This is a picture of my great grandma, Rose Charlotte Bruback Jacobsgaard, aka “Rosie” and my great grandpa, Elmer Russell Jacobsgaard on their wedding day on February 20, 1939 in Pontiac, Illinois. My grandma Dorothy says her mother’s dark red, almost wine-colored wedding dress is still in the closet on the Jacobsgaard farm in Livingston County.
My grandma Dorothy has a pretty good memory of her childhood. Here is one of the stories she told me about the Thanksgiving and other holiday traditions in the Becker family, Bruback (also spelled “Brubach”) family, and Jacobsgaard family in the 1940s in Livingston County, Illinois. The Beckers and Brubachs immigrated from eastern Germany, and the Jacobsgaards immigrated from Hammelev, Haderslev in Denmark.
Early on a holiday morning, her grandma, Kate Becker (my dad’s mother’s mother’s mother) used to take her shotgun out into the cornfields on the farm and shoot a goose out of the sky. That would be the main course for Thanksgiving dinner later on in the day. My grandma says her grandma Kate was a very “special” person. (Heh.)
The rest of the day was spent making a stuffed pig’s stomach. Her mother, Rose Charlotte Bruback Jacobsgaard (my dad’s mother’s mother) would help with that. It’s a pretty common thing to do in German families on the holidays. My grandma says her family never wasted any part of the pig. They would stuff a cleaned hog’s stomach full of sausage, potatoes, other vegetables, and spices, and bake it for several hours.
I asked my grandma if she had a recipe for the stuffed pig’s stomach. She said she didn’t, and I told her I would try to find a recipe online for it. She expressed astonishment that I could find a recipe like that on the internet (My grandma is cute; she doesn’t have internet). After driving back to the apartment after Thanksgiving dinner, I did some research and found that stuffed hog’s stomach is called “Saumagen” and was very popular with German immigrant families and Pennsylvania Dutch families.
I don’t think I’ll be touching any pig’s stomach anytime soon, but I might make a similar casserole of sorts in the near future.
North Shore Kitchen 