According to this entry from a while back, my four favorite dishes are spaghetti, leftover spaghetti, spaghetti memories, and spaghetti dreams. I now realize that the third item should have been “klobasa memories”—specifically, memories of the kranjska klobasa made by my grandfather. There are shops on the east side of Cleveland that still make Slovenian sausage, and it’s pretty darn good. My mom makes sure it’s served every Christmas and Easter, or other times when her far-flung children visit. But we all know—it’s not as good as grandpa’s was.
This second-best klobasa recently made the news when an astronaut took some up to the International Space Station* (along with some Euclid Beach popcorn balls—but that’s a whole ‘nother story, involving my dad’s side of the family). It turns out the astronaut’s mother is Slovenian, and not just—her maiden name is the same as my mom’s.
Anyway, I knew at the time I was being flip and a little lazy about the food question. I should’ve mentioned my mother-in-law’s soup with manti (little meat dumplings). And the list of four couldn’t accommodate the dishes concocted by my dear wife—for instance, the fennel pasta, the potato and leek soup, the “Ursy caserole,” the pizza rustica (a double-crusted “pie” in the traditional sense), her variation of Ming Tsai‘s fried rice ….
Makes you wonder how often I’m flip and lazy, doesn’t it? Well, keep wondering. (Or not.)
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*Correction (2007.01.15): Upon further review, the delicacy carted up to the space station was a package of Azman’s “smokies,” not the traditional (in my view, anyway) Slovenian sausage (which could not, by any stretch, be characterized as “thin”). Also, why give all the publicity to Azman’s? Some folks get their klobasa from Radell’s.
