Family, Food, History, Kids, Uncategorized

Pinkelwurst und Grunkohl

26 Comments

Our son phoned the other day to ask if I had a recipe for pinkelwurst.  Pinkel is a sausage especially popular in northwest Germany where my family comes from. It consists mainly of bacon, pork, beef suet, oats or barley, onions , and other spices.  It is eaten with kale, or grunkohl.  People in Germany take long winter walks called “Grunkohlfahrt” or Kale walks, and then return home to pinkel, kale, and schnapps.  I have never eaten it, nor do I think I will ever make it. I certainly don’t have a recipe for it.  I don’t care much for kale.  Son said it was ok, he found a recipe and translated it from the German. He has a friend who is a butcher, and they have plans for making it.  He then reminded me that I had the job of assembling the crib for their child, due in April, when I visit them over Christmas.

Daughter then texted me, asking if I could send her the blueberry coffee cake recipe. I found it and sent it. Then she asked me if I could make just one more kind of cookie to send her in the care package I had promised her, since she isn’t coming home for Christmas. They were chocolate mint cookies. I said I would if I could find the ingredients. I found them and made the cookies last night. All the care packages went out in Mondays’ UPS shipment.

My paternal grandmother always phoned my dad when she needed things fixed around her farm or house, even though my uncle lived a mile up the road from her.  Dad always went to help her, even though she always bragged about how well his brother was doing, and never had anything good to say about my dad.  Grandma never forgave Dad for his untimely conception before she and Grandpa were married.  In her mind,  Dad could never do anything as well as his brother, but she depended on him all the same.

I find it interesting how family members depend on one another. We really do need each other, but oh, the stress of it sometimes.  I worry that my children are far too dependent on me.  Pinkelwurst?  Really? Why assume I know all there is to know?  What will you do when I don’t make cookies anymore?  Why did Grandma criticize yet demand?  Oh, these families!

What does (or did)  your family depend on you for?

What do (or did) you depend on your family for?

 

 

26 thoughts on “Pinkelwurst und Grunkohl”

  1. hey renee
    you and i will both be first time grandparents in april

    congrats to you

    looking forward to it

    my daughter wanted to know how many days a week we would take it because her mom can only do 3 days and day care is expensive

    we told her no

    she worked out a work from home scenario with the employer
    wow what the workplace allows these days
    they suggested to get she starts from home right aftercare new year to get a couple months under her belt before the baby arrives and upheaval occurs,
    family depends on me for fixing stuff and paying the bills
    i am the cook for fancy stuff but my wife gets called on for comfort food like mac and cheese or grilled cheese with individually wrapped cheese slices ( we call that s*** cheese always have) and tomato soup
    hey do you want a s*** cheese sandwich?
    yes with mayo please

    the fix it stuff is mine : cars appliances furnature(got a chair to do before christmas dinner)
    holes in the wall
    finding a guy to make promo buttons for school club

    i tried to teach them as they went but with mixed success
    one kid changes his own oil none do brakes
    fixing stuff is so easy with youtube
    if you want to know how just look it up

    tell you daughter renee it’s time to buy a cookie sheet and a wooden spoon and get started making cookies in the great northwest

    i like to go for walks after dinner not before
    i have a different need for kale farts than you do i guess

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  2. There are always such really interesting posts on here! Fish! Food! Music! Random facts!

    My son is pretty independent yet. And they’re still in an apartment. Once they move to a house I expect to be able to help more.

    For my immediate family, my brother and I deal with moms computer issues. I help with her banking. My sister and one sister in law, deal with the medical issues.
    Mom has some vision issues so has one of those ‘talking watches’. I’m the only one that can change the time on it.
    And mom says I’m like my Dad in that I can fix anything. That’s pretty high praise and I think my Dad was better than me at that. But it’s nice I’m the one she calls to change a watch battery or fix the clock that doesn’t chime. it’s a lot of pressure to try to live up to my Dad. 🙂

    And Mom is the one that knows how to make the cheesecake I like. And Molasses cookies for a BIL. And she taught several of us how to sew. She doesn’t do as much of that now with her vision issues.

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  3. I learned early on that if Idepended on my family for anything, i could expect to have no say in how whatever it was was carried out, so I became very independent very quickly.

    I’m also considered to be incompetent by my family and they have adjusted their expectations accordingly.

    The s&h does what I ask, and has shocked me a couple times by taking out trash without being asked. He expects that I manage things and get the odd bit of baking done when I can.

    But wow, Renee, I did not realize we were cousins of some sort. Your dad’s experience with his mother is exactly what my grandfather experienced with his mother (and as I found out late in his life, for possibly the same reason).

    I’m ok with kale if it is in something, but I do love rotkohl, which is made with red cabbage.

    Slice the cabbage as for kraut, put it in a small roaster with some cider vinegar, caraway, garlic, salt, brown sugar, plunk some good brats/sausage on top, stick in the oven at 350F until the sausages are done and the cabbage is tender.

