No Room for Lazy People - Pattie (Barney) Hoard
New Ipswich Historical Society
FINNS: An Oral History of Finnish-Americans in New Hampshire’s Monadnock Region
Excerpted from FINNS: An Oral History... by Patricia Kangas Ktistes, 1997, all rights reserved.
Pattie (Barney) Hoard
Within our family, all occasions centered around food. And that is a typical Finn thing. But not always. And this is what I call the Finns-Food-and-Family theory. My mother is a fabulous cook. Not one of these gourmet cooks. This old, ordinary kitchen—a middle-class upbringing—but she really did some wonderful things. An ordinary occasion became special because of food. She dressed the tables. We had the ‘nice’ dishes, which probably in some people’s books were ordinary, but you knew it was an occasion when you came in and saw these dishes and linens. And my mother loved to do this stuff.
Then there are women who despise cooking. The thinking is, “Why waste the time getting dressed up just for a meal?” For them as far as food goes, holidays are just another day, except with more things to make. In fact, the very first Thanksgiving that I celebrated here in New England, I was wildly discouraged to realize that the guys were going to come in from the yard in their gardening and work clothes, sit down, eat, and go back outside. There was no sense of celebration and, for me, no sense of family. But for them, eating is not complicated; it’s just something you do, like taking a shower or going to sleep at night. And a lot of it really came down to the fact that some mothers of big families just get sick of trying to be creative for so many people.
Some women who have big families are terrific cooks. I’m thinking of a particular Finn family: many of the daughters and granddaughters are fabulous cooks. A lot of imagination. These women also are very creative: painting, drawing. For them, food is just another art form; some make gingerbread houses; some decorate wedding cakes. Not only do they look good, but they taste fabulous.
We have what we call ‘serving groups’ at the Apostolic Lutheran church; they take turns cooking and serving food after services. Although we are not regularly attending the church, we still are very active in that; a lot of our closest friends in the church are in our serving group. And it’s a couples thing. That’s also a phenomenon of the Apostolics in New England: men and women serve together. Back home in Esko, Minnesota—a good Finn area—only the women are in the kitchen. The men will take occasions like Mother’s Day or something and cook for the women, but on a regular basis it’s the women in the kitchen. And some of the men out here are great cooks.
Last fall our serving group brought in seven or eight outdoor grills. We cooked hamburgers and hotdogs for everyone after the service because we said, “We don’t want ‘church spaghetti’ ever again!” So we try to do different things. But not too different. When we’re serving coffee at church,
Elvi Ketola often makes nisu, or coffee bread, in beautiful ring-shaped braids and the older people are highly upset if nisu isn’t there: “What do you mean, there’s no coffee bread?”
Last summer, one of the pastors from home visited here. He did not grow up in the Finnish culture and is not Finnish. He’s German; grew up in Pennsylvania. He was here having a cup of coffee and needed the cream. Well, instead of clunking the milk carton down on the table, I got out a creamer, and the only kind I have are ornate china or crystal or something. And he flipped out. He said, “Look at you! You gotta be getting out these little creamers!” He couldn’t believe I would go to that extent and I actually thought it was pretty conservative of me not to have set the table with placemats like my mother. But that’s inbred. Most of the time, except when you have guests who are older, you’re kind of thinking, “Well, can I get away with not using linens?”
But traditional Finnish recipes like pasty: my kids don’t even like it. My husband doesn’t like it. Some of these things are going to be completely lost with my generation. Plus my not having daughters is a factor. I think if I had girls, I would probably be more inclined to push the old Finnish recipes. None of my mother’s children know how to make nisu: you have to do it every week to really make it well. I probably could pass the tradition on because I do make certain dishes: mojakka (beef soup.) We used steak that my mother cooked to death. My mother was a fanatic about not having any meat still being red. You cut this steak up into little, tiny pieces; add potatoes, carrots, onions, probably some kind of rutabaga or turnip, so it was along the lines of a pasty.
Only my mother—everything had to have gravy—made a good thick sauce, so it was more of a stew than a soup. Beyond salt and pepper, she used no seasoning except for a bay leaf. We’d always look for the leaf and say ‘Who’s going to have that?’
My grandmother made a steak-and-onion pie. And basically, again, it’s meat and potatoes and onions, only you put on a ‘good’ lard crust; or Betty Crocker crust in this generation (sorry, Grandma.)
Anyway, the one key thing that you add is allspice; something you would put in a pumpkin pie spice. And people will eat the steak-and-onion pie, love it, not recognize the allspice flavor, and say, “What am I eating?”
And as positive as I say my experiences were with associating food with family, my sister with an eating disorder will say, “Why did I make myself throw up? Because all we did was eat. We were consumed with food.” As far as women go in the Apostolic community, it’s really changed a lot in 15 years. When I came here, you worked until you had a baby. You got pregnant within a year after marriage. Your second baby came within a year or two after the first. Life basically consisted of attending baby and wedding showers. I was an anomaly because I had been in college. But it was understood that I was kind of ‘done’ with that now: “You’re married and you’re having children and you’ll just continue.” I think it all changed 10 years ago when the economy changed. All of a sudden, one-income families couldn’t pay the mortgage. And so it became more accepted for women to go look for work. At the same time, I was very ready to go back to college part-time. There were women from the Finnish community who had always worked. And they were almost exclusively born, raised, and spent their first 20 years somewhere other than in New England.
Interesting to read how other families celebrated and what perceived challenges head of families faced. Belonging to a church enlarges your circle. Our gatherings at the Niemi farm were smaller and involved close relatives, and only 1 or 2 per year. Food of course, in any social group was important. There was never any 'red' meat in my mother's dishes.