And I've often wondered too, how tedious and demanding the ever-present demand for food must have been for my Mom. She never failed us! She had no recourse to call for pizza, or to pick up KFC or burgers. We all learned to cook at an early age...Im grateful for that. We peeled tons of potatoes it seems and usually some extra so Mom could pan fry them for supper. (Thanks, Mom!)One of us would always slice up an entire loaf of home-made bread. We had to slice it thickly too since Dad wouldn't tolerate any of that thinly sliced stuff - "Curtain fabric" he'd say in German, "Gardenin Zeich" (sp?) This bread, referred to as Bulki in low German, was large and fluffy with a wonderful crust. Bread was an essential element at all of our meals. It was never absent. We were taught to eat it and enjoy it plain, with butter, with peanut butter and honey, with jam, dunked into our borscht...every way was delicious, wholesome and nourishing.
Thinking back, I believe my Dad's experience during the Russian Revolution must have impacted this almost reverent attitude toward bread. Our family knows and treasures the story of the bread that miraculously came my Grandfather's way and so saved that family from starvation, when there was no bread, no food at all, to be had anywhere not even at his parents house.
1921 was a desperate winter for that young family of seven. For more than a month, just one small slice of that heaven-sent bread, the size of each ones palm of the hand, became the hallowed feast once a day. The family all sat stoically waiting...watching for the clock to strike twelve noon, the magic hour when each one received his allotment. That story, among many other fascinating ones, can be found in Dad's sister Elsa Redekop's memoirs Two Worlds for Jasch, stories of my Dad's family.
Yes,the winter of 1921, was like no other for that family of my grandparents and their young brood. That winter too, Dad told us, he and his siblings had no energy to play or get into mischief. Everyone was listless. There had not been any school either since the onset of the Revolution.
In our Winkler years in the fifties, we always had our main meal at noon - we called it dinner or more correctly, Mittag. After every meal, we girls-there were five of us- all wearing the required aprons over our school clothes, always cleared the dishes, washed and dried them before heading back to school at noon.(Thinking back I dont think we had to do the breakfast dishes. I'm sure Mom was anxious for us to clear the house and let her get on with her day with just the boys at home until they too started school. We had one and a quarter hours for lunch. We must have eaten very quickly to get that all done, although we all waited until everyone was around our large oval dining room table, my Dad coming home from his work as well, before beginning our meals after we'd said our grace out loud together as a family - always in German:
"Komm, Herr Jesu, sei unser Gast,
und segne was du uns bescherret hast, amen"
"Come Lord Jesus, be our guest,
And bless this food prepared for us, amen!"
Since we lived only a few houses away from the school we could get back fast.
Bread is still among my very favourite foods. I so enjoying mixing up a batch of wholesome grains and having hearty bread available for toast, even though now my trusty breadmaker is my slave. The Bible has a lot to say about bread. In fact, from the time when Moses received the law at Mt. Sinai, around 1440 BC, including instructions for the Tabernacle and all it entailed, the Bread of the Presence placed on a special table in that Tabernacle to be replaced once a week, to the many miraculous and fascinating appearances of bread such as: Manna in the wilderness for the wandering Israelites (Exodus 16), sustenance for Elijah (1Kings 17:1-5 and7:7-16;19:6), to hundreds of years later. Jesus miraculously fed 4,000 and 5,000 people on two separate occasions with just a few loaves of bread and a few fish. Jesus also taught us to ask for bread in the Lord's Prayer...give us this day our daily bread... Among the well-known I Am passages in the Gospel of John, is Jesus declaration: I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never be hungry... so emphasizing the even greater importance of spiritual bread for our inner strength.
This then should be a Post with a picture of a loaf of home-baked bread I guess... but I got side-tracked after I had already posted my soup pictures. Buns and bread will come later. Bread and soup just go together so nicely!
My week usually begins by making a huge pot of soup of some kind or other. This serves more than one purpose - I always know what we'll have for lunch for the next few days. As I serve up the first bowl I also ladle the extra soup-usually enough for two of three jars plus a small pot for tomorrow's lunch, into piping hot canning jars, seal them with hot lids taken right out of boiling water. These jars will keep well in the fridge for a couple of weeks Im sure, but we usually cruise through them before the week is done.
I took the following pictures in summer when we always have green Sommer Borscht.
Ingredients: smoked ham, or farmer sausage with drippings from baking the sausage for an earlier meal, large onion, a mass of assorted greens i.e.green onions, spinach, beet tops, or sorrel (that is the authentic ingredient for this soup I think but I dont have any and the other greens - which I buy at a country produce barn - work very well too). new potatoes - these volunteered in my garden from last year, parsley and dill. Simmer, season with salt and peppercorns in a teaball.
That simmering Sommer Borscht.
Add the sausage or ham, sour cream and chopped boil egg if you like.
This trusty Mennonite Treasury the Mennonite Best of Bridge full of a host of Mennonite favouries such as "Sommer Borscht", had many printings beginning in 1961. I must have got my copy in the late sixties and paid $3.95 for it - the price is still on the first page written in pencil. As a wedding present I received another treasured cookbook from my friend Deanna called Canadian Mennonite Cookbook I have a copy of the eleventh printing done in 1965. It no longer has its spiral binding since I used this book almost exclusively during my early years of home-making, and now keep it together with an elastic.
More soups to follow...and it all started when I made red lentil soup for supper tonight with farmer sausage drippings, potatoes, carrots, onions, celery, lentils, parsley, a couple of squeezes of catsup, basil - since I dont have summer savoury which is sooo good in this soup. This I serve with half a teaspoon of vinegar topped with, no not wonderful bread but...Tortilla Chips( works so well and got the idea while travelling in Mexico last January.
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