Daily Journal – Friday, 12/15/23

As mentioned yesterday, last night I made kringle.

In my family, by tradition, the men make the holiday treats. I come from a line of Norwegian settlers, who, at the holidays, traditionally have made caramels, peanut brittle, lefse¹, and kringle²

For years, my grandfather and my father both would make kringle right around Christmas time, and I first recall eating them very young. The first time I can remember making kringle myself, however, was after my father left. There was a school project about family histories and tradition, and as part of it, I decided to try and make kringle. My mother, who had never made it herself, stood by to assist, as I was at best 10 or 11, and not yet to be trusted unsupervised with an electric mixer.

The most distinct thing I can remember is how sticky it was, and how impossible mixing it seemed. Kringle are sort of a doughy cookie, and its dough is made similar to many cookies, with sugar, butter, eggs, and vanilla, plus flour and baking powder. What sets kringle apart is the sour cream, into which is mixed baking soda, to cause a chemical reaction that induces a bubbling rise into the mixture, before blending in with the sugar-creamed butter and eggs. After mixing in the flour, what you’re left with is a dough the thickness of cookie dough but the stickiness of pizza dough. It’s the worst of both worlds to handle, and without experience or the right tools, my first attempt was a nightmare. I remember my hands, coated in dough so thickly that I couldn’t separate my fingers. They came out well enough in the end, and my classmates seemed to like them³, though were clearly missing something by way of technique.

Later in life, while visiting my father’s family at Christmas, I got my opportunity to learn at my grandfather’s side. I saw the benefits of a floured cheesecloth board and how it took much of the pain of rolling the dough away. I learned the importance of mixing the baking soda in with the sour cream, letting it bubble and froth before mixing with the other ingredients. I sieved flour in with baking powder, getting a thorough mixing. There are things a recipe card, Xeroxed and copied and photographed and digitized, will never contain. That must be learned at the knee, watched and ingrained in the timbre of one’s forebears.

I still hear my grandfather’s voice in my process, though he’s been gone for years now. I still hear my father’s as we laugh over how his father would grouse about our pretzel shapes instead of his figure-eights, as was tradition as he learned it. Both men are gone now, but they’ve passed on a legacy. I make what they made, how they made it, when they made it, and for whom. As I watched the first batch cool last night, while rolling out the second, I twisted one into a poor infinity, a crossed loop, in my grandfather’s memory, and his son’s after him.

I miss them, and I’ll carry their lessons with me. And I’ll teach them to the generations to come, the way they were taught to me. With patience, love, expectation, and reverence for those that had taught them before.

What I read

A Robot the Size of the World, which is an essay from Bruce Schneier on the longer-term implications of IoT combined with networked AI and where it might lead. A lot of the initial discussion around Internet of Things applications was regarding straight algorithms. I’m curious to see what the implication around more intelligent, morphological neurally networked algorithms open up in that space and that line of technological advancement.

What I watched

After the talk about the First World War yesterday, I finally caught They Shall Not Grow Old this morning. The resonance of the stories about the conflict told only through the voices of those that fought, and the recordings of their lives, was incredibly poignant. To hear a chorus of men from varying backgrounds all share their similar experiences, focus on the little details that still stuck with them decades hence, and to think back on events that rhyme even now with those of the soldiery of the present, was something to behold. It’s definitely earned its accolades, and I’d highly recommend trying to catch it before Netflix lets it go at the close of the year.

What I listened to

The latest episode of Pablo Torre Finds Out, the new show by the inimitable Pablo Torre. His show is an explosion of his inner self portrayed audibly and visibly externally. And then more than anything, I was thrilled to listen today because my absolute favorite sports talker, Katie Nolan, was on the show.

I’m a long-time Katie Nolan fan, back to her days recording YouTube shows in her time between shifts at the bar. I’ve followed her from the internet to Fox and her time teaching Regis Philben about the future and launching Garbage Time (which might be the most she was ever herself on screen) , to ESPN and the COVID casualty of her time there (where I listened to every episode of her podcast and watched every episode of her show, even as their leadership flailed around trying to find the right way to user her talents), and even to her time cohosting Apple TV’s Friday Night Baseball (which she took more seriously than most veteran broadcasters).

Wherever I can find her work, I’m there, and wherever she ends up next, I’ll be there. Katie helped me learn more about myself, showed me new ways to think about topics I’d not given enough thought, and was one of my vital points of connection to the wider world during COVID.

Projects In Progress

This thing: I made an executive decision to go with a Monday-Friday schedule, so we’ll seeya back here after the weekend.

Notes:

1
A type of flatbread of a crepe or tortilla thickness, made from potatoes
2
I’ve seen others spell it as kringla, which is how the word is pronounced, however for my family, it has always been kringle. Also to note, not Danish kringle, which is a flat ring with ingredients stuffed inside, then frosted.
3
Though, being in 4th grade, they didn’t have the most discerning palates.