Category: Heritage Recipes

Hiya Everybody! I've been on a little unplanned hiatus....although it was the kind of adventure you don't want to have.

September marked the first complete year of the Dakota Pharmgirl blog and I had big plans for an anniversary article! Now here we are about a week before Halloween. That was not the plan!

Here's what was supposed to happen and how it got derailed.

What kind of good Dakota girl doesn't know how to make sauerkraut and nifla??
This one didn't until a couple months ago, but I've got it down now and am ready to share!

Just like my previous post about kekle (kuechle), our family apparently goes for the simplified spellings of these words........so we spell it 'nifla'....others spell it 'knoephla' or 'knipfla'.....potayto potahto.....the point is that it is carb heaven.

I don't think its possible to have lived in North Dakota and never eaten sauerkraut and nifla or had a soothing cup of nifla soup...so good. Ya, you betcha. There's probably something wrong with your prairie genes if you don't like it......just saying.

However, at their age, the kids love the nifla, not so much the sauerkraut. So for now, I make them a 'nifla and bacon' version to go alongside my 'nifla and sauerkraut' version. I usually don't cater to their dislikes but more sauerkraut for me so I'm ok with it. Bacon solves everything.

Since this is my first post, why not start with one of my favorite heritage recipes?

I'm talking about Kekle ('KEE Cleh') which is how my family spelled it, but you may see it spelled as Kuechle or some other variation. This is 'Grandma Werner's" recipe (my dad's mom) which my mother continues to make when family gathers.

In fact, we just devoured several batches as my sisters and I gathered our families at Mom and Dad's over the 4th of July.

If you snooze you lose! They go fast.