A Swedish Family Cookbook: From Farm to Fabulous

By Jonni Hegenderfer

A cookbook, and so much more! It's kitchen warmth, family and friends, and the joy of sharing a meal and conversation with those you love, all rolled into one delightful volume.

It all began with Jonni Hegenderfer's grandmother, Anna Larson, who emigrated from Sweden to America in 1895, just days before her 21s

• Language: English
• Publisher: Palmetto Publishing
• Release date: Sep 19, 2022
• ISBN: 9798885909280

Jonni Hegenderfer

Former marketing professional Jonni Hegenderfer was the owner of a boutique public relations agency for 25+ years, serving McDonald's, Hershey's, Jim Beam, ConAgra, and other fortune 500 companies. She is now retired and divides her time between homes in Bonita Springs, Florida, Downers Grove, Illinois, and Grand Beach, Michigan. Jonni loves to eat and to entertain friends, and especially loves to bake-cookies, cake, or anything sweet. On a trip to Sweden, she put her Swedish cousins to work digging up old family recipes, which resulted in this book. Following her trip, she kept her friends busy cooking and eating. Her personal "recipe taste-testers" were asked to cook numerous recipes and then the group gathered - with a glass of wine - to taste and tweak. Each entry in "A Swedish Family Cookbook" has been Friend Approved!Travelling to explore the food, traditions, and cultures of other countries from Stockholm to St. Tropez to Sydney to Shanghai is always a treasured adventure. She believes there is much to learn when sharing a meal with new friends, and that the world would be a kinder place if we all committed to a global policy of International Dining Diplomacy.

Book preview

Many Thanks to…

My friends and family who provided encouragement, recipes, recipe testing, and many memorable meals to bring A Swedish Family Cookbook from an idea to the bookshelf. This never would have happened without you.

Special thanks to my Swedish family: Bengt Jansson – for the guided tour of Sweden, recipe translations, Gravlax video, superior kitchen skills, and enthusiasm, and to Gunilla Pettersson, and Inger Jansson who shared their homes, family stories and recipes, and days of amazing cooking.

And thanks to all my Sous Chefs who enthusiastically tested each recipe and hosted laughter-filled meals to test and review – your friendship is cooked into every page. I know I’m forgetting some of you but for starters (alphabetically) – Dale Micek, Anne O’Malley, Kay Porsche, Dolores Siok, Dorothy Stephenson, Ann Teri, Karen Zrout, and all my friends who sat at the table and provided invaluable taste-testing.

This endeavor has truly been the work of a village. Thanks to Lynn Fischer, a generous, multi-faceted cookbook author and TV personality who helped lead the way with her advice and encouragement. And to Margie Kessler and Christina Sanes, my Bonita cheerleaders and Chief Marketing Officers, thanks for your spirit and high expectations. I can never fully express my appreciation for everyone’s support and, most of all, for your friendship. I promise to deliver cookies whenever the cookie jar is low.

My Swedish Family

From 1895-2020

Anna Sofia Andersson Larson, my maternal grandmother, arrived in Chicago, Illinois, April 4, 1895. She was not quite 21 and immigrating with her two younger sisters, Hulda Lovesa, 18, and Brita Charlotte, 16. They left Tvååker, Sweden, saying goodbye to their mother, whom they would never see again, their father Anders, and two brothers, Johan and Karl.

Life was hard in Sweden in the late 1800s with little work, crop failures and scarcity of food. The boys could work the farm but girls had few choices. America was the land of opportunity and the Midwest was described as an Earthly Paradise. And so the sisters set sail to an unknown future leaving behind their family and all that was a part of their young lives.

Chicago was a popular destination for Swedes. Swedish girls found work in the homes of the wealthy – cooking, sewing, cleaning, doing laundry and taking care of children. Anna was a seamstress. Men could find work at the steel mills and the rail yards of the Pullman Company. My grandfather, John Larson, who also emigrated from Sweden, was a carpenter and worked for the Chicago Service System and the Pullman Company.

In addition to employment, Chicago provided an active and welcoming Swedish social community. The church, or Svenska Kyrka, and social clubs such as The Swedish Club of Chicago on the city’s south side, brought adventurous, often homesick young Swedes together for fellowship, celebrations and smörgåsbord. It was a place where everyone spoke Swedish. They shared stories and news of friends and families left behind as well as tips on job opportunities, a new Swedish bakery or grocery store, and introductions to eligible young men and women recently arriving in the neighborhood.

