Chanukah again, we’ve lit the first candle and as always the simple beauty of the two lights are a thrill eliciting sense memories:  melting wax, all the lingering oily smoke of frying latkes, cold night air, off-key chanting of the blessings, and the delicious melting chocolate of Chanukah foil-wrapped coins. Chanukah was really never about 8 nights of presents, it was more about a special time as a family.  In the context of “Christmas is all around us,” it couldn’t compete for the enveloping mainstream culture. Blue and white shiny foil-wrapped gifts, gaudy decorations, and too many presents were not ever going to be quite as nice as the entire sparkling neighborhoods of Christmas lights, gorgeous music, and never-ending sense that we were not a part of it, just onlookers. But it didn’t have to compete.

When I think about the early celebrations I remember the fun of the attempts at imitating the holiday of Christmas. My father as “Chanukah Claus” wearing a wine colored bathrobe and a Santa hat, Styrofoam Menorah covered in blue glitter, and foil chains to drape, blue and silver of course. What gifts? It was the fun, the laughter, the times together and always the beauty of those candle flames.  I remember my own kids experiencing the candle-lighting, the promise they each made that they would always want to light the menorah, the way their children, our wonderful grandchildren do. I love the new traditions they create.

May these Chanukah lights kindle joyous memories, and create more each night of your lives.

To my Christian friends, I will wish you Merry Christmas when we get closer.

On Baking, Sacredness, and Altering Recipes.

I have always loved baking. From the time I was a kid I'd stand on a stool and learn from my mother and grandmother. The way to knead dough, stretch strudel dough to impossible rice paper thinness, and how to take the joy of baking from skill to the  art of knowing what the right amount of this or that is. In Yinglish, Bubby's "aut azei, meine kindt, you make like this" she'd say as she'd grab an ingredient and add it without measurement. 

Every Friday or Erev (evening before any holiday) included challah, and if we were lucky chocolate fudge cake for Sat. morning breakfast. I know I can buy challah, but when I bake it, I feel the sacred in the mundane, a sort of joyous uplift of spirit. I hear Bubby saying "autazei meine kindt." 

Back to the mundane:   We've learned more about food and health. Some ingredients are forbidden to people with heart problems, diabetes, gluten intolerance, allergies, etc. Unless you are in danger by eating any of the ingredient, try not to mess with the recipe though. A true story:

My lovely aunt "M", was obsessed with eating correctly. She loved my mother's challah and phoned her for the recipe. After making her own challot (in America people say challahs), she phoned Mama. 

"Pearl mine just didn't turn out right. Do you think it's my oven?"

"Did you use the exact measurements?" 

"Well I used whole wheat instead of white flour, I didn't use sugar, and I thought the oil should be cut."

Pearl laughing: "Well then, it's the wrong recipe."

Some recipes I have managed to alter for heart health, like the use of canola (or olive oil as my cousin Debbie uses). But for chocolate fudge cake, no, and I mean no substitutions!

Recipes for Challah and Chocolate Fudge Cake are in the next post.

Challah and Chocolate Fudge Cake: Sherry’s Recipe

Challah

Keep your workspace draft free. Drafts and rising dough or yeast mixture are incompatible.

Begin with: Yeast mixture

Place 4 ½ tsp. of dry yeast in ½ cup of lukewarm water (too much heat will kill the yeast, if it is cold it won’t rise). I warm the water for 12 seconds in the microwave.

Immediately and gently stir in 1 tsp sugar, this feeds the yeast. When the yeast mixture rises to top of the cup (5 minutes or more), it can be used.

