Getting ready...

I always procrastinate. Probably not something that's likely to change at this point. I figure once you're past 50 most character traits are set in stone. And without exception I tend to do a lot of stuff I've put off doing right before going somewhere. Go figure. So of course while moving furniture yesterday and cleaning and reorganizing my sewing room today, I decided to make the pincushion for the swap I'm participating in on About.com. I don't have to mail it out until March 10, but since I received my pincushion yesterday, I was feeling a bit guilty that I hadn't yet started it. I did have an idea that I wanted to do.
Once I started on it, it was hard to stop. I borrowed the idea from Bella Dia. Her pincushions are amazing. Mine are a mere imitation, and I hope she'll consider it flattery that I tried! Of course I'm doing all of this because I'm leaving Wednesday for a quilting retreat. Am I ready with all I have to do before I leave?? Of course not. That would be totally uncharacteristic.

Lefse anyone?

Well, I was supposed to do my Week 3 check-in, but I think I'm going to drop out at this point. I'm so far behind, and I just am not into it. I was doing well with the morning pages, then my thumb started giving me grief. I moved on to morning pages on the computer, but it just wasn't the same, and I gave them up, and found more reasons for not doing the reading and exercises. With very intermittent internet connection, I've also been doing other things to fill my time.
When I married my husband I became exposed to a different food heritage, Norwegian, which included krumkake and lefse. Since I love to cook, I quickly adopted these things in my repertoire. Lefse is a very much like a potato dough tortilla.
I adapted my recipe this year, and substituted the half and half in the recipe with soy milk for my lactose intolerant husband, and I'm happy to report it was a success. It's a time consuming process which starts the day before with cooking the potatoes, ricing them, and mixing with the liquid ingredients. This sits overnight in the refrigerator, and the next day you can start rolling out the dough, and cooking on the griddle. The rolling pin is ridged and covered with a stockinette. There is also a lefse stick which you run under the rolled out circle of dough, and transfer it to the griddle. Since I make them thin and the dough is rather fragile, at this point the lefse can break and fall apart on the griddle.
I make it a point of eating many of these imperfect ones (sparing my family) warm off the griddle with a little butter.

I've never tried lefse's companion, lutefisk, but I think it's an acquired taste, and since my husband's family didn't eat it, it's not likely to make an appearance at our table. Occasionally the lefse comes out just perfect like this one.