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Deuel County Oyster Tradition

By Laura Johnson Andrews

Jaci Stofferahn of Watertown handles oyster stew like a pro.

In the gathering twilight of a Deuel County evening, lights wink in the fields. Rows of corn and soybeans have already been reduced to stubble, but farmers toil in their huge machines, bringing in the harvest. Trucks hug the edge of the dusty gravel roads, waiting for their next load.

On one cool Saturday night in October, traffic on the gravel lane leading to Bemis Holland Presbyterian Church is a little heavier than usual, as hungry folks file in for the church’s annual oyster stew harvest supper. Entering the tiny vestibule, we’re greeted by a pair of men manning the moneybox, one with a harmonica in his hand.

Bud Ruesink carries his mouth organ everywhere — it gives him something to do with bits of free time. If you catch him at a quiet moment and ask politely, maybe he’ll favor you with a rendition of”Sweet Hour of Prayer” or another old hymn.

The narrow room is lined with baked goods — extra treats to bring home if you’re somehow not full by the end of the night. At the far end, watch for Bemis Holland’s pastor, Terry Drew. He’ll spend the evening bounding up and down the narrow stairs, shepherding groups of diners into the basement to clusters of empty seats at long tables. It’s a workout for the minister, who has served the small congregation for 17 years.”I feel it for several days afterward,” he admits. Drew doubles as greeter and performer on oyster stew night; when the dining area is full, he plays guitar for people waiting their turn upstairs in the church.

Harvest dinner night is busy, but Bud Ruesink of Castlewood finds time to play a song.

Back in the packed basement, our group is seated. Waitresses navigate through the tables to the kitchen, where they fetch large, piping-hot bowls full of oyster stew or chili while platters of ham sandwiches, scalloped potatoes, pickles, Jell-O and cake circulate among the diners. If you’re an ornery member of the congregation, eat carefully — your oysters might be accompanied by a friendly prank.”Certain individuals get a rock or a shell in their bowl of soup. All the waitresses have to do is say, ‘So and so is here,’ and in it goes,” the busy soup servers told us.”I think they’d be disappointed if we didn’t do it.”

The meal has been a bright spot on the Deuel County social calendar for more than 130 years. Many of the church’s early records are lost, but it is believed that the harvest dinner was first served in 1883, just a few years after Dutch families from Wisconsin founded the church in William TeGantvoort’s dugout. Chicken was the main item at the church’s earliest dinners, but after about five years, the menu changed to oyster stew.

At first blush, oyster stew seems like an odd choice for landlocked Dakota, and, although oysters are raised on the southwest coast of the Netherlands, oyster stew is not a Dutch tradition.”Oysters were one of these early luxuries made possible by railroad,” says Catherine Lambrecht, president of the Greater Midwest Foodways Alliance.”People would order them by the barrel for the holidays.” Oysters couldn’t be shipped to Dakota in the hottest months without spoiling, so they became a cold weather treat, often served up in milky, sea-kissed broth and paired with fat, crunchy little crackers.

“It’s been kind of a life sentence for any and all related,” says LuAnn Strait (left), pictured with Kolt Ruesink.

At current prices, oyster stew is indeed a luxury. Sixteen gallons of oysters go into one Bemis-sized batch of oyster stew, and in 2015, a gallon of oysters cost $95. Ardy’s Bakery in Clear Lake supplies the buns, while the nearby Sunrise Dairy donates milk and butter. Other supplies come from Castlewood. Even with the donated items, it’s an expensive celebration. In some years, the church doesn’t quite break even, but tradition is tradition … and it tastes good, too.

Like many country congregations, the future of Bemis Holland Presbyterian Church and its October celebration is uncertain. Just nine people attended service on the Sunday before the harvest dinner. But anyone with ties to the church is recruited to help serve.”It’s been kind of a life sentence for any and all related,” says LuAnn Strait of Watertown, which is 17 miles northwest of Bemis. Many credit LuAnn’s mother, Tommie Greenfield, and aunts Phyllis Hoitsema and Joyce Ruesink as being driving forces behind the dinner’s survival. The strength of those family ties shows on oyster stew night, in the warm smiles and easy laughter of servers and attendees alike.

“I had three things to go to today — a wedding, a zombie walk and this. Mom said, ‘You choose what you go to.’ Here I am,” Renee Ruesink says.”You don’t say no to Mom.”

If you go: The 2018 harvest supper is Saturday, Oct. 20. The meal starts at 4 p.m. and continues until the last customer is full. Tickets are sold at the door. Take the Castlewood/Clear Lake exit off Interstate 29, heading east. Take the first left, following the curved gravel road north for 2 miles, then turn right and go about another mile. The church will be on your right. For GPS users, the church’s address is 46648 180th St., Clear Lake, S.D.

Oyster Stew

1 gallon fresh oysters

3 gallons milk

1/2 pound butter

1 tablespoon black pepper

2 tablespoons salt

Heat a heavy container a little and rub a small amount of butter over bottom and sides. Add milk and heat to boiling point, then add oysters. Heat to boiling again or until oysters float, then add salt, pepper and butter. Remove from heat and stir frequently to cool. Reheat and serve. Feeds approximately 30 people. Note: Never cover hot stew when cooling in refrigerator.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the September/October 2016 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

Bemis Holland Presbyterian Church, a Dutch congregation in Deuel County, has been holding an oyster stew harvest dinner since the late 1880s. Laura Johnson Andrews visited for a story in Sept/Oct 2016.
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Wienerbrau Memories

By Laura Johnson Andrews

After reading”A Time-Traveled Treat” (May/June 2018), Katie Hunhoff’s story about Swedish kringle, Shirley Drefs of Corsica was inspired to write in with a recipe of her own — wienerbrau, a Danish pastry she learned to make as a youngster in 4-H. It’s an old recipe (the original version called for baker’s yeast) that involves working butter into a soft dough that is then formed into strips and filled with prune or apricot filling, baked, then topped with a simple frosting and nuts. Feel free to experiment with other fillings — almond is traditional, but Drefs has used cherry pie filing, with good results. The recipe makes a lot of flaky, delicious pastry that can be devoured immediately or frozen for later.

Shirley Drefs learned to make wienerbrau in 4-H. The Danish pastry is similar to a Swedish kringle.

Wienerbrau

Filling

2 pounds dried prunes or apricots

about 1/2 cup sugar

cinnamon (for prunes)

May be made a day in advance. Do not soak the fruit. Chop fruit if desired (the apricots can be tough), add water to cover, cook until soft and let cool. You may need to mash the prunes a bit. Stir in sugar to taste and sprinkle with cinnamon, if desired.

