My Struggle

My family, except for the odd cousin or two, is not known for its athletic prowess. You know how every once in a while you pass someone like this on the street who is so big, blond, rosy-cheeked and otherwise hearty and hale that you swear she just came off a dairy farm in Sweden? Well that’s us, except dark-haired and German (Russian): We look like we were built to withstand a life of hard physical labor.

Strong and sturdy, as you know, rarely translate exactly into quick and coordinated. And I admit without reservation, now that I’m beyond the age of enforced physical activity (i.e. PE), that I can’t properly throw any sort of ball, let alone dribble or hit it with a stick, and I never learned to dive. Part of it’s genetic and part of it’s a lack of opportunity to really learn.

In any case, about a year or so ago I decided I was going to start running. I can’t say what compelled me to make this decision, though part of it was the desire to combat the effects, both physical and mental, of sitting at a desk for the majority of the day. I eventually got to the point where I could run 3 miles with relative ease. I’m not fast and I'm sure I don't have the best form, but it makes me feel strong. So I decided that if running 3 miles is good, running 6 would be better. And then I decided I was going to run a half marathon. I've never run in any organized event, with the exception of the 100-yard dash at field day and even then, I don't know that what I did counts as running, yet somehow I thought this was a good idea. I made it through the Lincoln Half in May without dying or breaking down. And then I signed up for the Nike Women’s Half in October.

Check out the hills in the virtual tour. I have nightmares about them: That’s why I run, on average, six days a week. And that’s why it’s hard for me to do anything other than make supper and clean up on weeknights. Still, I get the mania, as Justin calls it, from time to time, and decide, at 10:00, to clean the entire house or start a 3-hour baking project. And that’s why I sometimes get myself into trouble.

A Cupcake Kampf in Four Parts

1. The blister and the broken bowl (8:30 p.m.)

It started out innocently enough. We picked up Taco John’s on the way home from the Keystone, so I had plenty of time (or so I thought) to make something to take over to the friends we planned to visit Friday night. They have a new baby, so I wanted to make something fun and pastel, but Justin convinced me to do a trial run on the chocolate malt cake I planned to make for his birthday. He was in the kitchen snooping around for a snack, so I put him to work.

His job was to melt the baking chocolate in the microwave. After 15 seconds, he pulled the bowl out to stir things up. Apparently the bowl heated to such a scorching degree in that time that it blistered his finger on contact. He then dropped the bowl on the floor, where it shattered. Justin has absolutely no tolerance for heat, so I was skeptical -- but his finger does appear to be slightly injured.

I’m going to be honest here. I was annoyed – not so much about the bowl, though it was a pretty cool bowl, but mostly at the dramatic (over)reaction. But he felt so bad about the whole thing that it ruined his appetite. Plus he’s pretty cute, so I couldn’t stay mad for long, especially since he helped with the dishes.

2. Muffin tops (9:17 p.m.)

Muffin tops only look good on muffins, and even then, only when they’re nice and peaked. These are a bad flat kind of muffin top and the only thing I can think of as a cause is overfilled tins, though maybe these were just doomed from the start.


Not only did these cupcakes muffin top on me, they stuck to the top of the pan because who thinks to grease the top of the muffin tin! Seriously. And honestly, I didn’t think they were that good (which is why I'm not posting the recipe). They’re a little chewier than a cupcake should be, I think. Possibly the result of the malt powder.


3. Mess (11:00 p.m.)

In my original brilliant plan, I was going to make chocolate malt cupcakes with vanilla malt frosting and vanilla malt cupcakes with chocolate malt frosting. I don’t even want to talk about what happened here. As you can see, it wasn’t good.


They all ended up in the garbage and I went to bed, still without any cupcakes for Friday.

4. 4 ounces does not a 1/4 cup make (the next day, 6:00 p.m.)


I was brooding about the cupcakes gone wrong at work the next day when it came to me: I should make Surprise Cupcakes, the long-standing favorite of the Lucky Cloverleaves 4-H Club. Cupcakes so good one would lie and steal for them.

