I tried lefse using purple/blue potatoes and sour cream as a replacement for cream. Also, sweet potato lefse.

Purple Lefse With Sour Cream

Blue/purple potatoes are not easy to find, but when I saw them in my local co-op, I snapped them up. After boiling, I peeled and riced, enjoying their distinct earthy aroma and how lively they looked in the bowl. When ricing and stirring in butter, sugar, salt, and sour cream, it felt like this was a stout potato that made for more effort when mixing than with russet potatoes.

The sour cream? I had heard about sour cream lefse and had always wanted to try this. So why not? I just removed the whipping cream and replaced it with the same amount of sour cream.

Because the dough seemed denser than dough from russet potatoes, I reduced by feel the amount of flour, and started to roll and grill. The edges of the rounds were a little more jagged that I would have tolerated in a russet round, but the strength of the dough ensured that the rounds would not fall apart when lifting to the grill.

When I put the round on the grill, it became a pretty purple progression of dark purple changing to light purple from the right side of the round, the side that went on the grill first, to the left. Cool!

The taste? Wonderful! I ate this lefse plain, with butter, and with butter and cinnamon sugar, and it was all good, very good.

Sweet Potato Lefse

The message is short and sweet here: Try sweet potato lefse.

Sweet potatoes are a super health food and can be super colorful. Boiled and mashed and riced, the neon orange sweet potatoes were a sassy contrast to my blue bowl. Making this batch of lefse was going to be really fun!

I boiled the sweet potatoes too long, and after I added butter, sugar, salt, and cream, I had a wet, wet mess. I do not fear wet dough, but this was the wettest batch I had ever worked with.

And yet, with a goodly amount of flour, it worked and the dough rolled beautifully …

And bubbled and browned like potato lefse.

I was worried the taste would be too sweet potato-y. But no, the sweet potato taste was subtle enough that I was satisfied this was still lefse and not a hokey gimmick.

Some people may be put off by the non-traditional look of purple and orange lefse. They may say not to mess with a good thing, and let lefse be lefse. Tradition! Not me. Bring it on! There’s room in Lefse Land for all sorts of lefse.

Little did I know last Christmas that the innocent little act of selling an heirloom lefse rolling pin and turning stick could lead a Lutheran minister to lust.

Well, it did, and it weighed on my soul when I learned about the situation in an email from Rev. Daniel Bowman, pastor at Hawk Creek Lutheran Church in Sacred Heart, Minnesota.

Pastor Dan and Hawk Creek’s Lefse Ministry were featured in an entire chapter of Keep On Rolling! Life on the Lefse Trail and Learning to Get a Round. He is a wellspring of faith and a man of the people as he rolls thousands of lefse each fall when the church gives away and sells lefse to the community.

His family reached out to me last Christmas, hoping I had a beautiful lefse pin that could serve as a gift to Pastor Dan. This pin would replace the pin he’d used for years, which was showing wear.

I worked out details with Pastor Dan’s daughters Hannah Shibeshi and Ruth Haugstad, who decided to go with the Magnificent Maple Walnut Wave masterpiece made by woodturner Jim Jacobs (see photo below). This is a bigger pin with larger handles for Pastor Dan, who stands 6′ 4″ tall.

The family wanted the gift personalized with the words “Pastor Daniel Bowman Psalm 34:8” written on the pin. That passage in the Bible, by the way, is:

O taste and see that the Lord is good: Blessed is the man that trusteth in him.

Psalm 34:8

Jim is not an inscriber, but he did a pretty darn good job fulfilling the family’s wish (see below).

Pastor Dan’s Bind

Christmas came and went, and on January 3 of this year, I received an email from Pastor Dan, who thanked me for working with his family to provide his special Christmas gifts. He continued:

When I first saw the picture on your website, I was absolutely and viscerally stunned. Being a rather frugal person, I didn’t think myself worthy of such beauty and extravagance. This led to a serious problem with my ongoing violation of the 10th commandment, or 9th commandment, as it may also be considered in the Lutheran tradition. In either case, related to the lust of the eyes. My problem wasn’t at all with my “neighbor’s” wife. But it was with her rolling pin! A variegated design with multiple woods all lined up would be impressive and beautiful, though expected of a skilled wood craftsman. But this dark maple wave design of varying thickness is beyond description. I cannot imagine the specialized techniques or jigs Jim Jacobs must have used to create this “out of the box design” beauty. I must thank him in person some day.

