Weekend Waffles

After sleeping in on a Saturday, I thought what better way to start the day than a "new" recipe from Mary Emma? Actually, I wondered what breakfast recipes I might find in a cookbook that seems more dedicated to heavy casseroles and sugary desserts than to the modern concept of "cooking light." Since there isn't a breakfast section, I thumbed through the egg & cheese section followed by the bread section.

I zoomed in on the waffles pretty quickly. Waffles were not something we had growing up, and I was a little surprised to find some unusual recipes in this downhome cookbook (okay, so maybe Apple Waffles and Gingerbread Waffles aren't that unusual, but they are more adventurous than any other recipes I'd tried). Hubby gave his vote to Gingerbread Waffles, pg. 34.

The batter looked and smelled delicious - I'm really excited about cooking anything with molasses, which I had never really done prior to this year. The batter did seem to be a little thick compared to other waffle batters I'd made, but I decided not to tamper with it (okay, so Joe is really a recipe purist and he suggested that I leave it alone - I am more the kind to play around with something if I don't like the looks of it). The waffles turned out mighty tasty, but a little dense and cakey for my liking. Of course, they were extremely heavy and we probably won't be ready to eat again til supper time.

Flashback

While I'm not always thrilled to be living 10 minutes from my parents and the Mennonite community in which I grew up, it does have its perks - and borrowing a copy of The Mennonite Community Cookbook with duct tape for binding and my mom's handwriting inscribed on the cover page is one of them.

Actually, the journey of The Mennonite Community Cookbook into my kitchen has been something of an adventure. In the interest of finances, I decided to screw sentimentality and order a copy off of Amazon (as noted by J, I could purchase one for only $13). By some cunning twist of fate, or perhaps due to my own ineptitude, that copy got sent not to my address here in Massillon, but the one I'd lived at three years ago in Portland, Oregon. In a panic that January would draw to a close before I got my cookbook in the mail, I did what I should have done in the first place: I called my mother.

Frankly, I didn't even know if she had a copy, but she ensured me that she did and that it had been consulted often. "You'll find mostly farm cooking in there," she warned me. She recommended the Date Pudding which she and my grandma had both made on different occasions, and which is "so easy." This would be quite a contrast from the recipes in the San Francisco Chronicle Cookbook I got for Christmas from a close friend of mine, in which at least one ingredient per recipe is not available in my local grocery store.

So Date Pudding I did make. Specifically, Date Pudding II, since after examining both recipes, that one looked easier. Mary Emma recommended trying it with whipped cream, and Joe & I love any excuse to get out our carbon-charged whipped cream maker. The baked pudding turned out wonderfully. I had my doubts making it because the recipe calls for you to "pour" the batter into the dish, and mine was not pouring consistancy - more like cookie dough. So I added an extra 1/4 milk, and then plopped the batter on top of the syrup. Joe loved it and we both had seconds on the whipped cream! The only thing I would change if I were to do it over again would be to cut the sugar in half - it calls for ALOT of brown sugar and was too sweet for my taste. It would have been perfect with a really dark cup of coffee, but I wasn't about to go to the work of making decaf at 9 pm. The best part of making this recipe was pulling it out of the oven and having a flash memory of my mom doing the same thing years ago.

A little Mary Emma history

I did a little research on our new favorite Mennonite cookbook author and thought it might be helpful as we begin this venture.

First, I asked one of our favorite historians, Joe S., about who was the first Menno woman to receive her doctorate. Of course like with all historians' responses to questions, it was quite qualified (there were Menno women doctors, which he wasn't including in his response). I now forget who he thought was the first (though he wasn't completely sure), but he was pretty sure it wasn't Mary Emma. He thought she was up there in the top three though. I am still hunting down an article I read about her from a year or two ago with more extensive info, but until then this is what I collected from the web:

Mary Emma Showalter Eby (She must have gotten married after this cookbook's publication...I imagine it was difficult for any Mennonite woman with a doctorate to find a husband at that point!) created the landmark Mennonite Community Cookbook in 1950, which is still in print (43 printings later!) and has sold more than 450,000 copies. Herald Press was the publisher, and the cookbook was the first and one of the most successful Mennonite cookbooks.

Mary Emma grew up in Broadway, Va., and founded the home economics department at Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg and taught there from 1946 until her retirement in 1972. She earned a bachelor’s degree from James Madison University in Harrisonburg, a master’s degree from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville and a doctorate from Pennsylvania State University in State College. Before teaching, she served with Mennonite Central Committee as a nutritionist in refugee camps in the Sinai Desert and as a hostess and cook at the MCC office in London, England.

An interesting note about the cookbook's history is that it comes out of the “Mennonite community movement,” which was an effort by church people “to extol the virtues of rural community” after WWII as they observed the migration to urban areas. The magazine which later became Christian Living was another byproduct of the era.

Mary Emma died at the age of 90 on May 3, 2003, at Virginia Mennonite Retirement Community in Harrisonburg. Among her survivors are her husband, Ira, and three stepchildren.
And in her own words about why she embarked on this venture:

My first position after finishing college took me throughout the United States. I soon began to observe that, wherever I went, to California, to Iowa or Ohio, our [Mennonite] cooking was much the same. Some of the recipes that my mother had recorded in her little book were being used even in the Far West.

Since a cookbook of the favorite recipes of Mennonite families had never been published, I now began to sense that the handwritten recipe books were responsible. I asked to see them wherever I went and was astonished to learn how many of them had been destroyed in recent years. The daughters of today were guilty of pushing them aside in favor of the new, just as I had done one day. It is true that many of our mothers were still using the old favorite recipes, but were doing so by memory. When I found them, the little notebooks were usually at the bottom of a stack of modern cookbooks and were kept only for memory's sake. Through the years many had become so worn and soiled that in places they were no longer legible. . . . I was challenged with the thought that now is the time to preserve them. So this book is an attempt to preserve for posterity our own peculiar type of cookery that has been handed down for many generations.

Trying to recreate Christmas past...

Growing up in Kalona with Amish roots, the foods found in Mary Emma's Mennonite Community Cookbook were often staples on our table...or at least when we went to grandma's house. Several years ago, my mother gave me my very own copy (on the inside cover she inscribed: “This is like the recipe book we had in the Miller kitchen when I was growing up”).

I can't say that I immediately rushed home and started cooking from it, but having it sit on my shelf next to my Moosewood, Better Homes and Gardens and More-with-less cookbooks felt right. It connected me to my mother, her mother and probably her mother. I like the idea of knowing that if, by chance, I would want to make peppernuts (or pfeffernusse as she liked to call them) before Christmas like my mother always did, I could. Maybe this year it will happen.

Just before Christmas was actually when I actually opened the cookbook and tried out a recipe: Molasses Crinkles (p. 260). I was really hoping they would bring back memories of Christmases growing up. I started to mix them up...but then realized I didn't have any eggs, so I put the mix in the fridge for several days until I could get some more eggs. My mom would have gone down the road to our Amish neighbors and asked to borrow a couple of eggs that their chickens had laid that morning. I should know my neighbors that well, but I don't. And it isn't quite the same when you live in town. Then as I was continuing to make the cookies, they called for cloves (presumably powder). I only had whole cloves, so I got to pound my own powder. To add my own mark on the recipe (I don't believe in following recipes directly), I added a bit of cayenne – just a bit to give a little hint of some kick. When the cookies came out of the oven, they weren't quite what I was expecting (maybe I was thinking of gingersnaps??), and they were a little dry. Would be nice to try someone else's and see if it was just me, or the recipe.

I am not a cook like my mother, which is alright. But I did introduce her to Brie over Christmas break.