FROM ‘FOOD THAT REALLY SCHMECKS’

ON HORSERADISH “I don’t know whether horseradish wasn’t sold in the olden days when I was young or whether my parents were masochistic. Anyway Mother bought the fresh, tough, knobbly roots at the market and peeled them with tears streaming down her face while Daddy, also streaming, put them through the food chopper. Mother added vinegar and sugar to taste and they almost gasped as they ate it.” ON SOUR CREAM DRESSING FOR SALAD “Bevvy has never bought oil for a salad and Mother has despised it as something fit only for axles. Sour cream with a bit of sugar and vinegar is the favoured dressing for most local Pennsylvania Dutch salads. It is poured over lettuce or spinach leaves, cucumber, dandelion, boiled “schnippled” string beans, cabbage, endive, onions, and potatoes; sometimes it is thickened and warm, sometimes it is chilled; always it is rich and surprisingly zestful.” ON LIFE IN WATERLOO IN THE MID-1800S “Waterloo’s population was doubled within a year. It boasted thirteen taverns, the Orpheus and Harmony Halls where members gathered on weekly evenings and drew beer from a barrel. On Sundays after church they took their round-cheeked families and their picnic baskets filled with “levavascht,” “bretzels” and homemade brew to a grove on Buck’s Hill where the singing masters led them in a joyful “saengerei” (sing-song). Joseph Seagram came to Waterloo in 1857 and bought the grist mill whose side line was Alte Kornschnapps. J.M. Schneider, who worked in a button factory in Berlin, began making sausages at night in the basement of his cottage home.

The two towns grew closer together...”