I suppose growing up in North Dakota, Minnesota and Iowa we were always cheek by jowl with a large population of people of German, Polish and Czech descent. Mount Vernon's annual summer fair used to be called Kolache Days after the noble Czech pastry, the kolache. The summer fair is now called Heritage Days. I don't know what committee thought that one up but there was much more heritage in Kolache Days. I wish they'd go back to the original name.
These are kolaches. The can be filled with prune, apricot, apple, poppy seed or cheese fillings. I like the apple ones the best but the poppy seed run a tight second. Can you still get them in Mount Vernon?
The other thing about this particular demographic is that the music is still influenced. I thought it was normal that Sunday radio was taken over by polka music until I left the midwest. I still find it odd that I can't find a good polka on Sunday radio. Though, over here on a Saturday night, BBC Radio Scotland has Take the Floor (pronounced flair). It has almost the same feel to the Sunday polka hours.
I was talking about these things to our wonderful Jill and the fact that nobody else in the house likes sauerkraut. I don't buy it that often because I really can't eat a whole jar of the stuff and I hate to throw out good food. She recons that it is just a cultural thing and we women usually start out cooking like our mothers. I suppose that is true to a degree.
While I was pondering what my mother used to cook when I was small, a tiny memory flashed that I had forgotten about for decades. My mother used to save bacon fat in a can on the top of the stove. After every time she cooked bacon, she tipped the bacon fat that was left in the bottom of the pan into the can at the back of the stove. I can't remember when she stopped doing that. It must have been when we moved to Iowa.
I asked Mom about it this evening. She said that she saved bacon fat because her mother did it. I then asked if that was a hangover from the war years when everything was rationed. She didn't know about that but she said that cooking with bacon fat was quite tasty. I can't imagine doing that now. My arteries are growing new plaques just thinking about it. Besides, bacon over here in Scotland isn't like the bacon back home at all. You can't fry it in a pan. The bacon sticks to the frying pan and you get a sticky layer on the bottom of the pan. You get the best results with this different bacon by sticking it under the grill. The bacon fat would be hard to salvage from the bottom of a grill pan.
I suppose a weekend break to Prague via EasyJet would get me hooked up with a proper kolache. That or I could try my hand at making them myself. I think I'd rather go to Prague. I'd get in a few polkas too.
4 comments:
My family also saved bacon fat in a jar by the sink but they told me it was because you're not supposed to throw it down the drain, so they would collect it all in the same jar and then throw the jar in the garbage when it got full.
I have a funny story about that. A co-worker of mine saw some bacon fat out on his back stoop one time in a jar like that and didn't know what it was. He is a bit of a pyromaniac, so decided to light it on fire. When it didn't light on fire, he came in to work to ask us what it might be. I knew because my family used to do that, but I guess not everyone does this.
Sauerkraut huh. I never developed a taste for it, and not for lack of trying. Now don't take this personally, but sauerkraut fell under the category of gross foods in my book (from childhood anyway) that also included spinach, liver and rutabaga, all of which were served for dinner in the McGowan home. Kolaches are another story! Grandma McGowan, who is Slovak, made them once in awhile. She also danced the polka at family weddings until the early 80's when a) people stopped having polkas at weddings and b) she broke her hip hanging clothes. Another connection to your post is that both Grandma and Mom saved bacon drippings. Mom to save the drain like your friend described, and Grandma to flavor green beans, cabbage, fried eggs, etc. Very tasty! Grandma also saved all other meat drippings and made soap out of them.
Oops - I forgot to sign my name! - Helen : )
See! The grandmother's saved the fat and used it. Our mothers saved the fat and claimed to be saving the drains. We just have the memory.
Helen, I don't like liver either but I love spinach and rutabaga (over here it is called Swede - go figure)
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