Or at least I would. Granted I was probably about four years old, but even so, I remember parts of it quite clearly: Mom had made a batch of these sincakes for some occasion – for a harvest lunch out in the field or for a 4-H meeting snack, I don’t know, though I do know they were off limits to me. But I ate them anyway – that’s right, “them.” I don’t know exactly how many were in that 9x13 tupperware, but it was a lot more than one. Enough that my mom didn’t suspect me at first; the immediate blame went to my brother, who was five years older and supposedly hungrier and more prone to snacking, and I was smart enough to let her think that was the case.

This is the first time I remember lying.

My brother ratted me out, and I ended up getting my due. I don’t remember what that was, which means it was probably worth it.

But even these fool-proof cupcakes posed a problem. I could blame Justin, but it’s just as much my fault for asking for his help as it is his for “helping” while trying to tell me an involved story about Bioshock.

I made the cupcakes from this recipe, which requires a 1/4 cup hot water at the end to thin the batter. I asked Justin to get the water ready while I finished mixing; by the time we realized it was too much, it was too late.

I could have tried making a cake with the extra-thinned batter, or thickening it up by adding more flour, etc., but I’ve made these cupcakes (with the berry ganache and cinnamon buttercream) before and I didn’t want to ruin their perfect texture. So I started over.

Once you have that ready, make the “surprise” part.

Filling:
8 ounces cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup sugar
1 egg
pinch of salt
1 cup chocolate chips.

Cream the first four ingredients together. Stir in the chocolate chips.

Fill the cupcake liners about 2/3 full of batter, then drop in a generous teaspoon or so of the filling.

This should make about 15 or 16 cupcakes.

Bake at 350 degrees for 18 to 20 minutes. Once they're cooled, you can drizzle a glaze over. I made mine with some melted dark chocolate, powdered sugar, a little milk, and a little vanilla.

5. And finally, success (7:00 p.m.)

Remember what we started with:



Justin liked them; our friends, who have the cutest baby ever, liked them and I think the neighbor I gave the rest of them to liked them. But to tell you the truth, by the time these suckers were done, I had pretty much lost my appetite for cupcakes. I'm thinking apple pie.


Postscript: When I was training for the Lincoln Half, I did my first 10-mile run in South Dakota when I was home for a visit. It was a gorgeous morning – about 50 degrees – and I felt strong, awed at my own strength and in love with the world in general. I planned my route to go past grandma’s house during mile 7 and as I was running past, I stopped in to give her a hug and say good morning. Later that day I came back for a proper visit. And she said, “Can’t you run any faster than that? You just sort of troddle along.”

To top that off, the way grandpa told the story of one of the best runs to date (or this is the way the story got back to me, anyway), I was out running in my bikini while my mom followed behind on the 4-wheeler. I was, of course, properly attired in t-shirt, shorts and running shoes, and mom was at home making waffles.

This reminds me of the time grandpa told my cousin, who was cleaning out a bin for him in the middle of summer, to put a shirt on before he covered him in a tarp. And of all the times grandpa tried to give me a ride home when he saw me out walking.

It's not much as far as a vote of confidence goes, but at least grandpa thought I looked strong enough to make it home on my own two feet -- and he didn't try to cover me in a tarp.

A Peace Offering, of Sorts...

A co-worker of mine has a thing for kolalches. He also has a thing for telling long, involved stories. That's why I know about his neighbor who made the best kolaches ever, until she died, without passing on the recipe (though I suspect that she did pass on the recipe and that the heirs just refuse to pander to my friend's voracious appetite). The bakery in the neighboring town, moreover, charges an arm and a leg for their kolache and they taste like hog slop.

Shortly after I started working in the newsroom, my mom happened to make kolache while I was home for a visit. So, having inherited my mom's passion for feeding people, whoever and wherever and however full they may already be, I took back a plate of four or five for him.

For the last two years, then, I've heard about how Susanne's mom's kolaches rate in the top three best kolaches ever, after the dead neighbor and leaving room for a possible hiccup in memory. I've also been asked, repeatedly, when I'm going to have my mom make me some kolaches again.

