My name is Lance Cote. I am a First Nations person, who was raised in a Mennonite home. I first thought about blogging about Mennonite recipes when I was helping my Mennonite foster mother move into a retirement home. As I was cleaning out her kitchen, I started reminiscing about my childhood. It seemed as though I had a story for every plate, cup, ladle, and pot. Me being 31 years old, some of the things I came across I hadn’t seen, or even thought of for the last 15 years. Then as I started packing up her recipe books, flipping through the pages, trying to keep the old books from falling apart, I realized that I had a story for every recipe that she made as well, be it good, bad, or just plain funny.
Through my adult life I have been trying to find a lot of recipes that my foster mother used to make when I was a child, and although I have found similar ones across the internet, they were always slightly different, and just weren’t what I was looking for. My family and I have lived in several Mennonite communities over the last 15 years and have made many Mennonite friends. And although I have always appreciated a good, hearty Mennonite meal, I have found that the same recipes varied from town to town as much as the Low German the people spoke.
My goal with this blog is to share my foster mothers variation of popular (and not so popular) Mennonite dishes, as well as other favorite recipes of mine and the many stories that I have to go along with the dishes. I decided on the name MennoNeechie because Menno – meaning Mennonite and Neechie – is a Native American word for friend.
If you do come across this blog, I hope you try these recipes and enjoy them as much as my family and I do!
Cheers!
Lance