In my childhood home food was always something more
than nutrition. It was the heart of our
home. We began the day with breakfast.
Dad had left earlier to tend to the store so Mother read us children a
short story from Egermeier’s German Bible storybook. Then she prayed. We children glitched over our table prayers,
eager to get to the food, but she spoke slowly, deliberately, as if she was
actually speaking to someone.
It took many years for me to realize that the war
years in Russia followed by anarchy, famine, and flight to Canada were still
vivid in her memory, less than decade behind her. She had known real hunger, so food was
something to be thankful for, always. Too many people did not have enough. You
always prepared and ate food to avoid waste. Waste was wrong.
Dinner, our noon meal, was the main meal of the day;
Mother spent time preparing it. It was a
coming together. We children rushed home from school and Dad joined us, often
with stories about what had happened in the store that morning. Sharing food and
stories forged family ties. This small
group of people around the oilcloth-covered table belonged together. And eating together made the bonds strong. I will never forget the joy of knowing a
large pot of chocolate pudding made with whole milk was nestling in a
snowbank until we were ready to eat it – with real whipped cream.
Supper was always a simple affair, later on the
responsibility of us girls: fried
potatoes with eggs, boiled eggs, peanut butter sandwiches and milk, fresh vegetables from the garden in summer,
leftovers from noon. Mother had done her share of food preparation for the noon
meal.
Factory-produced snacks were few because they were out
of our budget. After school I rushed home to be the first to grab the leftovers
of the morning’s porridge Mother set aside for me. How can I explain how good these crusty
scrapings of oatmeal tasted. In summer, if we were hungry between meals, we pulled up new carrots in the garden, dusted
them off on a shirt-sleeve and ate them. In the evening we found our way down the
rickety steps into the dark cellar with its dirt floor to pick an apple from
the box. Sometimes a between-meals snack was home-made bread and jam while wishing it was store-bought sliced bread.
Meals changed with the days of the week, seasons of
the year, and in time, with the culture in which they were a part of. Wash-day we often had bean soup, easy to
prepare. Saturdays, at noon, we had pancakes, which could be made one at a time
as we girls ate and then went to the store to allow Dad to come home to eat. Food
for Sunday, day of rest, was always prepared on Saturday. We learned to expect
these rhythms to our food and meals and to accept them as part of the natural
flow of life.
Mother showed her love and expressed her creativity
with her cooking and baking. A meal was always a gift to those who shared her
table. It was always her food (“They
sure liked my crumb cake”). Women
had little to do with the public world so she shone in this private one. I recall my brother standing on the woodpile
and shouting to the world, “My mother is a Royal cook,” both in reference to
her use of Royal yeast and her skills as queen of Mennonite cuisine. She relished seeing family and guests enjoy
her wonderfully light rolls.
When I was working on my book My Emigrant Father I struggled
how to include this reverence and joy of
Mennonite food into the book, for it played an important role in my parents’
early upbringing in Ukraine and mine in Canada. It became a major concern when
famine conquered the land. So I added a recipe to each chapter of some significant Low German food I had mentioned and explained how it was
used in early times, how it had changed with the culture, and, especially, how
cooking in early homes was always eye-measured and taste-tasted. Measuring cups and spoons and intricate
recipes were not needed. You cooked with the heart, not the mind. This was Mennonite
soul food, not a scientifically concocted dish.
In good times the Mennonites enjoyed abundance,
especially foods made with grains, eggs, cream and fruit from their orchards. Many dishes were borrowed from the neighboring
Russian people. During the famine, people
resorted to Water Soup, which was just that – water with whatever greens they
could glean from gardens and fields. Sometimes there was very little. Some
households made “beggar’s gravy”
with only cream or milk and onions when meat was unavailable.
Later on, after
Mother could read English and had mingled with neighbors, her cooking repertoire
enlarged to include such foods as a glorious Lord Baltimore cake and lofty Angel Food cake. I
don’t think she ever made a casserole.
Something in a combination of foods was beneath her.
I hope that readers
of my father's story, My Emigrant Father (Kindred Productions), will enjoy the glory of Low German soul food as I explain how it was eaten in Russia, in my early home, and later
on in my own home. Shipping is from Winnipeg or Kansas.
