An old friend left an orphan cookbook on our doorstep, and it proved to be of more than passing interest. It is a centennial cookbook from the town of Lignite, near the Canadian line, published in 2007. It is a rich register, containing some recipes I’m going to try out, each credited to a particular person. I’ve never been satisfied with recipes for beer cheese soup—Jud and Gen Tracy’s recipe from the Chieftain in Carrington comes closest—but I think I can work with the one contributed by Nancy Nodland Hermanson.
We also get a peek at what fine dining looked like in Lignite. I’m reading Tami Barry’s instructions for “Aunt Martha’s Company Casserole.” This isn’t just some hot dish, it’s a casserole, and what makes it fit for company service, not just your family, is that it encases your hamburger and noodles in cottage cheese, cream cheese, and sour cream. Here are some other takeaways from the Lignite Centennial Cookbook.
1. Everybody has a recipe for ringneck pheasant: pheasant eggrolls, jalapeno pleasant wild rice soup, pheasant in cream sauce, easy pheasant and gravy, pheasant in wine and cream, red rooster, and just “pheasant.”
2. There’s some ethnic diversity in Lignite (Baklava, lutefisk, Danish, Spritz) and a considerable sweet tooth. Given the season, I’m going to give rhubarb sour cream pie a go, even though I just polished off a rhubarb custard pie.
3. Some cooks partake of the land with wry humor in their naming protocols. First prize in this category goes to Nadine Sandberg for Old-Fashioned Oatmeal Rocks, submitted in memory of her father, Ralph Ljunggren. Was that because he liked the cookies, or because he picked so many rocks?
The most endearing quality of this centennial cookbook, the thing that sets it apart, is its homage to Olive Johnson, proprietor of Johnson’s Cafe from 1957 to 2001. “She will be remembered,” say the editors, “for her radiant smile, her friendly ways, and her genuine kindness to everyone she encountered.” And for 28 pages of her recipes, at the front of the book. (I’m going to attempt her Icelandic Coffeecake.) My granular sources say Olive was born in 1893 in Minnesota, and married George Johnson after coming to North Dakota. It appears they left no children. When Olive ran the cafe, in an old bank building dating from the town’s founding, George ran a repair shop in the back. The town was her family, and she fed them.
Perhaps the reason this cookbook came into my hands, however, is that its preface presents a ballad from 1910, when Lignite was waging a county seat fight in the new county of Burke. The author of the ballad, “Lignite for County Seat,” is Thorwald Kopswald, the postmaster. Born in Norway, he had come to North Dakota by way of Wisconsin. He dug in his heels at the railroad town of Lignite and put his postmaster’s pen into service in the fight.
Lignite Our Prairie Queen
She will next fall be seen in the front rank.
Little she is, but sweet
She gets there with both feet,
Lignite for county seat,
On that we bank.
Lignite didn’t have the votes to win the county seat, but it wins for the ballad—all eight stanzas of it.