Here's the thing. At first it was cute, but then I realized he was serious. And then I noticed this: My friend is a total food mooch. He once plucked an expired carton of milk out of someone's garbage and drank it. Granted it was only expired by one day, but it was in the garbage. If there is food anywhere in the office, he is on it, in his own words, like a monkey on a cupcake. He had the audacity once to get angry when someone brought in treats of some sort for the office and they were all gone before he had any. And the only food I remember him ever bringing into the office has been his mom's cookies.

While I understand that he might never have had occasion to develop cooking skills, I have little patience for learned helplessness. How hard is it, after all, to add water to a muffin mix? Or to break apart refrigerated cookie dough?

It's not hard, friends.

So the next time the topic of Susanne's mom's kolaches came up, I told my friend that should the occasion ever arise that I had a hankering for some fresh kolache, I would bake them myself. And then I offered to get him the recipe.

And then, the more I thought about it, the more worked up I got: For 30 some odd years people have catered to this man and, in the process, really done him a disservice. What if, for example, he ended up married to someone who'd rather not bake her own birthday cake. What then? Would he ask his mom to do it?

The answer, I realize now, is yes. And that's fine. Truly. But at the time, I decided to show him some tough love and in the process I made a bargain. I told him that if he brought in a pan of bars -- though rice krispie bars did not count -- I would bake him a batch of kolaches.

He wanted nothing to do with it. That should have been the end of it.

But I'm stubborn, another inherited trait, and we'd reached an impasse of sorts -- and I was starting to actually get mad (all the refrigerated cookie dough thing requires is a pan, some Pam and an oven, God bless him), though I have absolutely no real investment in his future inside the kitchen.

I had to let it go because I really do like him -- so I made the kolaches. And if he threw them down his maw with nary a word of thanks, what does it matter? I'm just glad that I don't have to make my own birthday cake. And, admittedly, I have enough ego to get the affirmation I need from just seeing someone enjoy my baking.

I'm not qualified to say if they were the best kolaches ever, but they were good -- and I made them myself.

***

(My Dad's Aunt) Kathryn's Kolaches

My very favorite part about this recipe is its succinctness.

2 cups warm milk
1/2 cup warm water
3/4 cup instant potato buds
1/2 cup oil
4 egg yolks or 2 whole eggs
1/2 cup sugar
1 teaspoon salt
2 packages (2 1/4 teaspoons, each) yeast
5-6 cups flour

1. Mix as usual.
I'm not exactly sure what she means by "as usual," but this is what I did and it worked fine: Proof the yeast -- mix it with the warm water and a tablespoon of the sugar in a drinking glass or large measuring cup and set aside until it's frothy. Heat the milk, potato buds, oil salt, and eggs with the rest of the sugar in a saucepan. Once it's cool enough -- should feel comfortable on the inside of your wrist -- that it won't kill the yeast, mix in the yeast mixture with 3 cups of flour until smooth.
Keep adding flour until you have a soft, but not sticky dough. At some point you'll have to turn it out onto a floured surface to knead. It was fairly humid, so I ended up using 6 cups of flour, if not a little more.

2. Let rise.
About an hour or so, until double. You'll know it's risen enough when you can press your fingers into the dough and the indentations remain. (The dough doesn't look like it's risen very much in the picture below, but that's because it's in the biggest Tupperware bowl -- a 32-cupper -- I've ever seen, a gift from my mom.)


3. Make into balls -- put on pan. Let rise again.
This recipe will make between 3 and 4 dozen, depending on how big you make the kolache. Make sure to grease the pan. And then let them raise until double, about a half hour.

4. Make a well with your fingers and fill with 1 rounding teaspoon any flavor fruit filling.
The dough is very light and easy work with. I make the well by poking one finger in dead center and then using two fingers on both hands to stretch the dough.


I used canned cherry pie filling and a fresh peach filling.


5. Let rise again.
About 15 minutes.

6. Another recipe calls for a crumbly mixture to sprinkle on top before baking. Optional.
I opted for the crumbly mixture:
1/2 cup flour
1/4 cup sugar
2 tablespoons butter
(Mix and crumble, per Kathryn's directions.)


