………
1918
(available in paperback from Penguin, 1999)
MY ÁNTONIA, an American classic, is a love letter to the frontier spirit of those who fanned out across North America in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to make new lives in the West.
First published in 1918, My Ántonia is told through the fond reminiscences of a man named Jim Burden. Jim, orphaned at age ten, is sent by train to live with his grandparents in Nebraska. On the train he meets Ántonia and her family, the Shimerdas, immigrants from Bohemia who are also looking to build a new life in Nebraska.
In their new lives, Jim and Ántonia become fast friends, spending days in the fields under the Nebraska sun, enduring harsh Midwestern winters, and weathering family tragedy together. When Ántonia’s father dies by his own hand, the community pitches in to help the Shimerdas; Ántonia leaves school and takes to hard labor in the fields to help support her family.
Jim and Ántonia grow apart as they reach adolescence, but are reunited in the town of Black Hawk, where Jim’s grandparents have moved so he can attend school. Ántonia, like many immigrant girls in the area, finds domestic work in the household of a Black Hawk family.
When Jim leaves for college in the East, he leaves Ántonia and the Midwest behind. He will not see her again until twenty years later when he finds Ántonia, still in Nebraska, happily married and with a large family of her own.
Jim’s nostalgia for his childhood on the plains graces nearly every page of My Ántonia, and descriptions of food reflect his longing. On his first morning on the farm after returning to Nebraska, Jim sniffs gingerbread baking, a harbinger of the many hearty and delicious farm foods—bread, waffles, sausages, chocolate cake, chicken, ham, bacon, pies—his grandmother would cook. There is affection, even melancholy, in Jim’s recollections of his grandmother’s culinary nurturing: “On Sundays she gave us as much chicken as we could eat, and on other days we had ham or bacon or sausage meat. She baked either pies or cake for us every day, unless, for a change, she made my favourite pudding, striped with currants and boiled in a bag.”
The food in My Ántonia not only mirrors their pioneering self-reliance and industry, it also reveals the kindness and hospitality of neighbors facing hardship together. After hearing that the Shimerdas are reduced to killing prairie dogs for food, the Burdens bring them a hamper of food. With nothing but frozen potatoes in her larder, Mrs. Shimerda returns the favor with a teacup full of brown chips—dried Bohemian mushrooms.
To Jim, Ántonia embodies the richness of the Nebraska land they frolicked on as children. Consistent with this image of Ántonia, as an adult Jim finds her surrounded by a richness and abundance of food. Cherry and apple orchards and gooseberry, currant, and mulberry bushes abound on her farm. In her “fruit” cave, dill pickles, chopped pickles, and watermelon rinds fill barrels, and glass jars of cherries, strawberries, crab apples, and spiced plums line the shelves.
As Jim inspects the jars of fruit, Ántonia’s children inform him that she makes kolaches with the spiced plums. One of the boys snickers. Jim responds, “You think I don’t know what kolaches are, eh? You’re mistaken, young man. I’ve eaten your mother’s kolaches long before that Easter Day when you were born.”
Kolaches are yeast buns with a slight depression for fillings such as apricot, poppy seed, cherry, or prune. They were brought by Bohemian immigrants to the United States and can be found in midwestern bakeries in and around Czech immigrant communities.
Daniela Sever, a Boston area dentist, has fond memories of eating plum kolaches baked by her nanny, Babička (Granny), throughout her childhood in her native Czechoslovakia.
“In Czechoslovakia, we ate kolaches at weddings and parties,” says Sever. “And I bought one every day from the local bakery on the way home from school.” In the United States, Sever makes spiced plum kolaches for special occasions.
NOTE: You can purchase vanilla sugar, or to make vanilla sugar, mix 7 tablespoons sugar with several drops of vanilla extract. Or add 1–2 vanilla beans, cut into 1½-inch pieces, to a small jar of sugar. Cover tightly with lid and let sit in a cool, dark place for 2–3 weeks.
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1 cup milk 3½ teaspoons (1½ packets) active dry yeast 3 cups cake flour
½ cup granulated sugar 7 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature 2 egg yolks |
3–3½ pounds ripe Italian plums (about 24), quartered and pitted 7 tablespoons vanilla sugar (see note) 2–3 tablespoons poppy seeds, either whole or ground (optional) 3–4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted |
Heat ½ cup of the milk until lukewarm. Pour into a small bowl and add the yeast. Allow to sit until yeast is foamy, about 5 minutes.
Sift together the flour and salt in a mixing bowl. Mix in the sugar, butter, and the yeast mixture.
In a separate bowl, beat the egg yolks with the remaining ½ cup milk and mix into the flour mixture. Cover with a damp kitchen towel and let rise for about 1 hour.
Preheat oven to 350°F. Roll out the dough into a rectangle and transfer to a shallow, greased 11 ÷ 17-inch baking pan. Wet your hands and stretch the dough out to the edges of the pan. Top with the plums and sprinkle with vanilla sugar and poppy seeds, then drizzle with melted butter. Bake 25–30 minutes, or until plums are pink. Allow to cool, then slice into 3-inch squares.
Yield: 24 pieces
NOVEL THOUGHTS
The Chicago-based Book Club of Hope Hadassah, originally part of the local chapter of this national Jewish women’s organization, meets monthly at members’ homes on Chicago’s North Side. The group read My Ántonia when it was chosen as the One Book–One Chicago selection, part of a community-building program that encourages Chicago residents to all read the same book. “Some books take forever to get into, but My Ántonia gets you right away,” says Sue Edlin. “The severity of the summer heat and winter cold, the loneliness, poverty, and backbreaking work, as well as the town life came alive in Cather’s descriptions.” The women discussed the primitive way settlers lived. “The thought of living in a room dug into the earth did not appeal to any of us,” says Edlin. “It is difficult to comprehend these living conditions having existed in relatively modern times. The contrast between the prairie and life in the city was startling.”
More Food for Thought
Guests of Milwaukee School of Engineering’s Great Books Dinner and Discussion series in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, dined on foods from the pages of My Ántonia for their dinner discussion of Willa Cather’s novel. Coordinators of the series devised a menu reflecting the heritage of the novel’s Shimerda family (Bohemian meatballs), the Nebraska corn-farm setting (buttered corn), and Mrs. Shimerda’s favorite: poppy seeds (poppy seed–green onion noodles).
teaspoon salt