Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you...MINNESOTA!!

You know, today's installments of information would be awfully thin, were it not for the huge number of Possumblog Stringers, spanning the globe to give you the finest of local news, sharp, insightful commentary, and folksy recipes. Although my backlog of work today is causing me much distress, I knew I could count on a savior to come in and fill in the gaps with much wordage--I had just come back from my morning staff meeting to find one such missive from our Gopher State reporter, Toni Albani:

Ole & Lena jokes are real big here in 'sota. Things are so dismal in the news, I think a little humor is in order. Remember, this is the humor of Norwegians!

Conquerors of Northern Europe with the edge of the sword and with rapier wit.

Subject: LENA & HELGA

One night a torrential rain soaked northwestern Minnesota. The next morning the resulting floodwaters came up about 6 feet into most of the homes in the area. Helga had been visiting her friend, Lena, when the flood came. They escaped to the roof of Lena's house.

As they were sitting on the roof waiting for help to come, Helga noticed a baseball cap floating near the house. Then she saw it float far out into the front yard, then float back toward the house; it kept floating away from the house, then back towards the house. Her curiosity got the best of her, so she asked Lena, "Do you see dat der baseball cap a floating away from da house, den back again?"

Lena said, "Oh ya, dat's my husband Ole. I tole dat lazy-ass he vas gonna cut
da grass today, come hell or high vater!!!"

Ms. Albani will be appearing all week at the Edina "Chuckles ;)" location on the By-Pass, with two shows on Saturday night.

One of the towns on the lake where my family spent the summer (and where my parents have resided for the last 20yrs) is Starbuck. It's an old Norwegian town where people still speak Norsky and have that "Fargo" accent. They have a big statue of a "Buck" at the main crossroad and have the distinction of having created the world's largest lefse.

AND their very own Hobo Park! Anyway, as Toni knows, Possumblog is nothing without large amounts of salt, fat, sugar and starch (the four basic Southern food groups), and lo and behold, the magical Lefse has ALL of those things! It's the PERFECT FOOD!!

SO then, here is Corrine Hoium's Lefse Recipe from the website:

Ingredients:

5 lb. Russet potatoes (pealed and cooked)
1/2 cup whipping cream
1/4 pound butter or margarine
1 tablespoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar
4 cups flour

Baking Instructions:

Mash the potatoes with the whipping cream, butter or margarine, salt & sugar. Cool in the refrigerator over night. Rice potatoes and add the flour.
Roll and bake (1/3 cup makes one lefse round). One batch makes [sic] lefse rounds.

HOW MANY LEFSE ROUNDS PER BATCH!? This information was strangely missing from the website, but my guess is that is would make about 10,000 lefse rounds. (That may not be right--I'm bad with numbers.) Toni continues (in the process giving Chet the E-Mail Boy a flare up of his rheumatism):

There's also flatbread which is a local favorite. My Mom still makes the stuff, it's kind of along the lines of eating soynuts. Filling, but tastes like you are eating sawdust. Supposed to be a good thing for you to eat and low in cal's.

MMmmm! Just like sawdust!! Nothing like a big handful along with some metal shavings to take the edge off of the hungries!

Lefse is also low in cal's but everyone slathers butter and/or sugar on it which defeats that purpose.

Well, yeah...and your point is?

Mom still makes lefse around the holidays. Talk about cultural diversity, we always had lefse and lutifisk for Christmas eve dinner and ravioli for Christmas day dinner at our house.

Cultural diversity, sheer insanity...whatever. Just as long as no one tried lutefisk ravioli, I guess it's okay. Or lutefisk marinara. Or spaghetti and lefse balls.

I feel queasy.

Once my grandfather died, so did the lutifisk

Hmm. Musta been one of them weird symbiotic host/parasite relationships you see on the Discovery Channel...

- which was a good thing. That stuff really stinks!

One assumes we're speaking of the lye-encrusted fish, not Gramps.

Lefse is ok but I'm not a major fan so I won't be carrying on the tradition. My brothers are now the makers of the ravioli for Christmas so that tradition won't die out yet. We'll see what happens with the next generation.

Oh, you know how these kids today are--they'll probably get all high-falutin' and have stuff like ham and turkey with peas and mashed potatoes and gravy and dressing and cranberry sauce...

ANYWHO, thanks so much for this timely update, Toni! We always appreciate receiving updates from the vast snowy northlands. UPDATE:--Toni just sent in this link to her favorite purveyor of storebought lutefisk, herring, and lefse!

Hmmm--I wonder if there is a market for cornbread-battered, deep-fried lutefisk on a stick...
posted by Terry at 11:18:00 AM