traditions in food

I have cleaned up the kitchen and am about to embark on my annual cookie baking enterprise. In past years, I began shortly after Thanksgiving, this year I have scaled things back due to time and money. I have many memories from my childhood of baking and cooking with all the women of my family. Certainly, at Christmastime, we mixed, rolled, and baked dozens of cookies. My kitchen memories are not reserved only for holidays though. Summertime was spent canning, often after we did the picking. My grandmother always made applesauce, which was then frozen. Our German heritage allowed me to develop certain tastes not shared by my friends. Sauerkraut and Goetta being two of them. I'm not sure if it was the decade I grew up in, or my family heritage, but casseroles (or hot dishes) were week night staples.

My father grew up in Minnesota, it was summer visits there that introduced me to the foods of my Czech heritage. It is also those memories that sent me googling for recipes today. I will write to my aunt (in Minneapolis) for the family recipe, but I wanted one right now. My recipe quest today...kolaches. For those of you poor souls not familiar, these are Czechoslovakian pastries. Similar to small danishes, traditionally topped with prune, apricot, poppyseed or cheese filling. I am not sure what spurred my memory, except I just received a Christmas card from my aunt and began to reminisce about summers spent in the land of a thousand lakes and a million mosquitoes. Kolaches are part of those memories. With several recipes off of the web, I will purchase ingredients in the next few days and I may start a new Christmas morning tradition. (Though for the many previous Christmases, I have always made Monkey Bread, so I may have to just add a new tradition, rather than replace an old one.)

It's funny, the comforting value of the food we grew up with. My first husband was a country boy (read: redneck). When we were newly married he asked me to fix soupbeans. My suburban self fixed bean soup. That was when I discovered that they were NOT the same thing. I am a pretty good country cook now, thanks to his mother. I also learned that when cooking for him, we had to have potatoes at every meal! It had to be potatoes, pasta didn't count.

When my father was alive, he always asked me to fix Shepherd's Pie. My oldest son still asks me to fix Cowboy Chow. That was actually a cheap beans and rice dish, that I gave a kid friendly name to so they would eat it. Any time my youngest (the one in culinary school) sees a chicken in the fridge, he asks me if I am going to fix chicken and dumplings. While they were growing up, I got very adept at cheap meals that could stretch the budget. I can still get three meals out of one chicken. Even if the last one is chicken soup (with little chicken and lots of noodles and veggies). I still don't dare offer up a birthday cake with canned icing, only home-made buttercream will do.

As far as Christmas baking...Snickerdoodles, Chocolate Crinkles, Santa's Whiskers, and Candy Cane cookies. Don't let me forget the fudge and the cracker candy (that would be saltines covered with toffee and chocolate - don't judge until you have tasted it!).

Oh, if any of you have a good kolache recipe, you know where to find me!