The NDSU Foundation Magazine includes a story titled Cooking to Reconnect that features five German-Russian recipes that will help you slow down, warm up, and rethink winter. Story and photographs by Micaela Gerhardt, illustrations by Leah Ecklund. Recipes included in the story are cheese buttons, knoephla soup, borscht soup, wedding kuchen, and pumpkin blachenta.
A small excerpt from the story, "If you pay close attention, the humble ingredients in each of these recipes will teach you about the Germans from Russia ethnic group and the history of settling on this prairie they (and perhaps you, too) call home. Behind German-Russian foods are ingredients indicative of survival — of appetites earned while working long hours in the fields, of days spent in the kitchen preparing meals, of homes heated by the warmth of the stove, of gathering around a table and sharing language and stories, of making something delicious from seasonal crops and foods preserved in root cellars to enjoy in the coldest depths of winter.
The most important aspect of cooking German-Russian food is that it’s shared. With the sun setting in the early evening, and chilly weather outside, winter is a time that naturally invites us to slow down and stay in. As harvest season came to an end, German-Russian families also leaned into winter as a time for more rest and kinship."
Click here to read the entire story.