Borscht, Baptism, and The Black Jag - Helen’s Mennonite Kitchen

From the N.W.T. I was headed Southeast to Swift Current Saskatchewan hoping to uncover some of the magic of the Mennonite kitchen. What I found was more like a scene from Back To The Future, a story about a lucky Jaguar, and something I never knew I had been missing, a meal between lunch & dinner.

    Originating around the Netherlands and Switzerland in the 1500s, Mennonites evolved as a religious group of agrarians until the sixteenth century when conflicts with other established religions had them fleeing to protect their way of life. Beliefs like adult baptism, refusing to fight in wars, and not seeing the church and the state as one, did not sit well with other mainstream religious beliefs at the time.

In areas like Russia, peace was short-lived, and by the late 1800s, they were once again looking for a new home to maintain their way of life. With an open invitation from Canada to settle in the prairies and farm the land, thousands of Mennonites settled in Manitoba and Saskatchewan. Existing villages like those around Swift Current blossomed until modern life and government ideals began again in the early 1900s. During this time Canada began to pressure Mennonites to close their schools and enroll their children in traditional Canadian schools where they would be assimilated to traditional British beliefs and language. Similar to the previous emigrations, some groups moved to rural Mexico hoping to hold onto their freedom and beliefs. Today the Mennonite way of life in southern Saskatchewan is mostly held together by historical centers, a collection of antique homesteads, and my reason for coming, traditional recipes.   

Replying to a post I had made “Looking For Mennonites”, my friend Jen (I hadn’t seen in years, or maybe that’s decades at this stage of my life), cautiously reached out and asked why I was looking for Mennonites? After eight hundred years of fleeing to protect their way of life, my headline likely looked a little suspicious. I assured her I was only looking for recipes and before I knew it, I was headed to meet her family in Swift Current.    

Riding in the rain that day, I had drummed up the image in my mind of arriving at a farmstead and being greeted by a man in a flat-brimmed straw hat milking a cow and a lady with a haube covering her head; putting down her basket of garden vegetables and tying up her horse to come and greet me. Oh brother Mr Marshall, get with the times!

Indeed I did arrive to meet a lady with a love for garden vegetables, but instead of a pony out front, she had a supercharged Jaguar XF! We’ll get to how she ended up with the keys to the Jag after we get to the food.


Helen Fehr greeted me at the front door wearing a pair of rimmed glasses, a head of busy light-blonde hair, and the full cheeks of someone who’s spent a lifetime smiling. She could easily pass for your favorite kindergarten teacher. Lucky for me, she enjoys adults who still think they are in kindergarten.  

Mennonites are known for their friendly open-door policy and as I stepped inside wet from the rain, I was greeted with another aspect of the culture I was soon going to love. The mid-morning faspa! Faspa is typically served in the mid-afternoon and was meant to be the hold-over meal for hardworking farmers to keep them going until supper. This light lunch typically includes zwieback, a crisp, rusk-style sweet bread, or roll kuchen, a sweet fried bread often dipped in Rogers corn syrup. As well as meats, cheeses, jams or jellies, cakes or sweets, and is served along with tea and coffee. Today, Helen insisted the tea be served in these adorable tea cups with floral designs atop gold-rimmed plates.

Faspa was not exclusively for the afternoon Helen explained. She said that her uncle would often slide a little faspa into the morning, bring it back out in the mid-afternoon and occasionally this bounty of snacks might appear on the table again before bed. To offset this carbohydrate crisis, I would have needed to literally plow the field by hand.

While I started to stuff my face with faspa, Helen entertained me with stories about her upbringing. Helen grew up in the local Mennonite community, first learning to read and write Plautdietsch (a Mennonite dialect of Low German), with the Bible as her reference guide. Growing up in the 70s with three brothers, it was assumed that girls would marry early, conform to the role of housewife, and not pursue an education after high school. Turns out Helen was a bit of a rebel, and I could see we were going to get along quite well.

    Applying for university after high school she completed her studies and became the first female of her generation in the family to have a  university degree. Helen then applied for a job as a nursing practitioner in northern Canada. Soon realizing that moving somewhere colder for work wasn’t the dream job she was looking for, she decided to utilize her German language skills and applied for a stewardess job with Air Canada. This was in the 70’s and she had to drive to Calgary for an interview at a hotel. As part of the interviewing process, they first weighed and measured her, then confirmed that she was single…she was getting married soon, but that little detail didn’t need to be explained now. I was caught somewhere between laughing and cringing while she explained the details of her job interview. In the end, she met all the requirements for Air Canadas' ‘ideal’ stewardess and was offered a job on the Toronto to Germany route. 

 Shifting back to her youth, Helen said growing up, Mennonite homes in the area often had six or more children, and all the kids were given jobs to do. At a young age Helens' garden duties included long hours shelling peas and digging potatoes and you could tell that the traditional foods made from the harvest still held a place in her heart. She then offered to show me how to make a traditional Mennonite dish made with ingredients from her own garden, Summer Borscht, known traditionally as Zumma Borscht..

    A hearty soup-like dish, this Borscht is made with Sorrel Leaf, a sour and pungent herb that looks a lot like spinach that was growing behind the house. Helen grabbed a jar of Sorrel Leaf paste from the fridge, made from Sorrel leaves, vinegar, salt, onion tops, and dill. 

For today's recipe about a ½ cup of the paste was put into a spice infuser and placed in a large pot that was filled half full of water. 

Next we added around eight six-inch sausages and one eight-inch Mennonite farmer sausage cut into spoon-sized chunks. This was set to simmer on the stove for an hour or so while we zipped down to the Mennonite run Mexican store. Upon return we added around 12 medium-sized potatoes (peeled and cubed), then one medium diced white onion. Helen then topped up the pot with hot water until everything was covered. 