6. Bake 375 degrees.
For about 15 minutes or until they look like this:

And then you can drizzle a powdered sugar glaze over them while they're still warm.

They are perfect fresh from the oven -- tender and soft and sweet without being too sweet. Best with a big glass of cold milk and possibly a slice of sharp cheddar cheese.

Incidentally, I don't know if kolache plural is kolaches, or just kolache. So forgive my ignorance and fill me in if you know.

Mennonites Bake Bible, Cabbage in Bread

The church I grew up in was Mennonite in name, but at some point while I was too young to give such things much attention, it left whatever conference it was involved in (I think it was the general conference), becoming, in practice, much like other conservative, evangelical churches: We didn't baptize babies. We didn't raise our hands or clap or sing praise songs. And we certainly didn't sit around talking about our feelings. But we prayed long and hard and often -- and though communion was maybe a quarterly occurrence, we found a lot of excuses to break bread together and I still know where to find everything in that church kitchen, though I haven't been in it for almost eight years.

When I was looking for colleges, my mom wanted me to visit the Mennonite-affiliated Tabor and Bethel, even Grace. But I ended up at Northwestern College, nestled right in the middle of northwest Iowa's Dutch country. And at Northwestern I met Tonya (because we both liked the same boy. Said boy proved unsuitable for both of us, though we ended up being quite compatible). And Tonya, who was from Kansas and related to Naomi Kauffman (of all people), taught me a lot about Mennonites.

This education delved into some of the finer points of pacifism and included an introduction to Northwestern's Anabaptist fellowship group (this mainly involved hymn singing and eating, as I recall) and a briefing on some of the more important moments in our history, including the details of how Mennonites brought wheat to the Southern Plains by sewing the seed into dolls, clothing, blankets and sheets to smuggle it out of Russia.

Apparently Mennonites were good at hiding things. According to my grandma, they also baked Bibles into bread to keep them from being discovered -- and to avoid death for possessing them.

Think about that for a second. And then think about Matthew 4:4, John 1:1-2 and John 6:24-35. I have to confess that I don't know if the story is fact or fiction; it's almost too perfect an illustration; however, a) my grandma told me it's true (and doesn't that just almost always settle the question?) and b) you do have to consider that there are a lot of Mennonite breads, rolls and dumplings that have fillings: Verenicke (cottage cheese, primarily), kolaches (various fruits, cream cheese or poppy seed), bohne beroggis (pinto beans!) and beirocks (cabbage and ground beef), and those are only the ones I can name right off hand.

Until a month or so ago, I had never made beirock myself.
And I hadn't shared a kitchen with someone other than my mom (and Justin) since college and Plex 20. I didn't even realize that it was something I'd missed until I spent a Saturday afternoon visiting Tonya and Kelcee in Des Moines.

Tonya procured a beirock recipe from back home and she even typed it out, after quizzing her mom about the specifics, so that I could write about it later. Her mom is one of those sorts who makes bread by putting stuff together until the dough feels right. So you can understand the work Tonya did on my behalf.

Dough:
2 tablespoons yeast
2 3/4 cups warm water, divided
1/3 cup powdered milk
3 tablespoons sugar, divided
2 teaspoons salt
2/3 cup shortening
2/3 cup mashed potatoes (you can use instant)
1 egg
5 to 7 cups flour, or enough to make a firm dough (we used more than this because it was extremely humid)

Start by proofing the yeast. We mixed the yeast and 1 tablespoon of sugar with about 3/4 cup of warm water.

Then heat the remaining water, sugar and shortening in a saucepan until the shortening is melted.

Beat the egg and add it along with the powdered milk, salt and mashed potatoes to the butter mixture. (We used a leftover baked potato. In theory, this will work. But make sure you mash it first. We missed that step and kept picking potato chunks out of the dough...)

Stir in about three or four cups of flour with the butter mixture. Keep stirring until it's smooth. (This process goes a lot faster if you have a Kitchen Aid, like Tonya.) Keep adding flour until you get the texture you want. Even if you do have a Kitchen Aid, you'll want to do some kneading by hand so that you can gauge the consistency and texture of the dough.

