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Christmas cooking in Alberta

Martha Munz Gue, long-time member and leader in the Alberta Estonian Heritage Society, gave an online Zoom Estonian cooking demonstration for AEHS on December 2, with technical help from her husband David Gue. She featured roosamanna/mannavaht (semolina/farina whip) slowly in detail, adding helpful commentaries. Martha is a retired home economics and nutrition instructor, thus well qualified in this regard. 

Alicia and Breanne Mitchell of Calgary show off their roosamanna which they made with their mother Elena after watching Martha Munz Gue’s demonstration.

As she is currently re-learning Estonian, having heard it in her family while growing up on a southern Alberta farm among a large extended family of former Crimean Estonians, Martha chose to add a few grammar markings on the recipes to highlight some language aspects on the written recipes. Her ancestors left the Paide region in 1861 and likely ate roosamanna at their next home in Crimea before immigrating to Canada in 1904.

Martha also demonstrated some aspects of making Mulgipudru (Mulgi/Viljandi district style porridge of potatoes, barley and optional pork) and piparkoogid (ginger spice cookies). 

One family made the mannavaht at their home after viewing the demonstration and sent a photo of the two daughters with the dessert temptingly garnished by whipped cream.

(The roosamanna recipe can be found here

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