Potato Bologna

Wow, life is CRAZY!! Lots of preparation going on for Christmas, as we want it to be extra special for my little sister's arrival home from Iraq. That said, I haven't been able to finish all of my Christmas shopping yet but there's just a few people left on my list. I'm even behind on shipping gifts to family that I send to every year so I'm hoping I can get to the post office today to send that stuff off. Whew! There's so much to think about!!

What kind of preparation do we do? Well, the basic Christmas preparation on both sides of our families is full of traditions, which is something I love. The Christensons are very Norwegian, so we have at least one "lefse-making day" a year at my in-law's home. I love that I know how to make lefse and I know this is a tradition I will carry on with my kids and grandkids in the future. (It's so much fun!) I know that I mentioned our lefse day in an earlier post, but if you want to read all about it, click HERE. My in-laws were able to take some great pictures. My hands were full of flour so I didn't even touch a camera all day. :)

My side of the family is Swedish. While we eat many of the same foods at Chris' side, we do not normally have lefse at our Christmas meal. My mom has started making a traditional Swedish dessert called "Oostakaka" that we all look forward to (we've had it every year, but normally have it made by a woman in Iowa) and we also eat "potato bologna" (which is the same thing as "potato sausage"). My mom has also started making her own potato bologna---even stuffing it in a casing and all. Last year, my brothers helped her and this year, I offered to lend a hand. This was all new to me, so I'm glad my brothers were able to tell me how the process works!! :)

I took quite a few pictures, but just picked a couple to post. Here's Jon (aka "Professional Potato Bologna Maker") being silly as usual:



One very cool thing is that my mom uses "tools" that belonged to my grandmother and even great-grandmother. The meat grinder is quite an antique (but worked well) and the sausage-filler-press-thing (do you like my technical terms??) is REALLY an antique. It took three of us to fill the casings (aka pig intestine---yea, I just had to throw that in there!). My brother, Ben, turned the crank, my brother, Jon, pressed down on the top of the machine, and for most of the time, I was holding the casing and making sure that the sausages were the right thickness. Of course, after getting lots of flack from my brothers about my novice-like skill, I threw my hands up and my mom took over my "job"....



It was a really fun--and messy--day and I had such a great time hanging out with my brothers. Hannah was with me all day at my mom's house so you might be wondering: what kept her busy the whole time we were making the sausage??


A "Dora" DVD and lots and lots of Christmas cookies, of course!!