Once you have it kneaded smooth, set it aside in a greased bowl to rise until double.

In the meantime, make the filling.

Filling:
2 pounds hamburger
Large head of cabbage, shredded
Onion, chopped, to taste
Salt, pepper and other seasonings, depending on your preference.

Brown the hamburger, rinse. Add the cabbage, onion and seasonings. Simmer until the cabbage is tender.

Once the dough is ready, punch it down and divide into two or three sections, depending on how much you want to work with at a time. Roll it out and cut it into 4-inch squares.

Place 1/3 to 1/2 cup filling in the middle, fold in the corners -- or fold into a triangle -- and pinch the dough together to seal it.

Bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes or until golden brown. It should make about three dozen.

I wish I had pictures, but I forgot my camera the day we made them -- I do still have some in the freezer, so when I get them out and thawed, I'll make sure to post a few photos.

These are good, but my husband has a thing about cabbage -- and onions -- and Tonya's husband calls them cabbage cakes. I suspect that means he doesn't appreciate them as he should. Kelcee's husband, God bless him, was the only one who seemed appropriately excited about our afternoon's work.

Because I can't -- or rather, shouldn't -- eat an entire batch of beirocks by myself, I plan to experiment with some different fillings the next time I make them. Tonya and Kelcee mentioned ham and cheese -- and I wonder if a vegetable or potato filling of some sort would work too.

I've also come across a variation on the dough -- more sugar, different process for putting it together -- that I want to try. I'll let you know how it turns out.

Called to the Kitchen

I've long understood that place shapes identity and, even more than that, spirituality -- something Kathleen Norris refers to as spiritual geography in her book Dakota and that Linda Hasselstrom also addresses in her work, albeit from a different vantage point.

In any case, as far as place goes, my identity is rooted in the southeast corner of South Dakota along the James River, the place, as the story goes, the scouts sent ahead from Russia picked as the best location for the new settlement. In making this decision, they bypassed the more fertile farm ground of the Red River Valley and northwest Iowa because it was "too good" and they feared the people would become "proud" working rich land like that.

If there's one thing that can be said about farming, it's this: Depending on the land and the whims of the weather for your livelihood fosters, if not a relationship with God, at least the knowledge that there are forces greater than yourself at work in the world.

But I'm only beginning to understand how food can go beyond preserving cultural identity and family history to become theology in practice. I've said before that I come from a long line of women who take great joy in feeding people. I've never thought much about it until I put it in the larger context of the Mennonite emphasis on service and, more specifically, the relief sales, the meat canning, the disaster relief.

Within this context, cooking goes beyond a means of showing love to family and community or even a spiritual gift in service of the church. It becomes necessary for showing Christ to the world. It becomes a calling.

So there it is. As much as I have worked out.

Zweiback, At Last

The morning after we made the jam, my mom and I made the zweiback. It was something I'd wanted to do since April when I found Marilyn Moore's Baking Memoir in Friendly Used Books. It was a good find, and, thrilled to have all these old familiar recipes at hand, I regaled my husband with recipes for peppernuts, kuchen and zweiback (and Moore's account of how her dad got kicked out of Tabor College, which, being Lutheran and unfamiliar with Tabor as well as unversed in my uncles' exploits at Grace Bible Institute, now Grace University he couldn't quite appreciate as much as I did) over supper at the Pizza Shoppe (in my defense, we'd walked to Benson for some shopping and supper -- so the book was sitting right there beside me in the booth).

I brought the book home with me to share with mom. At first, she was aghast that I spent $9.00 on a used book, but after she spent an afternoon looking at it, she wanted me to find her a copy on Amazon. She also decided that we should try Bertha Toevs' recipe (Moore refers to her as a zweiback expert: this means that her zweiback never come unstacked in the oven) rather than the one she had from Naomi Kauffman.

