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J.T. Knoll
Irrespective of how grim life bought for the immigrant coal miners and their households right here within the Little Balkans, summer time supplied candy solace within the type of a vegetable backyard.
Even into the Nineteen Fifties, most each home on my paper route had one out again – or on the facet. Lettuce, onions, pink potatoes, inexperienced beans, zucchini, peppers, cucumbers, tomatoes, candy corn, eggplant, and quite a lot of melons and squash.
Most had an herb backyard as properly. Fennil, rosemary, thyme, dill weed and garlic have been harvested. In lots of a yard you might discover fig bushes. A lot of households grew grapes for wine.
Once we lived to Oak Park, Illinois within the Nineteen Seventies, I planted a small backyard out again, however after I returned to Kansas, there was no want for all that sweatin’ and diggin’. Contemporary produce was obtainable at roadside stands, from gardener buddies, at Johnny Spig’s within the Republic, and, for some years now, the Pittsburg Farmers Market.
My favorites are far and away tomatoes and candy corn. To chew right into a slice of fresh-picked tomato or gnaw down a row of just-shucked and boiled candy corn is to enter what the Irish name one of many “skinny locations” — the place the gap between heaven and earth collapses.
As a culinary deal with for this 12 months’s Little Balkans Days celebration, the 1986 Little Balkans Regional Cookbook has been reprinted and is on sale for $15 on the Pittsburg Chamber of Commerce, 4th and Pine, and the Angela Meyer Regulation Workplace, 1325 N. Broadway.
Not solely is it stuffed with native household recipes (and names), it features a new ahead by founding Little Balkans Days president, Penny Armstrong and the unique introduction by Little Balkans favourite son, Gene DeGruson.
DeGruson quotes the diary of Margaret E. Haughawout describing a night spent with Pittsburg native and famous folklorist Vance Randolph practically 100 years in the past: “We went again to Frontenac and had a supper of salami – the sausage they made the evening earlier than – gorgonzola, cream cheese, tuna fish, recent home made bread, peppers put up in vinegar, salt and water.”
Because the passage signifies, many households additionally butchered their very own pigs and cattle to make sausage and salami (Most occasions in giant gatherings with loads of wine and beer). In addition they cured ham and prosciutto and raised chickens, not just for the eggs but additionally as the primary ingredient in quite a lot of ethnic dishes.
Due to the variety of our space, Degruson writes, meals of French, Italian, or Austrian origin may arrive on the desk as casually as dishes which originated in England, Scotland, or Eire. Inhabitants of the Little Balkans settle for this as commonplace.
“Recipes,” he states, “like legends and household historical past, have been handed down from mom to daughter, and, as neighbors developed, from dwelling to dwelling.”
How well timed that that Miners Corridor Museum will host “Tasting the Previous: Exploring Kansas Meals Reminiscences,” a presentation and dialogue by Louise Hanson this Sunday, August twenty second, at 2:00 p.m. on the museum in Franklin.
Hanson will share her analysis on how ethnic teams in Kansas have used meals to keep up connections to the previous. This presentation will discover meals traditions from quite a few ethnic populations in Kansas, together with German, Czech, Italian, Jewish, and others.
Members of the neighborhood are invited to attend the free program. Contact the Miners Corridor Museum at 620-347-4220 for extra data. This system is made attainable by Humanities Kansas.
Getting again to the historic meals choices of our space, on Saturday, September 4th, at this 12 months’s Little Balkans Days Pageant, there will likely be two ethnic cooking demonstrations at Lincoln Middle.
At 11:00 a.m., Parsons Center Faculty dwelling economics college students will prepare dinner Bierocks (German pocket pastries) and, at 12 p.m., Dr. Ron Seglie will prepare dinner polenta (Italian corn meal mush. My north Italian grandma mixed hers with hen and tomato sauce.)
Better of all, each demonstrations will embody recipes and samples. (I’ll be emcee on the Folklife music stage within the park however I plan to sneak over for a style … or ship an emissary to deliver again a pattern.)
In the event you’re something like me, simply fascinated with all these gastronomic delights has your mouth watering and abdomen growling.
No drawback right here. I’ve bought a bunch of homegrown tomatoes within the kitchen. Because the Man Clark track says:
“You’ll be able to put ‘em in a salad. You’ll be able to put ‘em in a stew. You can also make your very personal tomato juice. You’ll be able to eat ‘em with eggs. You’ll be able to eat ‘em gravy. You’ll be able to eat ‘em with beans – pinto or navy. You’ll be able to eat ‘em on the facet. Eat’ em within the center. Homegrown tomatoes on a hotcake griddle!”
J.T. Knoll is a author, speaker and eulogist. He additionally operates Knoll Coaching & Consulting in Pittsburg. He may be reached at 231-0499 or jtknoll@swbell.internet
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