The Anabaptist perception on Grandma's cooking!

[steve-in-kville]

Copying from a social media post. List something that your grandmothers' made that is most memorable to you.

Maternal grandma- pig stomach at Christmas time. And she made chili with potatoes in it. Mom's side was most averse to anything hot or spicy and therefore food tended to be bland. But that pig stomach though....

Paternal grandma- she died when I was only seven but I remember she baked every Saturday. I kinda remember the angel food cake for some reason.

[Grace]

Old fashioned Carmel pudding. I found that the generation that went through the depression often used recipes that consisted of ingredients from their farms. Carmel pudding is an example, which consists of milk, butter, eggs, corn starch and brown sugar. The only thing had to buy at the store was the corn starch and brown sugar. If you leaf through the original Mennonite Cookbook you will many recipes using what the people either grew, whether it was plants, fruit trees or from animals.

[QuietlyListening]

My dad's mom made us roast lamb, mashed potatoes and creamed spinach every time we visited and holidays. Truthfully I don't remember her making anything else. But it was good.

My mom's mom lived with us from when I was tiny- she baked lots of cookies and she had one favorite at Christmas called a cake cookie and we made it with her many times but to this day not one of us girls can make it the same way- guess it was Grandma love? .

My husband doesn't remember either of his grandmothers cooking- his mother's mother lived with them and died when he was 4 or 5 and his father's mother lived with her one daughter and he doesn't remember her cooking.

[Ken]

Both my grandmothers died in the early 1980s.

The only thing I remember my PA Menno grandmother making that was especially unique was home-cured country ham. She always had a ham curing in the larder and we always had thick slices of country ham served sometimes at breakfast but usually dinner with mashed potatoes and garden vegetables. That ham was a different texture and flavor from anything you can buy in the stores today. At least around here.

My mother who we now call "grandma" since she is my kid's grandma is famous for her Christmas Cookies. She makes Christmas cookies that no one else can seem to duplicate and all three of my daughters get beautiful gift tins of Grandma's cookies in the mail every year wherever they are, in college or home. And since this is the 2020s, Grandma's Christmas cookie tins go on Instagram when they arrive, although I don't think she knows that.

[Josh]

Neither of my grandmothers were Anabaptists; one thing I really enjoy remembering is some of the Hungarian dishes my grandma made.

[MaxPC]

Not Anabaptist but just wish to say I truly enjoy Steve's food threads.

[Neto]

I cannot recall a single thing that my paternal grandma ever cooked or baked that was not ethnic food (Plautdietsch). Plumamoos, zweibach, etc. My maternal grandma, less so, but still very little outside of our own culture. Maybe this was also an ethnic "dish", but I especially remember a wild duck she fixed. She would have said it was a mess=up. She baked it whole, then found that it wasn't completely done, so she sliced it up pretty thin, and must have put in additional pepper or other spices between each thin slice, and baked it again. It was to remember.

[Josh]

I cannot recall a single thing that my paternal grandma ever cooked or baked that was not ethnic food (Plautdietsch). Plumamoos, zweibach, etc. My maternal grandma, less so, but still very little outside of our own culture. Maybe this was also an ethnic "dish", but I especially remember a wild duck she fixed. She would have said it was a mess=up. She baked it whole, then found that it wasn't completely done, so she sliced it up pretty thin, and must have put in additional pepper or other spices between each thin slice, and baked it again. It was to remember.

It’s interesting how much less “ethnic” Holdemans are. My wife’s grandma (who is now in her 100s) makes a few of these dishes but only for special occasions. My son eats more Hungarian ethnic dishes than Russian Mennonite ones.

[Neto]

I cannot recall a single thing that my paternal grandma ever cooked or baked that was not ethnic food (Plautdietsch). Plumamoos, zweibach, etc. My maternal grandma, less so, but still very little outside of our own culture. Maybe this was also an ethnic "dish", but I especially remember a wild duck she fixed. She would have said it was a mess=up. She baked it whole, then found that it wasn't completely done, so she sliced it up pretty thin, and must have put in additional pepper or other spices between each thin slice, and baked it again. It was to remember.

It’s interesting how much less “ethnic” Holdemans are. My wife’s grandma (who is now in her 100s) makes a few of these dishes but only for special occasions. My son eats more Hungarian ethnic dishes than Russian Mennonite ones.

To be fair to your wife's grandma, both of grandmas were born around the same time, and they would be over 115 if still living today. They both also spent their lives in very ethnic areas, especially on my Dad's side. But my maternal grandpa was 17 years older, and I imagine that would have affected their customs as well, because my grandpa was one of the youngest of his family, and most (maybe all) of the others were born in the colony (in Ukraine).
Is your wife's ancestry already mixed (with Swiss Brethren back ground people)? (My generation is the first that didn't marry within our own ethnicity, on both sides of my family. Well, come to think of it, my mom DID have one aunt that "married out", and there were also some of that generation who "went English". But going up my family tree there aren't any until one man who was adopted as an infant from unknown parentage and ethnicity, back in the Cortitsa colony. This is also on my Mom's side, 4 generations back.)

[Josh]

My wife’s living grandma and late husband were pure Polsch. Her other grandparents were Molosch. Her parents were considered a “mixed marriage” back in the day, but Polsch-Molosch intermarriages started to become more common by the 1970s. Where my wife grew up Swiss were rare and would have been a bit peculiar. There are also quite a few people who joined “from the world” there.

If one goes back to the 1700s there is some ancestry or a Scandinavian mercenary who joined the church and became a deacon, but a great deal of Russian Mennonites descend from him.