Both Naomi and Bertha are from Kansas, so the recipe my mom remembers from Henderson is probably slightly different than either of these. You'll notice that Bertha's recipe uses quite a bit more yeast. In Naomi's recipe, the dough needs to rise twice. In any case, though, the thing that really makes them zweiback (at least as I understand it), is the two-bun stack. In fact, my grandma told me her mom never made buns without stacking them.

Naomi's Recipe
(makes 4 to 5 dozen)

3 cups milk
2 tablespoons salt
6 tablespoons sugar, plus 1 teaspoon
1 cup Wesson oil
1/2 cup warm water
2 packages active dry yeast (1 package yeast is 2 1/4 teaspoons)
8-10 cups flour

Scald 2 cups milk and mix with the sugar and salt. Mix yeast in 1/2 cup water with sugar and let set until bubbly. Add last cup of cold milk and oil to first mixture. This cools it enough that the yeast can then be added. Now add flour until dough becomes fairly easy to handle, not sticky but not too stiff either. Grease and form ball in your bowl and cover to raise. Let rise 1 hour and knead. Then let rise another hour and form the zwieback. Put them on a greased cookie sheet and bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 10 to 12 minutes.

Pastor George and Naomi were at Zion Mennonite in Bridgewater for most of my growing up years. When I was in college, they left for another call at a church in Henderson. It's a small Mennonite world.

Bertha's Recipe (as told by Marilyn Moore)
(makes about 3 dozen)

2 cups whole milk, scalded
1 cup unsalted butter or margarine, melted
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 tablespoon salt
1 cup warm water
2 to 3 tablespoons active dry yeast
8 to 9 cups all-purpose flour (unbleached flour can be used, but don't use bread flour)

Bertha includes the specifics for how to mix everything together, but every bread maker has a method that works best so I'll just tell you what we did.

My mom didn't have whole milk on hand, so we used skim milk, which we combined with the butter and sugar in a saucepan. We put it over low heat until the butter melted and the sugar dissolved. (Note that scalding milk in the old-fashioned sense generally isn't necessary. Our milk is pasteurized, so we don't need to worry about getting it hot enough to kill bacteria, unless you need to be at one with the natural food chain.) Once that happened, we set it aside to cool. If it's too hot, it will kill the yeast. A good general rule of thumb: If the temperature is comfortable to your wrist, it won't hurt the yeast.

While the milk mixture was heating, we combined the yeast, warm water and a couple teaspoons of honey in a tall water glass. This is something my mom taught me to do when I first started baking. The honey -- or sugar -- gives the yeast something to feed on and you can make sure the yeast is good before adding it to the rest of the ingredients.

When the milk was lukewarm, we added the yeast and three cups of flour and beat it with a wooden spoon until smooth. Then, we gradually added enough flour to make a soft (but not sticky), smooth dough, eventually turning it out to knead -- a little less than 10 minutes.

In all, we probably used about 8 1/2 cups of flour. And the dough was very soft -- when I picked it up, it seeped through my finger.

At this point, we put the dough in a greased bowl and let it rise until doubled (then punched it down).

And then it was time to start shaping the zweiback. We divided the dough in half and then kneped it. The dough is so soft, that it's a little tricky to get it smooth. The best way to do this is to pat it (think burping a baby or giving your significant other some "love taps" on the rump; I really can't think of any other way to describe it) and pull the sides down to get a smooth ball-like top.

Then hold the dough with one hand and with your thumb and index finger on the other, squeeze off a ball about 1.5 inches in diameter. Don't twist the dough -- overworking it will make it tough.

This process is kneping. It's something I've done for a long time, but I didn't know it had a name until Marilyn filled me in.

In any case, since mom and I divided the dough, we each made 18 1.5-inch balls (for the base) and 18 slightly smaller ones (for the top). But then our processes differed.

In the Bertha Toevs method of making zweiback, you let the dough rise until doubled, about 30 minutes, before stacking them. My mom wanted to stack them before they rose, as several other recipes suggest, including both Naomi's and Marilyn's. This is how her mother made them as well.

So, my mom stacked the smaller balls on top of the larger base and pressed her finger all the way through to the pan (which should be well greased!) and then let them rise about 30 minutes or so. And I let the dough rise first.

