In this Book
- Homemade: Finnish Rye, Feed Sack Fashion, and Other Simple Ingredients from My Life in Food
- Book
- 2016
- Published by: University of Minnesota Press
Beatrice Ojakangas came by it naturally—the cooking but also the pluck and perseverance that she's served up with her renowned Scandinavian dishes over the years. In the wake of the Moose Lake fires and famine of 1918, Ojakangas tells us in this delightful memoir-cum-cookbook, her grandfather sent for a Finnish mail-order bride—and got one who’d trained as a chef.
Ojakangas’s stories, are, unsurprisingly, steeped in food lore: tales of cardamom and rye, baking salt cake at 5 on a wood-burning stove (she was the oldest of 10), growing up on venison, working for pizza roll king Jeno Paulucci, making egg rolls for Chun King, and sending off a Pillsbury Bake Off-winning recipe without ever making it. Even how she came to be known as Peaches. And from here, how those early roots flourished through hard work and dedication to a successful (but never easy) career in food writing and a much wider world, from working for pizza roll king Jeno Palucci to researching food traditions in Finland and appearing with Julia Childs and Martha Stewart. All without ever really leaving behind the lessons learned on the farm. As she says herself: “first you have to start with good ingredients and a good idea.”
Chockfull of recipes, anecdotes, and a warm humor that bring to vivid life the Finnish culture of Northern Minnesota as well as the wider culinary world, Homemade delivers the savory and the sweet in equal measures and casts a warm light on a rich slice of the country’s cooking heritage.
Table of Contents
- Acknowledgments
- pp. ix-x
- Prologue: Any Questions?
- pp. xi-xiv
- Part I
- First Names First
- pp. 15-17
- There Were Ten of Us
- pp. 25-30
- Being Finnish
- pp. 31-34
- Sunday Services at Uncle Frank’s
- pp. 35-36
- Summers on the Farm
- pp. 37-38
- Cows in Wintertime
- pp. 41-45
- Visits from Aunts and Uncles
- pp. 48-53
- My Twelfth Birthday
- pp. 54-55
- No Recipe Needed
- pp. 56-57
- Feed Sack Fashion
- pp. 58-60
- Christmas Trees
- pp. 64-67
- Some Stories Are Hard to Tell
- pp. 68-69
- Floodwood, My Hometown
- pp. 72-75
- Lincoln School in Floodwood
- pp. 76-79
- Anne Brown’s Beauty Parlor
- pp. 80-81
- Town Kids versus Country Kids
- pp. 82-83
- Seeds for a Bible
- pp. 84-85
- Heaven and How to Get There
- pp. 86-87
- Till the Cows Come Home
- pp. 90-91
- The End-of-Summer Prize
- pp. 92-96
- Back to the State Fair
- pp. 97-102
- Part II
- Becoming a Home Economist
- pp. 105-107
- A Turn in the Road
- pp. 108-110
- My First Taste of Gourmet Food
- pp. 111-114
- My “Toast in the Morning Man”
- pp. 115-118
- The Pillsbury Bake-Off
- pp. 119-123
- A Year in Finland
- pp. 124-128
- Stories from Finland
- pp. 129-133
- Sunset Magazine
- pp. 134-135
- A Marriage Encounter with Moussaka
- pp. 136-138
- A Food Writer and a Mom
- pp. 139-140
- Welcome Back to Duluth
- pp. 141-144
- Somebody’s House
- pp. 145-149
- Jeno and the Big Idea
- pp. 150-151
- Two Years at Vocational School
- pp. 152-154
- Nice Is Nice
- pp. 158-161
- The Seven-Course Morel Festival
- pp. 162-164
- In the Kitchen with Julia Child
- pp. 165-168
- On TV with Martha Stewart
- pp. 169-173
- Peachie, the Butter Spokesperson
- pp. 174-175
- Cookie Questions
- pp. 176-177
- The Great River Road
- pp. 178-180
- The Butter Churn and My Beloved Mom
- pp. 181-182
- Summing It Up
- pp. 196-198