The Food of a Younger Land (30 page)

The men with the machine stayed all night. Very early while it was still dark, they were out at the machine “getting up steam.” Mother was up early too, because they had to have a
big
breakfast—hot biscuits, fried potatoes, fried-down sausage and oatmeal served with plenty of cream and sugar. Mother had another row of pies baked when the little girl came down stairs, still a little sleepy but ready for another delightful day. The dinner was much the same as the day before, except that there were big platters of fried chicken instead of roast beef. It took a long time to dress so many chickens. The little girl wondered why chickens had so many pin feathers as she picked them out of the pieces that mother dropped into the big crock of cold water. The neighbor ladies came again and the little playmate. The threshers wiped some more dirt on fresh towels and ate until they could eat no more just as they had done the day before. The little girls again kept the water glasses and the bread plate full and felt important and almost grown-up.

The straw mountain grew very high and very bumpy. The last sheaf of grain was fed into the big machine. A shrill blast from the whistle announced that the job was finished. As the little girl watched the big red threshing machine chug down the road behind the little puffing engine, she felt sorry for all the little girls who never had a chance to help cook for the threshers.

The threshing scene in Nebraska has undergone many changes since the ’90s. There were no cars in those days. Social life centered in the community and people made their own entertainment. Opportunities for social contacts were not so frequent as today. Even though the threshing season was a period of long hours and strenuous work, it nevertheless had its social aspects. Men “swapped” stories as they paused for a drink of water from the brown jug or waited their turns at the machine. Women took advantage of the rare opportunity to get together and exchange recipes and quilt patterns. They talked of the homely details that made up their lives—the latest baby in the neighborhood, the new rag carpet Grandma Stance was making, their shelves of canned fruit, pickles, preserves and jelly, the number of chickens in their flocks. They vied with each other to see who could get up the best dinner. The best that the home afforded was none too good for the threshers.

Combines, which are used in many localities, have reduced the number of men in the threshing crews. Farm women are not so starved for social contacts as they were in the ’90s. They no longer exchange work at threshing time as frequently as they did in the old days.

“Calories” were unheard of in the ’90s. Everything that the farm afforded was prepared in large quantities. Now many of the farm women have become calorie conscious and they plan balanced meals. They are not so dependent upon the home-prepared foods as they once were. Bread may be delivered at the mail box in time for dinner. The cream may be sold at the cream station and butter purchased from the grocer-man. Canned vegetables are replacing the home-grown ones to a large extent. Meals have become much simpler. Refreshing salads are replacing some of the heavier dishes. The trend is toward serving a single dessert instead of several kinds of cake and pie. Fruit salad, fresh fruit, or ice cream are quite frequently served now.

An effort is being made to cut down on the work of cooking for the threshers. Some women are beginning to serve cafeteria style and in a few cases paper plates are being used.

When the fall days become really crisp, people in all the Scandinavian-settled regions of Wisconsin begin to scan their local newspapers for announcements of
lutefisk
suppers. Such announcements are not hard to find, because almost every Norwegian church gives at least one such supper between October and the end of the year, and there are many Norwegian churches. From miles away, often as many as fifty, lovers of
lutefisk
drive to the church where the supper is to be given. And they are not all Scandinavians, by any means. So popular have
lutefisk
suppers become that in Dane County a group of Norwegians have humorously formed what they call a “Norwegian Lutefisk Protective Association” to guard the suppers from the invasion of non-Norwegian epicures. “Germans and Irish are again invading the sacred lutefisk domains,” wrote one Norwegian-American editor in 1941, “and appropriating the usual disproportionate share of the traditional Christmas delicacy.” But the ladies of the Norwegian churches are glad to have the strangers come, for the receipts from the suppers go to pay the church debts. It is not uncommon for as many as two thousand people to attend a single supper, and a crowd of five hundred has come to be considered almost trifling.

These church suppers, so eagerly awaited, so widely attended, are a comparatively recent innovation. But though the custom of the public
lutefisk
supper is only about fifteen years old,
lutefisk
itself has always been, and still is, a winter delicacy in the Scandinavian home. It is a “company” dish and a Christmas dish; in many a Norwegian home it takes the place of the Christmas turkey.

Its preparation is not complicated, but it takes many days—so many days that it must be confined to cold weather, when the fish will not spoil. The codfish arrives already dried. Formerly it was imported from Norway, where it was sun-dried, but now it is gotten from Iceland, where it is electrically dried. The dry codfish is cooked in soft water for about a week (or for a longer period if the water is hard), and the water is changed each night and morning. Then the fish is removed and placed in a solution of lye and water (a gallon of soft water to two tablespoons full of lye), where it is cooked for another week. It is then removed from the lye solution, washed, and soaked in clean water for two days and nights. Frequently a tablespoonful of slaked lime is added for bleaching. At the end of this long period of being cooked and resoaked the fish is ready for use. The cooking is the simplest part. The fish is dropped into salted boiling water, where it is cooked for from fifteen to twenty minutes. It is served with generous sprinklings of salt, pepper, and hot melted butter. Norwegians prefer the butter sauce, Swedes a white sauce.

