A Bowl Full of Memories

Good morning, Folks!

I realized last night, much to my chagrin, that it has been a full seven months since I last posted. Good grief! Life is BIG, people!

Facebook has a small part to play, I suppose, but I'm back with a subject that is so worthy of telling the world that I just had to break my unintentional blog silence...

IT'S STRAWBERRY SEASON IN OREGON!!!

Wondrous and amazing as that fact is all on its own, two other things related to this subject fill me with rapturous glee: 1) this year's crop of our own homegrown strawberries is very nearly perfect... and 2) they are so bountiful, I have enough to make STRAWBERRY DUMPLINGS!!!

These luscious, seasonal gems from my childhood are so far from the usual strawberry fare that they cause a very specific chain reaction of sensations when I eat them... the sum of which is, I am rendered helpless to look in any direction but into the bowl of creamy, chewy, not-too-sweet goodness and bob around in the memory-laden cream... eight years old, hearing my Grannee call from the kitchen, "Who's ready for another one?!"

All arms shoot up in the air... even those with bowls still half full of pink, milky loveliness.

My Grannee got the recipe from my Grandad's mother who was a German raised in Russia but had lived in the states long enough to have English-speaking children. This gave rise to lots of interesting pronunciations of foods that are neither truly German nor Russian making it nearly impossible to actually look up a recipe. I have played with both languages a little bit and have decided that the name Great Grandma called them, "Strobensclays," (spelled phonetically) is most likely a mixture of English and German because the Russian translation of Strawberry Dumpling doesn't sound anything like the word she used and is definitely not appetizing. The German word is "Erdbeerekloss," which if you try to smash "strawberry" into the front of it, and say it quickly to a mob of ravenous American kids in a heavy Russian/German accent, could come out sounding like "Strobensclass..." That's what I'm thinking, anyway. Maybe it was her own secret language. Who knows?

So, all this verbosity on my family history is to say that last night I made Strawberry Dumplings for the first time in years, for the first time ever with homegrown berries, for the first time ever for my kids... so that was a pretty big deal for me.

Anna picked, trimmed and cut all the berries which was a HUGE help!


I don't have a written recipe... I just remember what I saw Grannee do and what they tasted like so I have had to cobble together my own imprecise recipe.

For the strawberry filling, I used about two pints of berries for a small batch. Just enough for dessert. When Grannee made them, these golden packets of love were most often consumed as the main evening meal and required five to six times these proportions.

So, to the berries I added about a third of a cup of sugar.

Traditionally, crackers or bread crumbs are crushed up and mixed with the berries. I'm guessing this is to make the berries go further and well, the saltiness tastes really good with the sweet berries. I didn't have enough crackers OR breadcrumbs so I just made sourdough toast and buttered it, let it cool, cut it up into small-ish chunks and set it aside.

For the dough I used a standard Betty Crocker Egg Noodle recipe:

2 cups flour
3 egg yolks
1 egg
2 tsp. salt
1/4 to 1/2 cup water

(Here is where I use a food processor)
Measure flour into bowl, add egg yolks, whole egg and salt. Process until egg mixes thoroughly into the flour. Add water one tablespoon at a time mixing thoroughly after each addition but mix only until the dough forms a ball.

Kneed a couple of turns by hand just to bring it together, check the consistency and to feel like you actually participated in making the dough, then let it rest under a dish towel for about 10 minutes.

Roll dough into a rectangle about 1/8" thick (you don't want it too thin or it will pop when you boil it) and cut into squares.


Back to the strawberries...
Mix crackers/crumbs/toast into the strawberries and place a spoonful in the center of each square of noodle dough.

Pinch the tips of squares together and seal up the edges to make little packets. Try to keep the edges as clean as you can to avoid a bad seal.


Drop the finished packets into boiling water.

Fish them out when they start to float. This takes five minutes or less.



Drain and place cooked dumpling in a bowl and drizzle with heavy cream and melted butter.
Great Grandma used to top with buttered croutons also, but I don't remember Grannee doing it very often and I prefer to put more emphasis on the berries.

Top with fresh berries or uncooked filling for color and a layer of brightness in flavor.

A very important note to make here is that, personally, Grannee thought it was a SIN to boil a fresh Oregon strawberry and while she would make dumplings for everyone else, when it came her turn to eat (after everyone else had been fed, of course) she would boil the noodle dough scraps and top them with the uncooked berry mixture... thus preserving the color and texture of the fresh berries and averting strawberry abuse.


I swear to you, these little beauties are worth every ounce of effort they take and I have never met a soul who didn't say "OH, WOW!" upon their first bite.