In this method, you dip your finger in a glass of cold water and then poke a hole almost all the way through to the baking sheet. (I wiggled my finger a little to create a slight well for the small ball.) Then, you moisten the bottom of the small ball and press it in the center of well (use slight pressure -- the dough will be very light as it has already risen).

When all the balls have been stacked, preheat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. When the oven is ready, turn it down to 350 degrees and bake the zweiback for 15 to 20 minutes until they're well browned.

Marilyn says to eat them without butter, only fresh jam. But my husband doesn't like rhubarb (pity that), so when I make them again (and when I get a Kitchen Aid), I'm going to try this recipe for homemade butter.

In case you were wondering, the Bertha Toevs-stacked zweiback had a better survival rate than the other method. Casualties and survivors alike, however, were consumed with great rejoicing at our impromptu faspa.

Rain on the Rhubarb

My dad grew up with five brothers and one sister. All things considered, this is a relatively average-sized family. But still, imagine feeding all of those growing farm boys.

From what grandma has said, dinner alone took two fried chickens (plus a hamburger or a couple of franks for the oldest boy, who's still not a fan of poultry), several pounds of potatoes and two pies to end. Besides dinner, though, there was also breakfast, two lunches (morning and afternoon), and supper, so it's little wonder that the kitchen, and more specifically, the Formica-topped table (with a couple generation's worth of chewing gum now cemented underneath) is still the place they all return to when they need tending.

Growing up, I sat at that table occupied with old puzzles and homemade play dough. I ate countless meals sitting in my dad's old place on the long end against the wall, and drank my share of pop, which grandpa doled out a half can at a time. During the summers I was home from college, I'd walk the two miles to the house, sit down for a glass of water and a visit, and unless grandpa insisted on driving me, walk the two miles back home. From that vantage point, I had a lot of opportunities to watch my grandma manage the various personalities in her family to circumvent conflict.

But when reasoning failed, she'd simply resort to this: Do you think the rain will hurt the rhubarb?

In other words, change the subject now or get out.

No one knows where she came up with it, but that hasn't stopped us from adopting it (along with grandpa's rather infamous portmanteau mental "flustration," which he used repeatedly during an interview with a local news station in the late 80s/early 90s). And I can't have rhubarb without thinking of my grandma.

Rhubarb Jam

5 cups rhubarb, chopped
4 cups sugar
4 cups sliced strawberries, blueberries or chopped cherries (or you can use a pie mix)
1 small box (6 oz) Jello in the same flavor

Combine the rhubarb and the sugar in a large saucepan and set aside until the rhubarb juices. Cook the rhubarb mixture over medium heat until it comes to a boil. Boil 15 minutes or until the rhubarb is tender. Add the fruit/pie mix and boil for 10 minutes more. Turn off the heat and stir in the Jello. Once the jam is cool, it's ready to be packaged. You can put it in jars and then refrigerate, but since it freezes well, I just put mine in freezer-safe Gladware and store it that way.

My mom and I made all three variations of this jam when I was home for a visit a few weeks ago. My personal favorite is the blueberry-rhubarb -- it's good on everything from ice cream to oatmeal, and especially fresh-baked bread.

For the record, I can't imagine that rain would ever hurt the rhubarb. It's hardy, being part of the buckwheat family and all -- and maybe that's the point.

Some Context

When I was in college I had so many words, so many ideas constantly demanding my attention that I filled journal upon journal besides writing all the papers and projects required of an English major. And then I went to graduate school and after that I got a job as an editor for an online publication and though the ideas still come, I lose them because at the end of the day, my words are all used up. The difference, I'm sure, involves all the other commitments on my time that come with being an adult -- and I know I’m not alone: a good friend of mine who completed a master's program in poetry two years ago hasn't written a single line since completing her thesis. We both agree that all we need is a little discipline to help us follow through on our good intentions.

