Fabulous Food Friday: Aebleskiver

Yesterday my friend Debbie and I drove for 2 hours down to Junction City to attend their Scandinavian Festival. We both have Norwegian heritage, so it was fun to spend a day celebrating our ancestors. One of the things we tried was a dish called Aebleskiver. They are little round waffle-like treats that are served with jam. I've never made them, but it was fun watching them make them at the festival. My mom has the iron to make these and we are planning to dust if off and make some soon.

Danish Aebleskiver
2 C flour
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder
1 T sugar
2 T melted margarine
2 C milk
2 eggs, separated

Mix together dry ingredients and set aside. Separate eggs and beat whites stiff, not dry. Combine milk, egg yolks, margarine and add to dry ingredients. Fold in egg whites.

Use a heavy cast iron aebleskiver pan on medium heat. Put aprox 1 tsp veg oil in each hole. Pour batter in each to level top. Using a thin knitting needle, turn when bubbles appear. Continue turning to complete the ball shape. To test for doneness, insert needle. It should come out clean. each batch takes about 7-9 minutes.

Here you can see the woman pouring the batter into the hot iron.

Once they have cooked for a while, you turn them about a third of the way over and let them cook some more.

Then turn them again, using a metal skewer.

Lots of young girls were on hand to help turn the aebleskivers.

And there you have it...ours were served with strawberry jam and norseberry jam ~ yummy!

More pictures from the Scandinavian Festival 2008

There was lots of dancing by adults as well as children.

Here are some clogs that I thought were so cute. Click to enlarge the photos to see the rosemaling detail.

Many girls wore these flower wreaths in their hair...so sweet.
I couldn't resist taking this little girl's photo. She was adorable.

Here are some of the women representing traditional costumes from Norway. Many of the dresses were made by the ladies who were wearing them.

I knew this would happen

I knew it, I just knew it....

Grrrr...The very thing that I hoped wouldn't happen did. In a previous post I mentioned that after 10 years of demonstrating for Stampin' Up, I decided to just let it go. I was hesitant to do so because of all the cool things I would miss out on, fun new stamps, paper and accsories that come out in the new catalog (now twice a year).

About this time every year Stampin' Up releases their newest goodies every year and I would wait on pins and needles for my copy of the new catalog to arrive. This was the first year in a long time I wouldn't be getting my complimentary catalog, so I decided to peek on Splitcoaststampers to see if any of the demos over there would have leaked anything about the new catalog.

Well, to my surprise it turns out that Stampin' Up! has finally partnered with Sizzix and will now be offering a line of exclusive Sizzix dies! This is so exciting to me and so dissapointing at the same time. I had been suggesting this for years, almost as long as SU has been marketing to scrapbookers. At first they came out with die cut punch outs which were okay and served their purpose, but I could never understand why they didn't come out with the actual dies for sale.

The very thing I was hoping to be able to demonstrate, never showed up in the catalog...until I decided to end my time as a demonstrator. As you can see there are lots of fun designs to choose from. I think I am in trouble once again...I just love this stuff!!! Stay tuned, I believe the new online catalog goes live on August 11th.

Totally Awesome 80's Party

Last Thursday was my 35th birthday and I planned an 80's themed party to celebrate. Like Happy Birthday to me, fer sure!

After spending a few hours digging through all the clothes at Goodwill, I came up with these outfits. I went for the mall chic look while my husband sported the Miami Vice look.

My daughter (on the right) thought her outfit looked weird...sadly, this is just the kind of stuff I wore in middle school. I even found Jellies (shoes) at Target on clearance for $1.99. I loved my Jellies back in the 80's, but man they sure did make our feet stink!

I even made one of these to go with her outfit...most of you who were little girls in the 80s had barettes like this.

Dan and Scott fake laughing.

Girls Just Wanna Have Fun!

Friends from high school looking totally tubular!

Like, gag me with a spoon!

The shirt still fits...sort of!

Back in the 80's I remember going to the mall and people asking us to take the Pepsi challenge to see which soda we like better: Coke or Pepsi...so we had our own blind taste test...some people could tell right away, others thought they knew, but were way off.

We served Breakfast Club Sandwiches, cool ranch Doritos and grape and strawberry crush to wash it down. It was hard to find "80's" themed food, but as I was working on coming up with some ideas I realized that this was the time when we really started to see all the processed foods and major junk food start to show up in the stores...lots of prepackaged stuff that I don't normally buy.


Of course there were sweets too!


You can't have an 80's party without the most rad video game star! These pac-man cookies were fun to make.


Mid way through the party, my husband came out dressed as Richard Simmons...people were laughing so hard, it took about 10 minutes for everyone to regain their composure.


Here they are participating in the 80's relay where you have to run from the other side of the yard to the chair, pick up the Thigh Master and do 10 reps and run back.


It was a Thigh Master disaster and my husband stayed in character the whole time!


I turned our dining room into an 80's museum. Here are the few things left from my childhood.


On the wall was a huge 80's collage poster we had printed out. Tons of 80's memories here!


If you click on this picture, you can see it much better, or drag it to your desktop and open it. I found it by Googling 80's collage...I love Google!


In the museum was a vintage 80's apple computer that was up and running some original 80's old school games...the kids and adults liked playing them.


Like this is totally a blast from the past...back in the day, this cell phone was all the rage.


For my cake, my friend baked me a "16 Candles" cake. It was a lot of fun to stroll down memory lane, but the best part was seeing what our friends came dressed up like...totally rad dude, to the max!