Monday, March 14, 2011

Celebrating Derek's Heritage Part 2: Maternal Side

Tonight we celebrated Derek’s maternal side with some German food.  Recently, I have learned more about my father’s side of the family.  I knew that my great grandparents (my grandad’s parents) were originally from Germany.  A copy of their marriage certificate, in German (translated into English), has surfaced and a scanned copy has been e-mailed around the family.  I can’t wait to find out any other information my second cousins discover!

On to dinner…

I have had a slow cooker recipe for sauerbraten in my file for years.  I like slow cooker recipes that have few ingredients and are cooked for 8 or more hours (so I can safely leave them while I am at work without risk of burning).

While this requires few ingredients, there is some prep work.  First, the beef has to be marinated for 24-48 hours.  So finding room in the refrigerator was a challenge.  With two full size refrigerators you’d think it’d be an easy task…but I had to move around quite a few things to fit the large bowl in there.


After about 36 hours, my roast was ready for the slow cooker.  Bryan was wonderful and turned on the slow cooker when he left for work.  When I arrived home, 9 ½ hours later, it smelled wonderful and the meat was ready!

The next step was to prepare the gravy.  After removing the roast from the slow cooker and placing it onto a cutting board, I added crushed ginger snaps to the slow cooker and turned it up to high.  Fifteen minutes later, the gravy was ready!

Sauerbraten was served with egg noodles and red cabbage. (and some veggies, of course)


For dessert, we had apple crisp over ice cream.


My next adventure in celebrating my heritage will be to attempt to make a yummy breakfast that my mom mom used to make whenever she would stay at our house.  I can’t tell you the name, not because it’s a secret, but because I think it was made up and I can’t spell it!  Here…I will try, I will spell it phonetically:  woofinpoofins.

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