Wet ingredients (Everything should be room temp, or lukewarm)

In a small bowl, stir the ingredients below with a wooden spoon:

1 Cup water

½ cup olive or canola oil (authentic Jewish challah is not made with butter; butter is dairy and often the holiday and the Sabbath meals are meat)

3 eggs (while in their shells, put eggs in a bowl of warm water to bring them to room temperature)

Dry ingredients (an additional cup (or more) of flour will be needed for kneading)

In a very large mixing bowl, mix together and then make a well in the center of the flour mixture:

5 (approximately) cups unbleached white flour

2 tsp. salt (to taste)

¼ to ½  cup sugar

Mixing the wet and dry ingredients

Pour wet ingredients and yeast mixture into the well then stir in flour. When the mixture becomes too stiff to stir, put on floured counter and flatten. Then sprinkle flour on top. Fold dough over and using the heel of your palm knead. Continue adding flour under and on top, folding, and kneading until all of the 6^th cup is kneaded in. Cover with a damp (wrung out) towel. Let dough rest for 15 minutes. Resume kneading until the dough is pliable, adding flour if it is still sticking to the surface.  When the dough can stretch when pulled and resumes shape if you push it down with thumb it is ready to rise in an oiled covered bowl. Turn dough over so the oil covers the top of dough, put plastic wrap over the top.

Placing the dough in the refrigerator to slowly raise is a good thing. Several hours are needed for the dough to raise when cool. The other option is for the dough to rise in a warm draft free place for about an hour. Then punch the dough down. Divide in two halves. Shape into braided loaves.

While the dough is rising, make an egg wash.

1 egg yolk mixed with one tsp. water

I use the 4 strand method (look up online). If desired you can fold it into a round shape. Let loaves rise for ½ hour.

Brush egg wash on top of loaves using an oiled pastry brush. Sprinkle with sesame seeds, or poppy seeds if desired.

I use a cast iron skillet. Bake at 350 in a regular oven for 35-40 minutes, or at 325 degrees in a convection oven for 28-30 minutes) testing by seeing if it is hollow sounding when  you tap it with your knuckles.

CHOCOLATE FUDGE CAKE (serves 12)
preheat oven to 350 degrees


2¼     cups sifted cake flower

2       teaspoons baking soda

½       teaspoon salt

½       cup (1 stick) butter or margarine

2¼     cups firmly packed light brown sugar

3       eggs

1 ½    teaspoons vanilla

1       cup sour cream

1       cup boiling water

1. Melt chocolate in a small bowl over hot, not boiling, water; cool

2. Grease and flour two 9x1 ½- inch layer cake pans; tap out excess flour.

3. Sift flour, baking soda and salt onto wax paper.

4. Beat butter until soft in large bowl. Add brown sugar and eggs; beat with mixer at high speed until light and fluffy, 5 minutes. Beat in vanilla and cooled melted chocolate.

5. Stir in dry ingredients alternately with sour cream, beating well with a wood spoon after each addition until batter is smooth. Stir in boiling water.  (Batter will be thin.)  Pour at once into prepared pans.

6. Bake in moderate oven (350°) 35 minutes, or until center springs back when lightly pressed with fingertips.

7.  Cool layers in pans on wire rack, 10 minutes; loosen around edges with a small knife or spatula; turn out onto wire racks; cool completely.

8.  Make CHOCOLATE FUDGE FROSTING.  Put one cake layer on a serving plate; spread with about one fourth of frosting; add second layer; spread remainder on side and top of cake, making swirls with spatula. 

Note: If you like raspberry and chocolate, you can use raspberry preserves between the layers, with or without the fudge frosting.

CHOCOLATE FUDGE FROSTING

Makes enough to fill and frost two 9-inch layers.

4       squares unsweetened chocolate

½       cup (1 stick) butter or margarine

1       package (1 pound) 10X (confectioners) sugar

½       cup milk

2       teaspoons vanilla

1. Combine chocolate and butter in small heavy saucepan.  Place over low heat, just until melted.  Remove from heat.

2. Combine confectioners sugar, milk and vanilla in medium-size bowl; stir until smooth; add chocolate mixture.  Set bowl in pan of ice and water; beat with wood spoon until frosting is thick enough to spread and hold its shape. 