And while I'd describe my life as fairly orderly, and even disciplined in some regards, that may be the biggest difference between my mom and me, at least when it comes to the kitchen. She's neat and orderly, washing dishes and utensils as she goes to prevent a big messy backlog at the end. I just stack them in the sink -- or by the sink. She follows a recipe to the letter, reading back through at the end to make sure she hasn't forgotten anything. (The one time, at least to my knowledge, that she didn't do this, she forgot the sugar in the pumpkin pies she made for her ladies' Bible study and at the last minute had to remake all eight of them using, horrors, frozen pie crust -- but that's another story for another day). I improvise and substitute and it drives her nuts, especially as she is an alpha cook. (I have a lot to say about this, but it will have to wait for another day, too.)

When I was in high school, we would get into epic fights in the kitchen, usually while I was baking for the county 4-H Achievement Days. She'd hover with a ruler (I'm not even exaggerating for the sake of a good story, as other members of my family are wont to do), measuring how much batter was in each muffin tin, how big I was shaping the buns, if the loaves met the size specified in the recipe, and I would just lose it.

You must understand, though, that my mom is one of the best cooks I know and that my success at achievement was a direct reflection on her reputation. Achievement days are a three-day event: All the entries -- from livestock to visual arts to the various categories of baked goods -- are judged on the first two days. On the third day, the exhibit halls are opened to the public (mostly moms and grandmas come) and the whole thing culminates with a barbeque, usually pork or beef, though there was the unfortunate sheep incident (where everyone complained) that my dad still talks about (because he was on the fair board and let some of the mothers who wanted a healthier alternative line up the sheep and the man who barbequed/ruined it).

My brother, who is five years older than I am, made waffle cookies -- similar to these; I'll post the real recipe when I can find it -- his first year in 4-H (when he was 8) and he earned a white ribbon (which means disqualification!), a disgrace he has yet to live down. It was a technicality -- something about a frosted cookie being entered in a category for unfrosted cookies -- but all these years later, my mom has not forgotten. All that to say, my mom really had more at stake than I did in this thing and it was shameful of me to provoke her by refusing to level that tablespoon of cinnamon with a knife. (If you're reading mom, know that I'm sorry.)

Now that I'm older and, I'd like to think wiser, sharing a kitchen with my mom is much easier, as long as I remember my place. And, for her part, she trusts me more. But mostly I think it's because we no longer have to deal with achievement-day baking and the approval of the old home economics teachers the county extension agent would round up to judge it.

What Is Zweiback and Why Would I Knep It?: An Introduction

My mom grew up in Henderson, Nebraska, a hotbed of Mennonite culture and tradition, by all accounts, and one of the few things I know about her childhood in that sacred place -- besides the summer her and her friends found religion and burned their comic books -- is that my grandma made zweiback, or two-bakes, as they're also known, on Saturday night. In the Mennonite tradition, zweiback, as the alternate name implies, are two rolls baked stacked one on top of the other. The trick, I'm told, is keeping them stacked during baking.

In any case, my mom and her twin sister loved these rolls so much that they would sneak five or six apiece and eat them under the sheets after they'd gone to bed. A pretty impressive night's work for a couple of little girls. And, according my dad, an art that hasn't yet been lost. My mom bought a dozen of the rolls at this year's Schmeckfest in Freeman, South Dakota, and, by her own admission, could only bear to part with two. I'd like to think she ate them under the sheets for old time's sake.

Despite this hearty appetite for zweiback, I can only remember my mom making them once while I was growing up. Perhaps they bring to mind too many painful memories (my grandma died when my mom was but 13), or maybe they never tasted quite like she remembered, or maybe, more practically, they're just a pain to make.

Lately zweiback has become something of an obsession for me, the key to knowing my mom and the grandma I know very little about. You see, I come from a long line of German-Russian women who show love by feeding people the best food they can offer. Food shapes and defines a community even as it nourishes it, and because my mom and dad share a similar heritage and grew up in Mennonite communities, albeit in different states, knowing the food is akin to knowing who I am, or at least where I am and how I came to be there.

I don't know very much about Mennonite history or theology or if it's something I want to claim (at least some of) for myself. I don't know and so zweiback it is -- my first line of inquiry and kneping, I'll tell you now, is simply the way to shape the dough.