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My grandfather immigrated to the United States from Ukraine. Like many people from the cold northern countries, he sought the cooler climate of Michigan. He was a blacksmith by trade, but he fought with the United States in World War I before he worked as a civilian. After the war he went to work for the Grand Trunk Railroad in Battle Creek, Michigan. One of his coworkers was a German fellow, 31 years his senior, who had eleven children, among them a comely lass who took my grandfather's eye. They married and my mother was the result of their union. Years later, when my mother was herself a young woman, another war was ending (W.W.II) and postwar love struck again. My mother met a young soldier of her own. They married and my brother and I came into this world. My father went to work for CW Post and my mother for WK Kellogg. Their employment guaranteed that corn flakes were in my future. I ate a lot of cereal in my day. But all was not poured from a box in my mother's kitchen. She cooked to please my father, and diligently learned Ukrainian recipes from his family. I loved being in the kitchen when she cooked. I was always under her legs and in her way. She solved this problem by placing me on a stool where I watched her make the dough and the different stuffings for pierogi. Little by little she let me help, and it was a bond between us. I still make pierogi the traditional family way. Food encased in dough is popular around the world. On a recent trip to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, I discovered a dish called Pasties which has an interesting history and reflects human adaptability and the instinct to survive. I learned how to make them from a Finnish woman who said that Pasties were traditional in Finland. They can be shaped like pouches in a fashion similar to pierogi, or made as a pie. The immigrants who settled the chilly Upper Peninsula were mostly Finnish, Swedish, German and Cornish. Many of them found work in the copper and iron mines that dot the Upper Peninsula. The mines are cold and the temperature maintains a steady 42 degrees all day. The miners spent the full day deep in the mines. There was no such thing as a lunch break, but they needed nourishment for the heavy labor they performed. Some ingenious woman (who else) must have devised the pasty - a combination of vegetables and meat wrapped in a pouch of dough- so the miners could take them into the mines for a nutritious lunch. They would leave the pouches on their lanterns to slowly heat up. By lunch time they were ready to eat. They could eat them like a sandwich and get a complete meal. Some of our best foods have originated out of necessity. |
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Read "Four and Twenty Blackbirds" all about pot pies and pasties. click here
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Editors note: We thank Gary for this article, and for the spirit of adventure that led to the discovery of Pasty Pie. Do you have a passionate food love, a funny
memory, or a recent discovery? |
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