Preserving the Sauer and the Sweet

My students are currently working on descriptive essays in Creative Writing, where they focus on their favorite food and the memories they have associated with it. We end up calling these essays their "food and family" essays because that is what's at the heart of it. As we talk about food and the people we love, I felt inspired to create one of my own as an example.

Here is my own "food and family" essay:

              Growing up, I always identified with my mom’s side of the family more than my dad’s. It seemed to have more culture and traditions that I wanted to learn and carry on. I don’t why I had this desire to learn family history, but that yearning still continues today.

              My Grandma Rose’s side is Czechoslovakian, which we always called Bohemian. My grandma could speak a little Czech, and the recipes and foods she made were clearly influenced by Eastern European tastes: horseradish, goulash, kolaches, and cabbage rolls. Beautiful dishes created from simple ingredients, using little to feed large families.

              Grandma Rose was a force with which to be reckoned. Her small, squat frame stood at 5’1’’ most of her life before years of osteoporosis shrunk her down to 4’10’’. Despite her height, she commanded the family with her stern voice. Never afraid to tell anyone what she thought, we knew she would be honest, sometimes painfully so. She never called grandpa by his name; instead, she referred to him as “dad” from the years of talking about him and to him around their seven children: one boy, six girls, including my blonde-haired, green-eyed mother, Lynn.
              It's always been a running joke in our family that my mom was the mailman's baby due to her appearance. Grandma and grandpa, including all the rest of their child, either have brown or red hair and blue or brown eyes, but my mom is just a little different. Despite her hair and eye color, my mother clearly resemble Grandma Rose, sharing her small stature and delicate, wrinkled hands that have long nails. Each morning my grandma would wash her hair and put it in curlers until it dried; she looked like a short, old Rosie the Riveter with her hair wrapped up in a bandanna. This is always how I picture her and she moved around her house in the morning. 

              I remember visiting her house often. A small white house set against a farmer’s field in a large flat yard except one steep hill on the side, which my cousins and I would roll down each summer for fun. A few trees stood in the front yard near the road that met their long, gravel driveway. Around the back of the house, several peach trees grew in a patch. They provided the fruit that would be canned each year in preparation for the winter months. As we always say in my family, homemade is better than anything you can buy at the store. Why buy canned vegetables or fruits when we can make them at home?

              All these canned preserves sat in the shelves in the back room of their house set just off the kitchen. At one time, this part of the house was the garage but had been turned into a room mostly for my grandpa. In the small square room sat a poker table on a concrete floor. Surrounding the table were a refrigerator, a freezer, a large toolbox, and materials for fishing, hunting, and gardening. This is where grandpa would hide his booze and smoke his cigars since grandma disliked both of those things. It's also where in his later years he kept supplies to take his produce to the farmer's market in downtown Logansport. The back room was where all the goodies were stored for us grand-kids. In the refrigerator, there were multiples types of pop: Sunkist, Pepsi, Diet Pepsi, and others. In the freezer, grandma made sure there were sundae cones and dreamsicles from Schwan’s. I went home full of sugar after every visit.

              But sometimes, grandma would let me take other goodies home. And out of all the preserves, my grandma worked hard to make and can my favorite as a child - sauerkraut.

“Go into the back room and grab yourself a jar to take home,” my grandma said to me with a smile. She knew how much I loved the briny, sour cabbage she created year in and year out. I had eaten sauerkraut from the store and at restaurants, but nothing ever tasted quite like grandma’s did.

Inside the quart-size mason jar, the cabbage was packed to the brim, discolored by fermentation and heat from the canning process becoming slightly brownish. Back then, I didn’t know how cabbage became sauerkraut. All I knew was that it was delicious, and I would eat it by the spoonful to the disgust of my aunts, uncles, and dad. The only other person who loved grandma’s kraut as much as I did was my mom.

Once home, I would wait weeks, sometimes months, to open and eat the sauerkraut, savoring it like the delicacy it was.  When opened, the briny, sour scent filled the air, expanding until it filled the house. My dad consistently complained about the smell, wishing I loved this smelly food less, but to me, it smelled homemade and full of tradition. Usually, we would pile the soft kraut atop hot dogs or bratwurst. It was always best when we had a package of what we called “Minnesota hot dogs” (which I now know are called natural casing hot dogs; to me, they will always be associated with my mom’s birthplace of Faribault, MN). Hours after mom and I devoured half a jar of grandma’s sauerkraut and put away the rest for leftovers, the smell still clung to the air. It takes time to dissipate just like it takes time and patience to create.

My sophomore year of high school Grandma Rose passed away. Her fight with gastrointestinal cancer ended at home in a hospital bed next to the wood stove in their living room. Our family felt broken without her, and all the wonderful holidays – Christmas, Thanksgiving, and Easter – were never the same after she was gone. Her house is gone, but I can still picture her clearly sitting at her kitchen table, a romance novel at her side and a checkbook, while she took care of the household bills. I never stop missing her. 

I admire my grandmother for many things: her faith, her love, and her special way of keeping our family together. I wish she was here to teach me the family traditions because I still fear they will be lost over time. Food is part of our culture, and I have always felt special to have a unique culture different from those around me. Now, I must learn to how to do these things on my own, and I have figured out a few of them, but I still can’t quite figure out how to make grandma’s sauerkraut. I hope to figure it out one day and keep that piece of her living in my own special way.