My mother comes to visit us once a year from Wisconsin and there’s always a flurry of excitement when she finally walks through our door. The first thing she does is hand out the chocolates and the gummy bears to her grandchildren and then she organizes my kitchen closet – bundling up the piles of newspapers and the old grocery bags. But she can only really settle in once she starts cooking.
Her luggage is stocked with things from the Dairy State. There’s a few hunks of Swiss cheese, beer sausage, brats (of course), cheese curds, canned red cabbage and always a Styrofoam container from the Bavarian Meat Market full of semi-frozen
rolladen.
Rolladen is a classic German dish. It’s tenderized beef — pounded flat, spread with a thin layer mustard and then rolled around a filling of pickles, carrots, bacon and onions. It’s held together with kitchen string or toothpicks.
While the rolladen sits on the counter to defrost — my mom digs through my cupboard for the oldest potatoes she can find – preferably the ones that are sprouting and there are always some of those. They’re full of starch and just right for her famous potato penny dumplings named after the coins she stuffs inside of them.
During her last visit, when she started cooking I noticed a new, unfamiliar smell – something like orange-flavored copper — coming from a small pot boiling on the stove. I asked her what it was. ‘Laxative’ she answered, as she cleaned the space between the cook top and the counter, digging at it with a small paring knife. She explained to me that a hot laxative bath will make even the grungiest pennies look like new and perfect for stuffing inside of her dumplings. ‘Children like shiny pennies’ she said shrugging her shoulders ‘and they like to find them my dumplings.’ She shot me a look that meant I should’ve of known better. Then she asked, ‘Do you have any Lysol?’ I didn’t. She’d buy a bottle of it for me in the morning.
I remember her potato dumplings from my childhood, she made them all the time, with egg, flour and some nutmeg. To me, they were the most edible thing on my plate, next to the beef tongue and sauerkraut my father liked so much. If we didn’t finish them – they tasted good the next day, fried in butter and breadcrumbs. And like she said, it was pretty cool to find money in your food. Looking back, it probably taught me how to chew well too. But I never remembered the pennies getting that cleansing laxative treatment before.
Originally broadcast on October 13, 2004
