{"id":55691,"date":"2022-02-06T19:39:37","date_gmt":"2022-02-07T00:39:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.worldcatholicnews.com\/the-steger-homestead-cookbook-mpls-st-paul-magazine\/"},"modified":"2022-02-06T19:39:37","modified_gmt":"2022-02-07T00:39:37","slug":"the-steger-homestead-cookbook-mpls-st-paul-magazine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.worldcatholicnews.com\/the-steger-homestead-cookbook-mpls-st-paul-magazine\/","title":{"rendered":"The Steger Homestead Cookbook – Mpls.St.Paul Magazine"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Minnesotans have lived with the unbreakable spirit of Will Steger for many years. We\u2019ve witnessed his journey from teen climber of Andean peaks to America\u2019s best-known polar explorer, Arctic Ocean explorer, Trans-Antarctic explorer, 10,000-mile kayaker, dogsledder extraordinaire, all-around strong man, climate hero, and, generally speaking, towering cultural giant.<\/p>\n

But have we talked about his favorite pie?<\/p>\n

Well, wait no longer. That interesting new fact is brought forth by The Steger Homestead Kitchen<\/em>, a new cookbook by local maestro Beth Dooley. The book includes the recipes Will Steger, 77, and his niece Rita Mae Steger, 27, cook at the Homestead, Steger\u2019s up-north rural retreat and science center dedicated to raising climate awareness. (Profits from this collection go to support the Homestead.) But that\u2019s not all you\u2019ll find in this cookbook. It\u2019s also a compelling read for several reasons. There\u2019s Steger\u2019s mammoth place in the outdoor exploration and conservation culture, of course, but the book also reveals heretofore obscured bits about local family and home culture as well. What do Minnesotans eat when ingredients must be grown, canoed and portaged in, or carried in by dogsled? How is family life different when you\u2019re the only warm house for miles and the land is brittle and snow-covered, the night lasts for 16 hours, and the wolves are howling? What exactly was the Minnesota childhood that created a superpower like Steger? And who is Will Steger when he\u2019s not being a superhero?<\/p>\n

I made some phone calls to gather some details. Now, sit back and enjoy a little time travel. I\u2019ll throw everyone on a stage for a home holiday play, like they had in bygone days.<\/p>\n

First Stop\u2014The 1950s<\/strong><\/h3>\n

The scene:<\/em><\/strong> Richfield, a little just-built house on a former cornfield, part of the housing that\u2019s been thrown up fast for returning GIs.<\/p>\n

The players:<\/em><\/strong> Margaret Steger, onetime Polish German Catholic farm girl from Mahtomedi, current mother of 10. William Steger the elder, co-inventor of a water-softening device, former Mahtomedi town kid from the German Catholic family that owned the Piccadilly Restaurant (the family would later learn he was actually Irish and adopted).<\/p>\n

Spotlight on:<\/em><\/strong> The large family table where everyone eats\u2014so big they had to pop out the back wall and enlarge the house to accommodate it and the growing family\u2014with a bench on each side for the 10 kids and a chair at either end for the parents.<\/p>\n

Why, who\u2019s that walking in? It\u2019s Will Steger, the second-oldest child, who just biked 12 miles home carrying the $1.75\u00a0 he earned caddying at the Minnesota Valley Country Club. Mom sees him. \u201cIf she was feeling affectionate, she\u2019d sing to me: \u2018Can I make you a cherry pie, darling Billy<\/em>,\u2019\u201d recalls the famous Will Steger today. Sure, she could make any of her pies; cherry and apple were family favorites. But if Steger\u2019s birthday was coming, it would be lemon angel pie, his absolute favorite, baked in a meringue shell. \u201cThe rolling pin was always out. She\u2019d lift the flour up out of the cupboard and set to making pie or cookies, cooking and singing out from the kitchen to my father, and he\u2019d sing from another room back to her. It was a wonderful way to grow up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Every Saturday night, Steger\u2019s parents would go out to dinner to dance and meet other couples, mainly at Gannon\u2019s, though sometimes they\u2019d end up at Murray\u2019s downtown. The next morning, the family would go to church, then maybe pack a picnic to eat at Minnehaha Park before exploring the falls. \u201cApples, oranges, sandwiches, some special dessert to make it feel like it was worth having the picnic. Like pie,\u201d recalls Steger.<\/p>\n

By the time Monday morning rolled around, Margaret Steger would fill up that big family table with cereal for breakfast and then line it with 10 brown paper bags packed with 10 sandwich lunches. \u201cWe ate just about all our meals together,\u201d remembers Steger. \u201cI learned a lot of tolerance and patience at that table. The kids cleaned up. My older brother washed the dishes, I dried, then the table turned into a place for homework. Everything happened around that big table. There wasn\u2019t anywhere else! All six boys shared one large bedroom upstairs with bunk beds, cribs, all together. The four girls had one bedroom. We got seven minutes in the bathroom each. It was an incredible experience, our family. Loving, and given total freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n

So much freedom that Will stockpiled his caddying money and, at 15 years old, took his older brother Tom along and piloted a motorboat down the Mississippi River all the way to New Orleans.<\/p>\n

