GER-VOLGA-L Archives

Archiver > GER-VOLGA > 2006-01 > 1136307437


From: Lauren Brantner <>
Subject: Food Pathways
Date: Tue, 03 Jan 2006 09:57:17 -0700


Thanks for the info Vera. Looking for the origin of some things is akin
to trying to find a pure race! Unless it's in a geographically isolated
place that has had no cross cultural contamination for long periods of
time, there will always be influences from other groups of people on all
parts of the culture.

My oldest female cousin and I have a laugh sometimes about her foray as
a young girl into learning to bake bread from our Volga German
Grandmother. Grandmother had a special large pan she used to make
bread. She told my cousin that it was easy. Grandmother then named
the ingredients for her. Then she stuck her hand vertically into the
pan and said to fill the dry ingredients up to a certain level on her
wrist and then add the liquid to a higher level on her wrist!

Some of the recipes in our cookbooks expect you to already know things
that seemed very obvious to the cooks of the last generation. That
makes for some difficult learning curves and some flops for beginning
cooks!

Lauren Brantner


This thread: