5.5.1 Food

The Bessarabian kitchen was influenced in several ways. On one hand there were the traditional recipes from the former homeland of the ancestors, on the other hand were dishes adopted from other nationalities like the Poles, Ukrainians and Moldavians. Naturally, available ingredients and the village lifestyle influenced the farm character of the Bessarabian food. In the first decades, meals of the Krasna colonists were simple. The menu was adapted to the season. Habits changed over the years. The main rule in Krasna was that the meal had to be hearty and nutritious. The wealthier Krasna people became, the richer was the food.

Flour was the number one ingredient in Krasna.

• Bread was served with all meals. It was almost always wheat bread. Mixed flour breads made of wheat and barley flour was served only in poor times. Bread was home made. There was a joke in circulation: Once a girl knows how to bake bread, it’s time for her to get married.
• Kuchen of several varieties were well liked.
• Mehlspeisen (flour dishes) ranked highest, such as pancakes, dumplings, “Pirogi” (made with curds, a pastry), strudel cakes, noodles and steamed noodles.

Sourdough and yeast were needed for these dishes and they were prepared as follows:

• Sourdough practically forms by itself when flour is mixed with water and left sitting for a few days. Before baking, a small piece of sourdough was saved as a starter for the next batch of sourdough.
• Yeast was made in the wine making process. Corn flour was added and the mass was then dried. Before use, the dough ball was softened with water and added to the baking dough.

Image 82: Baking Bread

Meat - much meat was consumed

• Pork was boiled or baked or made into sausages and ham, served mostly in winter.
• Beef was also important.
• Lamb was preferred on hot summer days (lamb roasts or made into borscht).
• Krasna people also ate much chicken, as chicken soup or baked.
• Smoked goose legs and goose breast were considered a delicacy.

Milk and Milk Products also played an important part in the Krasna kitchen. A menu without milk, butter and cheese was unthinkable. Butter was homemade. The cream from the milk was put into a butter barrel. This was a barrel of wood, in which a pestle was moved up and down until the cream formed into butter. From the middle of the 1920's, the dairies also produced butter.

Sheep cheese was popular until the end. It was produced by the milk shepherd and stored in clay pots; lasted for a time. Such a milk shepherd, a Bulgarian, had his milk shed, called a “strunga,” behind the garden ditch of Georg Steiert. The Strunga was connected to a fenced enclosure, called an “Okul”, where he penned up his 250 milk sheep during the night. The Strunga was made with four corner posts and a roof.

Eggs, aside from being used for baking, were eaten with the various meals in different forms.

• Vegetables, which are widely used today, such as Brussel sprouts, spinach, cabbage, cauliflower, etc, as well as lettuce were not widely cared for. Our ancestors had no knowledge of nutritional value, vitamins, carbohydrates and such. “Paprika” (red peppers), raw or fried, tomatoes, eggplant and pickles (also pickle salad made with cream), were often served. All these kinds were also pickled. Cabbage was loved in the form of sauerkraut.
• Meals in the summer were always served with melons, called “Arbus.” Melons were well liked in Krasna (water melons and sugar melons). Next to the wine grape they were served in the evening during the corn shucking. The best-looking pieces were used; the rest were fed to the livestock.
• Wine grapes were ripe from the beginning of September. In the evenings, grapes were eaten regularly, often in combination with sheep cheese, which was a nice switch from watermelons.
• Food pumpkins were used for meals, for instance a pancake called “Kerbsekichla” was prepared with them.
• Olives, called “maslins” (these were one of the few imported foods, not homegrown)
• Apples, also dried, were well-liked.

• Breakfast in the beginning and until the turn of the century consisted of a variety of soups, such as “Riwwel” soup, burnt flour soup and others. Grits were also liked for breakfast, mostly corn grits. Only after the turn of the century did coffee and tea replace the breakfast soups and grits in the mornings. With the tea and coffee, sausage and sheep cheese as well as butter, honey, syrup, jam and bacon were served.
• At noon flour dishes were preferred over vegetables. There were strudels, steam noodles, fried and boiled potatoes, steamed potatoes and much meat. In the winter it was mostly pork and beef and in the summer chicken (roosters and hens), ducks and lamb. Pork and sauerkraut and mashed potatoes were served most often in the winter as hearty noon meals.
• The evening meal consisted mostly of a soup, sausage, bacon, eggs, bread and tea. In the summer the main meal was served in the evening, because the entire family, including children helped in the fields during the day. In the evening, flour dishes were mostly served in the summer.

With the noon and evening meals, vegetables and fruit were served, as well. In the winter, people ate sour pickled vegetables such as pickles, “paprika” (red peppers), tomatoes and Arbuses (melons). See also Food Preserves

The foods served depended on the season, which was also due to the limited time for which foods could be preserved. People ate what was in season. In the winter often pork was served for the entire week. In the spring it was lamb and in the summer chicken. In the winter, people ate wine grapes and sheep cheese.

