Sauerkraut,Sausage and Dumplings! Oh My!

Sauerkraut, with sausage and dumplings was a staple at every evening meal at our house while I was growing up. Not just any sauerkraut, but kraut made according to my Dad's family recipe brought over from Germany in the 1800's.

My sister and I have often joked that in order to survive in our family, the babies had to be born with lead stomachs. We had to watch Dad pretty closely whenever we brought home a new arrival, because the first chance he got, he would slip them a taste of "kraut juice".

I kid you not! We'd turn around and he'd have a teaspoon up to their mouths and they'd be smacking their lips in delight! We could only assume our children liked the taste because we'd both eaten plenty of kraut throughout our pregnancies.

Of the seven grandchildren in the family, there's only one I know of who doesn't love sauerkraut, and that's my youngest son. What can I say? I suppose sooner or later a finicky one would have to come along.

I never understood why most of my friends turned their noses up at sauerkraut until I figured out that not everyone was privileged to have the same kind we had. Our kraut was totally different than the store bought stuff. Ours started out as cabbage in our own garden. When the time (which was determined by the phase of the moon) came, we'd pick the huge heads of cabbage and gather the kraut cutter, mason jars, canning salt and the garden hose together on the back porch.

Dad would methodically slide each head of cabbage back and forth over the blades of the kraut cutter, producing mounds of shavings, which my sister, mother and I would scoop up and put into mason jars one after another.

Picture an 10' x 20' concrete porch covered with mason jars full of shredded cabbage! We had to have enough kraut to get us through the whole year, and for our family, that was a LOT!

After the cabbage was in the jars, we'd put a handful of canning salt on top. Then came the garden hose, (which was my favorite part of the process). The jars would be topped off with water right out of the hose, and lids would be applied loosely. Dad explained that if the lids were tightened right away, the jars would explode from the gases that developed as the cabbage turned to kraut.

We'd carry the finished jars into the basement where they'd sit for several weeks (also determined by the phase of the moon) Only then could we tighten the lids.

Once the allotted time had passed, the kraut would be declared "ready"by the kraut-master himself, and the feasting would begin!

I remember so well, Dad leaning over the stove with smoked sausage sizzling in an iron skillet and sauerkraut simmering in a separate pan. After frying, he would mix the sausage into the kraut.

Next came dumplings, made simply from eggs and flour. He'd form a stiff mixture from the two ingredients and pinch off pieces the size of a quarter, dropping them one by one into the bubbling pot of kraut and sausage.

After the dumplings were added, he'd take the skillet with the meat drippings still in it and add flour to make "gravy". The gravy was apparently a very important step, as Dad explained to me more than once, that in order to be done correctly, it had to be poured over the top and allowed to seep slowly down through the rest of the mixture.

Ahhh! The aroma flooded the house and made our mouths water! There's nothing much better than a meal of sauerkraut, sausage and dumplings with a side of mashed potatoes (also home grown and made) and a tall glass of sweet tea!

When I visited my family in Ohio over New Years, I managed to swipe a couple quart jars of kraut from my sister. Today, I finally decided to prepare the dish I grew up on. This is a real treat! Since neither my husband or son care for sauerkraut sausage and dumplings, I get the whole pan to myself!

I'm not sure I did everything exactly right. I couldn't resist the urge to stir the gravy into the rest of the mix before it had time to "seep" in ... and my dumplings came out a bit more spongy than I would have liked. Over all, I think I did ok though. I know Dad would be proud to know I at least made the effort.

Tonight, I will feast on the wondrous delight as I reminisce the days of making kraut on the back porch with my parents and sister on those hot summer evenings forty years ago.

Oooooo! It's going to be wunderbar!


Becky Taylor
Bold New Day! LLC
http://www.boldnewday.com

Cats and Tuesday Evening

Here it is Tuesday evening and I am sitting in the recliner with one of my two Siamese cats, Skippyjon on my lap. He is lying across my left wrist as I type. I believe he thinks the movement of my hand under his chin is meant to be a treat for him, rather than a mere method of getting words onto a screen.

Cats are like that. In their minds, the world revolves around them. Personally, I find that to be one of their more endearing traits.

I love Skippyjon. He makes me smile. He's a skinny little clown, always poking around the house looking for things to get into. He loves to tease the older Siamese, Jasmine who has not quite yet accepted his presence in the household. As soon as she spots him anywhere near, she starts growling, an eerie noise that starts as a low rumble deep in her belly and rises to a positively evil wail quite possibly capable of making the hair stand up on a banshee's neck.

It never fails, Skippy gets Jasmine all riled up then just sits down and stares at her as if to say, "Whut?? I didn't do anything!" He reminds me of a mischievous little boy, always getting caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

I can't really remember a time in my life when I haven't had at least one cat. As a child, it wasn't unusual for me to have four or five of them living in the back yard at once. Back then, all my cats were of the average orange tabby garden variety. They were also always named "Jingle Bells".

Hey! I was two years old, and Jingle Bells was my favorite song. It was quite appropriate that my favorite pets be named after it.

