June 3 is my Mom’s Latvian Name Day. In Latvia you have a special day to celebrate your particular name. My Mom and I were going to go to The Five Fisherman for a lobster dinner but her back has been hurting too much to do go anywhere (thank you all so much for your wishes, she woke up feeling better today and I am convinced it is because of all your beautiful healing wishes for her, I am so grateful). The other day she talked about how Grandma would make a roast pork shoulder dinner for Christmas and how she had happy memories of the house filling up with its scent and Grandma cooking in the kitchen. I asked her if she would like me to make her this dinner. She could not believe I would do that for her considering I normally do not eat pork, let alone sauerkraut! I told her I would be happy to make it for her and would also eat it. And I did.
Here is the pork roast covered in salt and garlic powder and my Mom so happy that I am making this meal for her.
I was always afraid of sauerkraut as a kid. My Mom loves it but for some reason it always frightened me, perhaps because the scent of it is so strong. My Mom makes her own version which mellows it out and it actually is quite yummy. If you rinse the sauerkraut and then fry it up in bacon and add fresh cabbage with some brown sugar and caraway seeds, you get this:
Truly not as overpowering, mellow and quite lovely.
First we slow cooked the pork at low heat (325F) for hours and hours and then we put everything together so the juices would meld and roasted until the pork was done and was 185F inside and the potatoes did eventually brown.
Here is a dish of amazing rustic Latvian cuisine that me and my Mom inhaled. I could not believe how much I enjoyed it and the only person more shocked was my Mom who would not have been able to force feed this to me as a young girl. I feel pretty stupid that all this time I was missing out on my food heritage and am just so grateful I could do this for my Mom and me. What a perfect Latvian Name Day dinner! We looked up an equivalent name day for me here and now I will be celebrate my Zuze day on February 19th.
How wonderful! I have tears in my eyes, Zuze! What a beautiful thing for you and Mom to have shared together. I know how much it will have meant to hear. I can literally smell and taste that meal.
And Zuze is just the cutest & coolest. I wonder what you’ll make for your Name Day!
I absolutely love this rich tradition of celebrating your name!!!
many happy names days to your mom-what a wonderful treat for her
What a fabulous tradition and a wonderful gift for you to give your mom! And in that lovely way of gifts, it ended up being a gift to yourself, too! What a wonderful and heartwarming post, thanks so much! (I follow Jamie on Twitter so that’s how I occassionally show up here.) 🙂
This is so amazing Suzie! Er, Zuze! That is an awesome name for Names Day!
How lovely for you to make this for Mom, and wow that tweeted Saurkraut looks like it ended up pretty awesome and the meal looks delectable. Beautiful food memories!
That meal looks amazing! It was so sweet of you to make it for your mom.
Wow Suzie/Zuze, you’re the only person I know of who can make sauerkraut look yummy!
What a delicious way to celebrate your mom’s visit! Way better than going out for lobster!
You are truly very blessed to have such a close and awesome family and they are blessed to have you!
Glad momma’s feeling better!
Sooooooooooooo yummy! Dh is of German heritage so sauerkraut is present from time to time.
So sweet to see you two having such a great time.
I looked at the site you linked to. It was my Polish name day on June 3rd too. 🙂
What an absolutely special meal! Your mum will always remember it. I love roast pork and sauerkraut. Sauerkraut is really good for you too.
I like the idea of Name Days, they do that in Greece too. Zuze, Feb 19th, good to have another thing to celebrate in the frozen month of Feb!
I absolutely love the photo of your mom…what a wonderful moment you captured!