Meats & Hot Dishes- Chow Mein Hot Dish

Global cultural exchange is a wonderful thing.  Growing up in Fargo and St. Paul, you might think that there wasn't much opportunity for learning about people that weren't Scandinavian or German.  For the average person growing up in those cities in the mid 80s, that may have been true, but I was lucky.  My step-father was in pre-vet school in Fargo and in vet school in St. Paul.  While he was in school, we lived in married student housing; University Village at NDSU, and the Commonwealth Terrace Co-op.  Instead of being surrounded by people who looked mostly like me and my family, I had friends from all over the world very close at hand.  Let's see how big a list of friends' countries I can put together from 25 years ago:  India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Korea, Japan, Iran, Malaysia, China, Madagascar, Nigeria, Lesotho, Egypt, Peru.  There are probably a few more, but that's a pretty good list.  While we lived among this patchwork quilt of international families, we got to know a bit about them, their heritage, and their food.  Living these places was one of the most formative experiences in my life and has given me a curiosity and appreciation of different cultures.

Now Thief River Falls may not have had the commercial and cultural draws that St. Paul and Fargo did, but there was at the very least awareness of the wider world (how could there not be?).  It may have been a limited knowledge (it seems to me that I recall my father saying that living in Perham, he did not see anybody who wasn't white until he went to college in Fargo/Moorhead), but it was there.  There are six recipes in the Meats & Hot Dishes section that have some clear ethnic connection, if only tenuous.  Chinamen's Hot Dish, has a quarter cup of soy sauce (beware!  flavor!) in it.  Considering that according to the U.S. census there were only just over 33,000 "Asian and Pacific islanders" in the upper Midwest in 1950, it probably shouldn't be surprising that the general knowledge about people from the other side of the world was limited at best, and racist at worst.  But let's give the Ladies the benefit of the doubt, and not ascribe attitudes of the latter sort to them.  At least in the cook book, we're not seeing things like this, which still persisted until not that long ago.

Yipe.  Can you believe it?!

Considering the large population of Chinese immigrants to the west coast in the latter half of the 19th century, it shouldn't be surprising that some aspects of their culture spread across the country.  The food industry did their part, and our Ladies gave it a try.  I can't find any examples of the vintage "Chinese" foods that they may have purchased down at Froseth Food Market and Dairy Bar (phone 115), but I do know that some of the processed and accessible "Chinese" food that I ate growing up is still around.

I used to love this stuff.  That's frightening.

That canned chow mein, the Chow Mein Hot Dish I made, and most Chinese food we see out and about isn't remotely authentic, but if nothing else, it provides a change from the regular meat and potatoes (or does it?).

Norwegian Dishes - Kol Dolmer or Cabbage Rolls

Ah, vacations are wonderful.  They may not necessarily be restful when you're sharing a tiny cabin with a toddler and a pre-schooler, but they're pretty great nonetheless.  Here's a picture of my family with the local giant of the Northwoods, Paul Bunyan in Akeley, MN.

I bet Paul would have loved some cabbage rolls after cutting down all the trees in the Dakotas.

Wikipedia says that according to the 2000 census, 50% of the residents of Thief River Falls consider themselves Norwegian-American making the town "one of the most ethnically concentrated town in the nation."  Those poor Swedes and Danes probably feel rather set-upon.  With such a high concentration of Norwegians, it should come as no surprise that there is a Norwegian Dishes section of the cook book.  This section starts with another poem, one I can't read.  So I did what all high school language students do.  I turned to Google Translate.  First the poem as it appears, then the translation.

Du hente kan

Lidt ve og van,

Jeg Kaffen snart

Skal faa istan.

Google Translate detected Danish (hmmmm...), and spit out the following:

You can download

little woe and van,

I coffee soon

Must have Istan.

I couldn't agree more.  On to the recipe!

Vacation Time - Blog Hiatus

We're heading out of town tomorrow for a few nights in a cabin on a lake.  Not going to get to any of the Scandinavian recipes that are next up in the book for a little while here.  In the mean time, here's an interview of the owners of Back in the Day Bakery from Savannah, Georgia by Lynne Rossetto Kasper on The Splendid Table.  The Splendid Table is one of my favorite radio shows.  Enjoy!  See you in a week or two.

Here's the interview.

Beverages - Egg Milk Shake

Bonus post this week since this is such a short and quick recipe.  In looking through the cook book, I was quickly drawn to the beverages section.  Though I was hoping to find some vintage cocktail recipes, it probably shouldn't be too surprising that there are none.  Since I am more of a beer and whiskey person, it is probably good there are no cocktail recipes.  Going out to buy a bottle of booze we may not finish is not something I need to do.

There was a "recipe" that I had made MANY times though when I would visit my grandparents in Perham, MN.  They belonged to St. Paul's Lutheran Church and though it is a Missouri Synod church, I think that aside from a few theological differences that the church community they were a part of wasn't all that different than that of Zion in Thief River Falls just over two hours away.  On my shelf, I have a battered old recipe box of my grandmothers.  There are plenty of recipes in there that look like they would fit right in with the recipes in our cookbook.  But for all the time I spent in their house, I don't think I ever saw my grandmother use a recipe.  I wouldn't say that she was gourmet or anything, but she was certainly competent. Whenever I would visit when I was young, there were freshly baked cookies, and often fresh bread, and she would always make at least one big meal.  "Creampeasmashedpotatoesandgravy" is what I would invariably say when she asked me what meal I wanted.  The gravy usually came from a nice juicy roast.  But it was mixing up the creamed sweet garden peas with my mashed potatoes and gravy that brought me the most joy at dinner.  Then there would be something like a very large slice of cherry ice cream pie (which is straight out of the 50s, and very delicious. for me after dinner.  I never went hungry at my grandparents house.

This is a test pie from before our Pie-Off last fall.  YUM.

Pies & Desserts - Mock Apple Pie

It's poetry time again!

Sweets, they say, give energy,
So surely it won't hurt
To ease up on the first course and
Leave room for dessert.

Wrong.  All wrong.  Good sentiment, Ladies, but you can do better.  I prefer chef Jacques Torres's philosophy.

Truth... at least when you're not having dinner with little boys and you must *sigh* set a good example.

The best dessert to eat first, in my opinion is pie.  I love pie.  There are few desserts that are actually bad, but given the choice, I will frequently choose pie.  I love pie so much that Sarah and I are planning our fourth annual Pie-Off.  Here's how it works.  People bring a pie.  We all take time to eat way too much pie.  Then we vote on the best pies for silly categories, e.g. "Pie, It's What's for Dinner", "Impress the Mother-in-Law", "Science!".  Then we have little prizes for the pies that won.  Our Pie-Off is quite possibly the best idea anybody has ever had.  If you're reading this, you're invited.  I'll probably post some more details in a week or two.

Background

I'm making Mock Apple Pie this week.  Sadly, it's not made of mock apples like this.

It is a pie I've heard of a couple times, but have never tried.  Here is the recipe.