Of course, when the church suppers are given, great quantities of fish must be prepared in advance, and to simplify the process barrels and tubs of fish already in the lye solution are imported from Minneapolis. Consequently, the work of the women of the church consists largely of giving the
lutefisk
its last cooking, boiling, preparing the trimmings, and serving the supper. The first supper starts at noon and ends about 2:30 in the afternoon. Then, after a period of recovery, when the dishes are washed, the tablecloths changed, and the church aired, the big supper commences; usually it continues from about 4:50 in the afternoon until after 8 at night. It is a gala affair. Pink-cheeked people have driven through the crisp air, often many cold miles, full of a hunger that comes from a self-imposed and epicurean asceticism. All day they have been preparing to gorge themselves, to eat as they eat only at
lutefisk
suppers. To appear with a small appetite is the grossest kind of
faux pas
; and to fail to stuff oneself to bursting is bad-mannered.

From noon to midnight the heavy odor of codfish hangs on the air outside the church; and from about 5:30 to 7:30 the crowds begin making their way through the damp pungency, up the church steps, to the door. At the door tickets are sold, and each ticket has a number on it indicating the order of the guest’s appearance. The hungry guest must wait his turn; he must wait until there is space at a table in the crowded church basement; he must wait until he hears his number called out. And so he sits, sometimes for as long as two hours, in one of the pews of the steamy, fish-stuffy church. And yet he doesn’t mind waiting very much; it is much like waiting to see the President or the Duke of Windsor. Half his fun is in the waiting, the anticipation, the consciousness of a growing hunger that he knows will be fully and deliciously assuaged.

Among those who wait there is a feeling of good fellowship. Sturdy Scandinavian farmers, businessmen, politicos, editors, housewives, children, and students of what America eats wait happily together for the basement tables to be cleared of the earlier eaters, for their own numbers to be called. And they joke about waiting, about hunger, about anticipation, and about their girths before and after. If a newcomer is present, a tyro in the special gastronomies of
lutefisk
, they will tell him, with an air of complacent knowledge, “You won’t like it. Nobody likes
lutefisk
at first. You have to learn to like it. Better take meat balls.” For Swedish meat balls are served to the uninitiated who have yet to grow to a liking of strong fish.

The church basement is filled with long tables, and as soon as people leave them the ladies of the church set new places. Great bowls of the pearl-colored fish are kept standing on the tables, and the diners help themselves. The ladies who serve are very eager to see that the fish does not get cold, that the bowls are refilled over and over again from the great kettles in the church kitchen, where new fish is continually being boiled. Pitchers of melted butter are emptied lavishly on the fish and replenished time and again.

There are certain inevitable accompaniments of
lutefisk
at the church supper. Boiled or steamed potatoes are served with it, a plain counterpoint to the fancier delicacy. Pickles are served, “to take the course off of all the butter you eat,” as one church hostess said. A cabbage salad, usually cole slaw, is always served, and bright dishes full of red lingon-berry sauce pass up and down the tables. But the real Norwegian delicacy that accompanies
lutefisk
is
lefsa
, great piles of folded
lefsa
, looking like thin tannish paper napkins, heaped along the table in ever-diminishing and ever-replenished stacks. Before the
lefsa
is served, each crisp disk has been double-folded into a kind of triangle, thin and pliant.
Lefsa
is eaten in several ways: sometimes it is buttered, filled with white or brown sugar, and rolled cylinder-wise; sometimes it is buttered, stuffed with
lutefisk
, and rolled. At the
lutefisk
suppers cylinder after cylinder of
lefsa
is consumed, washed down by great quantities of coffee. If any
lefsa
remains, it is sold to those who wish to take it home with them.

The women of the church prepare the
lefsa
themselves, and there is great rivalry among the expert
lefsa
-makers, who vary the common recipe with a discrimination that comes from long experience. The following is a recipe from an excellent Norwegian cook: peel and boil enough potatoes to make two quarts then put through a ricer; add one tablespoon of lard or butter and a half a tablespoon of salt; add about three tablespoons of cream or milk (or simply use the liquid in the potatoes); add enough flour to make a dough of the right consistency for rolling, using one cupful of dough for each
lefsa
; roll the dough very thin with a grooved rolling pin; bake on both sides on the top of a wood range or on a cast-iron or steel top made for a gas stove; lay out the
lefsa
to cool; fold into triangular shapes; wrap in wax paper; and keep in a cool place.

When great quantities of
lutefisk
, boiled potatoes, and
lefsa
have been consumed, the
lutefisk
-supper habitué sits back, waits for ten or fifteen minutes, and then starts all over again. But at last, when he has been exhausted for a second or third time, he eats a piece of cake, has a last cup of coffee, and departs, to leave his seat to a new number that will be called upstairs. He drives home happily expansive both in body and soul. At breakfast the next morning he unfolds his newspaper, glances quickly at the war news, and then scans the minor columns for an announcement of the next
lutefisk
supper.

Add enough boiling water to the flour, corn meal and shortening to make a stiff dough, stirring constantly. Cool. Take portions the size of an egg and roll very thin into round sheets on a corn meal sprinkled canvas. Bake on top of stove, turning for even browning. Bake on both sides, using a stick to turn over.