Mennonite Foods And Folkways From South Russia

The Mennonites of Russia had a particular story and history, as well as a particular food tradition. A Russian Mennonite herself, Normal Jost Voth interviewed persons whose lives spanned from Chortitza in south Russia to Newton, Kansas, and from the Molotschna to Winnipeg, Manitoba. Their memories of orchards and gardens, Faspa and weddings, food preservation and wheat harvest fill this volume. In addition, there are more than 100 recipes (different from those in Volume I/, as well as typical menus and menus for special occasions. "Meticulously researched chronicle of the Russian Mennonite." -- Publishers Weekly

An abundant food tradition developed when Mennonites from eastern Europe settled in the Ukraine. These people, who had migrated extensively because of religious persecution and economic pressures, blended their flavorful cooking with their new neighbors' food. Here are 400 recipes with easy-to-follow instructions and stories that surround these foods' making and eating.

Never Come Back By: Karen Jensen Never Come Back is a gold mine of anthropological/sociological information about a very distinct social-religious group of people. The determination with which these Mennonites faced and overcame countless obstacles is a wonder and inspiration. -Col. Thomas Snodgrass, USAF (retired); history professor at the Air War College, USA Air Force Academy and adjunct history professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Arizona Follow Karen Jensen as she painstakingly uncovers her Mennonite roots in Prussia and Russia. It is an exciting story, not because it is a well-written novel, but because it is true! -Dr. William Varner, The Master’s University Karen Jensen grew up knowing she was living proof of her family’s miraculous survival. In Never Come Back, she shares her family’s extraordinary tale of deliverance and hope. In 1909, Aaron and Susanna Rempel were enjoying a peaceful life in Gnadenfeld, a Mennonite village in Russia. While wealthy, owning the first car the village had ever seen, the young family personified the Mennonite values of pacifism, hard work, and community. But World War I and Communist uprisings bankrupted the family, forcing them to Siberia. Despite being loyal citizens for a century, the Mennonites were at the mercy of the vicious Cheka secret police, the brutal Red Army, and savage bandits. Desperate to save his family, Aaron agreed to enlist in the Red Army in order to move his family back to Gnadenfeld. The family braved the deadly journey only to discover life in their village was just as brutal – neighbor betrayed neighbor and disease and famine were rampant. The Rempel family struggled to maintain their culture, but under the Bolshevik government, their lives were repeatedly threatened. In 1922, they began the long process of immigrating to America – a land of hope and freedom, but a journey that would be even more dangerous than what had come before. Rich with details of daily life as well as the horrors of war and Communism, Never Come Back is an intimate look at one family’s survival during the catastrophes of war and revolution.

Mennonites are often associated with food, both by outsiders and by Mennonites themselves. Eating in abundance, eating together, preserving food, and preparing so-called traditional foods are just some of the connections mentioned in cookbooks, food advertising, memoirs, and everyday food talk. Yet since Mennonites are found around the world – from Europe to Canada to Mexico, from Paraguay to India to the Democratic Republic of the Congo – what can it mean to eat like one? In Eating Like a Mennonite Marlene Epp finds that the answer depends on the eater: on their ancestral history, current home, gender, socio-economic position, family traditions, and personal tastes. Originating in central Europe in the sixteenth century, Mennonites migrated around the world even as their religious teachings historically emphasized their separateness from others. The idea of Mennonite food became a way of maintaining community identity, even as unfamiliar environments obliged Mennonites to borrow and learn from their neighbours. Looking at Mennonites past and present, Epp shows that foodstuffs (cuisine) and foodways (practices) depend on historical and cultural context. She explores how diets have evolved as a result of migration, settlement, and mission; how food and gender identities relate to both power and fear; how cookbooks and recipes are full of social meaning; how experiences and memories of food scarcity shape identity; and how food is an expression of religious beliefs – as a symbol, in ritual, and in acts of charity. From zwieback to tamales and from sauerkraut to spring rolls, Eating Like a Mennonite reveals food as a complex ingredient in ethnic, religious, and personal identities, with the ability to create both bonds and boundaries between people.

Based on findings from menus, cookbooks, government documents, advertisements, media sources, oral histories, memoirs, and archival collections, Edible Histories offers a veritable feast of original research on Canada's food history and its relationship to culture and politics. This exciting collection explores a wide variety of topics, including urban restaurant culture, ethnic cuisines, and the controversial history of margarine in Canada. It also covers a broad time-span, from early contact between European settlers and First Nations through the end of the twentieth century.

An indispensable resource for exploring food and faith, this two-volume set offers information on food-related religious beliefs, customs, and practices from around the world. Why do Catholics eat fish on Fridays? Why are there retirement homes for aged cows in India? What culture holds ceremonies to welcome the first salmon? More than five billion people worldwide claim a religious identity that shapes the way they think about themselves, how they act, and what they eat. Food, Feasts, and Faith: An Encyclopedia of Food Culture in World Religions explores how the food we eat every day often serves purposes other than to keep us healthy and stay alive: we eat to express our faith and to adhere to ethnic or cultural traditions that are part of who we are. This book provides readers with an understanding of the rich world of food and faith. It contains more than 200 alphabetically arranged entries that describe the beliefs and customs of well-established major world religions and sects as well as those of smaller faith communities and new religious movements. The entries cover topics such as religious food rules, religious festivals and symbolic foods, and vegetarianism and veganism, as well as general themes such as rites of passage, social justice, hospitality, and compassion. Each entry on religion explains what the religious dietary laws and guidelines are and how these were interpreted and put into practice historically and in modern settings. The coverage also includes important festivals and feast days as well as significant religious figures and organizations. Additionally, some 160 sidebars provide examples and more detailed information as well as fun facts.

Spanning more than two hundred years of history, from the eighteenth century to the twenty-first, Sisters or Strangers? explores the complex lives of immigrant, ethnic, and racialized women in Canada. Among the themes examined in this new edition are the intersection of race, crime, and justice, the creation of white settler societies, letters and oral histories, domestic labour, the body, political activism, food studies, gender and ethnic identity, and trauma, violence, and memory. The second edition of this influential essay collection expands its chronological and conceptual scope with fifteen new essays that reflect the latest cutting-edge research in Canadian women's history. Introductions to each thematic section include discussion questions and suggestions for further reading, making the book an even more valuable classroom resource than before.

With this collection of meditative, personal, memoir, and lyrical essays and narrative poetry, Connie T. Braun explores the multi-valences of silence within themes of loss, displacement, identity, heritage, and faith. Reflecting on her childhood in Canada, and her ancestral Mennonite homeplace, these pieces form a memoir about her maternal grandparents’ and her mother’s life in Poland, their experiences of war and displacement, and their eventual immigration and acculturation. In these pages, and in consecutive travels to Poland, the author invites the reader to accompany her as she traverses the territory of old and new worlds, war and peace, the landscape of dispossession, and the mass forced migrations of World War II within the ground of holocaust. Braun conveys through story that not only words, but silences, speak meaning. Private memory within the historical record reveals people caught up in catastrophe striving to survive with their humanity intact. These are stories crafted from silence and language, memory and obscurity, faith and doubt, chaos and hope, the past, and future possibility. Telling and listening to stories performs the acts of mourning and witness, and attests to the regenerative and transcendent qualities of narrative.