Like clockwork, in the final simmering moments, in walked the family. Helen quickly added in 2 cups of whipping cream, 1 cup of buttermilk, poured us a round of red wine, and left the Broschet to its final simmer. First in the door was Helen's daughter in-law Elaine followed by her son Lloyd, and a few moments later, husband Seymour. We all sat down to soak up the Borscht along with some hardy roll kuchen, a Mennonite bread made of milk, cream, eggs, butter, salt, and a touch of baking powder. It’s no surprise that all of these ingredients but one, would have come from a farmer's backyard. Over dinner, the family patiently answered my growing list of ridiculous questions:

    Me: Are Mennonites and Amish the same?
    Them: The Anabaptist religion loosely connects Mennonites, the Amish, and the 
            Hutterites. If you're trying to spot them on the road, the Amish don’t drive, the Hutterites 
            drive pick-ups, and these Mennonites drive Teslas!

    Me: Can anyone become a Mennonite or do you need to be born into the club?
    Them: It’s not exclusive. Get to know the culture, the people, the Bible, and get baptised.   
                  We’re not personally recruiting, but if you want to join we’re also not excluding. 

    Me: Do Mennonites resist certain technologies? 
    Them: We can’t speak on behalf of everyone, but technology is certainly more widely 
                  accepted than it may have been a decade or two ago. You likely won’t notice anything 
                 different inside this home than yours.

During my question-and-answer period, it quickly became evident that I was dining with genuine geniuses and after dinner, I was treated to a tour of Lloyds' techie test lab. Seymour and Lloyd share a city lot with a large shop. The roof is plastered with solar panels, the panels power the Teslas, a series of electric golf carts, and a 1985 Porsche 944 Turbo that Lloyd converted to all-electric, just to prove he could do it. His signature touch, the power charging cord coming up out of the fuel tank! 

While showing me around the shop, we stumbled into another project of theirs, a 1973 General Electric I-5 riding mower with cruise control. A machine way ahead of its time. When Lloyd kicked the mower into gear it quietly hummed like an oversized Roomba. The electric vibe of the room felt like Dr. Emmett Brown from Back To The Future was showing me around Elon Musk's hobby shop.
    
    The next day Seymour and Helen toured me around the countryside to explore old villages, the historical center and tried to give me a general idea of what life used to be like for Mennonites in southern Saskatchewan. It was interesting to see that Mennonites were the original work from home types, and all of the homes had the barn attached to the main house. This seemed like a clever way to keep fresh milk in stock before there were fridges.

 Though I wasn’t wholeheartedly picturing Helen meeting me on horseback, I was still surprised she was touring me around in a sleek, black, supercharged Jaguar XF. Like most of my discoveries, how she came to drive this car was far from what you might assume watching it stalk the streets at night.

    In early 2009, the Living Sky Casino was newly opened in Swift Current. The company was putting on various promotions and events to hype the place up in the hopes of finding as many participants as possible to deposit their paychecks into the casino's gaming machines. They mailed out ballots in the newspaper that you simply had to fill out and drop off at the casino for a FREE draw to win a new car. Helen entered the draw, with one ballot, giving it her signature “lucky fold” and proclaiming aloud “I’m going to win this”, while dropping it in the draw box. The day before the prize was to be awarded, a gentleman from the Casino called her to say they were making the draw the following morning on live TV and there was a very good chance she might win. The man suggested she take the morning off work and come down to the casino to see them draw the winner.  

She thought the company suggesting she should be there was a bit odd, but they probably wouldn’t tell her to come down unless they knew something she didn’t. The next day she walked in, they drew her name, and live on camera she won the Jag! When she went to register the car, the random license plate the teller pulled off the shelf had her initials and four digits of her phone number on it! While everyone else was putting their paychecks in the slots only to pull out pennies, Helen was strolling in and rolling out. Unbelievable! 
 
    The cars were a mix of luck and labor as the Porsche was transformed from gas to electric. The Tesla was a write off they had bought cheap and rebuilt, and the Jaguar was won in a free draw! Whether it’s the borscht, the Bible, or the beautiful jag, I find it’s best not to assume you know the whole or even part of the story until you’ve sat down for dinner and asked all the stupid questions yourself.

Recipe:
Summer (Zumma) Borscht Soup:
-Preserved Sorrel Leaf with vinegar, salt, onion tops, and dill. 
-½ cup sorrel leaf paste in a spice infuser.
-8 or so medium sausages. 
-1 medium Mennonite farmers' sausage. 
-10-12 Peeled and cube garden potatoes.
-4 cups buttermilk
​-1 cup whipping cream
-8qt Pot 
-Cut sausages into spoon-sized chunks and place in the pot along with the spice infuser full of sorrel leaf paste. Then cover with water and allow to simmer for 45 mins - 1 hour.

Next add in cubed potatoes, diced onion, buttermilk, and whipping cream, then allow it to simmer for 20-25 mins.
Optionally, serve with Roll Kuchen.


Roll Kuchen:
-1 Cup milk
-1 Cup cream
-3 Eggs
-4 TSP butter (egg sized amount) 
-Handful salt
-½ tsp baking powder

-1 cup of oil (to fry)
-Rogers corn syrup for dipping

Heat vegetable oil in a pan over a medium heat until it’s 350oF, or it spatters when you sprinkle water into it. 
While it’s heating, soften the butter and mix all other ingredients together in a bowl. Then roll the dough out and cut into rectangle strips about ½ - ¾” thick depending on how crispy you want your bread. Once the oil is hot, lay in the strips and fry on both sides until golden brown.