I made my great-grandmother’s Russian Beans the other day. I wish I knew the specific origin of this recipe. My great-grandparents were German citizens who migrated to Russia to take advantage of the offer of free land. At least, that’s what I have heard since I was young.

What’s funny is that as I was growing up, all of the German recipes I loved were possibly not even German at all. Some were of German origin of course, like Bierock, but many had other origins completely. I wish I had more details about those recipes. I had asked my grandmother many times the name of some of those things. She would tell me the name in German but she didn’t know how it was spelled or what it meant in English, or even where it came from. Now I have these recipes that I’ve had to call something – something I had to make up! For example; she made little potato filled pockets that I can only call pierogis. She called them something else in German that I can’t recall. Many recipes I wrote down many years ago because I knew my grandmother wouldn’t be around forever. She didn’t have them written down! They were only in her head.

I have searched and searched and searched some more to find a Russian Beans recipe online and in cookbooks. I wanted to compare it to my great-grandmother’s recipe. I can only come to the conclusion that my great-grandmother must have adapted a Russian recipe to what she had access to or that she possibly just made it up and called it Russian Beans because she was in Russia! Haha! Maybe she made it up after they migrated to the United States. I haven’t a clue. In any case, this recipe and more from my great-grandmother Yunker, will be in my cookbook!

Yes, I’m still working on that blasted cookbook! I had hoped for it to be ready for print by Christmas 2022 but I never even made it to the recipe testing phase! I’m back to work at it and I will be asking for recipe testers this year. That is, if things don’t get in the way like last year.

By the way, Happy New Year! I hope 2023 is a good one for all of us!