Sauerkraut in the making

Celebrating Jubilarians 2012

 Franciscan Sister Mary Joel Bieniek

75 years as a Franciscan Sister 
St. Francis Convent, Little Falls

This is the first in an occasional series of recipes shared by jubilarians in the St. Cloud Diocese. A jubilee marks the special anniversary of one’s religious profession.

Imagine turning 700 pounds of cabbage into sauerkraut — cleaning hundreds of heads of this cruciferous vegetable, shredding them and “stomping” them by hand with a heavy wooden tool to extract the juice.

How long would it take? How much would it make? How many would it feed? A list of questions ran through my mind as I spoke with 94-year-old Franciscan Sister Mary Joel Bieniek who shared a cherished tradition from the Franciscan Sisters of Little Falls’ convent kitchen.

Amazingly, with a handful of volunteers, this colossal amount of shredded, salted, stomped cabbage is ready to put into two or three 50-gallon crocks within about three hours. This tried-and-true recipe — made once a year in the fall — has been used at the convent for at least as long as Sister Joel (rhymes with Noel) has been there — that’s three-quarters of a century!

“After the fermentation process is complete, we freeze it,” Sister Mary Joel explained. “We use around three gallons a meal for about 70 sisters. We eat sauerkraut every week in some form — plain sauerkraut with sausage, ribs and sauerkraut, sauerkraut salad with pimento and a special dressing and in a chocolate cake that fools people into thinking they are eating coconut.”

Sauerkraut-making expert Sister Mary Joel, who celebrates her 75th jubilee this year, was the 11th of 14 children born to Joseph and Agnes Bieniek of Holdingford. Two of her siblings were Benedictines — Sisters (Anna) Mary Vianney (1905-1991) and (Magdalen) Giovanni (1910-2011) and one was a Franciscan — Sister (Helen) Mary Grace (1907-2002).

As a registered dietician, Sister Mary Joel taught at St. Gabriel’s School of Nursing in Little Falls, St. Francis Hospital in Breckenridge and St. Michael’s Hospital in Sauk Centre. Later, for more than 20 years she worked for the Minnesota Department of Health implementing training for foodservice directors throughout the state.

She was one of the founders of The Hospital, Institution and Educational Food Service Society in the 1960s. Today, this not-for-profit organization with over 14,000 members is called the Association of Nutrition and Food Service Professionals.

Check out the FFF posting that follows to see this sauerkraut recipe that has stood the test of time — and then some. CJK

In the 1999 photo above, Sister Mary Joel Bieniek (left) mixes shredded cabbage with salt for a year’s batch of sauerkraut for the convent. Sister Celine Jonas uses the wooden stomper in a large pottery crock to bring the juices out of the cabbage. (Archive photo courtesy of Franciscan Sisters of Little Falls)