The Science of Maize:

Pioneering a New Image for the Corn State

For richer or poorer, for better or worse, Iowa’s identity is married to a unique native American plant known to scientists as maize and to others as corn. In the words of Iowan Henry Wallace, corn’s greatest lover and the founder of Pioneer Hi-Bred, this has been “one of the great and vital romances of all time.” It’s also been a rocky marriage marked by misunderstandings and mutual dependency.

Corn is a perplexing creature. Technically a fruit (because its germ is embedded in nutrient flesh), it behaves unlike other fruits, converting starch to sugars instead of sugars to starch. Henry Lyte, one of the first botanists to examine plants in America, was baffled by corn’s sexuality.

“This Corne is a marvelous strange plant, nothing resembling any other kind of grayne, for it bringeth forth its seede cleane contrarie from the place whereas forth the Floures grow,” he wrote in 1619.

Even today, organic and pure race corn farmers feel threatened by corn’s wanton promiscuity - male tassel grains can fertilize sticky, hairy female silk wombs in a wind-blown whim.

When Columbus ate corn cakes on Hispaniola, he became the first white person to taste a plant that American Indians had been raising corn for some 7000 years. Tribes took measures to protect the racial purity of their corns, because kernel colors had sacred meaning. When Colonial Americans began raising different races of corn in the same garden, they noticed unplanned copulations. Farmer-preacher Cotton Mather called such promiscuity “vicious” but farmer-scientist Ben Franklin found it promising. Love and sluttiness are both in the eye of the beholder.

By the time railroads crossed Iowa, Franklin’s intellectual followers had improved corn’s stock by selecting seed from the most productive stalks to replant the following year, like American Indians had been doing for millennia. Sub-glacial Iowa contained the richest corn-growing soil on earth. Stalks routinely grew 20 feet high and Iowa proudly became the king of corn states. Hogs, cattle and prosperity followed.

Corn boom towns like Sioux City celebrated with annual rituals of corn pride. Corn palaces were designed by the country’s top architects and attracted sitting Presidents and captains of industry. In 1912 a delegation of Za-Ga-Zig Shriners from Des Moines visited Los Angeles. Wanting to promote the state, they wrote what would become known as "The Iowa Corn Song." That popular ditty affirmed the state’s marriage vows to corn just before the relationship was utterly redefined.

From Colonial times through World War I, corn breeders mostly sought good looking plants. Seed companies held beauty contests with winning ears becoming rich and famous. Henry Wallace determined that corn should be bred to increase yields rather than lovely kernels. In 1926, he founded what would become Pioneer Hi-Bred by selling 49 shares for $100 each.

Wallace’s vision provided the crowning achievement in the industrialization of corn farming. Steel plows had reduced the labor required to raise a bushel of corn from twenty hours to three. When tractors and combines replaced horse power, it took three minutes. By then, Wallace’s hybrid seeds had replaced self pollinated fields and increased yields seven times. In 1946, to cement the state’s claim as the “Tall Corn State,“ Don Radda of Washington, grew a stalk of corn 31 feet and 7/8ths of an inch tall. That still stands as a world record.

In the last half of the 20th century, pride in the marriage began to erode like Dust Bowl soil. Increased productivity made farming more of an industrial game than a family business. Farms became larger and fewer Iowans actually farmed. In the last 100 years, this proud rural state, in which self sufficient farmer-creators formed the majority, had evolved into a suburban/urban state embarrassed by its earthy partner. Cultural elitists portrayed farmers as slow witted hicks who, in the word of expatriate Iowan author Bill Bryson, “habitually stick a finger in their ear and swivel it around as a preliminary to answering any question addressed to them…Their wits are dulled by simple, wholesome faith in God and the soil.”

Some Iowans became ashamed of their spouse and of agriculture in general. The state quickly scrapped “A Place to Grow” as a motto. Schools quit teaching students to sing “The Tall Corn Song.” Corn wasn’t even considered a candidate for artwork on the Iowa quarter.

Then suddenly, in the first decade of the third millennium, corn’s mysteriousness unraveled dramatically as scientists mapped its DNA.
“We now have a germplasm galaxy - a picture of all the inbreds ever developed. It actually looks like a Hubbell telescope photo of a galaxy,” Pioneer Hi-Bred Research Director Dave Bubeck explained.

That revolutionized the way corn was studied and bred.

“From a technology stand point, everything is now digital. We work in labs as well as in real world fields. Because we can do everything digitally in such volume, we created ten times as many corn inbreds in 2010 as in the previous 80 year history of Pioneer Hi-Bred combined,” Bubeck stated casually.
An inbred is potentially one parent of a hybrid. So even Henry Wallace might be astonished at the exponential, new possibilities.

“If you have 700,000 new inbreds, you can’t cross them all. So, we now use a wide and comprehensive range of scientific disciplines. Genetics, molecular biology, plant pathology, statistics, quantum and qualitative genetics, and computer science are all part of managing the information,” Bubeck explained.
Such cross discipline scientists have accelerated understanding the “marvelous strange” grain at a previously unimaginable pace. “In the last ten years, our ability to process DNA information has increased 100 times over. Ten years ago, everything was screened in the field. Think of it like this. Before people had road maps, they guessed where they were going. Before we had DNA maps, we were guessing where we were headed, just like ancient travelers in the unknown wilderness,” Bubeck explained.

