Wild rice harvesting
Harvest meals are a tradition in most cultures. I want to explore some harvest meals prepared and celebrated here on the Range going back in time. I found a beautifully illustrated book free online from the University of Minnesota Morris: Eating with the Seasons, Anishinaabeg, Great Lakes Region by Derek Nicholas. For the original inhabitants of this part of Minnesota, November is the Gashkadino-giizis, the Freezing Moon. It used to signal the time to travel to winter camps. Fishing the harvest of the fall spawn and drying the catch for the long winter are still traditional activities. Harvest meals likely include fish, brussels sprouts, garlic, rutabagas, turnips, winter squash and of course, wild rice, according to this book. The author is an enrolled member of the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa who started his journey to revitalize his family’s culture and connect folks through the power of food at the University of Minnesota Morris. Download the book and its beautiful illustrations free at https://digitalcommons.morris.umn.edu/student_research/8
So, what did the Finns who came later to the Range do for a harvest meal? My friend Jeanne grew up on her grandparents’ Finnish farm near Virginia. She remembers venison, chunked, and canned in quart jars for the winter, as part of a fall meal, with rutabagas and potatoes from the root cellar and pickled beets and cucumbers. A standard holiday dish was “lanttulaatikko,” baked rutabaga mashed with egg and cream. A little nutmeg, butter and some breadcrumbs made this into a baked delight. Kekri, an ancient Finnish and Karelian celebration to mark end of harvest season, was still observed in rural Finland up to about one hundred years ago. The central focus of that meal, in addition to the abundance from the fall harvest, was the Kekri lamb.
Sarmas
My friend Jody married into a large Slovenian family who settled in Aurora, Minnesota on a farm with huge gardens. Fall harvest meals included blood sausage if they had butchered recently, and sauerkraut. There would be fried potatoes—fried in cracklings (fried bits made by cooking down pork trimmings)—and lettuce or endive salad. According to Jody’s Slovenian friend Rose, the endive was brought in after frost and kept in a cold room or the garage for as long as possible. If not blood sausage, the meal might have centered on sarmas (kislim zeljem-cabbage bundles) and zeljnata solata (cole slaw). It would almost always have included potica which is a favorite of Rangers of all ethnicities today, and probably some kind of soup with noodles or buckwheat dumplings.
My friend Toni remembers her Slovenian father preparing a huge booyah feast for his friends and co-workers in late October each year. He had a huge iron kettle made and cooked the meat and vegetable stew over a slow fire all day. He stirred it with a cut off canoe paddle. The process began the day before with the roasting of the meat, probably beef. At daybreak, the day of the meal he would add carrots and onions, potatoes, peas, green beans, tomatoes, and onions along with a huge cheesecloth bag of spices which remain a mystery. At about 3pm, after the stew had cooked and thickened all day, the friends and neighbors from all around Eveleth would come by to fill their bowls with booyah along with many loaves of Italian bread.
There’s another Iron Range food that was enjoyed year-round, I think, and originated with Mike Giacomo, “Spaghetti Mike” who ran the Spaghetti Inn in Gilbert. The story goes that a hungry man, after a long evening of drinking in the city’s bars, stopped in and needed something to satisfy his hunger. Mike didn’t really have anything but stirred up what he could find in the restaurant: tomatoes, peppers, onions, celery, some spices, and ground beef or whatever meat he had left over and put it on a thick slab of Italian bread for his hungry customer. It became a favorite among Gilbert’s bar patrons and somehow got the name “South Americans.” There are many recipes floating around today and some folks make huge quantities to can or freeze and give away. Diane’s food blog on the web calls South Americans “Iron Range Bar Sandwiches,” and recommends the recipe from Come, You Taste, B.J. Carpenter’s famous Iron Range cookbook. You can buy homemade South Americans at Paul’s Italian Market in Eveleth.
No Iron Range review of fall/winter meals would be complete without the Norwegian lutefisk, made from dried whitefish cured in lye. It is rehydrated for serving and has a jelly-like texture. I must admit I’ve never tasted it, but I’m sure I will soon. It is traditionally served with sides like pea stew, potatoes, gravy, and mashed rutabaga. The meal probably would include lefse as well, a Norwegian potato flatbread cooked on a griddle. A friend of mine sells homemade lefse at the Grand Rapids Farmers Market.
Lefse on a griddle
I grew up in Illinois, so this has all been new to me. My only experience with culture-specific fall meals was the Swedish potato sausage that my German maternal grandfather made with his Swedish wife. I still try to find good potato sausage every fall. And my paternal grandmother, a Volga German (Germans who lived in Russia) made wonderful bierocks, a pastry pocket filled with cabbage and savory meat. I’ve never tried to make those, but recently located a Facebook page “Germans from Russia Food and Culture” (https://www.facebook.com/GermansfromRussiaFoodandCulture ) and I have my work cut out for me this fall.
I hope you can share a traditional harvest meal with those you care about, and I wish you a safe and healthy winter.