The Family Tableau

Family Life - Home Cooking

I wonder how many families have foods that are a bit unique to their family? I am thinking of foods that are quite possibly ethnic in origin that might not be so familiar to your friend's backgrounds. They are foods that might not seem unusual if you live in a community where your parents and grandparents -- uncles, aunts, cousins, and of course siblings -- grew up in. But if you no longer live in the lands of your parents... these dishes might be out of the ordinary.

(image to above right from Mennonite girls can cook)

For some of you there might be two completely separate sets of cuisine -- one from each parent's family -- or only one if your parents come from the same culture.

I come from in some ways three backgrounds. One is the fairly common generic Canadian-Average American one of bacon & eggs, pot roasts, fried chicken, macaroni & cheese, and that sort of thing. The other two are a bit more exotic though not Earth shattering.

Mom's parents originate from Norway and a few tastes have entered my culinary vocabulary from there -- though mostly it was diluted by way of New York and Alberta. There were a few things that basically only came out at Christmas time like Fattigman Bakkels or Cookies (image to left - image from about.com) which are deep fried and dusted with sugar. There also were cheeses and other foods that normally weren't bought or served except for during the holidays.

Dad came from a Mennonite community in Southern Manitoba that had come to North America around 1875 and hold cohesively as a community even today. There are many dishes I remember from our visits to family there which we have taken out here to the West Coast of Canada. Among many others is a favourite of my Sister's and mine, "Wareneki" or "Vareneki" -- in particular "Blueberry Wareneki".

Wareneki are one of those foods that sort of turn up all over the place in one version or another. I find they are different from perogis though some consider them the same. I think some would consider them a stuffed noodle or liken them to ravioli I guess. Anyhow the translation of wareneki I have seen is "fruit pocket" though I wonder if simply "pocket" or "dough pocket" might be more true?

Basically you make a dough and roll it out, then you cut out circles and put the fruit in the centre with a bit of sugar and press the edges together. You carefully put the sealed pockets into boiling water to cook and then serve with a cream sauce. Now my Grandma and relatives tend to make squares and fold the corners in so that the points meet in the center giving a squarish wareneki rather than the more crescent shaped ones shown in the pictures I am including, but I am sure they taste the same... I think the more square ones might hold a bit more of the sweet fruit filling.

(image to above right from Mennonite girls can cook)

Now the two pictures from "Mennonite girls can cook" show cottage cheese wareneki or "Glums Wareneki" rather than the blueberry wareneki, but they are fairy illustrative. Some people also make saurkraut wareneki, but I think they are spoil sports. I guess I grew up with the treat of blueberry wareneki from freshly picked blueberries while other folk might remember other fruits more.

(images above to left and right from recipezaar.com)

To me though blueberry wareneki were like eating dessert for dinner!

Technorati Tags: cooking, ethnic cooking, wareneki, vareneki, fattigman bakkels, Mennonite cooking

Later!
~ Darrell

(I have also posted this on my Xanga site.)

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Rhubarb Rhubarb Rhubarb

Rhubarb is an Interesting Fruit... Vegetable?

I am not sure if rhubarb is a fruit, I suspect that it is really a vegetable. I believe that tomatoes are considered a fruit by botanists, however by agriculturalists -- at least those who are in charge of import, export and shipping type stuff -- they are considered vegetables like most people do when considering their mealtimes.

I shall call it a fruit!

Rhubarb is the first fruit that I ever really experienced that was actually being grown where I lived! We had a huge yard in the city and a huge garden. We did have a crab apple tree, but it kept getting "winter killed" and never bloomed for a long stretch of my childhood and we didn't have any other fruit trees or even berry bushes or plants on our yard. We did have a very strong pair of rhubarb plant roots though!

I recall that we received the plants from an elderly neighbour -- though we were in a very new district -- and rhubarb plants with older large roots produced better rhubarb. Our plants sure were good! As a child we would be allowed to have a stalk each and our friends as well and we were given a cup with sugar on the bottom to use as we ate it. It was fun to leave the great elephant ear like leaves on the stalk as we dipped the end into the sugar and bit off bites of the sour flesh.

In some ways it was an excuse to eat the sugar, but the rhubarb was neat too! Then we were left with the huge 40-50cm across leaves to play with!

I think even better was what Mom did with the rhubarb! She would cut the stalks into 1cm chunks and then cook them down into either a sort of sauce or she would mix it with brown sugar and oatmeal and other stuff to bake into rhubarb crunch and rhubarb crisp... probably rhubarb crumble too, though I don't recall that name. I think Mom also made rhubarb pies and experimented with rhubarb upside-down cake and muffins. The rhubarb sauce would sometimes be made into a jam, I think -- but it has been so very long.

I loved the rhubarb crunch warm from the oven with vanilla ice cream melting over it. I think it really was one of my favourite foods in the world -- next might be apple crisp...

I think that when we moved from that house in Calgary to the West Coast hear in BC we did not have quite so sweet a rhubarb in our garden patches. True later we had strawberry patches, blueberry patches, and raspberry patches. We also had producing crab apple, apple, pear trees and even a hazelnut tree! Mom made what I figure was the World's best crabapple jelly -- red as ruby and clear as glass -- but the rhubarb crunch has a very special place in my heart.

Later!
~ Darrell

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