Dough

1 1/2 cups milk, scalded and cooled

3 tablespoons sugar

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 eggs

4 heaping teaspoons dry yeast (original recipe called for 2 cakes of baker’s yeast)

flour — as little as possible, about six cups

1/2 pound cold butter

Scald the milk in a saucepan or in the microwave. Cool, add sugar and salt, then beat in eggs. Add yeast into 2 cups of flour, mix well, then add to milk-egg mixture. Add flour until you have created a soft dough that is rollable and not sticky or stiff. It should feel similar to doughnut dough.

Cut butter into small slices. Roll dough out into a large circle. Place butter slices over one half of the circle, then fold remaining dough over the top. Fold in sides to create a square of dough, then roll again. Continue folding into a square and rolling until the butter has been worked in and is no longer in visible squares.

Cut the square of dough into 5 strips and roll each one into a rectangle about 4 inches wide and long enough to fit comfortably on your cookie sheets. Put 1/5 of filling in the middle of each strip. (Any leftover filling can be frozen and saved for the next batch of pastry.) Fold sides of dough over and pinch shut. Place strips on ungreased cookie sheets or large jelly roll pans. Two strips will usually fit on one pan.

Let dough raise for 20-30 minutes.”They’ll get fairly big,” Drefs says.”It’s got to feel kind of light if you lift the pan.” Bake at 350 degrees for about 20 minutes. Cool, then frost with powdered sugar frosting, sprinkle with nuts and enjoy.

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Catfishing With Nata

By Rebecca Johnson

Nata Jones and her husband Brad enjoy fishing at Apple Tree, a peaceful bay by the Missouri River east of Springfield.

Catfishing is a popular sport for Yankton residents because the wild Missouri River flows just south of town. There are tricks to landing the wily cats, and to cooking them. But it’s nothing you can’t learn. Ask Nata Jones.

Nata is a native of Chernivtsi, a city of some 240,000 people in the Ukraine. She met Brad Jones of Yankton while vacationing in Minneapolis, and within a year she left her chocolate store and was married at the Chapel in the Hills near Rapid City.”It was a beautiful wedding at a wooden church in the mountains,” she recalls warmly.

Nata Jones

She liked South Dakota even before she discovered the Missouri River.”I love small town people. Everybody is so friendly and smiling. You don’t need to worry about nothing,” she says with a charming European accent.”If something happened, everybody would help me.”

She applied for three jobs and was amazed to find herself with not one but three. She tried to balance them all for month, but eventually chose to be a certified nursing assistant at Avera Yankton Care Center, a nursing home on Eighth Street, not far from the river. She loves to visit with the residents, and she likes her co-workers.”I never have a day when I want to stay home,” she says.

Not that she doesn’t like home. She and Brad live in a wooded area near Lewis and Clark Lake.”The first year I am here we see millions of geese come by,” she exclaims, still with wonder in her eyes.”I see by the house deer, turkey, raccoon. I never see this in Ukraine.”

And then there are the catfish and walleye.”I fished in the Ukraine, too, but this is a little bit different here,” Nata says.”In the Ukraine I don’t have time and beautiful place to go. Now I just come home from work and if it’s sunny out (Brad and I will) go.”

Their Chesapeake Bay retriever, Rex, always goes along.”He is very important fisherman,” says Nata.”He likes to jump from the boat ramp and just fly into the water.” Rex is also an environmentalist; he swims below the surface to retrieve discarded plastic bottles and then deposits them on the bank.

As Brad and Nata Jones concentrate on fishing, their dog Rex enjoys chasing bull frogs and retrieving plastic bottles from the Missouri River bottom.

Nata and Brad fish for whatever finned creatures are available but Nata proclaims catfish her favorite, explaining it’s the most expensive fish in the Ukraine. Channel cats seek areas where fast water becomes slow. Brad finds the perfect, clear water channels either by boat or along shore.”He is the real professional. He knows all the secrets,” Nata says. They use stink bait from a local bait shop to lure the bottom feeding fish, because the whiskered swimmers will generally eat anything they can catch in their mouths but their strongest sense is smell.”(The stink bait) smells very, very bad but this is what catfish like,” the angler says with a laugh.

Reeling in food for dinner is the ultimate goal but that is not Nata’s definition of a successful expedition. She doesn’t care if they get a bite. They enjoy the boat ride or the time ashore. She can’t imagine ever moving from this home near all her favorite fishing spots.”When my husband retires, he wants to leave to Montana or Yellowstone,” says Jones.”I said no because we have such a beautiful place here. We cannot leave.”

Baked Catfish with Onions and Tomatoes

Here’s one of Nata’s favorite recipes for catfish, although it can be used with any white fish. Baking times vary according to the thickness of the fish.

2 lbs. catfish

1 medium onion, diced

2 large tomatoes, diced

2 tsp. olive oil

salt and pepper to taste

Remove all skin and cut fillets into 8 pieces. Place into lightly greased baking dish. Saute onions in olive oil until translucent. Add tomatoes and cook until soft, stirring often. Spoon mixture over fish and lightly salt and pepper. Bake for 45 minutes at 375 degrees or until fish flakes easily with a fork. (Sometimes Nata replaces the two large tomatoes with 3 coarsely shredded carrots for a twist on this basic recipe.)

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the May/June 2012 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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Noodles the Czech Way

By Laura Johnson Andrews

Beseda Hall was without kolaches. No dancers could be seen in Sokol Park, and downtown Tabor was devoid of polka music. Lidice Street seemed strangely empty and quiet when we rolled into town.”Are we in the right place?” we wondered.

If you’ve only been to Tabor during Czech Days, you might not recognize the little Bon Homme County town during the 362 days a year when quiet reigns. The silence we found on our Monday morning visit stood in sharp contrast to the bustle inside American Legion Post 183, where a chaotic scene was unfolding.

Members of the Czech Heritage Preservation Society and volunteers were in the Legion kitchen getting ready to start mixing on their annual noodle-making day.”It’s a little disorganized right now. It’ll get better as time goes on,” Ann Beran, one of Czech Days’ official kolache-making demonstrators, told us.

