This morning has been full of memories. A friend emailed from BC, wanting a few recipes that she wants to try out on her new boyfriend…. recipes she’s probably simply forgotten, because I know she grew up making them all the time (and I remember her making spaetzle without benefit of cookbook or recipe card, and it was damn good!)

On top of that, yesterday was blisteringly hot. I’m under the impression it won’t be the same today, but even so – when the girls and I go to town, we’re going to get the supplies needed to make homemade rolkuchen, and we’re going to have fruit and rolkuchen for dinner. Unless it’s hot, and then I’m just going to go to the store and buy it… but I’ll crisp it/freshen it up in the oven for a few moments.

Something about the heat always makes me want to have it, and with watermelon, none the less, which I usually am not particularly fond of. I know it’s Izzy’s influence – just like alphaghetti should always have hot buttered toast with it, tomato macaroni soup isn’t quite right unless it’s done with Creamette ready cut spaghetti instead of elbow mac, and the best way to eat the left-over pasta is by frying it and serving it with cream gravy.

From somewhere in the summerlands, that woman is looking at me right now, and laughing just a bit, because she always said I’d never get away from that stuff. I miss her – she was probably the second most stable person in my life when I was little, the first being my grandmother. Izzy was the woman who baby-sat a bunch of us kids while our parents were off doing whatever (work, date, whatever..). I spent the most time there, I think, out of all the kids during those years before we moved away. Mom worked shift work and… well, I remember being there more than just when she was working.

Izzy made rolkuchen a lot in the summer. I’ve got her recipe, but I’ve never quite been able to do it the way she did. Her tomato-mac soup, I’ve got down (even to the point of conning friends and family into bringing home Creamette ready-cut spaghetti home with them, from the states…lol), and alphaghetti is just dumped from the can into a bowl, etc. Schaubel Zup is a breeze, particularly with the fresh summer savory grown in our own little…uh, bin-garden…this year. Komst Borscht, equally as simple – also with dill grown in our bin-garden, which also goes into Somma Borscht. I don’t remember having that at Izzy’s but when I once told her I made it often, she told me I’d eaten it there.

Kielke, viereniki and spaetzle I had elsewhere growing up, but I presume Izzy made them and served them to us as well, at some point. Probably with pan-fried hamburgers or farmer sausage, smothered in cream gravy. Could that woman make proper cream gravy, not butter gravy (ewww)….!!

I cheat and buy kielke noodles, because I just don’t have the patience to cut ‘em by hand. I also buy soup noodles from the same company, because they are Mennonite, and they know what they’re doing far better than I. Viereniki I buy, unless the mood strikes and I make a small batch. I’m the only one that can stand them in the family, so…. *shrug* a $7 purchase every six months or so isn’t a bank breaker. Spaetzle I make myself, because who can go wrong with that?

One simply can’t have grown up here and not have at least tried the Mennonite foods.

Except for Plumi Moos and Pfeffernuesse. I just never could get to like those.

(PS – Louise, I do have a recipe for Hassenpfeffer. I’ve even made it, although due to the lack of rabbit, I used chicken. Gran used rabbit, though!)