It's always during the last weeks in October when ginger snaps disappear from the shelves of Baltimore supermarkets.
The cookies are not being bought for snacks.
Instead, they're a preferred ingredient in the sour beef gravy so liberally ladled over marinated beef and homemade potato dumplings at the tables of many a family with German roots.
"I'm very proud of our gravy. It's smooth as velvet," said Grace E. Fader, fellowship chairperson at United Evangelical Church at East Avenue and Dillon Street.
To those familiar with Fader's steaming platters of sour beef and dumplings, redolent with spices, she's the high priestess of sour beef in Canton in Southeast Baltimore.
Last week, the congregation staged its annual fall dinner. Some 1,400 people feasted on platters of sour beef, dumplings, slaw and lima beans in a thick tomato sauce.
"I came home tired and beat," Fader said the day after she'd supervised a brigade of volunteer cooks and waiters.
At the peak of the dinner hour, the banging and rattling of trays, pots and caldrons could be heard from the church scullery.
Certainly not everyone in Baltimore salivates at a dish of beef that's been marinated in vinegar and spices for two or three days.
Nor do a lot of Baltimoreans line up for potato dumplings and ginger snap gravy -- the marinated beef gravy thickened with crumbled ginger snaps.
In fact, some people run the other way when the dish is put before them.
But the dish is heavenly for those who grew up with a grandmother who immigrated from Germany or Austria and who served this meal on chilly nights in late October and November, when the steam from the kitchen filled the house with an unmistakable odor.
"Anybody can look up a sour beef recipe in a cookbook. But learning how to make it right is different," said Fader, who learned to make the dish from other women in her family. "It all has to be understood."
She also draws heavily on church talent to make the slaw and the lima beans.
Lovers of sour beef will never be confused with those who prefer a diet of lettuce, tofu and reduced-calorie salad dressing.
"We used 20 50-pound bags of potatoes and 1,050 pounds of beef. It hit it pretty close and I ran out nicely," Fader said.
Why do some Baltimoreans cherish an invitation to a sour beef dinner?