CHICKEN IN THE POT IN MY KITCHEN

In my kitchen I hum the lines to a song I used to listen to: Chicken, chicken, chicken in the pot. It was sung by Ricki Lee Jones. Was the song referring to Hoover’s promise for a chicken in every pot? I am making chicken soup on a Friday afternoon.

What’s in my mind is the sensations I find wafting through my life of Sabbaths, holidays, and always for cold and flu days.  It’s fragance makes for steaming visions of the kitchen on cold days, when nothing smelled better to me. Not even  breads in the oven, simmering sauces, cookies, or popcorn,  assured me that I would soon be soothed and  healed,  as much as a  bowl of the golden soup. Forget the clichés about it’s being Jewish Penicillin, or the metaphoric food for the soul. It is what is. That is enough.  

And here is the recipe:

Chicken Soup

Skin one organic chicken, cut into pieces and brown these and the vegetables listed below. Exception: Fresh celery and parsley are added afterwards and put in a soup sock. I also put the leeks, onions and celeriac in a soup sock but leave this choice to you.

Cover with 3 quarts of water, put on cover. Simmer for several hours, skimming off any scum that accumulates. Don't boil the soup or the fat becomes part of it. Chill, uncovered, in a sink of cold water until it is just lukewarm; then refrigerate. It needs to cool before being covered because the covering sours the soup. It is refrigerated, because then the fat layers on top and can be skimmed. Bring to a simmer after skimming fat and serve. If you want the soup immediately you can pour heated soup into a gravy separater. Soup socks are cheesecloth and available at New Seasons Market, and lots of kitchen supply stores, like Sur La Table, William Sonoma, or?

1 organic chicken
4-5 chicken feet (cleaned of course)

1 tablespoon salt
All veggies are organic:
1 peeled celeriac, cut in quarters
3 peeled parsnips, cut in quarters
3-4 peeled carrots cut in half

1 large peeled and quartered yellow onion
3 leeks,  whites only, cut in half.

*For the ingredients below, use a soup sock  (otherwise the stuff which cooks soft and slimy and distributes throughout)
1 bunch celery hearts including leaves.
Adding chicken feet creates a rich stock. They are rarely available unless one finds them at a kosher butcher, or an Asian market. These must be very well scraped and scrubbed. Otherwise I add two cubes of Telma chicken boullion and eliminate adding extra salt.

Garnish if you like with dill. Dried is fine, fresh is also. But use sparingly.

Images of My Biologist Husband

Paul immersed in water to his thighs head slightly angled.
Eyes gazing into the net. Was it about to dip, or just pulled from the river?
His boyish handsome face, with dark brows and hair, is still mustachless.
Paul in the field with his passion for the work of a true Naturalist.
Images of early dreams and our early life together bring sweet memories;
Paul telling me how he traipsed the Chicago River, collecting, observing.
Paul on the Kaskaskia River.
Paul in the waters of Southern California.
Paul in the Misty Fjords fog, snow, depths.
Away into adventure and his dreams of rivers, oceans, estuaries.

Sweetened on Bananas

Every once in a while Paul and I decide to write something and then share our piece with each other. One morning we chose bananas. I often go into reveries about food: what I want to cook or bake, how to use various ingredients, menu plans to vary our meals throughout the week, how to make a meal during the challenge of camping, or with whatever is available without having to shop, and how to alter recipes so they can accommodate whatever special diet one of us, or a guest needs. Write about bananas? Loved it.

Ripening bananas smell sweet.  In my mind’s eye. I see the brownish slimy areas as I remove the peel. I hate the cloying taste of super sweet, but oh how I love to smash the softened fruit into a bowl. It becomes creamy and glistens there waiting to be mixed into the creamed eggs, sugar, and softened butter. Buttermilk makes the batter ready to mix into the dryness of flour, baking soda and salt. Voila, it’s ready to be poured into my glass loaf baking container, already smeared with the buttery grease left on the waxed wrap of the cube. Now a different smell fills my home. I hum loving the fragrance of banana bread and the happy sound of Paul’s. “MMMMM!”