A pattern began to emerge from the clatter of mixers and chatter of 20-some people crowding the kitchen. One woman cracked eggs into ice cream pails — each bucket containing enough for a batch of noodles. Another measured flour. At a third station, eggs, oil and salt were being mixed. Next, a heavy-duty mixer brought the beaten eggs and flour together. Another team kneaded more flour into each batch of noodles, setting their bowls in the Legion’s double sink, a more comfortable height. Others sliced and rolled the dough into smaller portions, which were then fed through the pasta attachments on KitchenAids. A pair of young brothers carried the flattened dough out to a room full of sheet-covered tables, where the yellow ovals would dry slightly before returning to the kitchen to be cut into two sizes of noodles: thick and spaghetti-sizes.”I told that little boy we’re going to fill all these tables. He said, ‘Are you sure?'” Beran said.

Beran was sure. The society makes 20 to 22 batches of noodles every year for Czech Days, selling the noodles in Vancura Park and the Gift and Information Center, located on Lidice Street in the town’s community center. The noodle sales generate funds to help preserve the historic buildings and artifacts in Vancura Park. The park’s mini pioneer village contains an 1873 log schoolhouse, St. John the Baptist Pioneer Chapel, the original Tabor jail, a log house and other buildings that highlight what life was like in the community’s early days.

While Tabor residents have long had a passion for their roots, in recent years, Czech Heritage Preservation Society members have become more aware of the subtle nuances of saving history.”We are finding that some of the things we thought we were preserving aren’t being preserved enough,” said Susan Schroeder, a society member. Thanks to grants and the sale of personalized bricks that create a heritage walk through the Vancura Park village, the society has been able to oil the two log buildings and reroof two other structures. Volunteers are in the process of organizing the museum’s collections and digitizing photographs. The ultimate goal is to open the Czech village to the public three days a week.

Volunteers are also essential to making enough noodles to save a village, especially during the drying phase, when dough is ferried back and forth to the kitchen before cutting.”We need lots of runners because some of us are old and we run with a limp,” laughs Adeline Merkwan. She grew up speaking Czech, and once taught the language in the local school. She’s been one of the Czech Preservation Heritage Society’s stalwarts since noodle-making began about 20 years ago. She recommends using the noodles in soup.”Chicken noodle, beef noodle, anything you put a noodle in. It’s a farm thing.”

While noodles might not be the first thought that comes to mind when you think of Czech cuisine, many of the volunteers were raised in homes where their moms rolled the noodles out in a big circle and then hung them over a chair to dry.

Even with modern technology, it’s still a labor-intensive process. The Legion Hall group was friendly and sociable, but at-home noodle makers sometimes consider the project a good marriage test. Ann Beran said,”If a marriage survives making noodles, sorting hogs and doing plumbing, you’ve got it made.”

Czech Days Noodles

12 eggs

3/4 cup oil

4 teaspoons salt

9 cups flour

With a heavy-duty mixer, combine eggs, oil and salt until the eggs are thoroughly mixed. Switch to a dough hook attachment and slowly spoon in about 4 cups of flour, stopping when you have a pliable, kneadable dough. Knead in more flour by hand until you have a stiff, round ball of dough that is not sticky. You might not use all the flour. Cut the dough into egg-sized pieces and roll them out into a 2 x 5 inch oval, stopping when it’s thin and pliable enough to go through your pasta machine, about 1/8 inch thick.

Let the flattened dough dry, turning once, until the dough feels slightly leatherlike but is still flexible enough to be cut. Do not let the dough become too dry or it will become brittle. Using a knife or a pasta machine, cut the dough into strips. Lay noodles over a tablecloth for a day or two, tossing gently about two times a day, until they are completely dry.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the July/August 2015 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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Quest for the Czech Kolache

By Laura Johnson Andrews

Ed and Carol Radack make fresh kolaches daily, but there are Bon Homme County natives scattered far and wide. That’s no problem, because the Radacks will ship them out of state.

When the first Czech immigrants came to South Dakota in 1869, they brought a pastry as round as the wagon wheels that rolled them here — the kolache. In fact, the name derives from kolo, the Czech word for wheel.

These circular sweet rolls filled with fruit, poppy seeds or cheese and topped with a sprinkle of streusel have a passionate following. Along with pivo (that’s Czech for beer) and traditional dancing, kolaches are a star attraction at Czech Days, held in the little Bon Homme County town of Tabor every June. But Czech Days only comes once a year. Luckily, businesses in Yankton and Tyndall fill the void for the rest of the year.

At the Tyndall Bakery, Ed & Carol Radack honor local tastes and traditions with kolaches and other baked goods created from recipes that date back 70 to 80 years. The kolache dough is used in many of the bakery’s products, such as long johns, doughnuts, kuchen, buns and Carol’s original recipe, apple fritter bread. In November and December, the Radacks stir up peanut brittle, Klondike and anise-flavored Christmas candies using the bakery’s old copper pot and marble worktable.

The Radacks wanted to try something new when they bought the bakery from Bob and Judy Rueb in 2007. Ed had been with the state highway department for 11 years, and Carol worked at Chicago Rawhide in Springfield until it closed.”This is completely the opposite of what we were doing,” says Ed. The husband-wife team works 60 to 80 hours a week, with extra help provided by their sons, Tim and Ty, and local high school students who man the front counter while Ed and Carol bake in the kitchen.”You’re married to it,” Carol says.

Kolaches have a reputation for being difficult, but the Radacks make the process look easy. Using the bakery’s secret recipe, Carol mixes the dough until it reaches the right consistency.”It should be smooth like a baby’s bottom,” Carol says. It rests in a large wheeled tub for about 45 minutes before she pours the quivering, almost liquid mixture out onto a floured worktable. Carol then grabs a dough scraper, slices off a wide strip of dough and flours the top. To break down the dough’s plasticity, she rolls a spiked wheel called a docker over the surface, followed by a metal rolling pin. Ed uses a small, 3-inch round cutter to form the kolaches, then Carol arranges the pillowy circles on a metal pan, poking the center of each circle to create an indentation for the kolache filling.

Once the cutting is done, Ed and Carol gently press on the kolaches again to reinforce the hollow that will hold the filling. Working with swift, smooth motions, they then squeeze fruit, cream cheese or poppy seed filling into the indentations.”She’s faster than I am, but mine look better when they’re done,” jokes Ed.

The pans of kolaches then rest in a room called the proof box for 30 to 45 minutes. The proof box is like a sauna for baked goods. A water-filled pan placed over a burner provides heat and humidity, helping the kolaches and other yeasty desserts to rise.

