On Bread, Wasted Food and “Stick in the Backs”
My Dad’s most frequent and favorite admonition to all was: “Waste not, want not!” Born in the first decade of the twentieth century and with his formative years spent during one of the worst economic calamities of our nation’s history he was always a conservator in its wider sense and an inveterate opponent of waste in any form. He was acutely aware of the potential for scarcity of goods, food, and the essentials of life, and perhaps overly fearful of economic stress and how difficult it was to extricate one-self from such circumstances.
But today many of these concepts are totally absent from the nation’s consciousness. My daughters and son’s families are definitely “throw away” minded. And food is the first on their list. No leftovers get moldy in their refrigerators.
It is often claimed that the USA, the most profligate nation, wastes nearly 40% of its food supply, or about 90 +/-billion pounds of edibles. Considering that an average meal weighs about 0.6 lbs, we can calculate that from our food waste alone we could salvage (90 billion/0.6 lbs = 150 billion) 150 billion meals. Those meals could feed the entire 9 billion world population with16 free meals, or 3 meals per day for more than 5 days! But for those concerned with climate warming all this wasted food has consumed enormous amounts of energy to grow, to transport it, to refrigerate it, to cook it, and to dispose of it as waste. Food waste contaminates our landfills. It wastes fossil fuels used in agriculture and cooking.
Among the 90 billion pounds of US food waste there is about 800 million loaves of bread. Bread is a major component of our food supply and as well has a very short shelf life, becoming stale, hard or contaminated with mold in very short order. As a result bread is the most commonly wasted food item in the nation.
But not so in times gone by…bread like most other foods was recycled in days when food was more expensive!
My paternal grandmother, Maria (1870-1960) was (in my boyhood) a tiny, wiry 5 foot 1in white- haired mother of six (five boys) who had her hands full managing a big home, raising a family and serving the needs and feeding and caring for my hardworking grandpa and five demanding boys (and later men), mostly, all on her own—with a little help from her young daughter.
The big sunny kitchen and pantry were Ma’s center of operations and command center. Near-by a flight of wood stairs led to a root cellar and meat locker, just below the kitchen floor in the old house’s rock-bound basement. The cellar-cooled, meat-locker held her main source of flavoring, frying- fat, shortening, breakfast meat and “umami” source, as well as the male member’s most favored food—in the form of a muslin covered side of bacon. This main food source was hung by a stout hemp cord to an adze-scarred overhead rafter by a rusty wrought iron eye-hook.
A clutch of big brown feather-marked eggs nestled on the floor in a straw filled wicker basket below the smoke scented side of bacon. In a corner of the rock foundation, a wood-lined ice box held a gallon jug of fresh milk, a red ceramic pot of butter and a jug of stiff layered bacon drippings. These rested on top of a layer of damp newspapers which covered a dripping and partly-melted block of ice
Tucked under the kitchen stairway were several stout, canvas covered wood boxes which served as Ma’s root cellar. Lifting the canvas exposed to view a mix of mud encrusted white boiling potatoes and bumpy-skinned baking Katahdins. In another box were carrots, onions, red and green cabbage, and poking out above the rim were a few stems of Brussel sprouts,. A wicker basket of apples and other fruits were stored here too.
Upstairs in the kitchen a wide closet was devoted to dry storage. A fifty pound bag of flour, a bag of sugar, ten pounds of coffee beans, a jug of molasses, bags of dried Navy beans, rice, and “money beans” or lentils were all found here. Above these, a wood shelf held jars spices, such as coarse salt, black pepper, dried parsley, dried thyme, cinnamon, nutmeg, and a few other staples.
In summer the big garden behind the house provided green vegetables, such as spinach, collards, green beans, summer squash, winter squash, green onions, and beets and beet greens, as well as white and red cabbage, and a plot handy to the kitchen door grew fresh mint, thyme, etc. herbs,
Almost everything that Grandma cooked came from the cellar and garden. There were no near-by Gristedes, Stop and Shop, A&P or fast foods. No pizza delivery or Chinese food arrived here. Aside from a few canned or jarred vegetables, and condiments almost all food products made it to the kitchen in its own skin or wrapped in newspaper or brown paper. There was no aluminum, styrofoam or plastic packages. The local butcher provided fresh meats and sausages—arriving wrapped in heavy “butcher paper”—and only once a week. Fish was served each Friday and on other Christian fast days. The local fishmonger provided whole fresh fish. Grandma, checked their gills for redness and their eyes had to be bulging, or they were sent right back. The varieties varied by season. Spring runs of flounder and later porgies would turn up in grandma’’s kitchen, then later in early summer perhaps a Bluefish or Stripped Bass might appear. In the dead of winter dried and salted fish might make up Friday’s fare, and then too Grandpa’s favorite, the pickled herring in a jug.