Such rapid advancements in plant research created so many proprietary issues that intellectual property (IP) rights has become the fastest growing department in many law schools. Drake University IP Assistant Professor Shontavia Johnson explained the legal dilemma of corn researchers.

“There are three major ways to protect corn inbreds – plant patents under the Plant Patent Act (PPA), certificates issued under the Plant Variety Protection Act (PVPA), and utility patents. The greatest challenge is choosing the avenue of protection,” Johnson said.

The rapid pace of new research science has freed Pioneer to focus on the specific needs of individual farmers.

“The marvel of digital biology is we’re now able to deal with an infinite set of variables. Variable microorganisms, climates, environments, soils, etc. In Iowa alone we have three main kinds of soil. As we breed new germplasm, we can create a better product and that translates into better performance for our customers,” said Bubeck.

Pioneer sells seed corn in some 70 different countries. Their research staff in Johnston represents so many different nationalities that no one at Pioneer could tell me how many there were, nor the number of languages spoken there.
All this ought to change the way Iowa perceives its marriage partner. Corn today represents everything that politicians and business leaders covet. It’s high tech, cosmopolitan, highly educated, professional, and essential to both world commerce and prosperity.

In the language of genetic scientists, corn has serious “breeding value.” In the language of old fashioned romantics, it’s something for Iowa “to cherish and hold, from this day forward.”

this story was first published in The Iowan

Heritage Birds

The Second Coming

Cochin chickens were first exported from China in the middle of the 19th century. That breed’s giant size, magnificent feathers and calm disposition set off a chicken breeding mania in the US and Great Britain. Chicken livestock shows became big entertainment and investors speculated wildly in new breeds. After the craze ended in the early 20th century, thousands of breeds were consolidated to about a dozen.

At her Fox Hollow Farm near Elkhart, Tai Johnson-Spratt pointed at a Cochin who was strutting in a pen with a dozen other breeds of chicken, plus multiple breeds of ducks, turkeys and peacocks.

“He’s on the endangered watch list now, ” she sighed.

Johnson-Spratt shares history with the Cochin. In her previous career, she owned a giftware company in southern China.

“At that time, the last place I could have ever pictured myself was on a little poultry farm in Iowa,” she admitted.

About eight years ago, the Chinese government muscled in on her business and decades of sky diving took a toil on her body.

“I was recuperating from back surgery and I figured I needed a hobby for exercise. I bought some chickens and noticed how freakish the industrial broiler chickens were. I call them ‘white fatties,” they can’t even walk normally. That’s when I fell in love with all these beautiful endangered species,” she explained.

Today Johnson-Spratt raises a wildly colorful array of chickens, ducks, quail, geese, peacocks and turkeys. Most of the 30 or so different breeds she keeps at any one time are on watch lists for endangered status.

Johnson-Spratt launched Fox Hollow six years ago, selling eggs at the Ankeny Farmers Market.

“Things immediately blew up,” she recalled referring to the emergence of a new type of consumer who rejected industrial eggs and poultry because of concerns about animal welfare, biodiversity and personal health. Last year, Johnson-Spratt sold six tons of turkey in Iowa and fed her birds ate nine tons of vegetarian feed and flax seed every two weeks, in addition to the bugs and grass they scavenged.

She tends her flock maternally. Her menagerie sees no cages, ingests no antibiotics, and roams freely about her pastured paddocks and roomy shelters. Egg laying hens work just two years and then are moved to a “retirement home.” Her English Mastiff was adopted to protect the birds but his fear of turkeys made him a giant house pet.

Johnson-Spratt’s biggest problems are keeping water unfrozen in winter, segregating antisocial geese, and stopping large turkeys from collapsing the roofs of hoop houses. Her peacocks’ biggest problem is fanning out their tail feathers without being pecked on the butt by sneaky chickens.
Most of Fox Hollow’s free ranged heritage birds have darkly colored meat, deep flavors, and thin skins that crisp marvelously. Last year, its turkeys, ducks and heritage chickens (particularly Poulet Rouge) became so popular with top chefs that Iowa restaurants virtually cornered the market. This year Johnson-Spratt hopes to produce enough birds to sell them regularly at the Downtown Des Moines Farmers Market.

Either way, she’s establishing a second craze in poultry breeds.

Where to Buy

Restaurants serving heritage breed poultry include: Bistro Montage, Centro, Django, Sbrocco, and Christopher’s in Des Moines; Devotay in Iowa City; and Lincoln Café in Mount Vernon. Fox Hollow eggs and poultry are retailed at Wheatfield Market in Ames and Gateway Market in Des Moines.

This story was first published in The Iowan

Aloha Wiz

Shirley dances with death, smiling of course.