After the kolaches have rested, they’re topped with a little streusel before entering the Tyndall Bakery’s enormous oven for 15 minutes. The propane-fueled behemoth contains six rotating racks, providing the Radacks with enough room to bake 30 full sheet pans or 120 kuchen at once. Once baked, the kolaches are allowed to cool before glaze is added. Then they’re ready for appreciative customers.

The Radacks have a time-honored system, but there are other methods of kolache-making. Drive east of Tabor, the Czech capital, on Highway 50 and you’ll soon arrive in Yankton where kolaches can be found at Czeckers Sports Bar and Grill, a joint venture of Matt and Kelsey Hunhoff and Matt’s parents, Dan and Jean Hunhoff.

Czech flair is evident at Czeckers in Yankton, both in its decor and its menu, which includes kolaches. Abbey Kokesh (left) was the restaurant’s kolache master before teaching the art to Kelsey Hunhoff, who owns the business with her husband, Matt, and Matt’s parents, Dan and Jean Hunhoff.

Czeckers, which opened in the former Elks Club in September 2013, blends the board game’s red and black colors with the family’s Czech pride.”Matt is very proud of his heritage, and Jean is as well,” Kelsey says.”He’d thought of the name and the theme several years ago.”

That pride extends to Czeckers’ menu. Since the Czech Republic is the birthplace of pilsner-style beer, Czeckers offers two varieties: Pilsner Urquell and Staropramen. Beer is also the key ingredient of their pivo-battered fries. On Friday and Saturday nights, the restaurant serves a Beseda meal: roast beef or duck, dumplings, sauerkraut, mashed potatoes, rye bread, and of course, kolaches.

Matt’s sister, Abbey Kokesh, was the restaurant’s kolache maker in the early days.”My grandma made them my whole life. I enjoyed eating them, but never learned how to make them,” Kokesh said. After her grandmother, Amy Rokusek, developed Alzheimers, Kokesh turned to Ann Beran, a longtime kolache-making demonstrator at Tabor’s Czech Days, for guidance. Now, Abbey teaches the Saturday kolache demonstration for beginners during Czech Days.

Kokesh tells beginners that kolaches aren’t fast food.”You really can’t be in a hurry. I usually put aside a half day because it takes time.” She also recommends patience.”Mom has made them, and hers don’t turn out right but she just doesn’t have the passion to bake them like I do.”

Here are some other tricks:

  • Keep the kitchen warm. That helps the dough to rise.
  • Use bread flour. They’re not sure why but that’s what the bakers do.
  • Be creative with fillings. Try chocolate, peanut butter, jelly or anything that might make a pie.
  • Pair dark fillings with dark and light with light so they cook evenly.
  • Find a mentor. Otherwise it may be frustrating.
  • Kolaches are best served hot but they will keep a week, or you can freeze the dough or the baked kolaches.
  • There’s no right or wrong way. Find out what works for you.

Czechoslovakian immigrants brought kolaches – round sweet rolls filled with fruit, poppy seeds or cheese and topped with streusel – to southeastern South Dakota when they began settling there in 1869.

Czeckers’ Kolache Recipe

2 packages or 2 tablespoons dry yeast

3/4 cup warm water

1 teaspoon sugar

2 cups warmed milk

3/4 cup potato flakes

1 tablespoon salt

3/4 cup sugar

2 eggs, slightly beaten

1/2 cup vegetable oil

5-6 cups bread flour

Dissolve yeast in warm water and 1 teaspoon sugar. Set aside.

Heat milk and pour into mixing bowl. Using a mixer, add potato flakes, 3/4 cup sugar, salt, oil and slightly beaten eggs and mix well. Stir in 2 cups flour, then add yeast mixture. Continue adding flour until it’s a soft dough. Switch to dough hooks and add the rest of the flour. Move dough to floured surface and knead slightly until the dough is no longer sticky. Move to a greased bowl, cover and let rise until dough doubles in size and the dough no longer pops up when poked with a finger.

Shape dough into small, smooth balls about 2 inches in diameter. Thomas’ method involves manipulating spoonfuls of dough by flattening them into a disc, folding the edges into the center and popping them through her thumb and forefinger to create an uncreased dough ball. Place the balls on a greased pan, brush with oil and let rise for about an hour.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Using a stamper (the Hunhoffs use the bottom of a plastic bottle) or your fingers, flatten the dough ball into a circle by making an indentation in the center and fill with kolache filling. Sprinkle streusel on top of filling.

Bake at 400 degrees for 11 to 12 minutes. After baking, brush with melted margarine or butter or a combination of 1 tablespoon sugar and 3 tablespoons hot water. Yields 4 dozen kolaches.

Poppy Seed Filling

1/4 cup sugar

2 tablespoons flour

1 can Solo brand poppy seed filling

3/4 cup half and half

1 teaspoon vanilla

Mix sugar and flour together. Add poppy seed filling, half and half and vanilla. Microwave on high 3 minutes and stir. Heat 3 more minutes, stir, then heat one more minute. May also heat on stovetop.

Prune Filling

12 ounces prunes

1 cup sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 teaspoon cinnamon

Cover prunes with water and cook until tender. Mash prunes and combine with other ingredients.

Streusel

1/2 cup flour

1/4 cup butter or margarine

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup finely-chopped coconut, optional

Use pastry blender to blend flour, butter and sugar together until crumbly. Add coconut, if desired. Sprinkle the mixture over kolache filling before baking.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the January/February 2015 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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Timber Lake’s Holiday Tradition

Every Christmas, cooks near Timber Lake share recipes for a local holiday cookbook. Kathy Nelson and her late husband Jim, longtime publishers of the Timber Lake Topic, began printing the cookbook in 2003.”We get quite a few German and German-Russian recipes, reflecting the ethnic population here,” Kathy says.”Recipes for kuchen and knoephla soup spelled all different ways.”

The books arrive with the newspapers in December, and it’s an issue readers anticipate.”Each year we get calls from readers who didn’t receive the cookbook,” Kathy says.”Two years in a row we got a call from the Department of Revenue in Pierre the day after the holiday cookbook was mailed. Both times, I thought, ‘Oh now, did I mess up on my sales tax report?’ But both times it was the office staff letting us know that their newspaper had arrived without the cookbook,” Kathy laughs.”We aren’t blaming the U.S. Postal Service or the capital mail room staff, but we do wonder why that happened to that cookbook two years in a row.”

For ordering information, call the Timber Lake Topic at (605) 865-3546.