Mary’s big kitchen with white wood cabinetry and its flowery design oil-cloth covered table was a busy place, where bread was baked three times a week, breakfast cooked for eight featuring thick slabs of bacon, eggs fried in bacon drippings, soft and never crispy, toast, butter and a big jug of coffee.
Rich, dark, strong coffee was brewed, with a few handfuls of fresh-ground beans dropped into the big Blue Willow-ceramic jug followed by a kettle full of just “ready to boil” water from the house well. Urgent-need-coffee-drinkers had to wait a good ten minutes for the grounds to settle, and then must remember to never pour out the last cup which would offer only thick brown coffee sludge.
In this household nothing was wasted, and a whole fresh chicken or roast of beef or lamb had to serve more than one meal. Leftovers were made into something else—often better tasting and more desirable than the original offering.
One example of this use of leftovers was what grandma created with stale bread. Today some packaged breads rarely goes stale.Commercial loaves are packed in plastic bags or have so much preservatives included they often sit around for days with little change. But artisan bread , French and Italian crusty loaves and home baked bread are something different.
A day after baking many bread types may still be used, but by the second day most are too dry and hard to be edible. Today there is little use for stale bread, it is simply thrown away like the 800 loaves noted above.
But not so in grandma Mary’s kitchen. Stale bread was useful. It was the source of such good things as delicious bread pudding, useful bread crumbs, and combined with a few ingredients and Ma’s favorite flavoring ingredient—bacon cut into tiny cubes— it would make a favorite side dish known as German Bread Dumplings or Knödel (with an umlaut over the “o”) or as my Dad famously called them: “stick in the backs”. (More on bread pudding on another day).
One of these make overs were what my Dad always referred to as “stick in the backs” (or German Bread Dumplings or knödel ) which he often derided as hard to digest. His frequent nostalgic reference of them “covered with brown gravy” or recalling them served with other favorite foods, as a savory accompaniment to sauerbraten, or Hungarian goulash, or creamed chicken indicate he must have had made certain he had his fill of the tasty bread morsels.
His term “stick in the backs” was coined perhaps to tease his Ma, but I reckon he must have eaten a lot of knodel if indeed, as he claimed, they resulted in a feeling of unpleasant “abdominal fullness”. Thus my definite impression, was he secretly loved his Mom’s German Bread Dumplings or Knödel!
As well as one of his favorites this was also a classic example of how our much more frugal and wise ancestors found ways to save and conserve foods rather than being so ready to dump, dispose and waste what had been already produced with so much effort and energy. Perhaps some day we will need to revert to these old ways.
So I append here my Grandma’s “Deutsche Brot und Speckknödel “ (German Bread and Bacon Dumplings) recipe below:
Ingredients
1/2 cup chopped parsley
1 cup milk
3 eggs
1 cup chopped onion or chopped green onion tops
1/2 cup bread crumbs, or as needed
1/2 cup bacon of choice cut into cubes, or if thin sliced, cut and chopped fine
4 cups of stale white bread (stale French or Italian bread, or stale soft rolls work well)
Butter or vegetable oil for frying
Salt and pepper to taste
Directions:
Beat eggs, then add milk. Then beat again to mix egg and milk thoroughly.
Soak stale bread with milk/egg mixture. Set aside. Be sure bread is soaked throughout..leave no hard crusts.
In sauté pan melt knob of butter (or use tablespoon of oil) and sauté onion and bacon. Onion should be translucent. Set aside to cool.
Add onion-bacon, and parsley to soaked bread mixture.
Mix thoroughly, then add breadcrumbs to mixture to form a sticky dough that will form golf ball sized spheres that remain coherent.
Add more milk if too stiff, or more bread crumbs if too loose.
Dough must be sticky enough so that balls adhere and remain coherent.
Dough balls can be steamed or boiled at this point.
It is a good idea to steam or boil a test knodel. If knodel falls apart your dough was too loose and you must add more bread crumbs or flour to the mix. At this point you may also correct seasoning by adding pepper or salt to dough at this stage then form balls ans boil or steam rest of dough.
Knodel can be eaten as is, or best with a rich meat gravy, as an alternate to your pasta, rice or potato course.
Try .stick in the backs”!
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