A MAYWOOD MEMORY

My frozen toes burn and tears are rolling down my cheeks, as Mama  pulls wet socks off my nearly-frozen feet. I’ve been ice skating down Ninth Avenue at the flooded field made into a rink for the winter.

I can still see images of long Midwest winters in Maywood.  Large dirty patches of snowfall after snowfall  layered and packed into lumps of ice, making an unpleasantly ugly sidewalk from November to March. But it was the thrill of winter I remember the most: sledding, sinking my feet through a crust of snow over soft snow; watching the light sparkle in crystal formations on top of the snow;  and ice skating whenever I wanted to, just down the street.

The air was so cold the day my feet froze, I had to wear a scarf over my mouth and nose, so I could inhale. I was finished with an after school skate session and walking home; my eyes cast downward to protect them from the wind, were fixed on the treacherous sidewalks.  

I drop my wet mittens and my jacket frozen with ice patches on the entrance hall floor. They smell of damp wool as they thaw. That smell mingles with the cooking scents. The smells are scrumptious on Fridays especially. My mother and grandmother are preparing for Sabbath,  Bubbling steamy chicken soup, roasted brisket stuffed with garlic, cloves and bay leaves, yeasty dough rising in a big bowl permeate the room.. And Bubby  is baking a chocolate cake for breakfast.  I think those smells were imprinted in my nostrils. I can still see every object in our dining room where I sat with my feet in the tub. “Put them in slowly, Sherry” Mama warns me. She serves me hot chocolate while she thaws my red, white and blue toes, they burn and feel like needles are shooting into them from the inside.

Sometimes I think I would rather have that pain instead of the ache of wondering where the kids I grew up with are, or if they are still alive, and the irretrievable small town easiness of that place. Maywood has disappeared as I knew it. White flight and upward mobility has made it a place with no one from my childhood  to visit.

The cobblestone street disappeared the Summer of my ninth birthday, when the men came with the horrid smelly asphalt and smudge lanterns, while they paved and widened the street in front of our house. That made a thoroughfare for cars to speed on from one main artery to the next. They also removed some of the huge beautiful elm trees in the parking strips; Dutch elm disease finished off the rest.

Our grand crabapple tree was ripped out of our front yard by a tornado one morning, while my beloved grandfather was davening; he witnessed the whorl of destruction twist the tree and toss it away from our house. My grandparents are long gone; Daddy died ten years ago. My mother disappeared as I knew her after a stoke, or strokes deep in her brain. For the eleven years she lived that way, she was like Maywood , there but not there. She died last June.

The further I get from my childhood, the more I want connection to it.  I am now being my mother!  Baking the same foods, creating the same warmth, applying her wisdom retains the most important connections: a legacy. I still hear my mother’s gentle admonishments to me, as I dipped my frozen toes into the warm water basin: “Take it slowly Sherry.”  I know that I need to take every moment slowly and savor the precious time that is Now. And I know  loss is sweetened by the fact that I had, and have, so much to lose.

RECLAIMING YIDDISHKEIT: THE HERITAGE OF MY IMMIGRANT FAMILY

Reclaiming Yiddish and Yiddishkeit

Until I was 33 years old, I didn’t let myself recognize that I had grown up in a bilingual home! In the 1950’s I wanted to be like the other kids, like the ones I viewed in the movies and on television. In my elementary school Christmas celebrations included memorizing the New Testament story about Christ’s birth. To fit in, it was essential to speak English, eat “normal” food, and be just like everyone else. Jewish kids in non-Jewish neighborhoods were very aware of how different they were. So were Greek kids, Italian kids, and kids of color, then called Negroes. Signs in certain neighborhoods could legally say: NO DOGS, NO JEWS, NO NEGROES.

