NAPOLEON Ray Kauk likes to sit at the kitchen table and watch his wife's hands do what he's seen them do a thousand times.

Hilma Kauk handles flour, eggs and milk like the expert she's become in 76 years.

She makes old-time food for the soul with those ingredients. And while the steam heats their kitchen, Ray Kauk remembers when he didn't eat and his healthy farm boy flesh dwindled down to 78 pounds.

He was in World War II, a half a world away from his Napoleon home, his upper thighs and stomach shot up from machine gun fire, a prisoner of the German Nazi forces.

He is 80 now and he remembers, but he doesn't like to much. The nightmares are still with him, he said.

Friday, he sat at the table, while his wife, Hilma, prepared her special soup. He keeps her company that way.

Their home just off the highway going through town, was warm and humid, a cozy welcome after the cold wind brewing outside.

Hilma Kauk's soup is so special, it's advertised like that.

Today, about 20 gallons of it will be served at the annual Trinity Lutheran Church bazaar, lunch and bake sale starting at 11 a.m.

On the menu, it says right in the ad, is "Hilma's Special soup." The cost is $5 for all a person can eat, and usually, it's all gone in a few hours.

Ray Kauk is not only her husband, he's her greatest fan.

"She's the best cook in Napoleon, and the best baker," he said.

Napoleon is the epicenter of good German cooking, and while it may be true, it is surely wise, for Ray Kauk to say so.

Hilma Kauk said the preparation of so much of her special soup is more work for her than it used to be.

But it's a way to serve her church and, on a cold day, to help take the chill off her fellow town and country folks.

She spends the day making knoephle the way she likes them soft and snipped fairly small into boiling water.

Batch after batch the same, the knoephle resting in big bowls on the counter, dressed in butter and spooned over until they cool.

Next she makes a savory chicken stock and lets that cool overnight.

Today, about 9 a.m., she'll head over to the church.

There the broth, like water into wine, will magically multiply into kettle after kettle, heated up to cook vegetables of onion, celery and potato and finally laced with hot milk and the perfect knoephle.

Simple, nutritious and cheap besides, she says.

This is a big job for a woman her age, but she knows all the tricks.

Her knoephle drop off the scissor like they're factory made, and she's learned to hold the dough the right height above the boil so it doesn't get too soft to snip into the delicate knoephle.

Her Kitchen Aid mixer does the hard work of bringing the ingredients together, sparing her hands and elbows.

She'd rather bake and of all her baking, she most likes to make caramel rolls. Sadly, she was out of them.

Hilma Kauk has been a hand in the kitchen since she was 13, helping her mother, the only girl of seven children.

Later in life, she worked for years at both The Downtowner and Wentz restaurants in Napoleon, earning $2 an hour those early years.

She liked making her own money, buying things for their home and being out with the folks.

Her days of feeding everyone who came in off the street are over, but she still enjoys preparing the simple, delicious foods she knows the best.

"You name it, she can bake it, and anything she bakes is good," said Ray Kauk.

Now, that's a man who knows on which side his bread is buttered, or in this case, his knoephle.

(Reach reporter Lauren Donovan at 888-303-5511 or lauren@;westriv.com.)