Filming for the Germans from Russia Foodways Videotape Documentary
Prairie Public Television

Sam Brungardt Preparing Volga German Foods
Saint Paul, Minnesota
September, 1999

Sam Brungardt, St. Paul, is a native of Ellis County in Kansas. His ancestral Volga German villages are Herzog, Marienfeld and Mariental. He is well known for his culinary skills and research with Volga German and other ethnic German-Russian foodways and recipes. Sam is the editor of Sei Unser Gast: Be Our Guest, the cookbook of the North Star Chapter, American Historical Society of Germans from Russia. For more information about the cookbook, go to this GRHC website page: http://www.lib.ndsu.nodak.edu/gerrus/books/cookbook.html.

Some of the cookbooks in Sam Brungardt's collection including Sei Unser Gast: Be Our Guest, Food 'N Folklore published the Germans from Russia Heritage Society, Bismarck, ND; Küche Kochen of the American Historical Society of Germans from Russia, Lincoln, NE; and Bessarabische Spezialitäten published by the Landsmannschaft der Deutschen aus Bessarabien, Stuttgart, Germany. German-Russian cookbooks available from GRHC, can be seen at the following website page: http://www.lib.ndsu.nodak.edu/gerrus/books/cookbooklist.html.

Sam Brungardt standing in his basement cellar with jars of pickled fruit, watermelon syrup, jam and vegetables.

Sam preparing the dough for Runza, a Volga German food (Bierrocks, Kraut Brot or Maultsche).