As for me and mine... strawberry season just isn't long enough!

Enjoy 'em while they're here, Y'all!!

A Book of Love

When my Granddad passed away 12 years ago, Grannee was more than devastated.

These two were the world's greatest lovers and had been honeymooning for more than 64 years. Suddenly, he was gone. Literally, her OTHER HALF was ripped from her and she felt helpless, hopeless and beyond alone.

She immediately moved in with my mom and step-dad where she was extremely well cared for, but nothing, of course, could take the place of her Dear George. Who could even try?

She even refused to sleep in a full sized bed because it felt too big without him spooned up behind her.

Now, Grannee and I have always had a very special and unique relationship that I cherish to this day. I am her namesake. Her "Dolly," as she used to call me. Gran and I related on a level that I can't explain and won't dare to try. When she lost her Love, all I wanted was to make the pain and loneliness stop, but realistically, who could? All I could do was remind her how much I loved her and all she was to me. She was such a profound influence on my life but I couldn't always be there at her side to remind her. I had a life of my own to attend to and knew that as time passed, it would get harder and harder for her to remember all the things I told her in our precious stolen moments together so... I decided to write her a book. A book of love that she could turn to whenever she needed to remember.

Grannee passed away on April 21st of 2006; just two weeks shy of the 10 year anniversary of when Granddad left us. Ten years without the love of her life she had spent over half a century doing life with. Wow. I can't even begin to imagine how hard that was for her.

At her memorial service, the minister read passages from my book as examples of the effect she had on me and every other person with whom she ever came in contact. (Not to mention what being around them as a couple would do to people! They were absolutely amazing... anyway) He approached me after the service and said I should publish the book. That it would mean a lot to people... at the very least, for my family.

It struck me as rather funny since it is such an intensely personal document. Who else would care about my relationship with Gran?

Well, I never got it "published" to print, but after nearly two years of sitting on it, I decided that maybe here was a good place to put it out to the world.

It's long. 37 pages even, so be forewarned. If you choose to tackle this undertaking, you will be peering into some of the most intimate thoughts and feelings I have shared with one of the single most important people to my very existence. But it is the product of so much unconditional love and encouragement that it doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of all she was to and did for me and who I have become... and continue to become.

So, with that said, I present for your perusal, "A Book Of Love."

Click on each image to see it at full, actually readable, size.

Walking In Your Footsteps...

...and trying not to trip in your very big shoes.

I would never dream of flattering myself by believing I could ever take my Grandmother's place in this world since her departure from it. However, since she left us about a year and a half ago, there are certain things that I feel compelled to do, have strong feelings about or have experienced that have the very distinctive "Esther Rueck" brand upon them. I sense her presence in a very tangible way when I do these things. It feels very right and like a natural progression for me to attempt to emulate her in their practice. As though the "torch has been passed." (This feeling is not diminished by the fact that I am her namesake, Esther being my middle name.)

Aside from when I'm brushing my teeth, a time when I am most aware of her is when I bake bread. Gran and I had sooo very many conversations about baking, but we never really got to do it together when I was old enough to actually know a little about what I was doing. We did lots of theorizing and comparing notes verbally though. So now since her departure, it doesn't matter what kind of bread I'm making, she's there with me.

That being said, you might imagine how much it meant to me when, upon pulling the new coffee maker my folks gave us from its box, I noticed an old yellow recipe card laying face down in the bottom of it. Since the box had never been opened, for a split second I thought Grannee had been up to her tricks again and miraculously dropped it in there for me to find... Upon an excited call to my mom, however, I learned that she had been startled to discover Grannee's Rye Bread recipe in an old canister she was about to give away... *gasp!* that was close! ... and had wedged it under the lid of the box as a surprise.

She may as well have sent me a Portkey* to my Grannee's kitchen. I was giddy with excitement, but wanted to wait until I could give my full attention and focused intention on making this special, magical recipe for which my Grandmother was renowned. It was like no other bread you could get anywhere. Grandad always said it was better than cake... and he was right.

This bread was something much more than the sum of its ingredients. For her, it was a meditation. A profound demonstration of love for her family and guests... and you could taste it. We begged for this bread. No one ever felt the least bit gypped if they got it for Christmas in stead of some *thing*.

Everything that left her hands was completely imbued with love and intention. To both of my Grandparents, if anything was worth doing it was worth doing well and she had refined this basic human nourishment and item of sacrament to an art form... and the rest of us have never been able to duplicate it to her level of mastery.

It was her own special kind of magic.