Shirley Fong-Torres practiced a peculiar style of driving, down roads as well as through life. It probably suited her sense of direction that the last man in her life was there, for over 14 years, as a very long distance relationship.

I met her, by kismet, in the Spokane airport in April of 1997. My hotel had forgotten my reservation and courtesy van while United Airlines had lost her baggage. The first thing I ever heard her say was “Don’t turn your back on me, I am a problem that wants to be in your face.” We decided to share a taxi to Coeur d’Alene Resort and impressed each other with our bizarre travel habits. She explained her method for extracting comps from airlines. I told her that I had flown from Des Moines to Spokane via Chicago and San Francisco, to accumulate extra legs toward elite status and a free ticket promotion. I also explained that a long layover in San Francisco allowed me to catch a Giants game. She said she lived in San Francisco most of her life and, never having been to a Giants game, wondered who the weird people were who did go. “Good to finally meet you,” she said.

For most of the next seven years, we spent at least one week every month visiting each other in San Francisco, Des Moines or other destinations. The following seven years I averaged just six trips to San Francisco a year. Longer but fewer.

In addition, we took 60 other trips together, to 45 different places on three continents. Three of the most common repeat destinations will surprise no one who knew her - Vegas, Reno and Honolulu. However, the most common repeated destination probably will - San Antonio. Most of those trips were taken during Shirley’s Country Western era when Dale Watson became her favorite singer, and a good friend, and she traded her Mercedes in on a red pickup truck. Tina correctly identified that truck “as a phase Mom’s going through.” Shirley responded “You’re doing such a good job raising me honey.”

The first seven years we often scheduled trips to coincide with baseball games, particularly on bobblehead nights. For those, we stood in line through hours of rain in Seattle and 105 degree temperatures in Phoenix, Shirley keeping everyone else entertained with her banter. She became an instant baseball fan at her first game - Giants vs. Dodgers. She was attracted initially by the trash talk between fans of the two teams. I had to restrain her at times in Los Angeles.

The second seven years, we scheudled all our trips, even mine to San Francisco, around babysitting opportunites with her grand daughters. There was no where either of us world travelers would rather have been than with Maggie & Stella. Their different personalities mirrored our own. Maggie was the wiser, more cautious one, capable of deep deductive reasoning at a young age. Stella was a bundle of irrepressive joy, more easily distracted but with a keen sense of how to make other people laugh.

One day as we drove over a Pacifica mountain from her valley home to the sea, Stella exclaimed "There's the ocean."

"And the beach," added Maggie.

"Do you girls want to be surfers when you're bigger," I asked.

"I don't think so," Maggie replied, after reflection.

"Really, I always thought one of you would be a surfer girl," I said.

"OK, I'll do it," said Stella.

"Stella, do you know you have to learn how to swim to able to surf?"

"OK, I'll do that too," she replied, without much thought.

I think our long distance, part time relationship suited Shirely better than me. She said she’d tried marriage and was so terrible at it that she would never try it again. She compared it to eating lamb, something else that someone had persuaded her to try one more time than her instincts advised. She preferred a system in which she “renewed my contract one year at a time.“ But nearly every single day for 14 years she insisted on talking to me first thing in her mornings and every single night she insisted that we talk, on chat on the internet, for at least an hour. before I went to sleep. I don’t know of a better way to get to know someone.

Shirley had trust issues. Because of that I always said goodbye as “I love you, always.” Sometimes she’d respond “Or till some skinny young slut calls.” In the last year, for the first time, she occasionally said “I always love you too. Just don’t think it’s good for you to know it.”

We built a surrogate family our first seven years. Others call them stuffed animals, she called them “kids.” We adopted a new kid in every city we visited.

The last time she took an official census there were 76 whose names she could remember. All had unique voices. Wroburlto (who added the W to his spelling in exchange for jewelry at a W Hotel) was the most complex. He was her only “bipolar bear.” He traveled everywhere with us and often became a major player in our travel writing. She loved Wro the most because he was the most difficult but she never told him. She always told him “I love Happi more,” provoking fits in Wro.

Wro overcame the mood swings to become semi famous. He was a much requested guest on the Gene Burns show. Public relations companies would include Wro’s name on invitations to press trips and strangers would ask to talk to him. He usually asked them for jewelry first and they almost always were happy to oblige him. Shirley would scold him but accept it. Wro was also well dressed. Shirley sewed his wardrobe before she discovered the BABW stores. Then she, or Wro, wrote the CEO demanding style changes. The company CEO responded and began sending new clothes to Wro for his approval. The company once invited Wro to a new store opening in a new mall. He was introduced to the developer of that mall who said “My you’re a very old bear.” The BABW CEO responded “We like to say ‘much loved.’” The developer said “That would be the correct euphemism I guess.” Wro corrected him. “No, moron, that would be good manners.” The developer laughed hard and then bought Wro a new jacket.