It also helped ensure a response when I stepped out onto the back porch and called for them. At least one (and usually two or three) of the furry orange critters would come running from way back behind our garden and crawl into my waiting arms.

Like every other little girl, I had dolls to play with, but given the choice I would take a cat over a doll any day.

Cats were more like real babies, after all. They wriggled and squirmed as I pulled frilly dresses over their heads and buttoned them in, then wrapped them in baby blankets. I would even lay them down in my doll baby beds and make them take "naps" after feeding them milk from real baby bottles.

Come to think of it, that's probably why they tolerated me as well as they did. They knew when all was said and done, I would finish up by feeding them milk from a bottle. The humiliation of wearing a dress and sleeping in a doll bed was a small price to pay, considering.

The weird thing about the cats I had as a child was that they always ran away in February. It never failed. I would go out one cold winter day and all of my cats would be gone. My dad explained that February was when cats went off looking for husbands and wives so they could start families of their own. Believe it or not, I bought that story until I was up in my teen years. Only then did I realize that my father was "assisting" my cats in finding their so called "husbands and wives" by loading them up in his car and giving them a ride out to a local farm where they'd spend the rest of their lives serving as "mousers" in one of the farmers many barns.

Thankfully, I had three aunts who seemed to have a never ending supply of "fresh" little orange kittens and my stock of "Jingle Bells" would be replenished in the spring. Then, the cycle would start all over again.

Cats have played such an important role in my life that I can't imagine life without one. To this day, simply picking one of our three cats up and snuggling it in my arms brightens my day. Something about the sound of a cat purring always soothes my soul.

I need my cats, especially at times like these when the blues seem to be nipping ever so closely at my heels.

And cats even come in handy on a plain old Tuesday evening when I've nothing better to do than sit in my recliner and peck away at the computer keyboard with one of them draped lazily across my arm.

I love cats. That's the way it's always been, and that's the way it always will be!

The Most Beautiful Place On Earth

My father taught me a lot about the appreciation of beauty. He always was, and still is an unusually sentimental soul with a huge heart for all of God's creation.

One of my fondest childhood memories is of going "hunting" in the woods with him on Sunday afternoons. Our adventures couldn't really be considered "hunting" in the sense that we actually ever shot a gun at any living thing. In reality, those days were spent quietly creeping through the forest, listening and watching for wildlife, stopping to investigate downed trees and looking at little wildflowers that had pushed their way up through the rich black Ohio soil.

Eventually, we would find a stump or boulder where we'd sit to catch our breath. There, I'd listen intently as Dad told me stories about the Shawnee Indians who use to roam the very area where we sat. On several occasions, we went back to the spot where the house my father was born in once stood. Nothing was left of it but the cornerstones by then but that didn't stop me from opening an imaginary door and stepping inside to envision what it must have looked during my father's earliest years.

On our way home, we would stop halfway across Higby bridge with it's one lane that spanned the mighty Scioto River. We would get out of the car and stand gazing down at the muddy water surging it's way southward to the Ohio River.

Standing with both hands in his pockets Dad would inevitably proclaim. "Beck! I've been all over this world but I've never seen anyplace prettier than this."

I use to laugh every time he said it. Though spoken with great conviction, my father hadn't really been all over the world. He did, however, spend some time in Alaska during WWII. I couldn't help but wonder how the hills of southern Ohio could possibly compare to the great sights and wonders of the Alaskan landscape.

So be it. My father said it and I believed it. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, after all.

Since those childhood days over forty years ago I too have been "all over the world" and in the process, have seen some magnificent sights. The Black Forest area of Germany at Christmas time is beyond description! The Rocky Mountains are breathtaking in the fall! My all time favorite place to visit anytime of the year, has to be the Caribbean with it's transparent blue water and white sandy beaches. Yellowstone National Park, the Pacific coast, the rain forest of Mexico ... I could go on and on.

But none of those places elicit the emotion I feel every time I journey back home. My heart literally skips a beat, and excitement begins to grow the instant I spot the Cincinnati skyline. By the time the rolling hills of southern Ohio appear on the distant horizon I am downright giddy.

The feeling is indescribable.

Objectively speaking, I must admit it's unlikely that Southern Ohio will ever be listed as one of the "natural wonders" of the world. To an outsider, the "mighty Scioto" probably looks like just another tired old muddy river. There are likewise hundreds of other areas in this world with nearly identical rolling hills, endless cornfields, and forests filled with oak, pine, elm and maple trees.

But objectivity in regard to my home place is an impossibility for that is where I keep my fondest memories. It's there that the skinny little girl with knobby knees and stringy hair still roams through the woods with her father, searching for critters that live in burrows and stopping to pick blackberries along the railroad tracks, then always ... always, pausing for one last look over the bridge railings at the river flowing through it's banks below.

The chances I'll ever live there again are slim to none, but there's also a part of me that has never left.

It took many years for me to realize and admit, it but my Dad was right. Surely there really isn't anyplace else quite so beautiful on earth.