This time, when I set out to make my attempt at Her Rye Bread, it wasn't with a recipe dictated over the phone and written in distracted haste, but with her very own card. Written in her own elegant hand. There are no instructions, just measurements of ingredients, temperature and cooking time. This card served only to jog her memory of the details of a process she could do in her sleep... and often did once she became too frail to wrangle heavy, awkward dough.

When she wrote this recipe down, her penmanship was still pristine, not ravaged by age and weariness. She was vibrant and brimming with passion, generosity and grace. I could feel her vivacity resonate as I carefully held this precious artifact as I read it, intense thoughts of her washing over me as I assembled the ingredients. I felt her standing right next to me and she was as excited as I was that we were *finally* getting to bake together. I couldn't stop myself from smiling and even let a little laugh escape my lips at how much fun we were having, the two of us.

As I prepared the dough, I could hear in my head little comments she had made to me over the years about how the dough should look or the fact that it's pretty sticky. I made only the tiniest adjustments based on my particular circumstances. Alterations with which I felt she would agree. Though there is no way I would ever make notations on the recipe card. I'll keep those notes in my head for now.

I was so excited to give my little family a taste of Grannee's Rye Bread and every aspect of what that means. Yes, it's amazing in flavor and texture, very nutritious and its aroma is what I think Heaven must smell like, but mostly what I want them to taste is my intention, my meditation of love and the same blessing that Grannee put into everything she fed us.

The bread I made doesn't taste *exactly* like Grannee's but it's very, very close. I have only my hands, pans and slightly different ingredients to work with so, I guess it's becoming My Rye Bread now... but I will always bake it (and enjoy that first, warm heal) with Grannee.



* For you non-Harry Potter readers: a Portkey is an enchanted object, often a piece of supposedly worthless junk, which when touched will transport a person to a preprogrammed location.

A Jar Full of Memories

It's the little things. Simple, unassuming objects of everyday life that hold potent powers of recollection.

These make the best gifts. Give me pause. Like snippets of life handed over to be locked in timeless suspension to be visited and cherished. The smells, the sounds, the feelings. Bits of conversations and lessons learned. Warm moments shared that seemed so ordinary at the time, but gain emotional momentum until they are gilt with a sheen of preciousness and longing.

It is in these ordinary objects that I feel my Grandmother. I know I'm not the only one.

Grannee was the kind of woman that made an impression on everyone she met.


She was the embodiment of elegance. The definition of grace. Manners personified.

And just as comfortable milking a cow or working farm machinery as she was hostessing a dinner party for 30 or working in an office downtown or tickling a grandchild.


I could go on. I'm sure you can tell.

Suffice to say, Gran had so much spirit and love in her that, now that she's gone, it makes throwing away anything... even breath mints I found in one of her purses, agonizing and heart-wrenching. About the only things it didn't nearly kill me to pitch were her bank statements from 1984.

Obviously, my mom has similar feelings, but has been working on becoming more callous about such things out of sheer practicality. You can't keep every tube of rancid, coral pink lip stick or butter dish. There just isn't room and they're just THINGS, right?

So, when she read my post about toothpaste, where I mention how Gran kept her salt and soda in an old cold cream jar her heart fell to her stomach. "If I had only known! I think I remember throwing it away thinking, 'well, I guess she won't be needing this anymore.' Now I wish I had it to give you!"

We both sat there trying not to wallow in disappointment. "It never fails..." and all that. Still, I applauded her at letting go of at least ONE thing and reassured her she could never have known that little jar held such vivid memories for me. I didn't really know it myself until I wrote the post.

But, as REMAINS my Grannee's way, she finds the means to get things done, even from the other side. She's an ambitious one. And generous. And kind. And just as sentimental as her girls.

On Sunday, as my mom continued on her never-ending task of sorting though bags and boxes in her garage... guess what magically appeared among the flotsam...


And on Monday, when I walked into my bathroom, it was sitting on the counter.

I shrieked in disbelief. And now, as I write this, my face is wet with tears, thinking of her and how much this single little object brings her close to me again. I feel her arms around me almost tangibly. I miss her so much, but at the moment, I feel like we've had a visit.

This little jar that is older than I am, that she saved because she thought it was pretty. That she held in her hands twice a day in the most mundane of daily rituals, is now a vessel for my tooth powder and my memories. A place for us to meet as I stare at myself in the mirror and wait for my toothbrush to stop buzzing... and remember her as I polish my smile.

I know she likes that. She is very big on good teeth and a bright smile.

Thanks Grannee... and mom... for the treasure.