With the wind blowing snow across our yard, looking out a window that was frost covered about half way up and seeing a heavy gray sky was actually a sign of beautiful things to come. Looking into the kitchen my mother, in her apron, was standing in front of an old black cast iron stove baking bread that treated my nostrils to an aroma too good to describe. Of the many loaves that were baked, never did I see any that were burned or even over done. Remember there were no temperature controls on those cast iron stoves. You adjusted the heat by putting another log in the stove or if you needed instant heat you could add a few cobs that burned hotter and faster for just a short time. If you were cooking on top of the stove you could move whatever you were cooking to a cooler or hotter part of the range. The loaves always came out of the oven so perfectly shaped and slicing it made toast that melted in your mouth. Oh, we didn’t have toasters or electricity but holding a slice of bread on a wire rack over the stove with a plate removed to expose the open flame, worked just about as well as long as you kept turning the wire rack to toast both sides evenly.

As the bread dough was being prepared into loafs, my mother would pull off pieces of dough and toss them into a pan of lard for deep frying. Watching those odd shaped pieces of dough fry to a golden brown with huge bubbles sometimes forming was such a beautiful mouth watering sight. That view alerted the tastebuds and they sprang to attention knowing how good that taste was going to be when you pulled them out to dry and taking that first bite. With a smear of homemade butter that had been made from the cream of separated milk that had just come from the cow, providing eating at its very best. With that fried dough tasting so good they were given the name “swedes,​ ” a treat we always looked forward to on cold wintery, bread baking days. A name comparable to the Danes calling a pastry a danish.

So why were they called “swedes”?​ Probably because they were good, just like the people who were Swedes making them, at least that was my interpretation when I was young. I even had the nickname of “Swede” by my friends for a while when I was a teenager and I looked at that as being good and a name that was never considered improper or political incorrect.

As we go through life our sense of taste diminishes about ten percent every ten years. So by the time you reach age fifty you have lost about half of your sharp taste but still enough that you can still enjoy good food. By the time you reach my age in the late eighties your taste buds have pretty well retired. Fortunately, the memory still allows you to remember, might even embellish, how good most foods were when you were very young.

If I were to name the best foods that I can remember in life, Swedes​ would be near the top of that list, followed closely by potato soup and the bread my mother baked in that old black cast iron stove on the wintry days.