The Evolution of Our Kitchen

Ahh, the joys of being Penna Dutch... and obsessed with food.

When my great-to-the-fourteenth ancestor, John Jacob Dreibelbis, came over as an indentured servant, he was given a parcel of land after working for seven years. His son, Jacob B, was the one who founded the farm at the end of town. Nowadays, owning a piece of land implies you're rich. Then? Dirt poor. The kitchen still has two shadowboxes of glued fish bones in patterns from the suckers they net-trapped in the river, the only part of the fish that's inedible.

That's how poor farmers were in colonial America.

And yes, that children's song is about us and our penchant for large names. I loved the song as a kid, but can't sing it now, knowing it was meant to be a mockery. Someday I hope to turn it around, like Yankee Doodle Dandy, and sing it with all the irony and sarcasm I can muster.

But I can tell you all about our "cuisine," and how it's a step or two away from starvation back then. Chow chow? The pickled extra veggies our truck patches produced, preserved so we got some vitamins in the winter. Turkey at Thanksgiving, goose at Christmas? Very welcome fresh meat after the careful butchering and preservation of one cow in November. Ham at Easter? The last chunk, saved for the holiday. Fasnachts? You need to get rid of the sugar for Lent, but all you've got is flour and some old potatoes, so you make do with a small treat before the season. Jams and jellies? Preserving the extra fresh fruits that may have been abundant during the summer, after fighting the birds and weather for a harvest. Snitz und knepp? Dried apple chunks and flour dumplings, things to make a meal when that's all that's left in the larder. Pot pie? Ours is crustless, because crust takes more effort and is expensive when you've got a smidge above nothing. Throw what bits you've got about in a pot with some square noodles, and hope it's filling. And boova shenkel, our cross of potstickers and pierogis, are only a step away from pot pie on one side and fastnachts on the other, but without sugar. Sugar's expensive and needs to be purchased; the rest of the ingredients can be scrounged up on the farm.

Even funeral pie, made for the funeral meal after burial, was the only time you'd see precious, hoarded raisins. My county wasn't big on that one, but Grenny (my grandmother) made milk flatcher instead for special occasions. Grenny really couldn't cook well, but she did what she could to make it edible. She was a much better baker, and her fruit pies and fasnachts and cookies were delicious (so that's where the raisins went!). She used her wedding gift, a set of simple-glazed pottery baking dishes, to make them. Only four ingredients in the filling - flour, sugar, molasses, milk. That's all. A bit of sweet when you don't have much to share. If one were to be polite, one would call it a flitter, or a slap jack, or a flabby, or a milk pie. Slop Tart comes closer, or Schlop Boi. "Fletcher" or "flatcher" means "cow flop" in Penna Dutch. We're an earthy people and calls 'em like we sees 'em, as my mom would say.

Even typing this up, my mind is flooded with a million memories. That warm yeasty greasy scent on Fasnacht Day, my shoulder aching as I pitted sour cherries for jelly, except for the ones I crammed in my belly when Grenny wasn't looking. Sitting with all the other womenfolk on Chow Chow Day, surrounded by aunts and cousins, shelling beans and breaking apart cauliflower for the mix. The sweet taste of Grenny's flatcher, because though it looked awful, I am a fiend for a custard pie. Those pottery dishes went one to each child, and when in due time I get my mom's, I will have to learn from my cousin how to make it properly. Cousin D is the only one who gets it just right, I'm envious.

Over time, traditions have had to change. We don't have the farm anymore, and no one really likes chow chow, except for the pickled cauliflower. Or the Eternal Great Debate to use lard or Crisco for the fasnachts. Or can snitz und knepp truly be made on a modern stove, since Grenny's old natural gas one seemed perfect for the job. The Polish community that lives north of us makes more and better pierogis than we can make boova shenkel, though the hole-in-the-wall diner that would bring in their tiny grandmother to make it on Tuesday each month had lines wrapped around the building for a taste of childhood.

Even scrapple, our "throw all the edible bits that no one wants to think about eating into a pot with flour and cook it up, we'll let it cool in these metal pans, and slice it up and fry it and slather it with apple butter" offal meatloaf (not awful meatloaf, just trust me) is looked at askance. I took great delight in watching one of the marry-in cousins turn green when he liked it so much he offered to help make it next time. He only came the once...

Despite our culture's deep desire to turn the four food groups into Sugar, Salt, Lard, and Ketchup, one thing will be immutable through time, world unto end:

You. WILL. Have. Pork. And. Sauerkraut. For. New. Year's. Day.