Caramel Rolls

Mary Biegler of Timber Lake is a regular contributor to the Topic‘s Holiday Cookbook. This recipe makes around 36 to 40 rolls so you will need at least three 13-by-9 inch pans. The rolls can be made all at once or begin in the afternoon and let the rolls sit in a cool spot overnight in the pans, then leave on the counter for 1 hour before baking in the morning.

4 1/2 cups water

2 cups sugar

2 tablespoons salt

1 cup shortening

12 cups flour (divided into 4 cups and 8 cups)

4 eggs, beaten

2 packages of yeast (or 4 1/2 teaspoons)

additional sugar, cinnamon and butter to sprinkle on dough

Bring 4 cups of water and 2 cups of sugar to a simmer for about 5 minutes until the sugar dissolves. Add 2 tablespoons of salt. Add 1 cup of shortening while the mixture is still hot. Allow to cool.

Mix together 4 cups of flour, 4 beaten eggs and 2 packages of yeast, which has been dissolved in 1/2 cup of warm water. Add this to the original mixture. Mix in additional flour — Mary estimates between 7 and 8 1/2 cups, but remember to keep the dough soft. Knead for 5 minutes. Allow to rise in a large, greased bowl until doubled in size. This could take from 1-3 hours. In the meantime, make the caramel sauce recipe below and divide it among the pans. When the dough has doubled, knead again, divide the dough in half and roll out each half into a long rectangle about 10 inches wide by 15 inches long. Butter each rectangle and heavily sprinkle with a half and half mixture of sugar and cinnamon. Roll the rectangles up starting from the narrow side then slice into 1-inch thick pieces. Mary uses a thread instead of a knife to get cleaner cuts.

Place rolls into the carameled pans, leaving about 1/2 inch space between each. Let rise until doubled. Bake at 375 degrees for 20-24 minutes.

Caramel

2 cups white sugar

2 cups brown sugar

2 cups butter

2 cups vanilla ice cream

Simmer the two sugars and butter until it boils for 1 minute. Remove from stove and add 2 cups of ice cream. Mix well and pour into 13-by-9 inch pans before placing the rolls inside.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the November/December 2013 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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Dunlap Melons

By Janet Dunlap Rathbun

On Dunlap Melon Day, Sept. 12, 1926 in Vermillion, 22,000 melons were piled and sold by 5 p.m. An estimated crowd of 8,000 to 10,000 people attended.

We had five seasons in Clay County: spring, summer, watermelon, fall and winter.

My grandfather, Jim Dunlap, began shipping melons from Vermillion as early as 1912. There have been several other colorful watermelon growers in the area. Grandpa earned his crown as the watermelon king in the 1920s when he cultivated 145 acres on the Missouri River bottoms.

For royalty, he worked very hard. In those early years, he walked two miles to his fields. In later years he rose at the crack of dawn, got in a truck, picked up the field hands, and drove down to the fields.

He came back exhausted. After our evening meal he would walk out on the front sidewalk, with his head raised toward the clouds (if there were any) and pray for rain.

In 1930, it was very hot and dry. His daughter, Lenette, told me, “For six weeks it didn’t rain a drop and each day Dad would say that he didn’t see how the melons could live much longer without rain. He would go down in the morning and the vines were all fresh and perky and looked good. He would go back in the evening and they looked withered and dead.”

James and Abbie Dunlap in 1935.

Finally, rain came on August 18. “Dad had one of his best melon crops,” Lenette recalled. “The roots kept going down for water and everyone thought the melons were sweeter that year than they had ever been.”

Lenette and her sister, Mary, enjoyed their father’s Melon Days promotion and his watermelon feeds. “Of course, the free feed was to entice people to drive down to the grove to buy melons to take home,” Mary said. “We had planks for a big, long table, probably 30 feet long, and behind the table were three or four men with machetes and these men would reach back in the pile of melons, put a melon up on the table, and slash it into slices.”

Grandpa Dunlap also sold rail car loads of melons to area towns for big feeds. The Milwaukee Railroad once paid him $265 in damages for a shipment that was not packed in ice. When that happened and the weather got hot there would be watermelon juice all over the train.

Rail companies eventually learned to use an open stock car so the melons could get air, but there was still a downside: Opportunists carved out pieces of melon along the way.

On Melon Days in the Great Depression, our family sold surplus melons for $2 a carload. Drivers came with the seats removed from their cars so they could squeeze in more melons.

”They would pile melons into their cars until they were practically falling out and then they would try to drive up the hill to get back on the road,” Mary said. “Many of them did not have the power to do this so they would have to stop, unload some melons, put them on the ground, drive their car up to the road, run back and get the melons, stick them back in their car, and then they would go on their way.”

Anna Bruce, a Lesterville farm girl, came to board with the Dunlaps so she could attend classes at the university. She didn’t know our family grew melons.

On her first day in town, she had a date. She and her friend met some other young people and somebody suggested that they swipe a melon.

A neighbor alerted Grandpa by telephone. “Dad walked down (to the patch), and as he approached the youngsters he struck a match to see the face of the person nearest to him,” Mary said. “To his surprise, it was Anna Bruce.”

Rather than embarrass Anna, he told all the young people to meet him back at his house.”I don’t know what he said to them,” Mary said. “But he gave them a watermelon to eat.”

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the September/October 2000 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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The Art of Mushroom Hunting

By Bernie Hunhoff

Morel mushrooms will soon begin to grow in South Dakota’s river valleys.

Thousands of South Dakotans are now waiting for a warming of the soil that will sprout mushrooms in forested fields and river bottoms.

When the time is right, people who normally complain about walking across the street for a loaf of bread will crawl through brambles, wade across mucky creeks, scratch under rotted leaves and climb barbed wire — all in the height of tick season — to collect a sack full of mushrooms.

I hadn’t gone mushroom hunting since we escorted our elderly grandmother around the farmstead as she poked about for the fungi, so when longtime mushroomer Darold Loecker issued an invitation to search his favorite spot along the Missouri River I thought it might be a fun exercise.

“Meet me at the bait shop. And bring an extra pair of shoes,” he said.

Grandma never needed extra shoes. That should have been the warning I needed. But I wasn’t suspicious enough to ask.

Darold wasn’t there yet when I got to the bait shop. The girl behind the counter asked if I was going fishing. She had a tub full of minnows.

“Mushroom hunting,” I said confidently.

A Wonderbread man, who was filling the bakery shelf, said he found lots of mushrooms the night before. “But the ticks were thick. I had about 30 on me when I got home.”