My rolling pin that has crafted approximately 100,000 lefse was gradually seeing wear and tear, especially from rubbing on the outside part of the handle from the knobby stopper on the metal rod. Occasionally I will have to pluck extraneous fibrous wood pieces from lefse. I do not have ball bearings, but have been fortunate to have a metal rod as the axle. I shared my problem (of the need for a new rolling pin as well as my problem with the commandment violation) with my daughter, not thinking that she would even consider getting it [a new rolling pin].

If you think about it, one way to conquer lusting after your neighbor’s house is to buy another like it for yourself. In any case, I no longer have the problem—as it regards lefse rolling pins, at least—since I am now the proud owner of one of the most beautiful rolling pins in the world.

At this point in the email, I was pleased that Pastor Dan was so pleased—and impressed that he was open about his “violation” of the last two of the Ten Commandments. Yes, he is one of us, I thought. But there was more to the story, an issue of self-worth, it seemed! Pastor Dan wrote:

I now have a new problem. How does one go about steeling up the nerve to press a “Mona Lisa” upon a ball of simple and ordinary lefse dough? Applying such a beautiful piece of art to culinary projects seems quite prodigious (aka prodigal – “extravagant”) – something akin to throwing pearls before swine, using the language of faith.

The other issue, a result of my strong sense of loyalty, is this: How will I feel about relegating the older rolling pin to a life of disuse in a drawer? Will it be something like putting one’s mother (or spouse) in the nursing home? How will I deal with my sense of betrayal of one who has been such a friend for so many years?

I will need your ongoing prayers on this matter. I wonder if thinking it through in terms of a death and a resurrection experience would be helpful?

I saw Jim Jacobs the morning I received the email and passed on Pastor Dan’s compliments. Jim read the email and then apologized for putting Pastor Dan in a Ten Commandment bind because of his rolling pin!

Oh, the power of lefse and all things lefse!

In the months since these issues surfaced, I have been praying for Pastor Dan. Let your faith lead you, my friend.

Almost two years ago, Chuck Hays wrote a blog titled “8 Unconventional Tips for Making Purple Lefse”. He uses Vitelotte Noir potatoes to get the purple color, and he steams them, never boils them. He doesn’t mash or peel or rice the Vitelotte Noir but simply puts the cooked potatoes, skins and all, through a meat grinder using a screen with a 1/8-inch holes. He doesn’t chill the potatoes, and he uses olive oil in his recipe.

I thought about purple lefse recently when I was reading a health-and-diet book (How Not to Die by Michael Greger, M.D., with Gene Stone). There was a section about sweet potatoes, a “superfood,” according to the author, because they are packed with nutrients and high in antioxidants. So, of course, I have put sweet potato lefse on my long list of lefse things to try.

The author also wrote that potatoes with blue or purple flesh were better than plain potatoes in reducing inflammation and increasing “the antioxidant capacity” in the bloodstream of subjects in a scientific study. “Blue potatoes may have ten times more antioxidant power than regular white ones,” writes Greger. “The most exciting purple potato study to date had people with hypertension eat six to eight microwaved small purple potatoes a day, and they were able to significantly bring down their blood pressure levels within a month.”

Finding blue or purple potatoes for lefse is the problem. I found some last fall in a Minneapolis co-op, but a produce guy said I’d have to wait until next fall when local growers start providing these special potatoes. Until then, I have to go online.

When I teach lefse classes, I give out my recipe for potato leek soup. Why? Because in making lefse dough, there are always extra amounts of riced potatoes. There are many uses for these extra spuds, but none tastier than using them in potato leek soup.

