The Better-Late-Than-Never Edition of Merry Monday

Happy Holidays!

We have been having such a good time celebrating that time just slipped away.

Then suddenly it was Friday! Then Blogger ate my post and now it's Saturday!

Where did the time go?

Santa was good to all of us, even the one who pooped behind the Christmas tree.

(We had blamed it on Andy's dog, Jeremy but it now appears that Stewart is the real culprit.)

The Christmas cactus even bloomed - at Christmas!

There were just four flowers but that's four more than last year.

We were lucky to have lots of help with the decorating from Spenser.

Then there were the visitors, Burt was happy to see everybody.

This one did a lot of woofing.

He did quiet down eventually, after he got all dressed up. How cruel was that?

There's no celebrating without a lot of eating! Like many families, we have some recipes we always

make at Christmas time. Most of them are cookies and desserts passed down from Norwegian great great grandmothers. There are traditionally supposed to be seven different varieties served at the holidays but I've only managed two. My Mom started making the Polish Tea Cakes after HM and I were married, I guess it was her way of including him in our family. I added the Turtle Brownies because I love chocolate and thought it needed some representation within the basic dessert group.

Then there's the one we make just because we really, really like it.

I guess it's official, cheesecake has been adopted as one of our traditional holiday desserts.

Finally, there is lefse. It's one of those things we make because it's been a staple of Christmas Eve

dinner for as long as I can remember. My grandmothers, aunts and mom would get together and

make boatloads of it in early October. Half of what they made was for a traditional Scandinavian

dinner at our church that raised funds for world relief. The rest we ate! Here's Andy posing with the

lefse he made. I tried to match the photo I took of him in kindergarten wearing his dinosaur costume

and holding a plate of cookies. He's taller now, even though it wasn't that long ago - to me. Ha!

The process begins the night before the baking. Three pounds of potatoes get boiled and then have to be skinned while they're still hot. Ouch! Most of Scandinavian Christmas baking involves burning your fingers. That's my great grandmother's fork on the right, it's missing one of it's three tines but it's perfect for testing the doneness of spuds or poking at veggies when they're cooking.

While they're still hot, the spuds are run through a ricer then mixed with butter, cream and salt.

It's basically mashed potatoes at this point. Then it goes into the fridge overnight.

In the morning flour gets added to the potato mix and it's divided into seven equal portions. There's

that number seven again. Then it's rolled out - with a special rolling pin that's just made for lefse - and baked on a very hot griddle - that's only used for baking lefse! On trains in Norway they sell it individually wrapped, like candy bars. It is tempting to just go out and buy some, it's available at local stores but that wouldn't seem right. Awhile ago I realized that if we were going to keep eating it, I'd have to learn to make it. Luckily, Andy and HM love to cook so between the three of us and some YouTube videos we figured it out. It's really not that hard and it gets a easier every year.

After an exhausting morning it was time for a break so we all headed out to the Bare Bones Brewery (at Burt's suggestion) to sample a couple flights of their beer and recuperate from the holiday baking. Check out the bone shaped flight holders! Andy made a full recovery from his lefse ordeal.

Season's greetings from Burt and Ivy, they will be back soon.

Thanks for stopping by and best wishes to all who are celebrating!

I'm joining Marfi at Incipient Wings for the final Merry Monday and I want to thank her so very much for bringing her own uniqueness and wonderful enthusiasm to the blogging community.

She makes every day a whole lot merrier!