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Lefse 2008 The Party

From set-up to the end of the night.  Here's hoping everyone had a good time. 

     

  

       

      

    

Lefse 6 sixth night

Okay, ever wonder what 25 pounds of meatballs looks like?    It's enough meatball mix that I have to use the 5 gallon bucket.    This is not my own meatball recipe.  I buy a ground meat mix from Ingebretsen's deli in Minneapolis.  It's a lot easier than grinding the meat myself.  What we do is roll the 25 pounds into small meatballs and brown them.  Note Jathan's meticulous work.    As Jathan was browing them Kyle  and I were stacking them in trays like this .  After several hours of rolling and browning meatballs we're left this this in my kitchen.    

In addition to the meatballs we were also prepping other food for the party.  We brought the chocolate fountain up from the basement for the first time in a couple of years.  We haven't used it recently because it's a lot of work to clean, and leaves a big mess, but we thought that it was necessary this year to bring it back out.  Anyway, Jenny the Vegetarian wasn't enthused about rolling meatballs, so we put her to work dicing pound cake for the fountain.     Finally, the entire crew collected for the Aquavit toast to end the evening.

Lefse 8 fifth night

Tonight we roll somelefse.   Peter came over to help prepare some lefse ahead of schedule, and drink some of my wine.  I decided that the first lefse of 2008 was worth drinking some of myChateuaneuf du Pape 2003, and Peter was particularly helpful disposing of a bottle.  The first step is to pull the batter from the refrigerator.    Then we mix it up with some flour until it looks like this.    Taking a golf ball sized piece we roll it out until it looks like this .  Note you can vaguely read the print on the pastry cloth through the batter.  Once it is this thin we use the lefse stick   to transfer it onto the griddle.    A piece of lefse grills quickly, in about a minute, 30 seconds on each side.  Then we transfer it to the pile  here, and put the lefse cozy over the top .  By the end of the night we produced two full batches of lefse, more than enough to get the party started.

Lefse 2008 4th night

Still cooking.  Really.  There's a lot of work, though I enjoy the cooking.  Feels like a hobby.  Tonight was lingonberry night.  I make a sauce that goes over the lefse (see tomorrow night).    Note that the size of the cauldron is big because I make so much.    What you see is a pot that I originally used in college for brewing beer.  Each container has three cups of berries, and then we add other stuff to make it sweet.  Note, I'm not having any fun at all.    In addition to preparing the sauce I was also busy staging  for lefse flipping.  This involves a drop sheet so that I don't end up with flour in the heating vents.  Lastly, because Karlene was busy eating my krumkake, I had to make more.  

Lefse batter

Okay, I've spent the weekend prepping and making more  Krumkake.  Not much to tell until tonight.  Thankfully, Vici was kind enough to post-pone our DFLEF committee meeting tonight, so I came home and made some batter.  The staging has been a bit much.   

Despite what you see here  Karlene has been a huge help.  True, I do most of the cooking.  But all the staging is Karlene.  If not for her there wouldn't be any decorations or plates for the food.  Not to mention the evite.  That's her too.  

First, I use my three gallon cauldron to boil the water.     While I wait for the water to boil I like to have a glass of whisky.  In this case it's Springbank, a Campbeltown whisky.   This cask strength whisky makes the water boil more quickly.  Then we get to the mixing.  This is a photo of the lefse batter before adding any flour.    The bucket is a five gallon bucket, so this batter will make a lot of lefse.  I still have to add around 15 cups of flour to make what we want.  From the batter, which has to cool in the refrigerator overnight, I will get around to the rolling and flipping of lefse.  

By the way, I was at a fund raiser the other night for Liz Wielinski who is running for Minneapolis Park Board.  She's a spectacular person.  Find a way to support her.  Come to lefse and meet her.  She's a yes RSVP.

Goodnight.

Lefse 8 second night

Shopping and finishing up second batch of Krumkake.  This recipe isn't the one that I used, but it looks like it would work to me.

Lefse 2008

It's December 3rd, and we begin...it is called Krumkake and it's a cookie.  I've never done this before on my own (we can thank Karen Johnson for the recipe) and not made Krumkake under supervision since I was in elementary school.  I won't tell you if it's the first one that you're biting into.                  

And so you know that I had Assistants...