The Good Earth

The fertile Red River Valley nurtures foods true to its pure, simple roots.

Written by George Hendrix

Eight-thirty on a Monday morning is not an hour for the idle in Crookston, Minnesota.  On a bright, humid day that holds the promise of heat, a clerk unfurls a sidewalk awning downtown at Eagle Rexall Drugs.  At Kim Samuelson's RBJ's Restaurant on Highway 2, it's the tail end of the morning rush.  Several of Kim's staff banter with customers.  The unofficial motto at RBJ's is: "If you've got time to lean, you've got time to clean."

That spirit typifies the Red River Valley, an area that runs along much of the North Dakota/Minnesota border.  The north-flowing river passes Wahpeton, Fargo and Grand Forks in North Dakota, Moorhead and East Grand Forks in Minnesota, and goes on to Canada.  Glaciers pressed this windswept region into one of the flattest lands on earth.  Fields splay along the ruler-straight horizon like a calm, green sea.

The topographical sedateness is deceiving.  This is an intensely hardworking part of the Heartland.  Most residents' ancestors came here from Sweden, Norway, Germany and other northern European countries, they drained marshy plains, dragged away the glacial boulders, and planted sugar beets, beans, barley, wheat, and potatoes.  Today, their decendants tend those fields, or service the farms.

But if the people work like serfs, they eat well.  The home cooking is hearty and good, with a northern European flavor.  That style also dominates menus at restaurants, where cooks build dishes around the bounty of the fields. 

Nobody seems far removed from the land.  Besides tending the restaurant, Kim and her huband, Eric, raise sugar beets, beans and three daughters on their farm west of Crookston (30 miles southeast of Grand Forks).  It's a satisfying life, which is fortunate, because the couple work brutal hours.  The sugar beets in particular require intense labor, particularly in fall, when the marathon harvesting begins to catch the beets at their sweetest.

Rhubarb, one of the region's most dependable garden crops, frequently shows up in pies and crisps.  In fact, the elephant-eared rhubarb patches are just as reliable a fixture outside Red River farmhouses as the windrows of cottonwoods, Russian olives and pines protecting the fields.

Potatoes, too, form an essential part of the cornucopia, though the back-breaking chore of hand-digging the spuds is a distant enough memory that folks sign up for the potato-picking contest each summer at Potato Days in Barnesville, Minnesota (August 22-23).  Gluttons for punishment also enter the peeling competition in the community 27 miles southeast of Fargo.

Where there are potatoes and Norwegians, there's lefse.  At Moorhead's Heritage Hjemkomst Interpretive Center, home of a full-size replica Viking ship berthed in the Norwegian culture center's atrium, the value of food traditions is punctuated by cookbooks sold in the gift shop.  They're packed with recipes for the crepelike potato dish, as well as krumkake and sandbakkels.

Back in Fargo, German foods take center stage at restaurants such as Kroll's on East Main Avenue.  On the menu, a no-nonsense, stern-looking stout woman in an apron brandishes a rolling pin.  Orders the caption: "Grandma Kroll says eat up!"  Yes, ma'am.  And save room for kuchen.