spiritualcookie wrote: Sat Jan 18, 2025 11:28 am
I am always in such awe of the breadth and depth of your knowledge of so many delicious dishes! I think you have enough knowledge to write several volumes of wonderful cooking books! Thank you for sharing - I would like to try them all!
I feel inspired by the Kartoffelkroketten! I like how in adding an egg, it adds so much nutrition to the humble potato. It is inspiring in me ideas for all sorts of mashed thing with egg to try! Sweet potato, butternut squash, blitzed vegetables... Since at the moment my body doesn't digest fried things or fat very well, I like also that it's baked and potentially I don't have to add fat to it, so it's something my body will be able to handle happily
Awww, thank you so much for the wonderful compliment!
And I love that I might have inspired you. The butter in the Kroketten is only for some crunch, when you bake it in the oven.
Yes
eggs complete almost everything into a full meal!
I tend to finish all leftovers in cracking an egg over it, frying it in a pan, and finding it delicious!
...Can you digest the fat in the yolk, though?
*I* am always blown away how things that we can't work with physically become sometimes more bearable, when you use them in their natural form (as organically pressed virgin oils, or as medicine the whole herb, not just an isolated part... where it all helps together to break each other up in easier digestible forms, or where tiniest natural ingredients (as something in a plant) makes it not poisonous, any more!
...I DID write a cooking-book for my family (hand-copied, full with old photos and postcards...) with all the family recipes that I learned to love, from my ancestors, including the tiny stories and memories that are tied to them.
...I see it coming that my answer to you is becoming "another book", so I will take the "L" from the rear of the Kartoffel and make it the beginning of :
"Love for food, family and history (and writing about it!!)..."
(Sorry for being so creative with the headlines, AGAIN!!
)
When I planned to pull together our familie's recipes, I had asked for recipes from Wolfgangs side also, but it didn't happen. The only idea was to NOT use the trait of his grandmother, who used to cook liver for hours in the oven: It turned into a dry, almost green "Sole of a Boot", and everyone tried to escape from needing to eat it... My mother in law became "immortal" in my book by once having not stirred the chocolate in a mousse long enough, so there where still little chocolate lumps in the cream, which was DELICIOUS. Since then, I always add some finely chopped chocolate in the end, to every "Mousse au Chocolate"!
But otherwise, mostly my Grandmother taught me to cook. Her mother had married rich and so, their family had a maid who did the cooking. And so, she didn't know recipes from her youth. Besides lemon-cream! In her youth, citrus-fruit were an immense treasure, and lemon-cream was on their table only once or twice a year. She HAD to learn preparing it, as it was so delicious!!
Later, she learned most of real cooking from her mother in law: Opi was a very poor farmer's son, and Omi cared to learn all the tricks of his mother and the other village-women, when the whole huge family (having lost their houses and often other relatives as well) gathered after WW2 on the farm, to be able to survive. It has been Opi's mother and 4 aunts, his 3 sisters and their 4 children, my Omi and her 5 children, all under 1 roof. The men had croaked in service or were still in captivity...
Omi learned to bake bread and "cakes" in an old fashioned bread-oven, heated with wood. The "cakes" were tray-bakes, topped with a bit of sourcreme and an stirred-in egg, sweetened with Rübenkraut -self made turnip-molasses, as they had no sugar, using modest bread-dough. Only flour and water with yeast or sourdough- as long as that was available they werent hungry. Hurray!!
She learned to be incredibly creative with making something out of almost nothing. They ate lentil- or pearl-barley- or potato-peels-weed-soups with "waterdumplings" (made from flour, water and salt) and whatever grew in the garden. The presence of a few herbs, almost always eggs and a bit milk (blessings of living in the countryside) made her clear how few humans really NEED. The presence of fruit-trees that lined the rural roads who were available to all folks (a special idea of landlords to help their people in famines) made it so clear to her, that having 2 or 3 trees herself would make life really better when hardships come!
I learned it all from her. And I LOVED the stories that went with it! I LOVED to understand wild (and old, forgotten) vegetables, and old methods of conserving. And I highly appreciated understanding that people have dealt with times, where there was no money to simply buy it all. But I also HIGHLY appreciated to find, more and more, the fruit and vegetables from all around the world, the foreign spices, and the foreign methods to cook... it all was SUCH a treasure-trove to me!
I also loved the stories of the family. How family assures survival. How, when the harsh winds blow, family holds together and shares what is crucial. I heard of my mother and all her siblings and cousins, playing in the woods and on the grassy hills, and of my uncle as the oldest of the gang (-as all his siblings not overly religiously educated) was snatching an old broom made from straw and carried it out on the village-street, while mumbling in typical sing-song of the catholic processions: The priest, walking ahead and praying, and the rest of the community, walking behind him and repeating the prayer in a lower tone. My Omi said she never run so fast than in the moment when she saw all her children (the "faithless refugees") walk out of the court, to play "Corpus Christi Procession"...
I also learned a lot from my mother, who had married back into Canada (where I got born). She was a farmers wife for a long time, preparing her own cheeses and joghurts, planted a huge berry-garden and of course used the tricks and traits of the farmer-family she had married into. SO fascinating!!
My second family-cook-book is already gathering, as it will be not be inspired by my ancestors, but by DH's and my travels- and by my children and their mates. As my daughter in law is a Kazakh who got raised in Russian culture, this is already quite fascinating! Whenever my Forum-Friends offered to share a special recipe from their family or their wonderful part of the world, I added those, too! My children ask for "Hopes Israeli Shakshuka" for breakfast, or for "Leafs Texan Pekanpie", or for WellBeans awesome "Blondies" from the US-Eastcoast. Lately, it is "Mashed Peas", from spiritualcookie!
“Seize the moment. Remember all those women on the Titanic who waved off the dessert cart.”
– Erma Bombeck
(By the way, I own a recipe about the dessert that got served in Titanic's last night: It is Eclairs, filled with vanilla custard, topped with lemon-icing, served with Hungarian Tokaj Wine... ALMOST worth drowning...)
We had 1 m snow at that day... It was an for me, before, unknown world!
I thought again.... 
