Tradition!

Tradition in our family boils down these days to soup. Many of the old traditions have gone by the wayside and new ones are being formed among the extended family. But one of the oldest still survives - the Christmas Mushroom Soup.
For over 100 years in this country, and who knows how long in Slovakia, this recipe has been served at Christmastime. Originally it was served only on Christmas Eve, but now it’s served on whatever day the Slovak clan gets together for the holidays.
Years ago, I followed my mother-in-law around the kitchen as she prepared the soup and wrote down everything she did. So, here it is: THE RECIPE for THE SOUP.

8 quarts water

3 cups sliced carrots
1 ½ cups sliced celery
2 small cans sauerkraut juice (7.5 ounces) or same amount of juice drained from kraut
3 Tbsp salt,
½ tsp pepper
1 tsp thyme
2 med potatoes, cubed
1 lb fresh mushrooms, sliced
1 onion, diced
1 ½ sticks butter (¾ cup)
½ cup flour
1 box barley cooked separately according to package directions.

Put water, carrots, celery, kraut juice, salt, pepper, and thyme into a large kettle. Cook until vegetables are almost done. Add potatoes and continue cooking. Sautee onion and mushrooms in butter until tender. Using a slotted spoon, remove onions and mushrooms from butter and put in soup. Add flour to butter and stir constantly until flour browns. Quickly add 2 cups soup to thin the flour mixture. Stir until smooth. Add this mixture to soup pot and cook until soup thickens slightly.

To serve, we put a spoonful of barley into the soup bowl and ladle the soup on top.

Our Family Tradition of a St. Nicholas Tea

(This is a re-post from Dec 4, 2007)

When you use the word 'Tea' today it conjures up elegant parties. Well, in our case, it was mostly cocoa and cookies and conversation. We started in 1966 or 1967 and sometimes through the years we did get spiffy now and then.

You might ask "Why a 'St. Nicholas Day' Tea?" I'm glad you asked! Why, to combat heresy, secularism, and commercialism and have fun at the same time. That's why!

St. Nicolas was a real man - a Bishop who lived in the 300's. He was a wealthy man who came to love Jesus and wanted to follow him closely. So he took Jesus' advice to the rich young ruler: "go and sell all you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me." He also took to his heart Jesus' teaching about how to give : "But when you give to the poor, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving will be in secret; and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you." Many people benefited from his secret giving and because they were curious about who was being so kind, they found him out!

He went to be part of the council of Nicea and helped formulate the beautiful Nicean Creed and died shortly after. That's the basic story. He made such an impression on people and was loved so greatly and for so long, that many legends have been added and it's hard to sort all that out. It's also hard to sort out how that good man has been morphed by America into Santa Claus! Secularists have such glee in the fact that Santa has eclipsed the real reason for the season. But if you look deeply you can still see a glimmer of 'Santa's' roots - giving in secret without expecting to get anything in return. Which of course is a teaching of Jesus. It's really all quite amusing.


Back to the tea party. The centerpiece was always our angel chimes. With the lights off, the spinning angels made beautiful twirling patterns on the ceiling. Very atmospheric! We would talk about Christmas things and use this as an opportunity to correct any misconceptions.


As some of the children became older, we expanded our horizons. Sometimes we would invite cousins for a more formal tea, and they would put on a hilarious puppet show for the younger ones. The puppets were mostly handmade and so was the scenery and even the script. We only had one play - Little Red Riding Hood. It became funnier with every performance.


The photos here are all from the 1980's. The little girls pictured grew up and did the show for the children of the original puppeteers!

We always ended the party with choosing names for 'Kris Kringle'. It was sort of a game we played for the rest of Advent. More on that in the next post.