Shirley did not have a childhood or adolescence like most kids do. She said that as child she actually thought her name was the Chinese phrase for "wash rice," as that was the most common way her mother addressed her. She said that she would be slapped in the face for laughing or smiling too much, or for winning at games. Irrepressible, Shirley refused to stop smiling or making al the rest of us laugh with her. "You should have a sit com" was a frequent comment left on her tour reviews. She also never stopped winning at games, carrying an uncanny lucky streak to casino after casino, but not to hospitals.

Notice the angel on her left shoulder.

During the last 15 years she experienced simulated, vicarious childhood. The last eight years, she finally made “best friends forever,” with Maggie and Stella, “Aglaia and Euphrosyne” as we called them for the different ways they incarnated the personas of the Graces. She would show their photos to anyone who asked and many who didn’t. When people would say “Do you get to see them often?“ Shirley might respond “No. Turns out there is a thin line that separates devoted grand mothering from stalking and I’m not really good at boundaries.“ She often said that those years were the happiest time of her life, "except for each time the girls leave."

God grant that it carries over to wherever it is that He has summoned the Wok Wiz. The only way I can accept that there might be a higher justice in the universe requires that Shirley is now in a better place - and the rest of us are stuck here in a world terribly diminished by her absence.

It is a sad day in Iowa and San Francisco today but it’s a glorious day in heaven: Stir fry is now being served there, with sassy love.

Farmers Markets 2011

CelebrAsian May 14

Filipino adobo and skewer and skewer

Nepalese momos
Thai stir fry

Kim chee

San Francisco April 16

Broccoli rabe $1.50 / lb.

Meyers 5 for a $1

Organic Strawberries, $8 for 3 boxes

White radish $1 / lb.

Pea tendrils $1.25 / lb., the best snap peas of the year $1.50.

Red Delicious $1 / lb.

Stranger than Fiction

Bob Blumer's Meat Loaf surprise is meat loaf with mashed potato frosting.

Nothing in this column is a joke. The truth about food is often stranger than fiction. You can eat it too. Bob Blumer, host of Food Network’s “Surreal Gourmet,” has published “Glutton for Pleasure,” a cookbook filled with April Fool’s type jokes. It features recipes for such things as meatloaf cake, faux French fries made of pound cake, “dog biscuits” that are actually spice cookies, and “flowerpot salad” - a mélange of greens topped with edible flowers served in a flowerpot. Even if you don’t cook, 2011 has produced plenty of mind boggling food stories:

There’s a jerky black market in New York. According to Buffalo News, police in western New York have been looking for a thief who only steals beef jerky. Cheektowaga cops reported the bandit hit six convenience stores there, plus others in Tonawanda, Kenmore, and Amherst. “The only thing we can surmise is that he’s reselling them,” said Cheektowaga Police Captain James Speyer.

The government is encouraging obese people to overeat. The Seattle Times reported that a government-funded study was seeking already obese volunteers in St. Louis to willingly "add 1,000 excess calories a day to their normal diet," in order “to better assess the medical implications of their condition.”

First Lady pushes junk food. A.P. reported that Michele Obama took time off from her anti-obesity campaign to defend the following menu that she ordered for her White House Super Bowl Party: bratwurst, kielbasa, cheeseburgers, deep dish pizza, Buffalo wings, German potato salad, twice baked potatoes, Snyder’s potato chips and pretzels, chips and dips, salad, ice cream, Yuengling lager and light beer, Hinterland pale ale and amber ale, and White House honey ale.

Authorities had to stop Packer fans from eating their opponent. Yahoo News reported that a Minnesota bar for Green Bay fans celebrated their team’s play-off clinching victory over the Chicago Bears by roasting a 180-pound black bear in front of customers. Health authorities intervened to prevent Packer fans from eating the bear.

A “Public Enemy” rapper targeted Clinton, Iowa for a fried chicken restaurant. The Des Moines Register reported that New York rapper Flava Flav, best known for his work in the group Public Enemy, chose Clinton, Iowa for the prototype of his new fried chicken joint.

“Following the pasta” is a new police tactic. A. P. reported that Italian police caught a cocaine trafficker who had eluded them for 11 years by tailing his daughter as she brought his favorite restaurant lasagna to his secret hideaway.

You have to dress up to go to McDonalds. The Daily Mail reported that McDonald's in Leyton, Lancashire (UK) has instituted a dress code after 7 p.m. banning hooded sweat shirts, track suits and athletic attire, as a “security measure.” They also began hiring bouncers to enforce it.

Chinese pigs are potty trained. Reuters reported that Taiwan pork farmers have begun toilet training their pigs in order “to reduce ground waste and air pollution.” Early tests found that the practice had increased survival rates too.

A snake died from silicon poisoning after biting a buxom model. AOL News reported that Israeli model Orit Fox was rushed to a hospital after being bitten on her breasts (called “the largest in Israeli”) by an aroused boa constrictor. The snake reportedly died of silicon poisoning.

You can get “bunga bunga” with pizza. Forbes reported that a Polish pizzeria is selling a pie that honors sexual predator, and Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi. Called the "bunga bunga," the pizza is topped with anchovies, figs, prosciutto, and black pepper. The magazine said that combination of ingredients is believed in Poland to be as "spicy and wild as the Italian leader's sex parties."

