Proud

S is 13. She belongs to Job's Daughters, a Masonic organization which honestly is foreign to me in my life experience. But it is great. They have a "ritual" assigned memorized parts. No makeup or nail polish for the meetings. Sound old-fashioned? Yes-but the purpose is that everyone is equal. The natural nature of the meetings puts everyone on even ground. It is not religious necessarily but basically patriotic and grounded in excellent morals. It's much deeper than this, but that's the general "sound bite".

One of the large state-wide annual gatherings is called Grand Bethel, where girls gather from across the state. Again-being "old-fashioned" there are competitions in scrapbooking, ASL sign language, recipes (every category you can think of). The ages of the girls are 10-11 to I think 20 is the oldest.

S last year entered a recipe for lefse. She is quite good at making it. Bless Grandma H. who has a passion for cooking and baking. Our tradition is to make lefse every Christmas Eve morning, for Christmas Eve dinner. OK-so literally we make lefse 1x per year. She embraces the girls and understands the importance of carrying on a Norwegian (family heritage) tradition. All 3 girls know how to do each part of the lefse process. Grandma truly understands how to teach -- her delegation skills are absolutely outstanding.

S last year won a coveted "golden spoon" award for her lefse. Lefse is quite "fussy" to make, and she did fantastic. Recipe is on Allrecipes. I submitted this recipe for her to the site, as per their rules she is too young to have an identity and submit recipes.

THIS YEAR-she decided to make another quite difficult recipe, and again won another golden spoon. Awesome! It was a very rich and utterly delicious chocolate raspberry torte-recipe from Epicurious. Also quite fussy, involves spring form pan, finishing with raspberry drizzle and chocolate crumbles. Very rich. We had the torte last spring at a family event. S-12 at the time immediately earmarked this recipe as the one she wanted to make for the competition. OK I'm her mom, but to me that was pretty darn impressive.

The weekend event is packed for time. The girls also dress up (think beautiful dresses you would wear at a black tie event). She tried her best to find the time to go taste her recipe, but there was none left when she was available for tasting. Yum.

I am so proud of our Golden Spoon winner.

Hey-if she's doing this now, just imagine the delectable delights that she can create and share in the future!!!