I write a lot about food and memories because I think familiar food often takes us back to some of our happiest times and places. There is nothing like the warm, homey smell or taste of a favorite dish to instantly take us back to childhood or favorite people and places.
Last week I had a wonderful if unexpected visit from a cousin. To be correct, my dad’s youngest cousin. Since my dad was the eldest of his generation of Cook kids, and Wesley was the youngest, I’ve always thought of him as part of my generation since less than eight years separate us. Wes and his wife Dana were driving home from a family wedding in Oregon and took a chance and called me. They had never been to the ranch but ended up spending the night here and we all had a really sweet visit.
Wesley’s dad was my great Uncle Nathan, the youngest of the Cook kids in my Grandfather Joe’s generation. Uncle Nathan was just a terrific guy who came out from Nebraska with my grandparents, dad and uncle in June 1942. Nathan wanted to finish high school in Culbertson, NE, so my Nana and Papa waited for him to graduate, then all 5 of them drove out to California in a 1926 model T truck. They were in the depths of the depression and started their cross country trip with $41 combined and finally made it to Hawthorne, California with literally a dime to spare. They overheated frequently and broke down somewhere in New Mexico and had to stop while Papa and Nathan picked onions and melons for a week to earn enough to fix the truck and go on. While that was happening, Nana camped roadside with her two little boys, my dad Rod, almost 4, and Tom, two. They ate onion sandwiches and all the melons they could hold and were grateful for the food and the chance to earn enough to keep going. They truly lived the Great Depression.
Once they arrived in California, they temporarily stayed with my great grandparents and my great uncle Harry, who had sold the family farm and driven out to start new lives in late 1941. Harry had arranged jobs for everyone. My Papa Joe became a civilian construction instructor with the Navy and Nana soldered bombs in the old Wolf stove factory. Papa told me about how foreign and crowded Southern California looked to him, and how scared he felt, but that he knew there was nothing to return to, and that the moment he saw his folks, his older brother Harry and smelled his mom’s cooking, he felt a little safer if not at home.
Nana, Papa and Nathan’s entire trip had taken 19 days. The family had been expecting them for a week, so Papa was surprised to smell his very favorite meal within minutes of arriving. Later, his brother Harry confessed that their mom had been making Joe’s favorite each day for nearly a week, praying for them to show up. Harry and their dad were a little tired of the same supper but understood and said nothing.
My papa’s favorite meal was a simple old German dish that harkened back to growing up on a farm in Nebraska, something nourishing that the boys could carry with them out into the fields, and was made with ingredients found everyday on the farm.
In case I haven’t said it before, my great grandparents were both Volga German, they spoke that language at home, lived in a primarily Volga German community in southern Nebraska and passed both that unique language and food culture onto their children and beyond. My Papa and all of his siblings learned English at school, something Papa started at 7.
I was lucky enough to be the first born of my generation of Cooks and in the earliest years of my parents long marriage, got to live with my grandparents and see lots of my great grandparents. I’ll also share that our family name Cook was anglicized by my great grandfather’s generation. Prior to that, we were the Koch and Lebsack families who hailed from Frank, Russia during the Volga German era there from the mid eighteenth century until the end of the nineteenth century.
Papa’s favorite meal was Kraut Kugel, a delicious pocket of yeasty bread dough filled with bacon or any kind of chopped meat, fried onion and cabbage. It was simply seasoned with salt and pepper and just a few teaspoons of white vinegar and sugar. My great grandmother would brush a little butter on top and bake the pillows for 15-20 minutes in a nice hot oven.
I can still remember hardly being able to wait for the kraut kugel to come out of the oven. I loved watching them get brown through the little window in Nana’s oven. I was making kraut kugel with my great grandma and Nana by the time I was 5 or 6, and I’ve never stopped. Not only are they delicious but when I make them, smell or eat them, I’m transported back to my grandparent’s kitchen, my great grandma speaking German, my papa answering in English, and everyone I loved most in the whole world together there, and happy. Just writing that last sentence lets me see their faces, hear them…and I find myself tearing up a little.
I was very lucky to have my great grandma Cook who we called Banner until I was thirteen and I got to hear her stories of growing up in Russia, emigrating alone to the United States as a teenager and making a new life with my great grandpa Phillip and their seven children. I got to watch her cook, and feel her soft hands teach me to stuff kugel and make so many other dishes. I loved Saturdays at Nana and Papa’s because it meant time with them and Banner. She’d get tired after the noon meal, and we’d sit together in her room or on the couch in the living room and she’d read me stories from her bible, always in old Volga German. I didn’t understand a thing but I could feel the love, and while I might be the only one ever to think that old German verse sounded lyrical, I’d sit quietly while she drifted off for a nap. When she woke, we’d crochet or go outside to the backyard and swing or just watch birds and visit till supper. I was also beyond blessed to have had my papa till I was 43 and my Nana till I was 46. Some of you got to know my Nana while she lived with Fred, Patrice and I during her last few years. Nana made a lot of friends here in Paradise Valley. Nana and Papa were my best friends, confidants and teachers not only growing up but throughout my life.
Visiting with my cousin Wesley the other night, I was touched to hear him say that my granddad Joe was the kindest man he’d ever known and how lucky we’d been to have him so long. I couldn’t have agreed more. My papa was and is my greatest hero. My Nana was my best friend. Wes and I talked for hours about all the stories they told, the old German food we ate growing up and how it still takes us straight home. It had been 7 years since I’d seen Wes and his wife and almost 20 since we’d had a really good visit. I was afraid I had bored Patrice with all the old stories until she told me this morning that she wouldn’t mind learning to make kraut kugel. Sometimes, there is just nothing sweeter than family and the memories and traditions they inspire.
Kris Stewart is a rancher from Paradise Valley, Nevada.