NFL strike threatens chicken industry. WLS radio interviewed a chicken industry executive who warned America that a pro football strike would cause massive lay-offs due to football’s effect on chicken wing consumption.

Dennis Kucinich sued his lunch. CNN reported that U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio sued a Congressional cafeteria after eating an "unwholesome and unfit for human consumption" sandwich wrap.

“If It Isn’t White, We Cream It”

Tasting Norwegian Christmas in Decorah

Decorah’s holiday pleasures are best approached at night. The Westside Bridge is lit up like an amusement park ride, a prelude to the dazzling lights that outline the downtown buildings. The courthouse is adorned with lighted wreaths and crowds keep the outdoor skating rink busy until 10 p.m.

Small towns are not supposed to bustle, but Decorah is a non conformist. In this part of Winneshiek County, geography is oddly un-Iowan. Mountains and valleys, rivers and rocks have discouraged the large scale clearing and planting that characterizes the state. It also attracted a spirit of free thinking.

Elsewhere in Iowa, one would be stunned to see satyrs running through banks of snow, but here, goat-people are an old holiday tradition. Such julebukker are ancient Norwegian spirits, fond of wreaking havoc at Christmas time, unless appeased with food and alcohol. So some folks masquerade, as goats and other things, and barge in on neighbors.

Norwegian immigrants brought julebukking to Decorah. The custom remained quite popular until the mid 20th century, when people became less trusting. Julebukking is one of several Christmas traditions revived by the the Vesterheim Norwegian-American Museum, the oldest and largest ethnic museum in the United States. Their “Norwegian Christmas” (Dec. 4-5, 2004) brings julebukker and nisser (elves) together with fiddlers, choirs, artisans and artists. Workshops in klostersom (satin stitching), hedebosom (lace ornaments), tapestry weaving, rosemailing (ceramic painting) and kolrosing (wood carving) mix with ones where children make nisse costumes. Vesterheim curator Tova Brandt explained the museum’s reason for being.

“In Norway, during the first half of the 19th century, the potato, the small pox vaccination and peace all conspired in a population explosion. Soon there were too many people for what the land could produce and when the potato famine hit Norway, it caused havoc. Emigration was a way out.

“As one of the late immigrant groups to America, at least by 19th century standards, Norwegians could sense how ethnic identity was swallowed up in the melting pot of America. So they determined to preserve their identity,” she said.

Darlene Fossum-Martin of Luther College explained how Norwegian foods became a focus of that resolve.

“For pioneers, recipes were a way to hold onto a culture and to connect to what they had been. Sights, aromas and tastes connect us to memories. I was fortunate to grow up in a family where all the recipes used were the ones that great grandparents used. Born on a farm, I remember making rendered lard. I remember watching great grandma baking, most of my knowledge of Norwegian foods comes from my family, though I lived in Norway for five years,” she said.

In her book “Keeping Christmas,” Kathleen Stokker explains that Norwegian Christmas traditions survived social pressures for 2000 years, on both sides of the Atlantic. Many local customs evolved from the Viking festival of jol, but the Christian church discouraged these, or tried to convert them, by ordering drinking toasts to the Virgin Mary for instance. The Midnight Mass of the Dead was outlawed, but ghost stories replaced it, as in Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol.” When Advent fasting came to Norway in 480 AD, lutefisk was Christianized, as acceptable fasting food.

At the annual “Taste of Norway,” in the Vesterheim’s Bethania Lutheran Church, a kitchen full of venerable Norwegian-American cooks educated us on traditions of food and humor.

The Gift of Cod

Some visitors wore sweatshirts that caught our eye:

“Lutefisk : The gift of Cod that passeth all understanding.”

The lady chefs explained that lutefisk is such “an acquired taste” that most families don’t prepare it anymore. It has gone underground, to church basements, where it “represents the immigrant experience - courage, hardship and small rewards.”

Yet, more lutefisk is exported to America, from Norway’s Lofoten Islands, than is consumed in all Scandinavia. Stokker wrote that Norwegians consider it historical peasant food, but Norwegian-Americans need it to connect to that history.

It’s prepared by soaking dried cod in lye, which breaks amino acids down into a jelly of protein. Humor is central to the ritual, the ladies insist. “Lutefisk reminds us that the crucifixion is the central tenet of our religion,” laughed one of them, quickly adding, “Don‘t quote me.”


The Christmas Pig

Pioneers in Iowa butchered animals in early winter, for salting and drying. Thus, Christmas was often the only time to enjoy fresh meat, a festive occasion for sharing. We were told that women were in charge of collecting blood, for pudding and sausage, and of making headcheese.

A Christmas pig was fattened until the last waxing moon before Christmas, in accord with an ancient Norwegian folk belief. Blodpolse (blood pudding) was made immediately. Modern conveniences have simplified the ritual. Doris Barnaal goes to the Isen Locker for pig blood pudding, which doesn‘t clot as fast as cow‘s blood. Leona Rosendahl makes blodpolse from beef blood that she buys at the Waukon Grocery. Agnes Forde admitted “I make it, but I never taste the stuff.”