Just as I was trying to leave, Darold showed up. I mentioned the ticks. He just laughed. “Did you bring extra shoes?” he asked.

We got in Darold’s pickup and as he turned the key he swore me to secrecy. Mushroomers, it seems, like to keep their favorite spots a secret. Unlike deer hunters, who will tell you the exact latitude and longitude where they bagged a big buck, mushroom hunters often won’t even tell you what county they hunt.

Darold trusted me for some reason. And it wasn’t long before we came upon some cottonwood trees in a river bottom. He gave me a bag and suggested I find a walking stick, which isn’t hard to do in a forest of cottonwoods.

He said the stick serves three purposes: It can be a cane, a marker when you find a good spot and a probe in underbrush.

Off we went. My eyes were trained on the grassy ground. I found empty shotgun shells and Mountain Dew cans, but no mushroom.

After about five minutes, Darold called me over. He pointed to a little fungus with a brown, spongy head atop a 2-inch stem. “That’s a morel mushroom. That’s what we’re looking for.”

He instructed me how to pinch the mushroom off at ground level. I was more confident now that I knew what we were looking for. I walked even slower, looking under every brush by every log. Darold has discovered that mushrooms seem to sprout around downed trees and branches.

Darold found a few more. I was still looking for my first one. Then he started tailing me and every now and then he would say, “You just stepped over one!”

That was the motivation I needed to really watch the earth and, before long, I found a few without backtracking. At last I was a full-fledged mushroom hunter.

We had good success along the riverside. But mushroom hunters are explorers and Darold pointed to a tiny island, which was separated from us by a swamp of stale water and cattails.

”There’ll be mushrooms there because nobody else will go there,” he said. That’s where the extra shoes came in handy. We put on our old sneakers and gingerly waded through the swamp to the island, where we found more pop cans but no mushrooms.

We returned to the riverbank, put on our dry shoes and resumed the hunt. In a few hours’ time we filled several bags with morel mushrooms. I felt like a gardener who reaped a bounty without pulling a weed. And we only brushed off a half-dozen wood ticks.

It seemed too easy to be legal. But it is.

Since that mushroom hunt, I have tried to learn more about mushrooms by asking other veteran pickers for advice. As long as you don’t inquire as to where they go, they are willing to talk. Here’s some of what I’ve learned:

Don’t use plastic bags when you hunt for mushrooms because they cause sweating and quicker deterioration. Use paper bags in the field, and wax paper or newspapers for wrapping.

Sandy soil (such as can be found along many rivers) is the best place to search early in the season because it warms earlier. The mushroom season usually arrives in mid-April in southeast South Dakota and may last only a week or two, depending on the weather. It may come later in northern South Dakota and has been known to extend to Memorial Day in the Black Hills.

If you are hunting mushrooms for the first time, be certain you are collecting edible fungi. Some are poisonous. The most popular South Dakota mushroom is the genus Morchella, commonly known as the morel. Guidebooks are available to help you identify your bounty. Veteran mushroom hunters are also happy to help.

Once you bring home a sack full of mushrooms, you’ll wonder what to do with them. Most nutritionists would probably agree that mushrooms will never become a staple in the American diet. They are not easily digestible and should not be eaten in large quantities.

Furthermore they are fungi — closely related to athlete’s foot, green stuff on old cheese and corn smut. Nutritionally, they are about as good as a leaf of lettuce.

But also remember that mushrooms can cost $100 a pound dried in some specialty stores. And the morel we commonly enjoy in South Dakota cannot even be grown in captivity. They only flourish in the wild.

When you bring your mushrooms home, be certain to look for tiny worms that sometimes crawl into the pitted crown of the morel.

Some people store their mushrooms by drying them on wire trays or screens and then storing the pieces in tightly closed jars. When water is added later, the mushrooms return to their original shape, texture and taste.

Others can mushrooms by heating them for about 15 minutes in water and then packing them in pint or half-pint jars. Add 1/2 teaspoon of salt and 1/8 teaspoon of ascorbic acid to each pint and fill the jars with boiling water to cover the mushrooms. Process in a hot water bath for three hours or in a pressure canner for 30 minutes at 10 pounds pressure.

When it comes to preparing the mushrooms for the table, it is a matter of preference. Many people simply slice them up for salads, sauces and omelets.

But a favorite style, especially in South Dakota bars, involves dipping mushroom slices in an egg batter and frying them quickly in butter, turning them to brown both sides.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the March/April 1993 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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Cooking with South Dakota’s Sweetest Crop

By Jennifer Thom

South Dakota is consistently among the nation’s top honey-producing states. Beekeepers collected 19 million pounds of honey in 2015.

South Dakota is always among the nation’s top honey-producing states. In 2015, beekeepers collected 19 million pounds of honey from 290,000 colonies, second only to North Dakota. Traveling up to 12 miles a day, bees gather nectar and return to the hive, where it’s mixed with enzymes to create honey. The bees deposit the honey into combs and cap it with beeswax. There it stays until the beekeeper scrapes the caps off and spins the combs, letting centrifugal force extract the honey. The lifetime work of 5,000 bees fills a pint jar to its brim with honey.

Contrary to common belief, bees are sweet unless they feel threatened. Then they sting, and ironically, stinging ends a bee’s life.

“It’s the supreme sacrifice,” says beekeeper Bob Smith. Hundreds of school kids toured Smith’s honey farm, Skunk Creek, near Hartford, and suffered nary a sting. Once, Smith accidently got enough bees angry that he suffered 17 stings on his ankle. “It puffed up as big as a football,” he recalls. “I was wearing brown socks and they went for the dark color.”

Bees are drawn to darker colors as a source of nectar and a stinging target. That’s why you see beekeepers in white outfits when they’re working with the hives.

Bees travel up to 12 miles a day to gather nectar before returning to the hive. Photo by Greg Latza.

Smith’s bees dined on pasque flowers in April. As spring turns to summer, bees harvest nectar from dandelions, sweet clover and alfalfa. Bees will also forage sunflowers and wildflowers. Even weeds as awful as Russian thistle can be the start of sweet honey.

West River bees, including those housed by Martin beekeepers Mary and Gary Schmidt in their 1,600 hives, produce some of the mildest honey in the world, thanks to the wide expanses of alfalfa and clover available to the bees. “We could sell it as gourmet honey,” Mary says. Like other pleasures worth savoring, such as diamonds, honey is graded. The type of flowers the nectar is from determines the color of the honey, which in turn determines the grade.