It's hard to find around here anymore. The few diners and fire company fundraisers that do it have lines out the door, of course, but it's not the same.

Why?

No one cooks on a wood stove anymore.

Even the Amish and Mennonite have gone to modern electric and natural gas stoves. And though I could throw a rock and hit a dozen houses that made their own sauerkraut in pickling crocks as a kid, no one does today.

My Great-Aunt Dottie made the best pork and sauerkraut ever. At the stroke of midnight, as the ball touched down, she'd shove this huge pan of pork loin roast practically swimming in sauerkraut still in the brine into the wood stove, well banked, and get up throughout the night to maintain the temp to cook it slow. At exactly noon on New Year's Day, this gloriously tender meat would practically melt in our mouths, and the sauerkraut tasted like pork, so you didn't care that the stuff was pickled cabbage strips.

Lucky to eat it on New Year's? Well, you were lucky to have meat, really. Pickled cabbage was the poorest of poor food, some of the cheapest stuff out there, easy to make and preserve with few ingredients. Cover it with the taste of meat, call it lucky, and others are starving so just shush and eat it. (I offered to send my share of sauerkraut to starving people, and narrowly avoided a paddling for that. Ahh, the seventies, a wild and wooly time when things like that would happen.)

So, where do you go to get sauerkraut today? The store. There are many brands, jarred and canned and bagged, and the stores in our area bleeping well bleeping know they'd better have it in late December, or else! The bagged Silver Floss brand is the mildest for us, and pairs well with our pork.

Which we now make in a crock pot.

Don't judge us, we get enough of that from Certain Family Members anyway. Until they try it, of course, and suddenly it's completely gone, stuffed down the gaping maws of come on now, couldn't you leave just a little bit, that was a massive third of a whole pork loin, barely fit that in the crock pot, and I didn't even get a taste of what I made?!?

My dad is a decent cook, but you can tell he was a military cook. Get it out on the table efficiently, and did I mention we're Penna Dutch? What's seasoning? We already splurge on pork by spreading horseradish mustard on it on our plates! He does a plain roast, and it's... plain. Good for sandwiches with a lot of mustard, or a hot open face with the mustard and shredded cheddar cheese. Don't tell him I said that, he'll disown me.

Ours is easy and juicy and flavorful. And it is very low salt, which suits my diet perfectly.

Take 2 medium to small onions, 3 potatoes, and 3 or 4 carrots. Rough chop them into chunks.

Lay the onions in a thick layer in the bottom of a 6-quart crock pot.

Lay down a sheet of aluminum foil on a counter, and load it up with a metric boatload of a spice mix - powdered onion, powdered roasted garlic, some powdered mustard, and an Italian herb blend. We use Penzeys brand spices, but the ones you get at the store work well. The McCormick Italian blend is salt free, but if you want salt, you can add that too. And black pepper and some chili powder if you like a kick. We have family allergies, so I go light on all but the Italian blend. Once your aluminum foil looks like it's about to sneeze, take a 4-7 pound pork loin and roll that puppy in the spice mix to get a good coating all over. You will get fat on your hands, so use gloves, or give your hands a good scrubbing a few times afterwards.

Lay the pork onto the bed of onions, and jam the potatoes and carrots all around the loin. Toss the aluminum foil, but we tend to throw the rest of the spice mix into the crock pot.

Add a box of low-salt chicken stock, you can add more stock or water till the liquid is to the rim of the pot.

Lock the lid in place, turn it to High for 6 to 7 hours, and sit back and let the magic happen.

We throw out the potatoes, carrots, and onion, because it will taste like pork fat when you pull out chunks of tender pork. Plate and serve, and good luck fighting off the ravening hordes with your fork.

Like Grandfather's Axe, it's different but the same. Grandfather's axe has had three replacement heads and ten new handles, but it's still Grandfather's axe. Our pork and sauerkraut is completely different than it used to be when I was a kid, and very different than what my parents had as a kid, or than what my grandparents had as a kid. But we still gather on New Year's Day, and serve up pork and sauerkraut, and talk about our thoughts and plans for the new year, and reminiscing about the year past and the holidays. Getting texts from other groups of our fam, showing pics of what we're eating, and holiday wishes over the network instead of the table. Memories of previous New Year's, and the family that's no longer there, and watching my granddaughter scarfing on the pork and ignoring the sauerkraut. That's okay, kiddo, it's an acquired taste, and she likes the pork, so who am I to complain?

She's here, and we're still a family. And that's what matters.