Nordic Heritage Cooking, Fattigman and Lefse

 

Fattigman, translated from Norwegian as "Poor man's  cakes", are traditional Nordic "cookies" that are in fact deep fried cardamom flavored dough. 

Cut in strips, then slit, with the tail threaded through the slit, then resemble buckles. 

 Then they are deep fried, cooled, and coated with powdered sugar. 

It's a team effort, with Irene rolling out the springy dough, taking over my traditional job, me cutting the strips, Irene slitting and twisting, and Isaac frying. Tom did the sugaring. We all sampled.

This was the first part of our two projects in Nordic Heritage cooking today. Lefse was the next. 

I made the mashed potatoes, rich in butter and whole milk, yesterday, so they could chill over night in the refrigerator. Today I added enough flour to make the potatoes into dough. I don't like to add more flour that necessary, which does tend to make the dough soft and prone to sticking. Lots of flour is involved in the process. 

I was back to rolling out the dough this year. 

Irene is quite attached to her lefse stick and didn't want to change jobs so she manned the griddle/lefse iron. 

Isaac tried his hand at rolling out, but it takes a light touch with my sticky dough. He had some trouble, but persisted through several rounds. 

Then I assigned Isaac to preparing some samples as we finished the job.

The lefse is coated with melted butter and sprinkled with cinnamon sugar, cut in wedges, and rolled up.

It's the last one!

Flour everywhere. Then we called in Grampa for clean up duty. We all sampled lefse.

I didn't know if I would be up to this, but I had a great time with my grands, and they did too. And out fattigmand are crispy and flavorful and our lefse are soft and yummy. 

It was a great afternoon of heritage cooking. 

What Do You Call Them?

 The fifth batch of cookies is cooked, coated, and cooling. Little balls of butter (lots),flour, vanilla, a little powdered sugar, and lots of chopped nuts, I use walnuts, baked 30 minutes and then rolled in powdered sugar, these tasty treats have many names. My 1960 Home Economics Teacher cook book calls them Sand Dabs or Sand Tarts. They are also known as Mexican Wedding Cakes, and Russian Tea Cakes. 

We call them yummy!

The sun is currently shining, but not for long. Rain returns and will continue maybe up to Christmas or more. I am getting outside after lunch to get some greenery decorations done while I can. 

Hope your holidaze are happy. 

Cookies and Floods

 Cookie Baking Week is going well. While the rains come down and the floods come up, the winds have not been strong, at least here, and the power has stayed on.

Cookie Report:

Hazelnut Crescents

Chocolate Covered Cherry Cookies

Apricot Foldovers

Cranberry Swirls

These are all what I call "fussy" cookies, with lots of steps, but even though I fuss a bit at having to make them again, they are loved by my family, which makes them a labor of love. Thank goodness Tom helps! And he's great at clean up.

I have one more kind to make, and then a lull before the kids come next week for Lefse and Fatigmand on Wednesday and sprinkle decorated sugar cookies and gingerbread on Saturday.

We are fortunate here to live on high ground. Flooding is not a problem for us, but in the low lands, especially along the rivers flowing out of the Cascade Mountains, disasters are occurring. It is estimated that as many as 100,000 people have received evacuation notices. Some rivers are cresting today but some not until tomorrow. The rains are finally letting up, at least for a few days. Too many will experience misery for Christmas. 

The Halls Are Decked!

 Yes, the Santa Claus collection is in it's place. The stockings are hung. The days are busy but the evenings are calm.

We ask ourselves how much longer we will put ourselves through this, because it is a lot of work and we are getting worn out, but we can't bring ourselves to stop yet. 

We had our own Christmas Light Fight. When I put the lights on the travel tree, half of them didn't light. On our big tree one more strand of pre-lit lights were out. That slowed us down a bit but a trip to Home Depot got us back on track. Funny thing, when we started to take the bad lights off the travel tree, they magically lit. OK. The New lights are now in reserve for another year. 

Tom is putting the final touches of the Travel tree. It's fun to remember where and when we bought these ornaments. 

The dining room is very Nordic.

There are gnomes lurking in this corner.

The Santas.

Some we've had for more than 50 years. We've finally stopped adding new ones. 

Today we added the final decorating, the big tree with all of it's collected ornaments.

As I unwrapped each of these fragile ornaments from their wrappings, it was like shopping for them all over again. So much fun.

Now the big tree is stuffed with memories. 

So is the the Travel Tree.

Next up, baking. I got a start on it this afternoon. A roll of freeze-before-slicing and baking Cranberry Swirls is in the freezer.

Now it's dark, the outside lights are brightening the scene outside the front window, and it's time to go rustle up some supper.  

Our Annual Christmas Field Trip

 The day was perfect, no rain, no wind, so glaring low winter sun, just a calm, cool gray day for being out and about in Seattle. 

Our friend Jan joined us, of course, as we began our fun day in Ballard at the Scandinavian Specialty Shop. Just walking in and seeing all of the trolls and Nordic decorations made me smile. 

Jan found some treasures to give to others as gifts. Tom and I were fairly restrained, mostly enjoying the looking. I did borrow someone's grandchild for this photo. I studied the ornaments too. :-)

Then on to Larson's Danish Bakery!

Oh my, did we indulge! Their almond croissants are amazingly delicious, with coffee, of course.  

We did buy a few things to take home or give away. Then we moved on from Ballard,  a little farther north, to Swanson's Nursery. Can you tell this is the Scandinavian capital of Seattle?

Swanson's is a large, well stocked nursery, always with beautiful displays. This time of year the emphasis is on the evergreens. 

There was a treasure hunt, find the characters, for the kids and young at heart. We needed a kid to tell us who most of these animated movie characters were. We did know a few from movies of long ago. 

The Koi pond in the gift shop/cafe. 

And of course, poinsettias!

Now it was getting on to 2:00, we had walked of our bakery treats, and it was time to find food, which we did at a Panera close to our next and final stop.

Sky Nursery in Northwest Seattle is a huge plant palace, but at Christmas time they also have a wonderful Christmas shop.

We had fun looking for ornaments we hadn't seen before, especially the food ornaments. You can even get avocado toast ornaments now. :-)

We resisted though. Our trees are full.

This is a nursery after all, so they did have plants, including this beautiful display.

It was dark when we finally got home. That happens early now that we are nearing the Winter Solstice. We had a light lunch for supper and then settled in, very content with our Christmas field trip. 

That was Wednesday. Now Thursday is coming to a close and it has been dark and rainy all day. We did some shopping and more decorating and online order packages are arriving. It's a busy time. I will try to carry the good cheer of yesterday with me and not get too bogged down in busyness.