South Dakota cooks can choose water white (the most sought after, it sells for a premium), white, light amber, amber and dark amber grades. The darkest honey produced is called non-table grade; bakeries use it. Light amber is the honey most often found on supermarket shelves.

Light colored honey, delicious on warm toast and crisp English muffins, has a more delicate flavor. Cooks who enjoy baked goods with a distinct honey taste should choose a darker honey.

“Baking with honey is a touchy-feely thing,” Mary explains. “When I taught my girls to bake we used sugar at first because I didn’t want them to get discouraged.” It’s one of the few times that Mary has intentionally used sugar instead of honey.

Richard Adee, whose Adee Honey Farms is headquartered at Bruce, operates the largest honey farm in the world, with more than 80,000 hives and offices in four states. Photo by Greg Latza.

“I used to be gung ho about getting people to switch, and it scared them off,” Mary recalls. “People thought I was going off the deep end.”

She pauses, and then decides to go ahead even though I might also conclude she’s from honey’s lunatic fringe. “But why use a sweetener with no nutritional value? Sugar cane is processed and bleached until nothing is left but the sweetness.”

Maybe I’m nutty (I did experiment with bee pollen in high school so I could run a faster mile) but I agree. In contrast to sugar, there’s nothing fake about honey. It’s a natural sweetener that contains trace amounts of every vitamin except E.

If baking with honey is new to you, it’s best to start with recipes that specifically call for honey. When you want to experiment, start by replacing up to one half of the sugar in a recipe with honey. Because honey has more sweetening power than sugar, replace one cup of sugar with 1/2 cup or less of honey.

If you’re replacing granulated sugar with honey, reduce the liquid in the recipe by 1/4 cup for each cup of honey you use. In baked goods, add 1/2 teaspoon baking soda for each cup of honey used, and reduce the oven temperature by 25 degrees.

Because bacteria and mold can’t grow in honey, a jar keeps indefinitely without refrigeration. Baked goods made with honey, like Mary’s Banana Nut Bread, stay fresh longer than those made without honey.

The good points about honey go on and on. “Honey can take on other flavors,” Smith says, “and that makes it great for spreads and toppings.”

Honey Peanut Butter Hot Fudge, Honey Mint Hot Fudge and Brandy Honey Nut ice cream toppings are just a few of Smith’s creations. In business terms, he’s adding value to honey. By any other definition, Smith is concocting delicious treats. Four gallons of the Brandy Honey Nut topping were once devoured at a Governor’s Hunt. “I’m not a gifted cook, but these ideas just come to me,” he says.”If I don’t like it, I figure no one else will.”

Skunk Creek spun honey is spreadable, like tub margarine, but infinitely more satisfying on a biscuit than any margarine. The honey is pulled over paddles like taffy, and then Bob adds natural flavors such as cinnamon, apple and apricot.

Smith also adds honey to turkey dressing, spaghetti sauce and chili. But don’t bother asking for a recipe. “I don’t measure it out. I just add it to taste.”

It’s that touchy-feely thing again. Using honey isn’t a calculated, measured operation. It seems fitting that South Dakota honey remains an unmeasured reward we receive from living in a wide-open state that’s fragrant with clover and softened with wildflowers.

Skunk Creek Honey Farm’s Honey Popcorn Crunch

1/2 cup honey

1/2 cup melted butter

3 quarts popped popcorn tossed with 1 cup nuts (the nuts are optional)

Blend honey and butter; heat until well blended. Pour over popcorn mixture. Mix well. Spread over cookie sheet in a thin layer. Bake at 350 degrees for 10 to 15 minutes until crisp.

Mary Schmidt’s Banana Nut Bread

1/2 cup butter

3 crushed ripe bananas

1/4 cup nuts, chopped

3 teaspoons baking powder

3/4 cup honey

2 eggs

2 cups flour

Cream the butter and honey. Add the eggs and mix well. Add the bananas; beat well. Sift the flour and baking powder and add to mixture. Add the nuts and beat well. Bake in a greased 9 x 5 bread pan at 350 degrees for one hour.

Mary Schmidt’s Oatmeal Chocolate Drops

1 cup honey

1 stick oleo

1 teaspoon vanilla

3 1/2 cups oatmeal

4 teaspoons cocoa

1/2 cup peanut butter

1/4 cup milk

Combine honey, vanilla, cocoa, milk and oleo in a saucepan. Bring to a full boil, stirring constantly, and boil for three minutes. Remove from heat and stir in oatmeal and peanut butter (chopped peanuts may also be added if desired). Drop by teaspoonfuls on wax paper and let cool. If desired, chill to harden.

Mary Schmidt’s Eier Schmalz (Egg Pancakes)

2 cups flour

1 Tablespoon honey

1/4 teaspoon salt

8 eggs

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder milk

Beat the above ingredients and add enough milk to make a very thin batter. Pour into a greased, hot skillet and let cook until somewhat set. Cut in half and turn over. While it’s finishing cooking, cut into smaller pieces. Serve with honey or honey maple syrup. To prepare honey maple syrup, stir together one quart honey, 3/4 cup hot water, and one teaspoon maple flavoring until well mixed. Can be served on waffles, pancakes or French toast.

A note from experienced honey users: To keep honey from sticking to measuring cups, spray cups with cooking spray or rinse with hot water. If oil is used in the recipe, measure it before the honey. Stored honey will crystallize eventually; simply place the jar, lid removed, in very warm water until the crystals dissolve.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the May/June 1993 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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Homemade Noodles

By Jane Milstead

Mother’s homemade noodles helped stave off family confrontations in one Aberdeen household.

Words weren’t allowed in our Aberdeen household. Not harsh ones. Had they occurred between my two older brothers and/or myself, it would have killed my mother, or so she swore (not as in curse, she would never do that).

So “words” just didn’t happen in the ready-made family I was born into when my mother was in her 40s and my father was just turning 50. They were losing their teenage sons to the outside world and had long since given up hope of having anything else in common. Therefore, they decided to give that over-the-counter wonder, Lydia Pinkham’s Compound, a try and a year later I arrived, the promised “baby in every bottle.”

I don’t remember my brothers ever living with us and my life was a reasonably pleasant, largely-unsupervised jumble of library books and movie shows and best friends. I have since annoyed many of my adult friends (for whom life began in college) by recounting the great times I had at Central High School even though I was hardly cheerleader material. I’ve thoroughly disgusted others who dread family get-togethers by pulling a pollyanna about the joys of such reunions.

