When I moved to Omaha 20 years ago I was exposed to all different types of people and cultures.
Where I grew up, in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan (The U.P) there was a large population of Finnish people. My grandfather came over from Finland in the early 1900's. My dad speaks both English and Finnish.
We were raised to be very proud of our ancestry.
Today I made Finnish food for Hook.
Pasty
The Pasty, pronounced pass-tee, (pictured above) is one of the staples of the Upper Peninsula, brought here by the copper and iron miners from Cornwall, England.
The pasty is a sort of portable beef stew folded into a purse of pie dough and baked to a rich, golden brown. Warmed on a shovel held over a candle, the pasty provided the miners with a nourishing, well balanced meal no matter how far underground they were working.
Pasties in the U.P. have an unusual history, as a small influx of Finnish immigrants followed the Cornish miners, in 1864. These Finns (and many other ethnic groups) adopted the pasty for use in the Copper Country copper mines.
About 30 years later, a much larger flood of Finnish immigrants found their countrymen baking pasties, and assumed that it was a Finnish invention. As a result, the pasty has become strongly associated with Finnish culture in this area.
I watched my Grandmother and Mother make pasties when I grew up. There is no family recipe because my grandmother used the little bit of this, little bit of that method.
I am proud to be a Finnish American...... I made 2 pasty pies, I didn't feel like rolling the crust for 20 or 30 pasties.
It smells like home!!!
~Nursey~
