I wonder if anyone else in Victoria, Minnesota, loves lutefisk.  Never in the thirty-three years that we have lived here, have I seen or heard of anyone serving it or eating it outside of our own home. 
I could widen the circle and say the same thing about a lot of places.  I've never seen or heard of anyone in Chan-hassen or Chaska or Waconia or Excelsior or St. Boni or Eden Prairie eating lutefisk either.  We could go all the way up to friendly Fridley, and still nobody eating lutefisk.
Also, I've never heard of it being served at any of the church dinners around here.  Back home (the home of my youth) there are still churches that serve lutefisk suppers during the holidays.  It's some of their biggest fundraisers of the entire year.  They serve it with mashed potatoes and melted butter, also thin, fresh, pliable, warm homemade lefse.  Makes my mouth water just thinking about it.
Each year during these holidays I pick up a few packages of lutefisk in the local grocery stores (to cook for me and my family) and I never see anybody else picking it up.  Sometimes I hang around with my cart in the lutefisk aisle just to see if I'm the only person in the county that buys it.  I think I am.
Back home (again, the home of my youth), there are always people picking up lutefisk in the grocery stores.  My brothers and sisters pick it up.  My parents pick it up.  And all those Lutheran church people also pick it up.  You really can't tell the difference between any of us.  Maybe it's the lutefisk that did it.
Would you like to come to our house for a lutefisk dinner?  You're invited.  Just give me a call.
Meanwhile, if you want to kill a little time before dinner, you can go hunting for the fishhook hidden among the pretty pictures and sentimental stories and adorable ads in this Christmas issue of the Gazette.  Last month many of you found it encircling the basket of buns next to the turkey on page 36.  Stephen Glaser of Victoria got his name pulled out of the minnow bucket and so he gets the ten dollars.  Congratulations, Steve.  You can buy about a pound and a half of lutefisk with your winnings.
If you find the new hook, drop a line to me telling of its location, and sinker in the mail to Box 387, Victoria, MN 55386.  But don't drop it in lye.  Lye turns cod into lutefisk, but it would probably vaporize a fishhook.