Sense of Home Kitchen
My heritage is an even mixture of Germans from Russia on my maternal side and the British Isles (they moved back and forth between Ireland and England over the centuries, with some Welsh mixed in for good measure) on my paternal side. My maternal grandmother spoke of helping to make strudel when she was young, but I never knew her to make it as an adult and I had never had kraut rolls, or runza as it is sometimes called. Some of the Germans in our area however, have grown up eating these, or something similar, no doubt with German sausage rather than the chorizo I used.
A strudel dough is a stretchy dough and older Germans, including my grandmother, spoke of standing around the kitchen with several family members stretching the dough to get it thin enough. I was surprised by how much I could stretch the dough without it tearing. The German food I am familiar with is often quite plain and kraut rolls, as I have heard them called around here, would not have had much more than sauerkraut and either hamburger or a German sausage in them. I "churched them up", as my daughter said (using a reference to an older movie that is best left forgotten).
