Getting in touch with my inner German (South Dakotan)

Over the holiday break (yes I pretend I am in school too and take the time between Christmas and New Year's with the family), my mom brought Grandma Rose's recipes. So I decided to finally venture into the cooking of a few traditional Wageman recipes. This was also triggered by Corey making Kneppfla for the kids before heading south for the holiday - which they absolutely loved! I consider these recipes 'farm food'. I can imagine my grandmother and mother preparing this food for grandpa and their farm hands for the main meal of the day 'dinner' served at noon. High in carbs, this food would get them through a hard day on the farm. While at the same time being affordable to prepare - especially since much of the ingredients they had on hand, such as fresh milk from the cows, eggs from the chickens, you get it.

• Potato Turnover
• Cheese Tarts
• Kuchen (did you know this is the state dessert of South Dakota!)
• Cinnamon Rolls

While mom was here we team tagged the potato turnover and cheese tarts. Which is a good thing, since mom and grandma don't include quantities for such things like flour in their recipes, you do it by feel! The kids were on the fence about the potato turnover, but I have to say I have reunited with the recipe. Robert and Irene joined us for supper (yes, that's the evening meal to a South Dakotan), we trained them on the 'how to eat potato turnover'. Fork in right hand, pickle in left hand, take a bite of turnover, followed by a bite of a pickle - Bubby's makes the closest to our Tante Hilda's homemade pickles. Robert was a big fan of the potato turnover, so I will make this again.

Night two brought cheese tarts, these are very similar to cheese blintzs. The dough turned out good, even though I didn't add eggs to the dough, I was suppose to just know that an egg or two was necessary, I have now included eggs to the recipe card. The key ingredient is farmer's cheese, an unaged cheese, very similar to Ricotta. I found a local dairy that makes the Russian version (Russian or Polish is what you want to use). I had an 'aha' moment and used a pasta maker to roll-out the dough for the tarts. Chloe and Jonah liked helping with cranking the pasta maker and also with filling the tarts with the cheese mixture. The end result was a big hit with Chloe (Jonah was fasting and didn't try them). Wally thought the dough was too thick, so next time I will roll it out a little thinner.

Today I am making Kuchen, I will post later if this is successful or not!