"If there's a book of jubilations, we'll have to write it for ourselves."

[mrissa]

It's Santa Lucia Day, and my parents' lussekatter are waiting in the freezer for them to get back from work and a funeral and visiting sick family members. And there was enough with the funeral and sick family members that I had myself braced. "You know how this goes," I told myself. "It is a hard knead. Sometimes it doesn't rise when you want it to. Leave plenty of time. Do it in advance. This is important. It's okay if it takes time and energy to get it right." So I did it on the day of Nana's funeral, which was Tuesday. Well in advance.

People. You guys. The lussekatter rose like a dream this year. They barely needed kneading. They twirled and danced into whatever shapes I wanted with barely a touch.

I have no idea what happened.

When things go wrong, you poke at them and you think: was it too cold? Was the yeast too old? Did I put the yeast into the warm milk and butter when it was too warm? And on. And on. When things come out perfect--well, there's a certain urge to interrogate that too. But the only thing different was that the saffron didn't grind well, and I can't think that's it. It was a longer rise time than the 45-minute minimum but a much shorter rise time than I have sometimes had before. The house was the house, and I was me. And my lussekatter, oh, my lussekatter gave me a break this year. They put up only token resistance.

I am so far behind on everything, and I am such a big worrywart, but this. This went right when I was prepared to have it be a fight. And now I have some fight left over for other things that need it.

I was going to hesitate to use this word, but it turns out we have a long tradition of using it with bread products: this was grace.

Happy Santa Lucia Day.

2011 2010 2009 2008 2007 Part 1 2007 Part 2 2006

Comments

[sksperry.livejournal.com]

For some reason I read that whole post as if it were something from the TV series GRIMM, and Lussekatter were a kind of Wesen that you were trying to bake in the oven like some kind of evil Witch from Hansel and Gretal.

Or maybe I just haven't fully recovered from being sick yesterday.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I'm not bad, I'm just drawn that way.

[sksperry.livejournal.com]

This picture of you tends to support that statement.

[aedifica]

I am filled with amazement that I know exactly where that quote is from. (Though having written that, I don't know for sure that that's where it entered your idiolect from. But still.)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

[aedifica]

Yes.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

And a happy one to you, too!

[txanne.livejournal.com]

The Lussekatter Post has become one of my holiday traditions.

[athenais.livejournal.com]

Mine, too. And I thought about last year's as I was rising early this morning wishing I had, after all, made the lussekatter.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Heh. I just read your post, Lucy, and was thinking "Oh! - I wonder how Mrissa's lussekatter came out this year?" - and there was her post, directly beneath yours on my friends' page...

[ckd]

Same here.

[alecaustin.livejournal.com]

The lussekater was so very well-behaved. (And tasty. Let us not forget tasty. Mmm.)

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

And to you!

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

Also grace, since I get on a long flight tomorrow morning: I am glad I didn't miss the annual lussekatter post- it's a holiday tradition for me as well. On the other hand I did somehow miss the post about your Nana. I'm sorry you've lost her, and glad so had her so long. May her memory be a blessing (sounds like it already is).

[athgarvan.livejournal.com]

I'm sure Santa Lucia had a finger in the pie!

[pameladean]

Oh, hooray. I was wondering how it would behave.

I am so glad that you have some extra fight. I wish one could bottle it.

P.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Bottle it, heck! I will have used it all up by the end of the day! No preserving agents required!

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

I am now tempted to say "who's a good lussekatter?" in the tone usually reserved for amiable dogs.

Happy Santa Lucia day@

[rosefox]

Oh, I'm so glad. Grace indeed.

[brooksmoses]

And something else remarkable this year. For several years, I've had a pattern of reading your lussekatter post and nothing that I was feeling really worn down by the dark and could really use some light, and wishing that I'd remembered to try making lussekatter (and felt like doing so), and finding a small but important bit of light in the world in your writing about it.

This year it was again with being surprised that it had come around again, but with almost none of the depressedness. Lussekatter would still have been a great goodness, of course, but many things felt okay with my world nonetheless.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

That is good. Thank you for telling me.