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The folklore associated with food is as interesting as the foods themselves. Hungarian Cooking

The Sabads are one of several second generation families in the small railroad and mill village of Norfolk to continue such Hungarian food traditions at home as cabbage noodles, chicken and veal paprikash, and sweet desserts. The program features the discussion of family foods-some of which are special items of their popular restaurant-certain traditional skills they have learned from their elders, and the need to adapt certain recipes for available ingredients in this rural area. [7:31]

The folklore associated with food is as interesting as the foods themselves.
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The folklore associated with food is as interesting as the foods themselves.

quote"Shine's [Sabad] mother used to make [Hungarian] homemade noodles all, she always used to make her own noodles, and she would try to get, I could never master it, cause she used to make just sheets and sheets, you know, and then it would dry, and she'd put it on her board, just put her knuckles like that and her kitchen knife and zing, zing, zing, , zing she'd go. I could never, I could make the dough, but I could never roll it out (laughter) They'd come out uniform about the size of a match, every piece was just about the size of a match, just like that. And never cut her hand. Amazing. Boy, I used to cut my knuckles, my fingernails off. I remember it, until I mastered it. And I still have my special knife that I used. That is till just for making noodles, I mean, cutting noodles fine or wider or whatever.quote

-Beverly Sabad, Norfolk

The folklore associated with food is as interesting as the foods themselves.
Tauny -Traditional arts in Upstate New York.

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Long before microwave ovens, commercial canning, and even thermometers, men and women have used methods of producing and preparing foods learned not from books but from members of their family or practiced widely in their old neighborhoods. While science and health regulations may often have eliminated some techniques, for some people in the North Country the old methods are stll preferable and practiced when possible.



Jim Marilley continues to cut wedges of extra sharp cheddar cheese from 40 pound wheels kept at room temperature at his family's general store in Croghan.
[Mark Sloan photo/TAUNY Archives]

Both the Adirondack mountains and the St. Lawrence River are traditional food sources.
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