The times have changed but some things haven’t. It is still true, that most young children are acutely aware, if their background differs from the mainstream. As a third generation American kid I wanted to be “normal;” I wanted to fit in.

 So how did I finally allow myself this realization? Fresh from radical college experiences, my husband and I were both teaching high school in Southern California, when we discovered the loss that came with rejecting our backgrounds. Paul was the advisor for La Raza, a club of Mexican-American students, who were asserting a sense of their pride in their culture. Paul told me how great it was for his students to celebrate Cinquo de Mayo, and how rich a cultural background is.

We looked at each other and felt shocked at how we could consider ourselves devoid of such a rich heritage. While having blended ourselves into mainstream America; we were avidly supporting the rights of others to honor their minority backgrounds.  We had somehow forgotten our own!

I was teaching English and Drama, when the English as a Second Language (ESL) program came into effect. During a discussion with my colleagues about how lucky the Spanish-speaking kids were to speak two languages, I had a vivid memory:

I was sitting in reading circle in my first grade class. Someone’s grandmother was visiting our classroom and reading a story aloud to us. I blurted out: I didn’t know grandmas speak English!

Laughter, especially from my teacher and our guest, made me blush.

So sitting there with my fellow teachers and at last comprehending how I’d pushed away from my heritage I felt shame and blushed again  I was bilingual also! How could I have so distanced myself?  The only grandmothers I saw and loved in my childhood all spoke Yiddish or Yinglish. And there were plenty of them at our weekly huge extended family visits.

When I was four, Dad returned from the Navy. We moved out of Bubby and Zayde’s apartment in the heavily Jewish neighborhood in Chicago, into our own little home in Bellwood, Illinois thanks to the G.I. Bill. We lived in Bellwood, then Maywood, until I was 15. I was always the only Jewish kid in my class, and one of the few at Emerson Elementary School.  All I wanted was to be just like the other kids, even though I loved our holidays, Hebrew school, our synagogue and customs; I wanted to keep it all separate from my American life.

When I was nine, my grandparents moved in with us after Zadye’s heart attack. I left home when I was twenty in order to complete my last two years of college downstate.  I had actually heard Yiddish throughout my girlhood! 

But I couldn’t speak it.  When I was a girl, I was embarrassed of the sound; this discomfort continued, even when I was a young woman. I felt shame about my rye bread sandwiches, and kosher hot dogs, which a few of my gentile friends tasted, and then derided.  I would watch friends wash down their cheeseburgers with chocolate milk and feel sick, but I wished I could be like them. And their grandmothers spoke English. I so wished mine wouldn’t be visible when friends visited.

Now, everyone in my parents’ generation is nearing the end of their lives*, and as the way of life goes with them, so does the Yiddish language. I long for it. I find myself thinking in Yiddish, speaking it to my stroke-damaged mother. I call her Mamele (little mother) The further I get from my childhood the more I want connection to it.

Yiddish is a tie, along with the rituals and observances of my rich warm heritage replete with weekly Shabbas observance. Mama and Bubby cleaned and cooked. I loved the Friday nights that glow l in memory and in my own recreation of them:

Shabbas began with the lighting of of candles, and to avoid using electricity, there was a light in a crystal hurricane glass Bubby lit, to see her observance of Sabbath to sunset on Saturday. There were Fridays full of delicious smells, baking challah, steaming chicken soup, roasting briskets, and sweet wine blessings.  We awoke to chocolate cake and milk for Saturday morning breakfasts.

I had long talks with my family as we walked weekly to synagogue.  We kids were delighted with each successive glow, as we added to the Chanukah menorah each of eight nights.  We sang songs in Yiddish and Hebrew, Danced the Horah and the Sherileh (a conga type dance) at family occasions, We played with dozens of cousins almost every weekend. 

I see now how blessed I was; to live with my immigrant grandparents; I had been given the opportunity to inherently know two languages.  Studies now have shown that exposure to another language before a child is five years old predisposes that child to learning any other foreign language. That’s been true for me.