Jeanne and David Sumnicht took my class and received “extra credit” by:

• Making lefse on their own within a week or two of when they took my class. I always recommend this because there is less chance you will forget a step or technique in how to make lefse if you do it close to the time you learn. Jeanne and David made lefse the day after their class.
• Making potato leek soup. They did that promptly as well, and served it and their own lefse for lunch (see photo below).

Jeanne and David, congratulations! You go to the head of the class!

Oh, yes. Here is the recipe for potato leek soup. Enjoy!

I learn from every lefse maker I meet. A little tip, a refinement in the recipe or way of making lefse, perhaps a joke or a song. It keeps lefse making fresh for me, and I make a lot of lefse friends.

I met a lot of lefse makers when I spoke at the Sons of Norway Vennekretsen Lodge in Anoka, Minnesota. One of them was Alice Holland, who handed me a paper with two photos on it and her phone number. A few days after my presentation, I called Alice and she explained the photos and how she made her own lefse pastry board with Lazy Susan hardware attached to the bottom. I was intrigued.

“In 1986, I had a back injury,” Alice said, “and it’s difficult for me to twist my back.” In 1990, during a kitchen remodeling project, workers cut a hole in the countertop material to make room for the kitchen sink. The hole was 19 inches across, and Alice the lefse maker immediately seized the cutout piece for use as a lefse pastry board for rolling lefse. And because of her back issue, she fixed to the board Lazy Susan hardware she purchased from The Home Depot.

“With that, I don’t have to twist my back when I roll lefse,” Alice says. “Just rotate the board with a little push of my thumb.”

I decided to give Lazy Susan lefse making a try. I realized how much I bend and twist and dance around my pastry board as I adjust the angle of my rolling pin in order to roll round rounds. I often rotate the board because I move around the perimeter of the board when rolling. Because I’m not grinding on the same spot in the middle of the board, I reduce the amount of flour used—which makes for more tender lefse—and it prevents the dreaded sticking problem.

I used to add rubber feet to the Keep On Rolling Pastry Board that I sell, but I have removed the feet because it’s easier to rotate the board without them. Using a Lazy Susan lefse board would make it even easier to rotate the board.

To make a Lazy Susan lefse pastry board, I purchased at Menards a 12-inch Lazy Susan by Shepherd Hardware Products. A true Lazy Susan would attach the lefse pastry board to a base board. I decided not to attach my rolling board to a base board because it would require drilling through the rolling board. I didn’t want holes and screw heads messing up the surface of my rolling board. I also didn’t want the extra weight and clunkiness that would come with a second board.

So I simply used No. 8 x 1/2-inch flat head wood screws to attach the Lazy Susan to the bottom of my board I have used for years. I had to use flat head screws; round head screws would prevent the Lazy Susan parts from moving freely. My board is 1/2 inch thick but the 1/2-inch screw don’t poke through to the rolling surface because the thickness of the Lazy Susan hardware stop the screws from sinking a full 1/2 inch.

After attaching the hardware to the board, the last detail was cutting a piece of perforated rubber used for shelf matting and placing that on my countertop and under my pastry board. I didn’t want the Lazy Susan Hardware to scratch my granite countertop.

Viola! I can roll lefse and rotate my rolling board with ease so I can keep on rolling for years with less work. Thanks, Alice!

Here is a tasty tip for when you make lefse dough. It’s from St. Paul lefse maker Sasha Aslanian, who admits she is “kind of a maniac about reducing waste.” She found the tip in Scraps, Peels, and Stems: Recipes and Tips for Rethinking Food Waste at Home by Jill Lightner.

Sasha wrote:

You take the potato peels from your lefse potatoes, put them in a little bowl and drizzle with oil (I used peanut oil). Then put them on a baking sheet and pop in a 400 degree oven for 10 minutes. Then flip them/stir them around and bake a few more minutes.

I asked Sasha if she had a photo. “I don’t have a photo of my chips because sadly, I just scarfed them down before I sent you an email,” she wrote. “I don’t buy junk food so it was satisfying to make my own, and find a use for something I was tossing in the compost.”