Ric Rac Rummy, a Card Game for Family Gatherings, version of Contract Rummy

This challenging card game was an important part of extended family gatherings (on my Norwegian side) when I was a kid.

We called it Ric Rac Rummy, but I can't find any reference to that name anywhere. For the sake of someone else on this planet desperately searching for this game from their childhood, here it is!

I did find a card game nearly identical in "Official Rules of Card Games" by The United States Playing Card Company, known as Contract Rummy among many other names, popular for large gatherings.

This game works best if you have many players AND at least a couple hours to spend together. I remember epic games with aunties and cousins crowded around our fully extended dining table.

To help us keep track of the hands, as each hand becomes progressively demanding, my aunties created these little booklets from cut strips of paper. I found one of these booklets in a back drawer. Treasure!

For Thanks-Birth-O-Ween, I wanted to introduce it to my kids. Would they like it?
They loved it.

RIC RAC RUMMY

CARDS REQUIRED:
for 4-5 people, use a double deck WITH jokers as wild cards.
(with 5 players you might want to use a triple for the last few rounds)
for 6-9 players use a triple deck etc...
OTHER WILD CARDS -- the group may choose to use 2s as wild cards also.

Deal 12 cards to each player (for the first few hands)
Place rest of deck in center of table and flip the top card over to begin the discard pile.
Player to the left of dealer may choose this card or draw from the top of the deck.

TURNS:
Player draws the top discard or draws from the top of the deck.
At that point, the player may "go down" if they can.
If they have already "gone down" they may then play on other people's cards on the table.
If they have not gone down, discard one card and end the turn.

HOW TO "GO DOWN"

Each hand has different requirements. The first hand, for example, calls for 2 sets of 3.

SET: Three cards of any suit that are the same rank, such as 3 Queens or 3 sixes.
RUN: Three or more cards in the SAME SUIT in sequential order, such as 8, 9, 10, J, all in Diamonds.
ACES: can be played as a "one" = A, 2,3,4 OR can be played "high" = J,Q, K, A, but cannot be wrapped around -- such as K, A, 2, 3.

To go down, the player must have ALL the sets and/or runs called for in that round (No partial going down), and ONLY those sets or runs called for.  They may not place additional sets or runs on the table. They may add to those sets or runs however, for example, if they place a run of four hearts: 6,7,8,9  -- they may then add to it with a 5 or a 10 of hearts.

After a player has gone down, they may then play cards from their hand to other player's sets or runs on the table. Unlike Rummikub, they may not split or re-arrange those sets or runs to create new ones. They can however, replace wild cards with the cards they are representing, and according to your interpretation of the rules, the wild card can be used elsewhere in that run only OR you could decide to extend that rule to be able to use those freed wild cards elsewhere on the table.

TO GO OUT: The last card played out of a players hand must be a discard. You cannot go out by simply going down. You must have a discard.

BUYING: Keeps things interesting. After a player discards and BEFORE the next player draws to begin their play, any player may call out "I'LL BUY THAT!" meaning they want the card that has just been discarded.
The players are then given the opportunity to assert their rights for that card, beginning with the player whose turn is next and progressing around the table. If no one with higher rank in playing order wants that discard, the buyer takes the discard AND two more cards from the top of the deck.
If the person whose turn is next wants that card, they draw it normally. They do not have to buy it.

Each player may BUY up to three times per round.
The group may decide to allow four BUYS in the last few rounds.

BUYING becomes essential in order to have enough cards to go out later in the game.


ALL THE ROUNDS

First Round:
Two Sets of Three,
deal 12, each player may buy up to three times.

Second Round:
1 Run of Four
1 Set of Three

Third Round:
2 Runs of Four

Fifth Round: 
One Run of Seven,
One set of Three

Fourth Round:
3 Sets of Three

Fifth Round:
1 Run of Seven
1 Set of Three

Sixth Round:
2 Runs of Four
1 Set of Three

Seventh Round:
3 Runs of Four

Eighth Round:
1 Run of Ten
1 Set of Three
Deal 14 cards
(At any point, if you determine there are not enough cards for players involved,
add one additional deck of cards. Players may also decide to allow up to four buys per round)

Ninth Round:
1 Run of Five
3 Sets of Three
Deal 14 cards

Tenth Round:
3 Runs of Five
Deal 15 cards

SCORING: Play continues until someone goes out by playing the last card from their hand as a discard.
Players then count the cards remaining in their hand as negative points. Cards on the table are not counted.
Numbered cards may be counted their face value OR you may choose to count them all as five points. You decide.
Face cards are ten points.
Aces are fifteen points.
Jokers are twenty points.
If 2s are wild, they are also twenty points.