Next Stop\u2014The 1960s and 1970s<\/strong><\/h3>\n

The scene:<\/em><\/strong> Up north, among the tamaracks, betwixt a brown gnawing beaver and black wailing loon, not too far from Ely.<\/p>\n

In 1964, young Will bought 30 acres of land inaccessible by road and started the three-year process of cutting down trees, digging out roots and rocks, and carrying in buckets of muck from the lake to make garden beds for growing his own food. \u201cI was smart enough when I was younger that I wanted my mind to develop in the pure wilderness, where I was free,\u201d he explains now. Steger had been enamored with the idea of homesteading\u2014turning wilderness into something that can sustain human life year-round\u2014ever since he was a kid. He canoed in, felled trees with an axe, stripped the bark, built cabins and picnic tables and sheds. His little brother Bobby, 10 years Will\u2019s junior, visited him. Steger recalls how Bobby wept with fear when the Slavic stonemason helping Steger hid outside and howled like a wolf. Bobby was the brother who shared Will\u2019s Emersonian, hippie-adjacent ideas of the importance of freedom and independence.<\/p>\n

Those early building years, Steger didn\u2019t eat much more than what he calls gruel\u2014that is, wheat, purchased whole and in bulk from the Twin Cities co-ops, freshly ground, cooked over a campfire with water, then made rib-sticking with butter and maybe some peanut butter from a five-pound bucket brought in by canoe. Eventually, his thoughts turned to dogsleds\u2014they would make his land work and also get him farther out to explore. That\u2019s how he started breeding his now-famed line of Polar Huskies. Soon enough, he\u2019d be dogsledding in not only his essentials but also three tons of dog food.<\/p>\n

That plot of land, which eventually became the Homestead, cost a little more than a year\u2019s tuition at St. Thomas. Steger remembers that number pretty well because he got both an undergraduate and a master\u2019s degrees from St. Thomas\u2014both to defer his Vietnam draft and to provide credentials so he could teach winter classes, particularly January terms for Gustavus, St. John\u2019s, and St. Thomas. He also taught classes for youth at risk, he says. \u201cIt was mainly people with parental problems, sometimes addiction, not real heavy drugs. Once we got them into the woods, they didn\u2019t know where they were, so they couldn\u2019t run away. Then we taught them wilderness skills for three days: how to build a fire, how to dry your stuff, cooking, that kind of thing. We\u2019d eat every meal together around the campfire. There would be a specialist in family issues or someone like that, and we had deep discussions every night. Surrounded by incredible beauty and wilderness, physically active together all day, sitting down around fire and food to tell our stories\u2014through that, understanding and learning to respect each other. We did miracles on these courses.\u201d<\/p>\n

Intermission<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Spotlight on:<\/em> <\/strong>The big table.<\/p>\n

See it there, the one thing behind the life of feats and courage? A big table, always a big table, with simple food upon it, and lots of people gathered around.<\/p>\n

On to the 1980s<\/strong><\/h3>\n

The scene:<\/em> <\/strong>Backwoods of northern Minnesota.<\/p>\n

Once the road went into the Homestead, Steger\u2019s parents, Margaret and Will, would drive up for their son\u2019s birthday. \u201cWe\u2019d have a campfire. She\u2019d have the meals all planned out: pork chops, boiling potatoes, my angel pie. We\u2019re not an outdoor family, but they were good sports. Once, she got up early to start breakfast, a big bear came along, she screamed\u2014quite a morning.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eventually Will married Patti Steger, and they raised her two children in the woods and founded Steger Mukluks, the traditional shoe company that\u2019s still Ely\u2019s biggest employer. In those mid-1970s-to-mid-1980s years, with family coming and going, so many people visited the Steger\u2019s plot of wilderness that he created a building for a big table and a woodstove, the kind with a firebox on one side, a water reservoir for boiling water, and an oven for baking.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s what people cooked with on a farm before electricity and propane and all that,\u201d explains Steger. Bread, chili, gingersnaps, and, yes, pie all followed the arrival of the wood cookstove. But Patti and Will split up. He went on to fame. She went a few lakes over and ran the business and had her own successes.<\/p>\n

Then the big-money super-adventure years began. Will was racing to various poles. Meanwhile, his kid brother, little Bobby, grew up, vacationed in Vietnam, fell in love, and brought home his wife, Kim Chi, and the two eventually welcomed baby Rita Mae.<\/p>\n

The Next Chapter<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Spotlight on:<\/em> <\/strong>Rita Mae.<\/p>\n

Rita Mae Steger grew up in Monterey, California, cooking beside her mom, Kim Chi, whose fried rice is in the book, and learning the joys and difficulties of distance hiking with her dad, Bob Steger. She\u2019s gone out hiking for two months, for five months, and between that and the fact she\u2019s been the Homestead official cook since 2017, she likely knows as much about North American campfire cooking as any chef on earth. She spent summers as a child in Hue, Vietnam, learning from an extended family that includes famed chefs. She also made frequent trips to the Twin Cities and the Homestead.<\/p>\n

