Rolling Lefse with Bestefar

My grandfather is Norwegian, and every December he makes lefse, a soft potato flatbread, for Christmas. This year, he decided I was finally old enough to learn. I'm thirty-one.

He has a special grooved rolling pin, a round griddle and a long, flat wooden stick he's used for sixty years. He mashed the potatoes the night before and let them chill. In the morning, we mixed in the flour and butter, rolled each round thin enough to read a newspaper through, and lifted it onto the griddle with the stick in one smooth motion.

That smooth motion took me about forty tries. I tore some. I folded some in half. One landed on the floor. Bestefar laughed every time and said, "That one is for the dog."

By noon, we had a tall stack of perfect, freckled rounds. We spread them with butter and sugar and rolled them up like cigars. He ate one, then looked at me and said, in his heavy accent, "Now you are the lefse maker." I'll remember that every Christmas for the rest of my life.