I always thought my grandparents met in Chicago. However, digging through family memorabilia, I discovered that they both came from the same area of Sweden, were on the same ship sailing to America at the same time, and both arrived in Chicago on April 4, 1895. Were they friends – or lovers – before they set sail? Did they fall in love on the long journey to America (typically six to eight weeks)? Did fate finally bring them together in Chicago at a Swedish club social or the local butcher shop? I wish I knew their story but it will always be left for my imagination. I do know that they were deeply in love and married in 1902, seven years after arriving in Chicago.

In 1907, Anna and John made the long journey back to Sweden with the hopes of starting a chicken farm. Although their dream of a farm was a disappointment, another dream was realized – they successfully started a family. My mother, Cornelia Anna Mangheld Pettranella Larson, was born in Gothenburg, Sweden, on July 23, 1908. Deciding life in America truly offered a better future, Anna and John packed their belongings and, with their infant daughter crossed the Atlantic Ocean for their third and final voyage. Cornelia was three months old at the time of sailing, which would mean they sailed sometime in October/November of 1908, not the ideal time for a trans-Atlantic crossing. The family story of this perilous journey on turbulent seas always included an elderly gentleman who rocked baby Cornelia on his knee across many miles of an angry sea.

Two years later, on July 21, 1910, Elmida Louisa Larson, Mom’s sister and my aunt, fondly known to her adoring niece and nephew as Mimi, was born in Chicago. While neither of the Larson sisters learned to speak Swedish, they learned the language of the Swedish kitchen. My most treasured inheritance has been their joy of cooking and a stack of delicious recipes.

Fast forward to the 1930s. Cornelia Larson (my mom) married Clifford Lincoln Hazzard (my dad) and had two children, Clif (my brother) and me, Jonita Susan. In the ‘40s, Elmida Larson married Aron Claus Aronson, a second-generation Swede who loved Swedish cooking. We all lived together in a brick two-flat on the south side of Chicago. My family, dad, mom, Clif and I, lived on the first floor while Grandma Anna, Aunt Mimi and Uncle Aron lived upstairs. Grandpa John had died before I was born.

This multi-generational living arrangement was an incomparable blessing that enriched my childhood creating memories that continue to warm my heart every day. Surrounded by love and support from every corner of my home, I always knew I could escape to Grandma’s arms if my brother was tormenting me as brothers often do. Or, if Mom’s dinner was not my favorite – sauerkraut was at the top of the list – I would run upstairs to see what Mimi was cooking and set another plate at her table.

Like all children, I loved family celebrations — the fun and laughter, the stories, my dad singing, my brother playing the piano, the flowers on the table, and mom and Aunt Mimi stirring and twirling as they created kitchen magic. Especially, I loved the smells hinting at the feast about to be served and the tastes I would steal straight from the bowl before anyone else had a chance to dig in. Every celebration was a smörgåsbord with cheeses, sausages, herring, meatballs (of course), salads – potato, jello, fruit, cabbage, carrot – a main course – typically a roast or a ham or the holiday turkey – plus corn pudding, a green veggie, Parker House rolls, and then the birthday cake or plum pudding or rice pudding with raspberry sauce and platters of cookies. When I think back, most of our everyday family meals were mini-smörgåsbords featuring a little of this and a little of that – Lagom in Swedish.

For years I’ve carried around a large manila envelope plus a notebook plus a recipe box containing my family treasures – recipes handwritten by my grandmother, my mother, Aunt Mimi, and my brother Clif who loved to entertain and was a great cook. Every holiday I go back to the envelope or the recipe box or the book, looking for the recipe for the traditional Spritz cookies or Mom’s Spice Cookies, or Mimi’s Turkey Dressing, or Grandma’s Rice Pudding or Clif’s Fruitcake. The pages written by Grandma Anna have become worn and splattered, and the ink, most of it over 100 years old now, is fading. Other notes written in a beautiful script in green ink were pages sent to Clif from Aunt Mimi to help him with his first Thanksgiving feast when he moved to New York. Mom’s recipes, also in beautiful script but typically on a scrap of paper or the back of an envelope, have become crumpled and stained from overuse. Those are always my favorites.

Stirring together the Rice Pudding for Easter dinner a few years ago, stirred up memories of past celebrations. The inspiration to preserve these treasured family recipes before it was too late, before the pages faded away to Smörgåsbord Obscurity, became an exciting concept. My cousins in America and in Sweden, representing four generations of Swedes, agreed this would be a "fantastic