Monday, Wednesday, Friday: Meat
Tuesday and Thursday: Dairy
Saturday: Friday night leftovers for lunch, appetizing for dinner
Sunday: Deli? Chow mein from left over soup chicken. Catch as catch can.
These were the steps of the ladder of our food life, organized and prepared by my mother. We knew, more or less, what to expect to eat on any given day: fresh fish, rolls and chocolate pudding on Thursday evenings, steak or lamb chops on Wednesdays. Each day included a meal prepared by our mother…a meal that started with fruit, salad or soup, followed by a main course with side dishes.
We always had nourishing food and it was always homemade. So, when I married, and subsequently started a family, the idea of preparing dinner was simply understood. I had learned from first-hand experience that this is what families do.
I had also learned from stories passed down from my own parents about their own mothers.
“Oy! My poor mother!” my father would say, head in his hands. Six children. New country. Non-English speaker and deaf on top of it all. Her children and her husband had to do the grocery shopping and serve as her translator, since she couldn’t communicate with the shopkeepers. And, of course, money was tight. Yet she managed to cook for the brood. My father’s favorites: chicken soup, challahs and raisin rugelach.
My mother’s mother, Sarah, who arrived in this country with two children, having tragically buried her third child back in Poland. Reunited with her husband, whom she hadn’t seen for more than seven years, she immediately got to work: bearing more children, washing, scrubbing and cooking without end. In all, she bore eight children, six of whom grew to adulthood.
I grew up hearing stories about Thursday nights. Sarah would put her children to bed, nestled in the deep feather comforters she brought from Europe, and the cooking would begin. By the time the children awoke the next day, the floors, recently washed, were covered with newspapers, to keep them clean before Shabbat. The challahs were baked. As was the apple cake. The chickens were cleaned and she was ready to continue the drumbeat, ending with the lighting of the Shabbat candles. Step by measured step: gefilte fish, chicken soup, tzimmes, kugels and more.
Vegetables at the open-air market in Israel.
Yet while I enjoyed my mother’s meals, and my parents’ stories, I didn’t attempt much in the kitchen until my seminal food year – my junior year of college which I spent in Israel. That’s when several forces came together. Not only did I need to cook – each floor of my dorm had a kitchen and most students used those to prepare meals – I wanted to cook.
I was introduced to fruits and vegetables of such astounding flavor that I was in a perpetual state of awe. Intensely flavored mangoes. Eggplant prepared in a variety of ways. The fragrant pyramids of produce in the open-air markets. I wanted to be part of the excitement. And so, I began to cook.
Coupled with that was the time I spent in cousin Vivi Pick’s kitchen in Ramat Gan, Israel where I enjoyed her adventurous meals. There was a seemingly endless array of fresh salads. I marveled at the ease and joy she exuded in the kitchen and when feeding visitors. It all seemed so good. The food, the country, the family, the food preparation. I wanted to be part of it.
So enough talk. As my father would say, less talk, more action.
Let the recipes begin!