Food Column: 'Mennonite Girls' feed the spirit, too
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The 10 women behind the blog that turned into a book, "Mennonite Girls Can Cook." -
Pfeffernuess or Peppernuts from "Mennonite Girls Can Cook." -
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Are you still prepping your holiday menus? Last week, Gretchen McKay helped you with four stuffing recipes; this week, she's tackling side dishes.
A cookbook published earlier this year could assist with holiday menus. Along the way, the book might also help you keep the holiday frenzy at bay and, instead, reflect on the holiday's spiritual side.
Ten women "met" through a cooking blog that eventually became "Mennonite Girls Can Cook," a full-color book of recipes, stories and devotional essays.
Nine of the "girls," as they began calling themselves when someone offhandedly commented, "You Mennonite girls sure can cook," are Mennonites living in Western Canada. The 10th lives in the Seattle area, and although not Mennonite, she shares the group's Russian Mennonite ancestry.
The book captures the family traditions, family closeness and religious faith that united the women's ancestors during times of persecution.
The book might seem to suffer from ethnic confusion, but that simply stems from Russian Mennonite history. Some recipes have Russian names, some have Dutch or German names, and some are everyday American fare.
Russian Mennonite families started in the Netherlands and Prussia (the leading state of the German empire), where they faced persecution for their religious beliefs.
In 1763, Catherine the Great of Russia offered a safe haven to Europeans who would convert unused Russian land into profitable farmland. The Mennonite families who emigrated tamed the wild land and built large estates with ornate buildings, well-tilled fields and orchards. Lovella Schellenberg, the blogger who started the cookbook, still possesses blueprints of her grandfather's estate.
But by 1870, Russia ended the special treatment and began conscripting the pacifist Mennonites. Also, Russian citizens, who faced great poverty during the revolution of the early 1900s, began to resent the prosperous Mennonite farms.
And so Mennonites faced persecution again. They were not allowed to have churches. Soldiers plundered their land. And when World War II broke out, their German descent pegged them as enemies of the state. In the book, Julie Klassen shares a recipe for schnetki (finger biscuits), the food her mother-in-law packed for her father-in-law on the final day his family ever saw him in 1941, when he and other Mennonite men were forced to march away under guard to Siberia. Mrs. Klassen's husband was 4 years old at the time and still remembers his father trudging into the distance with schnetki in his pocket.
First Published November 17, 2011 12:00 am
