Hey Yoopers!

[jdixon]

Katchup and a couple of bottles of Bosch Beer. Man how many years has it been since they closed down the Bosch Brewery in Houghton? Must be over 30 years now. Dang, homesickness worse now!

 

[spitfire]

I will eat'm anyway.But prefer with gravy on the side!

 

[bnail]

I don't understand te draw, but I've noticed that ketchup has about a two/one lead over gravy. myself, I like it plain with maybe a healthy dousing of tobasco, I guess I should've added that condiment in as a choice as well.

 

[Brawdhead]

Here's a question for all you yoopers, do you take your pasty with Gravy, Katchup, or "Straight"?

I'm a traditionalist. Eat it dry. No plate . . . just hold it in one hand (in a break with tradition, I wash up beforehand) and finish it off without dropping a single crumb (er, more or less).

My kids (fifth generation Yoopers) eat them with catsup and use a fork.

As I understand it, the only other acceptable condiment is butter. Salt and pepper are okay.

Adding gravy is totally a troll practice and will elicit disapproving stares from the other patrons at Toni's Kitchen.

Dan

 

[Brawdhead]

Man how many years has it been since they closed down the Bosch Brewery in Houghton? Must be over 30 years now.

33 years since it closed.
Leinenkugel then continued to produce Bosch in Chippewa Falls, WI for the UP market until about 17 years ago when they were bought out by Miller.

Dan

 

[Brawdhead]

myself, I like it plain with maybe a healthy dousing of tobasco

I must admit that I do add Tabasco sometimes, depending on who made the pasties.

Dan

 

[redwing]

What or who as the case be is a "yooper"? I have never heard this term before. Thanks

 

[djnye]

the same folks that find the family reunion as a great place to pick up chicks and who write more than one pasty as "pastys". say ya to da u.p. eh.

that would be michigan's upper peninsula

 

[bnail]

What or who as the case be is a "yooper"? I have never heard this term before. Thanks

It's a veritable subculture! we have our own band, "Da Yoopers," with such hits as "my rusty Chervrolet" and "Da Tirdy point buck," and we have our own movie, Escanaba in da Moonlight, starring Jeff Daniels, though I think Fargo pulled off better accents. and BTW, I'm a transplant so I can't claim yooper status. I am, however, working on "Yoopie" status. :winking:

 

[bwhoffman]

Here's a recipe for pasties Ihave had in my collection, made themonce and was pretty good. Measurments are by guess and by golly!

Cornish Pasty Ingredients -Recipe
For the Pastry ( This is for Short-crust)
One and a half Cups Plain Flour
Lard or vegetable fat
Pinch of salt
Water

For the pasty filling
Chuck steak
Two Large potatoes
Half large turnip (swede)
One large onion
Salt and pepper to taste
Water

Cornish Pasty Recipe Method
The Pastry:
Place flour and salt in a bowl, rub in the fat, until the mixture is so fine that it falls through the fingers. Tip mixture onto a lightly floured table top. With your index finger make a well in the centre of the mixture. Add water a little at a time until it forms a pliable but stiff dough.

The Cornish Pasty Filling:
Finely chop the steak. Dice the potato, turnip (swede) and onion. You may prefer to slice them. Add seasoning. Mix all in a bowl or to be really authentic use your kitchen table top.
Using a floured table top roll out half the dough to a circle the size of a plate. Make a mound of the filling in the centre of the dough. Dampen round the edge of the dough with either water, or milk. Fold over the dough, to make a half moon shape, crimping the edges. Make a slit to let out steam. Brush with beaten egg to glaze.
Cooking your Cornish Pasty Place on lightly greased metal baking tray in the middle of a preheated oven, for around 40 minutes at 450 F . The pasty is cooked when their undersides turn brown and crisp.

FWIW,
Brett

 

[bnail]

Here's a recipe for pasties Ihave had in my collection, made themonce and was pretty good. Measurments are by guess and by golly!