Headcheese is made by alternating layers of meat and fat, picked off the skull, and cured in its own brine. The ladies all remember it, but few miss it.

“Headcheese was how our family made sure we used every part of the animal, ” explained Fossum-Martin.


The Sweet Seven

According to Stokker, the baking of sju slags (7 cookies) is an old Norse custom. In America the chosen cookies became fattigmann, sandbakkels, krumkakker, Berlinerkranser, goro, strull and rosetter. All include flour, sugar, butter, eggs, cardamon and almonds. Distinction is in their different forms.

Goro is the oldest, mentioned in classic Norse poetry as a symbol of wealth. Doris Barnaal says the thick rectangles are only good in theory. “They don’t work out in reality, there is too much butter in them for the high temperature they takes. Anyone who makes them has to open windows to let out the smoke,” she observed.

Krumkakker are thin rounds curled into a cone. The hardware to make them came to America in dowries, and was handed down as heirlooms. “There are three generations of krumkakke irons: long handled; stove top and now we have electric ones,” Barnaal explained.

Strull are made the same way, but twisted into cylinders. Rosettes require special wheel-shaped irons, with long handles. Berlinerkranser blend hard boiled and raw egg yolks in the different recipes. Sandbakkels are named for their crushed almond texture. Fattigmannbakkels were the ultimate status symbol on the prairie, because of the lavish use of egg yolks, sugar and cream.

Fossum-Martin remembered another cookie as the lutefisk of desserts, because of their odd aroma. “I will never forget great grandma’s harts’ horn cookies, which were made with baking ammonia, from harts’ horn salt, from the antlers of deer,” she said.


The Pudding Queen

All the cooks agreed, Agnes Forde is “the queen of rommegrot.” She earned the title when King Olav V visited Decorah in 1987 and Agnes made her special version of Norway’s national dish.

“We were told not to try to make any kind of contact with the king, unless he initiated it. After he ate my rommegrot, he came and extended his hand to me,” she recalled.

She had been anxious, knowing that in Norway the pudding is made with fresh, unprocessed sour cream. Agnes used sweet cream as is customary in Iowa.

“I couldn’t eat it in Norway, it didn’t taste right at all,” recalled Carrie Solberg, going on to say that her grandmother used a toro, cut from the very top of a pine tree, to roll the cream over the lowest heat, lest the fat burn or scorch, a seven hour process in her day.

“My grandma took her kettle and skimmed the cream with a toddle stick, making a cross on the bottom. So whenever we children saw grandma walking to the barn with her kettle we got excited; we knew we were going to get rommegrot for dinner,” she recalled.


The Anti-Lutefisk

Lefse (potato flatbread) is as popular as lutefisk is unpopular. The ladies agreed it should be made with a grooved rolling pin. Marj Hove uses her grandmothers’ pin to make the ultimate lefse, from homegrown garden potatoes. The cooks disagreed about whether to boil, or mash, them before ricing, and whether butter, margarine, or a 70-30 mix is best. They argued whether the butter should be melted.

Barnaal filled us in on some lefse history that lives in infamy.

“The museum had a lefse contest, with five judges, including a Better Homes and Garden editor, and some Norwegian food purists. It turned out that the winner used instant lefse mix. That caused a lot of long faces.”

If It Isn’t White, We Cream It

Klubb, also called kumla, are dumplings made with flour boiled in beef stock. Stokker called them a constant food from all regions of Norway, which forged a common bond among Norwegian immigrants. Such is not the case in 21st century Iowa. The “Taste of Norway” chefs said that they vary wildly. Sometimes bacon or salt pork is stuck in the center; other times minced potatoes are the main ingredient. Rosendahl said the latter are typical in Story City. Solberg claimed they are best with side pork and museum literature said that the dish is popular with boiled rutabagas, ham, pork sausage, syrup and melted tallow.

Carrie Solberg made them sound like lutefisk’s soul mate: “They look like baseballs left outdoors all winter. You have to slice them to serve them.”

They chefs agreed they should be made with blood, suet, water and flour. Rosendahl admitted, “I make them with potatoes instead of suet, but you can eat it with cream or butter.”

Karen Guttebo laughed, “Everything we Norwegians eat is white, and if it isn’t white, we cream it.”

Visiting Decorah

The magnificently restored Hotel Winneshiek’s and its Opera House and Conference Center are among Iowa’s best kept secrets. At Christmas, it dresses in Victorian splendor. Last year, Nutcracker characters adorned trees and mantles. A grand tree centered the lobby, surrounded by a sumptuous buffet. The Opera House was draped with a 150 foot garland, its stage book-ended by dazzling trees decorated in 19th century style. On Christmas Eve, the hotel placed a Nutcracker ornament on each guest’s bed. www.hotelwinn.com ; 800-998-4864.

Decorah is one of the best restaurant towns in Iowa. Many, such as the Hotel Winneshiek’s Victorian Rose, the Dayton House, La Rana and the Café Deluxe, use fresh raised meats, poultry and vegetables, from the area’s many organic and organic method farmers.

