SILVERHILL, Ala. — Pete Midgarden has a simple explanation of why he took up baking as a young man in his early 30s.

“I guess you could say I was bored,” he said. “I was going to Naval graduate school and I had a lot of free time on my hands.”

Midgarden, who grew up in a largely Norwegian area of North Dakota, near the Canadian border, began making many of the Norwegian delicacies he was familiar with as a boy.

He also began collecting recipes with a Norwegian and Scandanavian influence. And while he does have some traditional cooking recipes, he said, his favorites are of the dessert variety.

“My wife is a good cook, but she doesn’t do much with dessert,” he said. “So that’s kind of what I’ve become known for. I do make some things I don’t like, such as pickles, but mostly I make desserts, which will give you an idea of what I do like.”

Midgarden’s career in the Navy took him all over the world, but his journey to Silverhill began with flight training in Mobile.

That’s where he met his wife, who was a nurse at Mobile Infirmary.

“We were living in Turkey, trying to decide where we were going to live when I retired,” he said. “She wanted to be close to home. She didn’t want to go back to North Dakota, that was too cold.

“Anyway, she comes up one day and says she found a place and she tells me, “it’s not exactly what I wanted, but it’s perfect for you.’”

That place was the small community of Silverhill. With it’s primarily Scandanavian heritage, the small town was very similar in a lot of ways to the area where Midgarden grew up.

“We moved here 22 years ago and we’ve been here ever since,” he said.

He likes dabbling in the kitchen year-round, but especially during holidays and special occassions, and of course, for Heritage Day.

A member of Zion Lutheran Church in Silverhill, Midgarden gives a demonstration of one of his favorite recipes, krumkage, a delicate, cone-shaped cookie.

Midgarden starts with a batter and a flat-top cooking device called a krumkage iron. He spreads the batter thinly onto the heated flat-top and closes the lid, cooking both sides.

When done, he deftly removes the still pliable product out with a butter knife and rolls it around a cone-shaped roller that he hand-made as a boy out of oak wood.

The finished product is a buttery, crumbly wafer-like product that looks very much like a thin waffle cone.

Midgarden also enjoys making bread prducts called lefse.

The traditional flatbread product can be made with buttermilk and a mixture of course and white flour, or mashed potatoes.

Then there’s the traditional rug brod’s or rye breads and smor kranser or butter rings.

Another traditional recipe, popular at weddings, is kranse kager, also called Norwegian wedding cake, wreath cake or ring cake, which is made with an almond paste, powdered sugar and a small amount (2 to 3 tablespoons) of flour.

The finished product resembles a large cone and rings are removed from the bottom to retain the cone shape, Midgarden said.