This so ticks them off and in turn tickles me, I don’t always tell the whole truth and add that I’m not holiday-happy because of the world’s strongest familial ties, or because I have Martha Stewart Syndrome (I hear this first manifests itself with a sudden midnight urge to get up out of bed and make hats out of empty milk cartons).

It has thus far remained a secret that my love of holidays comes largely from the ingredient that infused them with magic: my mother’s homemade noodles.

Where other families longed for comfort foods like meatloaf and mashed potatoes, or pined for roast beasties, we whined for noodles. We always wanted noodles, every day if possible. Only we didn’t get them because they required a lengthy process of mixing and cutting and, if my mother had been the type, occasional cursing when the dog (Trixie) snagged a particularly long noodle off the back of a kitchen chair where a batch was drying.

Then just the right old hen had to be purchased or snatched from what she had hoped was her retirement eggness. Said hen had to be simmered until a rich, artery-hardening broth ensued, and then roasted to a golden crisp as the Noodles From Heaven roiled in their glorious schmaltzy stock.

Since my mother had a job and a life and some sense of nutrition, this rich, labor-intensive cuisine was relegated to the status of Holiday Fare Only. This, of course, included every holiday we could slide onto the list, such as birthdays, Easter, and every other celebration except the Fourth of July. We celebrated that by feasting ourselves sodden upon other of my mother’s culinary masterpieces: Her legendary fried chicken (homegrown, of course), her potato salad and her lemonade. Simple sounding enough, but somehow she could turn this ordinary fare into Godfood. My mother’s spice cabinet was limited to salt, pepper and cinnamon and I don’t think she’d ever even heard of garlic, but she was easily the best plain cook who ever lived.

All this considered, you can see why the near turkey-tiff took many years to almost happen. My brothers were both married with three young children each. Thanks to their wives’ less opinionated culinary backgrounds, they had learned that turkey was not just something people were forced to eat on holidays if they hadn’t behaved and therefore didn’t deserve noodles.

Turkey was also pretty darn good, and a lot better for you. Additionally, turkey also provided great leftovers. Of course, noodles were no slouch, either. First we prayed some would be left over because they were even better the next day, were that possible. Then we prayed that if any rotten person got up in the middle of the night and polished off the noodles cold, right out of the fridge (they were fabulous that way, too) that rotten person would be us.

Whatever, it came to pass that on the Christmas in question, my brothers decided to give my mother a rest and cook a bird.

I doubt if my mother had any rest for several days prior to the event. She was already worrying about her stove. It was a no-nonsense black cookstove to put it kindly, but it gave out great gusts of hot air and delicious aromas and my mother could play it like a grand piano. She refused to trade it in on something new and shiny and gaseous. Besides, we needed a strong heat supply in that end of the house to keep South Dakota’s chilly fingers from sneaking in and freezing the pipes solid.

My brothers had grown up around this stove and had learned, as had I, that when Mom wasn’t home, the most complicated thing anyone should endeavor to cook was toast. However, that bright holiday mid-morning, surrounded by their merry wives and kids and a few noodle-opting cynics like myself, my confident brothers chopped, stuffed, cracked wise and had a fine time in general.

When tom was finally in the oven, my brothers left the kitchen for us to clean up and went off in search of a quiet beer and a nap.

Up until then, it was holiday business as usual, except we were doing the work and my mother had been banished to a comfortable chair where she sat nervously nibbling her cuticles. Also, a pretender to the throne was perched in our oven where the aforementioned “old hen” should have been reclining, having already given much of her all to the vat of noodles atop the stove.

The trouble that almost started didn’t almost start until it was time to remove tom from his sauna. It was then discovered that while the diners and the rest of the dinner were table ready, tom was not. Nicely brown on the outside, inwardly he was un-pretty in pink.

So began a series of oven temperature risings and in due time, tempers showed signs of moving in a similar direction. At first, tom was pulled out of the oven, given a variety of gentle, though personal, tests for doneness, and slid back into the now-seething darkness. When nothing seemed to work , tom was soon being wrenched out of his quarters, roughly examined, sneered at and jammed back in.

By now, my mother’s eyes looked like Orphan Annie’s, great zeros of concern. But my brothers contained themselves beautifully, all things considered. Scowling did break out, coupled with a few traded glances that asked, “Whose damn fool idea was this anyway?” And they shooed both their wives out of the kitchen somewhat brusquely, stilling their helpful suggestions.

But “words” did not occur and once again, my mother’s life was saved. So, finally, was Christmas dinner, sort of. We finally ate the breast meat of the turkey, along with all of the usual trimmings which had somehow weathered the wait.

After dinner, my Scandinavian sisters-in-law pounced immediately upon the dirty dishes, as usual, while I figured the odds on whether I should try to make it to the couch or just ease onto the carpet beside my chair. Later, when everyone was gone and our household of three was back to normal, my folks and I sat at the kitchen table, sharing a bottle of the preferred drink of the manor (Pepsi on ice).

Finally my mother turned to me and I knew what was coming. “You realize your brothers almost had ‘words,'” she said, her voice low and confidential. Then came the kicker. “If that ever happened,” she added even more sotto voce, “it would kill me.” My father’s newspaper rattled ever so slightly.

I thought a moment. This was no time to tell my mother that words are okay sometimes, even necessary, in order for siblings and other strangers to really get to know each other.

“Let’s avoid such a possibility by always having noodles from now on,” I cooed, unselfishly thinking only of her.

She nodded and noodles we had, from that day forward. I remember those holidays with bliss. We had them down to a science. We were agreeable. We made nice, which wasn’t very difficult since we had no visiting relatives to monkeywrench our well-thumbed scenario, and whatever we had to say to each other that wasn’t positive was well buried. And when we had done all that was expected of us, we were rewarded.

Then we sat around that large table, wordlessly, joyfully savoring the plump, chewy, chickeny noodles as they dripped with the rich gravy they formed all by themselves. And all was right with the world.

Mother’s Noodles (Small Batch)

3 large eggs

Pinch of salt

1/2 eggshell water

Flour to make a stiff dough

Mix well, then roll out on a floured board and cut with a pasta or noodle cutter (the latter does exist) or very sharp knife. Allow to dry at least an hour. Cook covered for 25-30 minutes in freshly made chicken stock. (Canned will suffice if you absolutely must.)

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the July/August 1999 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.