Agnes Forde’s Rommegrot makes 10 servings

1 quart milk
1 cup half & half
1 cup butter (or margarine)
¾ cup flour
½ cup sugar

¼ cup melted butter or margarine
Sugar and cinnamon

Heat milk and half & half, stirring often to prevent scorching. In a large heavy pan, melt butter and add flour; cook about 5 minutes, stirring constantly with wire whisk. Pour in milk and half & half and cook, stirring frequently until mixture bubbles and thickens. Stir in sugar. Pour in bowls
and pour melted butter on top. Sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon.

Rommegrot make be kept warm and served from a crock pot on low. It may be refrigerated and reheated in microwave.

This story was originally published in The Iowan

Call Her “Mom”

Betty and Gene Burgett Camp with a Family of Forty

“It looks like the Oklahoma Land Rush, declares Kathie Swift, the Iowa State Fair marketing director. “They start lining up days early, getting in position for when the gates finally open.”

Swift isn’t talking about teenagers waiting in line for tickets to see Britney Spears. For the most part, she’s talking about their grandparents.
Every year, several days before the state fair opens for camping, scores of
vans, RV’s, trailers and motor homes park queue outside the campground gates. Unlike the Oklahomans of 1889, these folks gain no advantage by arriving early. All the choice camp sites have been reserved, for months, years, even decades. These Iowa Sooners have already staked their claims. “We come early because there is no where else we would rather be,” explains Betty Burgett of Lucas County.

Betty and husband Gene have been camping for the length of every State Fair for 53 years. All five of their married children also plan their vacations around the fair. “There are 36 in my immediate family here and 4 extras, like Sheila Sivil whose son is married to my daughter. So, I guess there are 40 of us, a small army.” Betty admitted.

Altogether last summer the Burgett campsite included: ten trailers; 15 cell phones; three balanced tables; a food tent that seated 50; a deep freezer; three refrigerators; a double sink with a hot water heater; two ovens; a four-burner gas stove; and a flat top grill big enough to fry eight pounds of bacon at a time.

Setting up camp for this army, on a steep hill, requires military precision. First a 24 foot goose neck trailer is unloaded with camping basics: mess tent, refrigerators, picnic tables, hot water heaters, freezers. Then the trailers must be set up, in precise order, and leveled on the hill. “It’s a giant jig saw puzzle, there is only one possible order to fit everything, so arrivals must be coordinated,” explained Betty.

All of her children and grandchildren camp, together, for the duration of the Fair,
and then some. Almost nothing interferes with this family outing. Betty proudly related how one daughter-in-law came last year despite serious back surgery. Betty’s mother came every year until she died at age 86, and her father still camped here at age 97. In 1972, daughter Connie left her camper and went to a Des Moines hospital. Granddaughter Cami was born on a Wednesday that year and by Friday Cami and Connie were back camping.

The Burgett camp shelters four sets of four generations, descending from Betty and Gene: five children; five spouses; 13 grand children, plus a place is always set for Joey Dean Smith who was stilllborn in 1983; and seven great grandchildren. Burgett family ritual dictates that when a child marries, they get their own trailer for the Fair.

Weddings and the fair also bring the family together for a butchering ritual. Daughter Bonnie and her husband Bruce Smith own a walk-in cooler big enough to hold four sides of beef, and a complete butchering facility. Thirty family members have specific jobs preparing food for the campground. The Burgetts make brats and sausage, cut sides of beef and pork, cure hams and bacon. In short, they prepare the things that other campers simply buy at the supermarket. It takes a lot of food to feed 40 plus people for 2 weeks. “We live off the land, everything we eat here, except dairy products, we grew or raised,” declared Betty.

For last year’s fair, the Burgetts butchered five hogs and a cow, cured their own hams and rolled our own beef roasts. Their menus defined homegrown, roots cooking at its best. A typical dinner featured roast beef, creamed peas, scalloped cabbage, cucumber salad, baked beans, fresh corn on the cob, green beans, three kinds of home made breads, melons, peaches, plus sliced tomatoes, three home made pies, and three other desserts.

As if preparing three wholesome meals a day for 40 people isn’t enough work, the Burgett’s invite sundry others to the spread. “At 5 o’clock on Sundays, we feed the Fair workers, we’re having fried chicken this week, so there will be a big turnout,” she confided last year.

Betty is a campground legend. As we drove around the temporary city of 4000, numerous employees waved and called her “Mom.” She involves people in many ways, “Once I sold out a newspaper carriers’ papers, just to prove to him that it was worth his while, coming up to the campground. After that, he came back every day, for breakfast,” she laughed.

As soon as Betty and Gene get up, at 5 a.m., they start inviting people in for coffee. “If anyone calls me Mom, or Grandma, I will feed them,” she admits. Soon after coffee, the breakfasts begin in earnest with home cured bacon, home made sausage, farm fresh eggs, biscuits, pancakes and fried breads.

