Kitchen or no Kitchen

I’ve been reading and re-reading recipes for the cookbook as we’ve had one final round to go over everything. The next time we see it, it will be in print, and we will not be able to change anything anymore. Many of the recipes in the book take me back to my Mennonite roots. The Borscht, Zwieback, Ruehrei and Rollkuchen, to name a few.
When our kids were small, we went to South America to visit the places that our grandparents emigrated to from Russia in 1930. I’ve written about their pioneering years in the Chaco in earlier posts.

This photo depicts a brick oven that was built by one of our forefathers. We were visiting a relative and saw it in their yard … a reminder of the past. It was already an improvement from the first kind of oven they used, when they converted giant ant hills into ovens.

I just have to shake my head. How would we do that today? The recipes we are editing need to be so finely tuned. The time and temperature has to be just so. I asked my mom, who was born in the Chaco, about baking in a brick oven. She told me that often she, as a young girl had to run outside to check and see if the oven was ready. How would she know? When the bricks turned white, it was the right temperature.

When I think about us girls at MGCC, I think about how unique it is that all of our grandparents were born in Russia (the Ukraine). All of our grandmothers, some were possibly still children, others young women, had to grow up real fast and take on responsibilities way beyond their years, as they pioneered in a foreign country . . . cooking the foods their moms made in Russia. They did their best with what they had, even without a kitchen, and continued to serve foods that we now remember with fondness. Makes me thankful for my kitchen today.