Tortillas de papas = lefse

Potato tortillas are almost the same as Norwegian lefse. One day last November, Dick saw tortillas de papas for sale at Santa Fe market and bought some. He asked for 6 and the clerk began weighing out 6 kilos. No, no, just 6 tortillas, and later he said they were almost like lefse, a Norwegian treat the Skaug family enjoys every Christmas Eve. Although he checked back almost every day since then, the tortillas de papas have never been available again.

He decided to make his own. It was a 2-day process with the first day being peeling, boiling, and mashing the potatoes. We don't have a potato masher on the boat so Dick used my plastic colander to force the potatoes through the holes, a lot like ricing potatoes. A very good idea, but later I had to poke a wooden skewer through EVERY hole to remove potato bits and still had to take it off the boat and squirt it with spray nozzle of the hose. There was a fine flour dust everywhere and lots of potato-flour cement on mixing bowls. New kitchen rule: if you make lefse, you clean the galley.

Day 2: the dough was sticky and hard to work with. Rolling out the balls of dough was difficult until Dick covered a plastic panel with a clean t-shirt. Nice rolling pin, huh? Dick cleaned the galley!

The final evaluation from Dick: "They're not as good as the lefse made by Merrilyn and Grace." I thought they were delicious.