Starts with K
The commitment to lutefisk is a beautiful thing.
Consider this: Leah Nordquist is not from Blooming Prairie, does not belong to the First Lutheran Church in Blooming Prairie, lives in another Prairie – Eden – and works a full-time job.
Still, she spent Friday morning peeling potatoes and “blinding them:” taking the eyes out.
“She came down from Eden Prairie because she saw that we needed a potato person,” said Ruth Earl, who coordinates the annual lutefisk dinner, which was held last weekend at the church.
Nordquist works in food service at the high school in the Twin Cities suburb, “and I have been coming to this dinner for six decades. This is a family thing.”
Nordquist does have local ties: Her father graduated from BPHS, “my grandmother worked the ‘corn room’ at this dinner, my grandfather was a custodian for the church, and I was baptized here.”
Back in August, she was online, looking for the date of Blooming Prairie event, “because I didn’t want to miss this dinner.”
She found the information – and also the call for volunteers in the potato room. Nordquist signed up.
“Then I got a text from her,” she said, pointing at Earl, “and it said, ‘Who are you?’ Everybody thought it was weird. ‘You better check her out; she must be from a rival church somewhere.’”
Nordquist sent them her grandparents’ obituaries and told them her father was Chuck Nelson, who was the barber in town. In fact, he was Earl’s husband’s barber.
“I needed a service project,” Nordquist continued. “Today was a day off, because school was closed; the stars are aligning: I’m coming down to do this.”
She planned to be back Saturday morning to cut up the potatoes for boiling and mashing, “and I’m sure wonderful dairy products will be added to them.”
As Earl listened, she saw an opportunity. “Do you want to come with me? I have to pick up 200 pounds of butter.”
“I’m in,” Nordquist said. “I’m committed. Or I should be committed.”
Her last name did not escape me; I’ve spent some time in Scandinavian territories, and they can be ruthless.
“One day I came home, and I said, ‘Dad, there’s this boy I met in Owatonna. His name is Tim Nordquist, and he wants to marry me.’ And my dad says, ‘Nordquist? Is he Swedish?’
“And I said, ‘Yes, he is. His family’s Swedish.’ And my dad got kind of a sour look on his face,” Leah Nordquist said, “and he said, ‘Honey, in our family, we call them social climbers. He doesn’t know a cranberry from a lingonberry.’
“So I said, ‘Here’s the plan: We’ll get him to a couple of lutefisk dinners at First Lutheran, and we’ll see how it goes.’ We were married for about 35 years until he died,” Nordquist said.
“He never quite took to the fish, but he loved the meatballs,” she said. “We would drive down every single year. I don’t think I hardly ever missed one.”
She loves lutefisk and has “just a little bit. That’s all I really want.”
Nordquist’s family has a particular style of eating it, too, she said.
“The lefse has to go down first, then the potatoes, then the fish on top, then the hot butter, then a little salt and pepper, and it’s ready to eat,” she said.
Kind of like a … fish lasagna?
“It is; it really is,” Nordquist said. “I’ve seen cretins – cretins! – up in the Twin Cities that will roll it up and eat it like a burrito. Like, are you a Dane? What is wrong with you?”
She has gone to several lutefisk meals in the Twin Cities area, “and they were just terrible. Hard-boiled potatoes. What are you doing? You forgot to get them mashed.”
Nordquist wasn’t sure if she’d be mashing potatoes last Saturday, though.
“Actually, I don’t think they’ll let me touch power tools,” she said. “I’m just here to help. Whatever they want me to do, I will do. That’s my motto.”