The fields were usually distant from the village, therefore, our parents took the noon meals and afternoon snacks with them in a field chest. Drinking water was taken in a water barrel.
Often bread, bacon, cheese, olives, smoked sausage, milk, buttermilk and butter were taken.
Roast meats were loved as a field meal and snack.

When working the fields far out in the steppes, food was cooked there.

Image 83: Eating at the Fields

Pastries

Steamed noodles (Dampfnudel),

Strudel (with chicken or cheese),

Dumplings (Knödel) in various preparations, for instance cabbage dumplings,

Pancakes (a wide variety, fixed with cheese, pumpkins or with yeast),

Stierum (a sweet omelet but without raisins).

Potatoes and vegetables

Sauerkraut and mashed potatoes,

Potatoes with chicken or pork ribs,

Soups

Mostly chicken soup with noodles or macaroni,

Borscht (a Russian dish made with cabbage, red beets and carrots),

Riwwelsoup (butter fried flour balls in fatty broth).

Recipes taken from other nationalities (evident in the names):

Examples

Pirogi (a flour dish), stuffed with curds or plums,

Galrei (jellied meats made with pork, the pig's feet, ears, etc., were used),

Bastram: oven dried beef, but also goose and duck legs.

Ikri made of tomatoes, sometimes with eggplant, called eggfruit in Bessarabia) and paprika (red pepper) initially roasted in the oven, then finely chopped and mixed together.

Halubzi: cabbage rolls, pickled like sauerkraut and filled with pork chunks, potatoes and rice.

Mamelik: a porridge made with corn flour.

The names of the dishes and the recipes differed slightly from family to family. For more recipes there are recipe books available for Krasna dishes ¹⁾ such as:

• Helene Krüger-Häcker: Dampfnudeln und Pfeffersoß, (steamed noodles and pepper sauce),
• G.Knopp-Rüb / LM: Bessarabische Spezialitäten, (Bessarabian specialties)
• Nelly Däs: Kochbuch der Deutschen aus Rußland (Cookbook of the Germans from Russia).

• Sunflower seeds: peeling sunflower seeds was a favorite pasttime performed by all ages, especially on Sundays and Holidays and during long winter nights.
• Halva mainly made of sunflower seeds and oil. It has a distinctive taste. (It is especially made in the Black Sea region and fixed in several variations.)
• Licorices (from a wild growing plant),
• Nuts,
• Pumpkin seeds (roasted),
• Corn kernels baked in fat (pop corn).

Snacks during Christmas time were nuts, apples, oranges, Lebkuchen, St. John’s bread (called buckhorns) and all of them were collectively called “Saches.”

There were no refrigerators, no frozen foods, and no canned goods in Krasna. Foods to be kept for some time had to be preserved with the conventional methods in use back then.

• Smoking: Sausage, ham, bacon and goose (breast and legs). The items to be smoked were prepared with salt and spices according to old home recipes. Smoking was an all day event and took place in the smoke chamber, which was often located in the attic. Smoked meat could be stored for a considerable time.
• Pickled Meat: Meat is stacked in layers and rubbed with pickling salt, or covered with it, then stored in a clay pot.
• Fried meats: The spiced meat was baked in the oven and then placed together with smoked sausage in so-called “Schmalzkannen” (lard cans), tin or ceramic containers. Hot liquid lard was poured over it and it was sealed airtight and preserved. It could be stored until the summer of the following year.
• Sour pickling: Placing vegetables in a mixture of a sour sauce (salt not vinegar) means that they could be preserved for some time. Paprika (red peppers) were preserved that way, as well as not fully ripened or green watermelons. Cabbage was used for sauerkraut.
• The pickled vegetables were kept in Zubindegläser (preservation jars) first covered with cloth, later with lids.
• Another form of conservation was Trockenobst (dried fruit), made of sliced apples, pears or plums.
• In order to store groceries over time, every German village had an Eiskeller (ice cellar). This cellar was a deep hole in the ground, layered with alternate layers of straw and ice. Barrels, canisters or pitchers with items to be stored were placed in the center.

Image 84: Krasna Had such an Ice Cellar near the Lafke.
See also 3.1, The village

The first pig was butchered in the fall. Before the harsh cold set in, a second and third followed, depending on family size. People who wanted to make a lot of sausage also butchered a cow, a steer or a calf. Then there was plenty of sausage and meat for soups. Aside from pressed meat, made from the pig stomach, there was liver sausage, which was perishable, so only enough was made to be eaten quickly. Other sausage, ham and rib sections were smoked or fried and sliced. See also Preservation of Foods

Each family, or each neighborhood, had butchers who would butcher the animal in exchange for groceries. Butchering days were always little family celebrations. The chronicle of Alt-Posttal ²⁾ describes butchering and the butchering celebrations in detail. The following excerpt is from this publication: Pigs were killed without being stunned and the blood was allowed to run off if people did not need it to make blood sausage. The scrubbed pig was elevated outside on a set up ladder or, in bad weather, hung up by the rear legs in a room, then scrubbed well and gutted. All that was required to make pressed stomach or liver sausage was cooked in a large kettle in the yard and the butcher and his helper cleaned the gut, stomach and bladder.