Lowest score wins!

If you are glad to find this game, let me know! Happy Holidays!

Decorating for Thanksbirthoween

It's a mixed up holiday of our own invention, so the opportunity to be creative was terrific.

(For an explanation of Thanksbirthoween, see my earlier post)

Budget -- basically frugal.

I played with grapevines, leaves and pine cones.

Using what was at hand or free in nature. 

The Birthday gifts were wrapped with shipping paper and leftover wallpaper found at a thrift store. 

Odd bits of ribbons, yarns, jute string and even fabric found in thrift shops added more color.

The most difficult thing I took on was mismatched dinner plates salad plates and cloth napkins. 

Mismatching has become very popular, and I love it, but when you look at a lovely image all put together it seems so easy.

This was not quite perfect, but still fun.

I discovered several things:

Keep to a very narrow color palette, including specific tones in that palette.

The shapes of dishes matter. Some of my dishes were more bowl shaped at the sides, and these don't work as well as those with a slight well and a defined, flat rim.

I discovered that creating individual settings was easy, but making the whole thing look right was much trickier.

And mixing modern designs with antique designs adds a layer of complexity. Some of my favorite individual settings just did not work together.

I have been collecting colorful water glasses for years. These helped tie it together.

I hate tall fussy floral arrangements in the middle of a dining table. I much prefer to see the people I am enjoying dinner with! Four delicious Comice pears and five simple candles was perfect for our centerpiece. And we ate the pears the next day ;)

Thanks-Birth-o-Ween

We are so glad that our two daughters are forming their adult lives, fully engaged in careers and
committed to their own social circles and of course, their husbands and extended families.

This is a great comfort.

But occasionally we need to consecrate time together.

I have seen that major holidays can be a point of contest in other families, so we avoid having any expectations. One day is the same as all the rest to us! We don't want a day of celebration to become a torment of guilt, or worse, a mad dash from one party to the next in an anxious attempt to please everyone.

So we have started making up our own traditions.

It started when our youngest went off to college in another state. Her favorite holiday is Halloween, and though she had fun with her new friends, it just was not the same for her as Halloween on the farm, with the darkening Oregon skies, the wind whipped birch tree casting amber leaves like enchantments, the rain soaked fields of pumpkins.

So when she came home on Thanksgiving break, we would often have a little Halloween as well. Why not?

A few years later, we found that including our new sons-in-law, five of us had birthdays in October and November.

And also with their marriages, Thanksgiving got complicated, as should be expected!

So we invented Thanks-Birth-o-Ween. This will be our third, and I am unreasonably excited about it.

This year we will celebrate the weekend before Thanksgiving. It will be a day of feasting and games and presents. There will be pumpkins, hot cider and walks in the rain.

For now, it's time to decorate! (To be continued)

A New Lefse Generation

I have two sons in law now. They have heard stories about the Great Grandparents who came from Norway and settled here, working the land to create this beautiful farm.

So for Christmas I gave my daughters their very own lefse rolling pins and a copy of Julia Peterson Tufford's Norwegian Recipes. Our local hardware store happens to carry these! We made lefse a few days later, using leftover mashed potatoes.

Our mashed potatoes were just the standard made with butter, salt, pepper & a little cream.

A simple lefse recipe is a half cup flour for each cup of mashed potatoes.
I cut the flour in with a pastry tool.

We learned that cold mashed potatoes are lumpy and we had to work the dough far too long. Next time we will warm them up and make sure they are smooth! I might try using a little less flour as well.

We combined the flour & potatoes into a workable dough, and kneaded it until it felt ready to roll.

My Grandmother would roll all the dough into a large cylinder which she called an "emne": a rough translation would be "something that is made to be processed into something else".

She would cut a disk off the end of the emne and shape it with her hands,

then turn it onto a floured surface and roll it round and thin.

My sons in law learned quickly. They found out why we keep adequate flour on the board and let the weight of the pin do the work; pulling the dough out from the center. Both of them are engineers, so they needed little help from me in working out the most effective techniques!

Lifting off the board with a paddle

 Lefse dough is handled more delicately than flatbread, but the methods are much the same. See my flatbread post for a description of the tools we use.

Tapping off the excess flour

If you can cook outside you will have an easier time cleaning up all the flour that gets swept off the lefse grill.

Turning lefse on the grill

Try to turn the lefse when there are light brown speckles (lift it to check underneath from time to time). If it is burning (black specks) you are cooking too long or your grill is too hot.

Once the lefse is cooked, you need to place it between dampened cloths to soften. I stacked our lefse about 3-4 high before adding another cloth. Let them soften until they have no stiffness left at least 15 minutes or more.

