I'm Norweigian. Mostly. Er, energetically anyway. Regardless of the actual percentage, culturally I am Norwegian. And today I'm standing here in my Norwegian great-grandmother's apron and thinking about holiday traditions.
Since going grain-free/gluten-free about year ago I've begun to long for the old standards. Especially during the holidays. Lefse. Krumkake. Rosettes. So this year I decided: grains be damned, I'm having a traditional holiday.
Today Lupine pulled out the rosette iron. My grandma's. Yes. We'll figure it out. Gluten-free rosettes sound easier than grain-free bread in my opinion.
Lefse. That's my real love. My Gram and I made it together each year until she died. During the last year or two she spent most of her time at her round kitchen table, entertaining baby Sage while I made the lefse alone. And then she died. And the lefse making fell entirely to me for my family. I missed her humor when I made it without her, and her coffee and request to "eat ourselves sick on the trims". Last year life got in the way and I skipped lesfse making altogether (the first year ever, perhaps). That felt like such a downer when Solstice and Christmas came and there was no lefse on the table. So this year I'm thinking... can I do it gluten-free? We shall see.
Tonight we stated slow. Thumb-prints. Grain-free, sugar-free thumbprints. I used this recipe as my jumping off place, subbing in 1/3 C of honey for the sweetener, a blend of homemade butter and coconut oil for the palm oil, and my homemade raspberry jam for store-bought.
The result? Yum. Even gram would agree.
(An unrelated side note: Thank you for your comments and emails after my last post. It was pretty heavy. I don't normally go into that shadow space but for this I needed to - it feels like an important part of my process towards healing. Sage is well this morning. His fever finally gone, and the promise of a quiet day together in the kitchen is lifting my spirits. xo Rachel)