\u201cWill and I were always kindred spirits,\u201d says Rita Mae. \u201cWe just vibe off each other really well. My dad ended up in California because of Will, and the two of them just have this very close connection with nature. My dad kisses the ground every time we show up. I have that connection, too. My dad will sleep in Will\u2019s expedition sleeping bags on the top of the lake in February. Someone will see an object on the lake, and I\u2019ll be like, Yup, that\u2019s my dad<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rita Mae keeps her grandma Margaret\u2019s cookbook in the Homestead kitchen (Margaret passed away in 2006) and cooks from the spidery handwritten pages, sometimes making the lemon pie that first appears in our story just after World War II. Sometimes Rita Mae does her own thing, making a five-spice beef stew from meat she gets in town at the Ely farmers\u2019 market. (Feeding 25 people at a time at the retreat center from the farmers\u2019 market in Ely can be a delicate dance. Rita Mae is careful to never clean the egg lady out of eggs, because it wouldn\u2019t be fair to the rest of the town.)<\/p>\n

Rita Mae also sings and plays guitar. Sometimes, at the Homestead, she wakes up at 4 o\u2019clock in the morning to get some time to herself and work on her own things. \u201cI love it there so much. I am just so happy there. It\u2019s like paradise. So many people coming in and out all the time. And because I work in the kitchen, I\u2019m just about always the first person people meet, and that\u2019s such a cool part of being there.\u201d<\/p>\n

She also gets away from the kitchen. \u201cI\u2019ll actually eat alone after feeding everyone,\u201d she says. \u201cMaybe take a special loaf of banana bread for Will to leave at his cabin, then go down to the lake, say hi to the snapping turtle Goliath or his little friend Sardine. I love the aspen trees up there, the way the leaves make noise in the wind and look like sequins. I love to jump in the lake in the afternoon, even when it\u2019s the end of summer and it\u2019s 35 degrees.\u201d<\/p>\n

Will Steger is one of 10 siblings and currently has 37 nephews and nieces, and it seems awfully nice that he found one just like him in a few meaningful ways. \u201cRita Mae left home at 18 to be self-sufficient. I admired that tremendously,\u201d says Steger. \u201cOver my 50 years in education, I\u2019ve dealt with so many young people who made the decision not to go to college. They leave; their parents have a nervous breakdown. I tell the parents, \u2018Relax, it\u2019s going to work out. It always does.\u2019 <\/em>She\u2019s a California girl with her mother\u2019s values of Vietnam, and like-minded with Bob and I, and just a prodigy when it comes to cooking. How lucky am I?\u201d<\/p>\n

Lessons Learned<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Spotlight on:<\/em> <\/strong>The home of the big table today.<\/p>\n

The scene:<\/em> <\/strong>Snow as far as the eye can see.<\/p>\n

What is solitude? What is isolation? Are they opposites? Necessary co-conditions? What is it to be close with family? Does solitude make a family closer or merely create a desire to get away from one another? These are the questions that emerge in the icy cold of Minnesota in January. Do we bake cookies because we have to or because we want to? Are cookies from Grandma\u2019s recipe by Grandma\u2019s descendants better<\/em> or worse,<\/em> and do they make you happier<\/em> or sadder<\/em> than the best cookies in Paris?<\/p>\n

There is no one answer to any of these questions, of course. We all have our own answers, and the answers may change over a single blizzard spent indoors. But the Steger clan\u2014some heroes, some humble\u2014have answers that the rest of us can use like candles to better illuminate our own family rooms. \u201cThere\u2019s something about being in solitude that brings people together,\u201d says Rita Mae. \u201cIt\u2019s not like you\u2019re in quarantine and things get intense. If you\u2019re in solitude in the forest, you can do yoga in the quiet, then hang out at the lake laughing, hearing the laughter echo. And you eat every meal together. When do you ever do that? It creates a special closeness.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s cool to have Rita Mae as a friend,\u201d says Steger. \u201cThose values that Bob and I, that Kim Chi and I, Rita Mae and I share\u2014you\u2019re only like-minded in this life with a handful of friends you can really relate to. You can\u2019t expect the world to understand you all the time. I have that understanding with Rita Mae. It\u2019s a gift. People in the city say, \u2018Oh, you\u2019re going back up to the middle of nowhere.\u2019<\/em> Well, my definition is that the city is nowhere. At the Homestead, you\u2019re in the middle of something beautiful, which is the present moment. You have time to converse and laugh and look at the natural world.\u201d<\/p>\n

He goes on to say, \u201cI really do think the world is in a sort of spiritual void right now, buying incessantly and destroying the planet, no benefit to anyone. But I have faith in the human spirit. If there\u2019s a void, there\u2019s a chance to fill the void so the human spirit will regenerate. And people have done what we do forever: be with community around a fire and a table. I think if we did it more, we\u2019d all be in a better place.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the minds of Minnesotans, Will Steger may still live as a superhuman figure, skiing alone across Canada or taking dogsleds to the points on the globe where there\u2019s only north or only south, but now we know the bigger truth. This strong man came from a strong family with a big table, a set of singing parents, a like-minded soul for a brother, a cooking niece, a belief in the human spirit, and, yes, plenty of pie.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n