McKenzie Electric Cooperative member Rebekah Engebretson has embraced a homesteading lifestyle (learn more here). For Engebretson, that means keeping it simple. One of the best ways to start is in the kitchen.
“It can be as simple as growing your own food or cooking meals from scratch,” she says.
Since taking over the Velva grocery store, Verendrye Electric Cooperative members Brenda and Matt McCasson have made it their own. They offer in-house smoked meats, homemade daily lunches and even their own line of homemade frozen pizzas. Read more about the McCassons here.
Brenda is a self-described meat-and-potatoes gal, who prefers the stick-to-your-ribs classics with a twist.
Capital Electric Cooperative director and rancher Sara Vollmer shares favorite family recipes from a cookbook she created for her daughters, “The Food that Grew Me.” Read more about Sara here.
Sara makes a huge batch of the Swedish meatball bake whenever she must feed a hungry ranch crew. She uses shell noodles in her preparation, but any egg noodle will do.
If you ask North Dakota Living Editor Cally Peterson, there are a few redeeming qualities of January in North Dakota: basketball and soup season. This month, soup and soupy dishes are leading ladies, and gravy is the knight in shining armor to save us from the depths of winter.
These recipes feature electric pressure cookers, but provide slow-cooker swaps. Learn more on page 27.
Level up your holiday cooking with these recipes from Sheri Shockman, a professional chef who lives in rural LaMoure, but caters a multitude of private parties and events across the state. Shockman’s cooking style has evolved to “gourmet comfort food” since moving to North Dakota 13 years ago from New York City. Read more about Sheri here.
From milking cows on the farm to baking at restaurants, grocery stores, a donut shop and even Minot State University, Carol Crabbe’s Norwegian work ethic hasn’t been tempered with age. Later this month, her kitchen turns into a lefse factory, before her holiday candy-making season kicks in. Read more about Carol here.
Carol shares her famous lefse recipe, which she used to make every day from Nov. 1 through December for many years and sell at grocery stores in Bottineau and Minot.
To celebrate the International Year of Cooperatives, North Dakota Living hops across the pond to northern England for its recipe inspiration this month. Here, poor cotton millworkers pooled their scarce resources to access basic goods at a lower price and created the first modern cooperative business, the Rochdale Equitable Pioneers Society, in 1844.
McKenzie Electric Cooperative members Corey and Rachel Meuchel are growing greens and community at Meadowlark Acres in rural Arnegard. The 15-acre garden plot opens to the public this month. Families are invited to walk through the rows of produce and pick their own to take home. It is the fruit that blossomed from Rachel’s brain cancer diagnosis in 2023, which you can read about here.
Colleen George and Heather Lee are a mother-daughter team who used to run a pizza joint in Westhope, but now work alongside each other at Baker’s Market in the small town 2 miles from the Canadian border. Colleen does the baking, while Heather manages the grocery’s produce and deli departments and cooks a lunch special four days a week. Read more about the small-town grocery store and an effort to make the rural grocery business more viable here.
Richardton rancher Bill Butterfield brings the smoke in everything he does. His most recent venture is a line of North Dakota made seasonings. Read more about Butterfield and his business, Wild Willy’s Seasonings, here.
