No Wonder I’ve Always Lefset Alone

By Elaine Nelson McIntosh submitted by RuthAnn Wilson

We Bakkes may be a bunch of ethnocentric Norwegians, but once in awhile some of us have observed the merits of others outside of this group, and brought them into the Bakke family through marriage. The “clan” now includes spouses of Danish, Italian, Dutch, Scotch and other heritages.

One of the first steps in acculturating these exotic spouses is to introduce them to Norwegian foods. What foods are most representative of Norwegian cookery?  Well, there’s Klub … or blood sausage… oh, and there’s lutefisk - cod which has been treated with lye! But these are foods which even some of us Norskies don’t like so much any more. So they should surely serve as an acid test of your new spouse’s loyalty to you. If you do inflict one of these foods shortly after the honeymoon, be sure to have on hand several of the more tolerable Norwegian foods to soften the experience, like sandbakkels, fattigmand, or fruit suppe. 

Lefse, ready to be eaten

In my case, having a Bakke from Westby for a mother and then changing my name from Nelson to McIntosh, I thought I’d start out easy by putting lefse on the table that first Thanksgiving. I felt safe in doing this because, although it had been referred to earlier as ‘napkins’ by a certain Italian member of our fold, Lefse had generally been well-tolerated.

I was wrong. Lefse was not a hit with my spouse.

One day, years later, when the subject of lefse came up, he asked, “How do you make that stuff, anyway?”

I replied, “Well, for a nice big batch, you’d take about 4 cups of cooked, mashed potatoes, add butter, milk and flour to make a stiff dough…”

“Ugh! You can stop right there,” my Tom said. “No wonder I have always ‘Lefset’ alone!”