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      1. I imagine so, maybe less. Learned this from a fine old saint at church years ago. I daresay it would also be just fine all day on low in the crockpot. I haven’t tried that because when the meal itself is that simple, I can usually do something about dessert as well (and it’s nice to have the oven on at the time of year when this is seasonal food).

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      1. I think it would make the eggs taste funny anyway.
        My egg guy at the farmer’s market also grows tomatoes, and the leftovers go to the chickens, those yolks are ORANGE.

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  4. When I returned to the Midwest after Disastrous Marriage, I depended on folks for lodging while I “regrouped” for a few months. They let me create a basement apartment, complete with fireplace. They were so happy to have one child back in the Midwest, they also provided me with a bicycle and some cross country skis once I had moved to Mpls.

    Then when my dad really started to decline, I would visit them monthly in their apartment. At one point he told me he felt bad for how much was going to fall on my shoulders after he was gone. I reminded him of how much they’d done for me, all that he had done to help HIS folks at the end, etc. I’ve moved my mom four times. She depends on me to come every couple of days and take her “out” – away from her floor – on the elevator somewhere. In warmer weather we always go outside. In this weather we travel to some other part of the building that has a fake fireplace, and have tea by the fire.

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  5. My answer is predictable. I used to help family members in various ways. As time goes along, I do less for them and they do more for me. Blanche DuBois always relied on the kindness of strangers. Increasingly I rely on the kindness of daughters.

    I’m still the family historian and raconteur. I struggle with shaky hands to be the family photographer. I’m not very good at that these days, but they indulge me because I’m so determined to stay on the safe side of the camera.

    I have other uses. My daughter often depends on the assistance of Siri. But Siri doesn’t have the recipe for Dad’s Spaghetti, and she won’t say much about Trump’s latest crimes against decency. I invented Dad’s Spaghetti and I cheerfully blow the whistle on POTUS 45. When requested to, I conduct internet research on expensive purchases. But mostly I make myself agreeable by keeping quiet. The advice of old men is something for which supply painfully exceeds demand, and I need not add to it.

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  6. Oh, my family doesn’t depend on me to do much. I, on the other hand, depend on them to cook my meals, do the grocery shopping, let me go shoot photos whenever I want regardless of their needs for babysitting or whatever, clean the bathrooms (and everything else), and clean up the messes I make in the kitchen when I’m in the mood for baking. After my surgery a few weeks ago, I depended on them to bring me drinking water and pain meds and meals on a tray. It worked out just grand.

    Excuse me while I choke on my own words.

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  7. I’ve been pretty independent since I was sixteen years old, and really flew the coop when I was eighteen and went to Basel. There were too many strings attached to depending on my parents, so I chose not to.

    After I returned from Basel, I rented a room from an old lady who lived in a huge old apartment in Copenhagen. I didn’t want to move back in with my parents. While I was living with Mrs. Kjær-Andersen, mom had another nervous breakdown and was hospitalized, and dad, working in a shipyard, stepped on a nail which went through his foot. He was laid up for weeks, and they didn’t have any income. One evening he came to where I lived and pleaded with me to move back home to help them financially. I was reluctant to give up my nice room in the center of town, but I could see that dad was very upset and needed help, so I did. A couple of months later I learned from my mother’s hairdresser that mom was telling everyone that I had moved back home because I couldn’t swing it financially on my own. That’s when I took the job in Moscow.

    When I immigrated to the US three years later, it pretty much cemented that I was on my own, although that was never expressed in any overt fashion.

    In 1979, when I purchase my house, I was 36 years old, and found myself $500.00 short of the sum needed for the down payment in order to qualify for a certain mortgage loan. I asked my parents if they could lend me the money for a few months, but they didn’t even consider it; they promptly said no. It was the last time I asked them for anything.

    I love kale, it may well be my favorite green. What’s wrong with you folks?

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      1. I borrowed it from a friend, and paid him back two months later. Back in 1979, banks weren’t crazy about lending money to single women (although of course they didn’t tell you that), so they scrutinized applications from women very closely. I could have easily qualified for a loan of $500.00 from some other bank, but of course, that would show up on my credit report, so I had to find a source that wouldn’t report it. My friend Leon trusted me and lent me the money without so much as an IOU. Bless him.

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  8. I depend on my sister to be the one to host the family gatherings. She and her husband have a nice great room connected to their kitchen, and it’s a much better space for entertaining. She’s a much better cook than I am too.

    I don’t have a lot of responsibility within the family. I kinda like it that way.

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  9. YA depends on me a lot but probably doesn’t think so. One of the appetizers I made on Sunday ran out fast and YA bugged me for 48 hours to make more. And, of course I did! Nonny says I’m a pushover.

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    1. i feel bad if i scared him off
      i was so happy to see him back then the second day he said “i got nothin” on the topic of the day
      i wrote back “ we wait all this time and you come back with that?” and we haven’t heard from him since
      i hope we hear from you again clyde
      if it’s painful to type give really bad dictation
      we can have fun figuring it out

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