Betty proselytizes campers with religious fervor. Sheila Sivil says she recruited half of Lucas County. Betty admits to less, “I have instigated over 100 families to come camp at the fair.”

The Burgett army first bivouacked out of necessity. Half a century ago, fairground camping was free and that fit the budget for a young farm couple with 4 young children. “No matter how poor we were, since then we always found money for the fair.”

Betty believes the fair experience has kept the family unusually close. All 36 children and grandchildren still live within 20 minutes of each other, and all but son Don live within five miles. “Connie tried to move away once, to Minnesota, but that only lasted one year,” Betty qualified.

The family gets involved in the Fair. Three generations have shown sheep, hogs and horses. Betty and nine other family members work at the Family Center. Others keep busy doing good deeds. After shuttle service to the campground ends, the Burgett teenagers often push wheelchairs up the hill. Astonishingly, all this family togetherness is friction free. “I have never heard one argument in the 25 plus years I remember being here,” said 31 year old grandson Todd Burgett.

Asked how any family could be so close and yet so easy going, Todd replied, pointing to Betty and Gene, “Easy answer, those two people.”

Todd’s emphasis was a point of respect. yet, there is something mystically anachronistic about this family. The last half century has not been kind to Iowa farmers like the Burgetts. Betty worked at the Chariton Farmers Co-Op for 25 to help make ends meet. Two of the Burgetts’ son own farms, but they both have taken second jobs to support them. Yet, by sheer force of personality, Betty and Gene seem to will that, within the friendly confines of the campground, a kinder, gentler history of America farm life can be rewritten, simply by setting an extra place at the table. In the Burgetts’ camp, food, faith and family overcome all obstacles.

“My parents brought me to the Fair in a horse wagon, from Chariton. In 1948 this campground was all tents. Only one shower house has been here as long as I have. Our kids used to play with Tonka toys in a ditch over there. Now it’s filled in and terraced with campsites. Our shade is gone with the wind, ( of a 1999 storm) so we bring awnings now,” Betty recalled.

Shower houses, electricity and sewers are all innovations during the Burgetts’ run. They credit former Fair CEO Marion Lucas. “He was a camper himself, so he understood,” Betty acknowledged.

The family has changed its own camping style. Todd recalled at least six upgrades in his family’s camper-trailers. The important thing’s have not changed. “In 53 years we have never had anything stolen, never. It’s absolutely safe here,” claimed Betty proudly.

Personal history makes Betty reflective, and appreciative. “How many people are fortunate enough to live in Iowa?,” she asked. “The best thing of all, is to be here early and to watch it all come together and then to stay late for the sad good-byes. I always think, gee, I hope everyone makes it back next year,” she confided.

What else would you expect from the woman everyone calls “Mom?”

Good Food at the Fair
Some Fair’s food concessions bring once-a-year tasting opportunities. For instance, this year, the corn dog will have a dozen competitors in the food-on-a-stick category: dill pickles; pork chops; cheese; Cajun chicken; German sausage; Chinese beef; veggie hot dogs; fried pickles; chocolate cheese cake; hot bologna; honey; and chocolate covered bananas.
Those who prefer their food off the stick can find concessions that are miles away
from the typical junk food of yesteryear. In the Agriculture Building, Salad Bowl will offer personalized wraps with 20 fresh toppings and salad dressings like orange balsamic. Her BLT’s will be made with Roma tomatoes so they don’t get soggy.
Applishus’ four locations will sell fresh cut apple wedges with melted caramel and apple slushes with 100% juice, plus apple pastries and cookies.
The Iowa Lamb Producers will feature leg of lamb sandwiches and other Iowa
lamb products at their concession in front of the Sheep Barn.
Turkey Time, on the Triangle, will have fresh strawberry shortcake and turkey.

Camping
If you want to camp at the Fair you must: 1.) Write a letter of intent by May 1,
requesting a full time spot, for the following year, to POB 57130, Des Moines, IA, 50317-0003. 2.) By May 15 you will receive forms from the Fair, asking about the size of your camper and your personal requirements. Return them soon as possible, assignments will be granted in order of postmark.
Although camp sites for the full fair sell out, short term campers are accommodated.
Rarely is anyone turned away, particularly after the first weekend and if your camper is self contained. Full fair camp sites rent for $175 with electricity and water, $210 with
sewer added. $140 without any utilities.

Betty Burgett’s Cucumber Salad
1 small package lemon Jello
2 tbs. vinegar
1 cup chopped celery
1 cup chopped cucumbers
1 tbs. chopped onion
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 cup mayonnaise

Add vinegar to Jello and let Jello begin to set, whip till fluffy. Add remaining
ingredients.

Sheila Sivil’s Scalloped Cabbage
1 large head cabbage
1 stick butter
1/2 cup flour
dash salt

Shred the cabbage, bring to boil in water and drain. Add cabbage to 9 x13 pan. Make a
white sauce with melted butter by stirring in flour and salt till pasty, then slowly add milk,
stirring until thick. Spread over cabbage and bake 40 minutes at 350 degrees.

This story was originally published in The Iowan