52 Ancestors in 52 weeks
Week 14 – April 1 -7, 2024
Favorite Recipe

As a child in the 1950s who descended from a predominantly English and German family, I can’t say that my mother ever made ethnic food for us. We didn’t have any ethnically diverse family recipes like the Irish, the Italians, Lithuanians, the Polish, Greek, Jewish, or other interestingly ethnic groups. The 1950s for my family was the decade of cooking with grocery

store canned goods, ground hamburger meat, pot roast, texturally gross round steak cooked in the broiler until it was similar to shoe leather, chicken breasts with the skin still on, white bread (not even Wonder Bread!), margarine, and refined sugar.

Even though I lived on the geographical edge of diverse communities of coal miners, railroad workers, sewing factory employees, small family grocery store owners, and machinists, our family never had a good Italian sauce with homemade pasta, pigs-in-blanket, haluski, Italian

Wedding soup, pierogies, or potato pancakes. Interestingly, the only spaghetti with sauce I ever had as a child was Chef Boy-R-Dee in the big #12 can and then later grocery store sauce in the jars. Even Chow Mein, our very exotic meal offering occasionally, was sold in the canned goods section of the emerging big grocery stores chains like A&P, Acme, and Food Giant. In the southern United States, the large grocery store chains were Winn-Dixie and Piggly Wiggly. I was well into my teenage years when I first tasted homemade marinara sauce, fettuccine alfredo, potato pancakes, piggies, or spanakopita.

Sunday dinner was baked chicken breast, baked potatoes, a canned vegetable, homemade rolls, and dessert. Sometimes the chicken would be rather dry because my mother put it in the oven to bake while we attended church at 11:00 am.

But looking back on these memories today, I can see some of the culinary influences in our extended family meals. For instance, my maternal great-grandmother, born in 1880, who was of English and German descent, always made a large pork and sauerkraut dinner with homemade pies for dessert for our extended family on New Year’s Day which was also her birthday. We also had liver and onions, which I disliked immensely, or scrapple at least twice a week due

to my maternal family’s English and Scottish roots. Unfortunately for me, I never really cared for those types of meals except for the dessert parts! I envied my classmates who spoke about big Italian meals, Polish meals, or Jewish delicacies.

However, even though my friends partook of those ethically inspired meal recipes we did enjoy wonderful holiday baked goods. My mom made the best assortment of Christmas cookies, fruitcakes, and homemade rolls. The rolls were always made for the bi-annual church “Roast Beef Dinners” that the Methodist Church we attended held to raise funds for various religious endeavors.
With that said, here is my favorite recipe for Mom’s humble dinner rolls exactly as she wrote it on those little 3" X 5" index cards.

Homemade Dinner Rolls
Melt one cup shortening in one cup hot water with ½ cup of sugar and two teaspoons
salt
Add 1 ½ cup cold water
3 beaten eggs
½ large yeast cake in ¼ cup sugar
7 cups of flour or more (up to 8 ½ cups)
Let rise overnight. Then place in pans. Rise again until doubled. Bake at 375
degrees for 20 minutes.
That’s it! Not a lot of ingredients, or a lot of directions.
Not an overly complicated recipe nor a particularly ethnic one but they were the best, always served warm with lots of margarine, or sometimes real butter!
This was the recipe that was made for our family. We always had extra rolls which were added to our freezer or distributed to family and friends.
The recipe for the “church dinner rolls” was doubled and made in the church kitchen the day before the Roast Beef dinners with other women of the church. Quite a few batches were made in many 9” X 13” pans.

Tickets for this community event were sold before the date of the dinner, held in the “social rooms” of the church to many members of the community and the church. Hundreds of tickets were sold. As a teenager, I often served as a waiter bringing family-style roast beef meals to the tables. The tickets for the event were always sold out! What else can I say, it was a simpler time.
Do I make this recipe very often? Unfortunately, no. The recipe makes too many rolls, someone in the family is always on a low-carbohydrate diet, or someone else is gluten intolerant. But, I'll never forget the aroma of the rolls baking or the simple pleasure of slathering butter on one to eat with my dinner.

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