 One side will have larger spots. That is normal.

Traditionally we eat our lefse rolled up with butter and cinnamon sugar, but we also love to experiment with savory fillings the same as you might use a wrap or tortilla.

Norwegian Flat Bread (flatbrød)

Everyone loves lefse, but I think fewer Americans have experienced the dry "flatbrød" I grew up enjoying with my family.

While lefse is like a soft, potato based tortilla, flatbread is a thin, crisp cracker, intended for long storage and delicious with tiny bit of butter.

Making it has always been a big social experience as well, and I had depended on my parents to organize the event, usually just before Christmas. Many years have passed since our last flatbread party, and I realized it was up to me to start the tradition anew.

I invited my sister-in-law, who isn't a speck Norwegian but can cook just about anything. You need people like that on your team when you are re-building something only vaguely remembered! I had to promise we'd make lefse as well (which we did).

I happened to have the special equipment favored for the task:

• a large flat lefse grill, 
• a giant lefse rolling pin (the checkered surface gives you the needed pull on the dough), 
• a clean Bethany board to make rolling easier, and 
• plenty of flat, thin wooden paddles for lifting & transferring the rolled dough.
• an oven set to warm, with a tray for catching crumbs
• The only important piece missing was a large soft brush for dusting excess flour off the dough & griddle. I substituted a clean, unused paint brush, but had to be very careful not to let it touch the 500 degree griddle (would melt instantly!)

 If you don't have these:

• If you don't have access to a lefse grill, you could experiment with a very hot non-stick skillet or other flat grilling surface. Lefse grills go up to 500 degrees - on a skillet the cooking times may be a little longer. Here's another blogger's advice.
• A standard rolling pin may work also, but if you can borrow something with more clout you'll be happier!
• Any clean surface you would use for rolling a pie crust would work also, just keep it well floured
• You could come up with something to replace the wooden sticks. I saw one lefse blogger who made their own by sanding down smooth lath pieces or paint stirring sticks. Basically you want a stick that is long (about 18-24"), thin, smooth & strong and has ROUNDED edges. 

My folks experimented for YEARS with the recipe. Here is the only one I wrote down, with a note about what I actually did:

Anderson's Flatbrød

6 C white flour
3 C whole wheat flour
2 C cornmeal (I ended up using about a half cup cornmeal and 1 & 1/2 Cups Masa flour)
heaping Tb Salt
5 C water
1 stick butter, softened

We mixed all the dry ingredients, cut the butter into the flours, and then gradually added the water. When it was pretty well combined, we turned the stiff dough onto a board and kneaded it just enough to make sure it was well mixed.
Then we divided it into smaller portions, and from those into balls of dough.

My family used to make massive flatbrød that
filled the grills from side to side! My sister-in-law made them smaller, but this made them much easier to work with and store.

The cloth covered Bethany board really makes rolling much easier than a plain wooden board, but you still need to keep it well floured.

We like our flatbread as thin as possible - about the width of a piece of cardstock! You can experiment with yours. Thick flatbread can be hard to eat.



Rolling tip: work the ball into a flat round with your hands, and keeping it floured, work the roller from the middle out, working all the way around the dough (don't roll all the way across from side to side). As it expands, you can leave the middle alone and focus on the edges. You want the dough to be as even as possible. Let the heavy roller do the work. If you lean onto the dough too much you'll tear it or get it stuck to the board or pin.

My sister-in-law didn't care if it was perfectly round, and I decided that was just fine. It all tastes the same!

Once it's rolled out, slide the stick under the middle & gently lift off the board. Tap it to remove excess flour, and if you are ahead of the baker, it's good to have a place to store them (like those we have wedged in the laundry hamper!)

 To put on the grill, lay half the dough on the dry grill, (no grease or oil is used) and unfold the rest by flipping the stick over until it's all flat on the grill. Use the brush to gently flick off excess flour and re-position the dough if need be.

In a few minutes (grills vary) the first side will be done. Check by lifting with the stick to see if small brown freckles are appearing. Use the stick to flip it over, and do the other side.

When both sides have nice brown spots like this, you are ready to move it to the oven, where it will need to be for several hours to finish drying. (It will probably be a little chewy yet if you try it now, even though it should seem very dry & stiff.)

brushing flour off the dough. You can simply blow flour off the grill.

Clean any flour left on the grill by swiping it quickly with a cotton cloth. We set our grill up outside so the house doesn't get full of flour.

When it was finally completely dry, we broke the pieces in half (or more) to put in gallon size ziplock bags. My husband was sure we'd made enough to last through Christmas, but we didn't even make it to Thanksgiving. Oh well! Gotta have another party I guess!