Thanks Brett :hatsoff:
Ya know, Pasties were featured on the Andy Griffith Show once. It was called, If I remember correctly, Andy's English Valet or some such and guest starred Dr. Bombay from Bewitched. The Pasties here were half filled with plum pudding so you could start with your main course and move right on into dessert without missing a bite! I've looked and looked but can find nothing to collaborate the authenticity of that particular modification though.

 

[bwhoffman]

I have a few other variations I can stick up here if there is any interest...

I found these doing internet searches, all that free info you know!

Brett

 

[Brawdhead]

What or who as the case be is a "yooper"? I have never heard this term before. Thanks

As others have explained, Yoopers are the folks who live in the beautiful country above the Mackinaw Bridge, to Gitchee Gummee in the north, and west to the Cheddar Curtain.

Earlier, I mentioned that "trolls" put gravy on pasties (a.k.a. "pastys").

Trolls are creatures who live under the Bridge (I s'pose that by that analogy, Yoopers should be "billy goats", but we don't carry it quite that far).

The term "troll" is frequently applied rather broadly in reference to any non-Yooper (especially visitors and recent immigrants).

Dan

 

[Brawdhead]

we have our own band, "Da Yoopers," with such hits as "my rusty Chervrolet" and "Da Tirdy point buck,"

"Second Week at Deer Camp" is probably their best known.

and we have our own movie, Escanaba in da Moonlight, starring Jeff Daniels,

Which few Yoopers can stand watching. It was much better as a stage play.

though I think Fargo pulled off better accents.

Yeah, the "EidM" accents were horrid. My wife and I figured that the entirety of their voice research for it was to watch "Fargo" a hundred times and call it close enough.

However, I thought the accents in "Fargo" were, on the whole, pretty fake, too. The actors in that movie were more interested in parodying Minnesotan speech habits than replicating them.

No muzzleloading in either flick, but "Escanaba in da Moonlight" takes place at deer camp. And there is, indeed, camp cooking in it. (That's my obligatory on-topic reference. I'll quit with the movie reviews.)

Now, back to pasties. . .
The pasty (at least as it is known in the U.P.) developed from the Cornish pasty.

In the mid-19th century, copper mining began in the U.P. It was a huge boom to the area as they tried to meet the skyrocketing international demands of the newly born electrification and communication industries.

(The U.P.'s Copper Country was akin to Silicon Valley of the 1980s. A worldwide capitol of technology. The U.P. was even host to a World's Fair.)

Anyway, a large portion of the workforce was comprised of tin miners from Cornwall ("Cousin Jacks", they're called). And they brought with them the pasty. A very filling, self-contained meal that could be eaten without a table or fork and could, when wrapped in a towel, sit half a day down in the mine and still be warm when lunchtime came around.

Other miners soon adopted (and adapted) the pasty. It was probably the Finns who figured out how to fix 'em up right by adding rutabagas.

Later, when iron mining began to the south and across the Iron Range, the U.P. pasty accompanied the miners there, too.

Dan

 

[bnail]

Thanks Dan for the elucidation :hatsoff:
I, in truth, have never seen EIDM, only a few short snippits, but did see enough to know I don't wamt tp see anymore of it! just the phrase, "Pasty pie" was anough to cause me to stick my nose in a book while the kids watched it.
I think the pasty is a wonderfully utilitarian meal. I just had a Lowery's pasty for lunch today actually, and man was it GOOD!
I wonder just how similar the pasty and the tourtier are?

 

[Vaino]

Hyvää Päivää...{ Good day, hello, in Finnish}. Quite a few people that visited the UP mentioned a Lehto's pasty stand west of the Mackinac bridge, so we just stopped in and bought a couple of pasties for lunch. They certainly weren't like the pasties my mother made and we fed them to the seagulls. My mother owned a restaurant in Milwaukee, Wi. and pasties were a big hit when she made them available. There's quite a few pasty recipes, but my mother's was authentic seeing she was born in the Houghton-Hancock area. Pasties were originally a Welsh miner's lunch which provided a well rounded diet of meat, vegetables and potatoes wrapped in dough which eliminated the need for bread. This "meal" was adopted by miners of various ethnicities and became especially popular w/ the Finns.....Fred