Yiddish is flooding my tongue now. I use the language as if it were always mine. Oh yes, it was; it  is.

*Note: I wrote this before my mamele died June 1rst, 2009

MY BUBBY'S SHABBAS LECHTER (CANDLE HOLDERS)

A Gift of Candlesticks: a Heritage for Generations

Mary read Abraham’s letter once more. His familiar Yiddish letters described where she was going. She’d have to ask him how to pronounce: Chicago & Lake Michigan.

Tell David his Tateh is going to show him a new world. 

I will hold you again in my arms.

Was she ever in his arms? Five years was such a long time. The letters were often sparse and infrequent.  Abraham had 15-hour workdays, only Shabbas gave him respite. He refused to work on Saturdays; this, at risk of losing his job, he’d written. The shop boss agreed to give him the time off, only because Abraham was so skilled a leather craftsman. On Shabbas, he couldn’t write until sunset. Mary understood, and still was unable to shake a sense of abandonment. But this letter held tickets for passage to the new land, so very far from the people she loved.

She was about to close her soft valise packed with embroidered linens and a lace table cloth, all from her dowry; these she would hold close and carry with her.  They would remind her of her friends, and especially Frieda, her mother. These stitches and delicate crochets were their creations. Often, when Mary and all the women finished with heavier chores they sat together creating curtains, towels, bed linens, handkerchiefs and table cloths, while they spoke of children, shared recipes, and lent a kind ear to grief, loneliness, and many times joyous news. For quite a while they offered Mary reassurances that she would soon join her husband.

“Only one year together during their five years of marriage,” they’d whisper when Mary left the room. “If only he hadn’t been drafted into the Tsar’s army. It is so good that Frieda and Mordecai Avigdor sold some of their farm to buy him a passage. “

As Mary folded and packed her challah cover, a special gift from Mama, Frieda’s voice startled her.

“Mary, I have something for you.”  She unwrapped the heavy brass Shabbas lechter she used to bench licht every Friday night of Mary’s life.

“Mama, no, these are not for you to give yet. For generations they are only given after the mama dies; you must not break a 300 year old tradition.”

 “My daughter, I want you should have them now to take to America. You will carry a part of us with you and remember us each time you light the candles. You will someday give them to your daughter.”

Their weight in Mary’s hands was as heavy as her heart. When would she see her parents, her sisters and brothers, especially Sam who was soon to be a Bar Mitzvah? She rewrapped the lechter and placed them carefully between the linens.  Tateh came into the room and found the two women wrapped tightly in each other’s arms.

“Come Mary, the wagon is loaded now. Say goodbye, we must go to the train.”

All the family lined up with gifts for Mary, breads, cheeses, preserves, dried fruits,  and dried mushrooms. These would sustain them in the travels by train, and through treacherous border crossings where they would have to hide in tall grasses.

Sam stood in front of his 5 year old nephew and hugged Dave close. Sam had mostly resented David, because he was the interloper who took his older sister away. Mary, Frieda and several others smiled, a quick respite, during a sad parting. It seemed to Mary that most of the Jews of Selz were there to wave and wish her and Dave a safe  journey.

“I will visit you,” Mary promised, looking back at her family and the only home she’d ever known. The faces she loved would alter with age, the children would grow up, but she’d return to see them. She would write; they would write, and at last Avrame would meet his son.  Finally Avrame had saved enough money from his work in the leather factory to send a ticket of passage for them. The horse pulled the wagon away. Mary looked forward. It hurt too much to look back.

David was crying: “Zayde, Zayde”, as the train pulled away. Mary held and rocked him, promising he woud finally meet his own father, and Tateh would love him. They would visit Zayde, Bubby, and the whole family. 

“But,” Mary panicked, “will I still love Avrame?”

 Avrame’s smile and blue eyes became vivid.  She could hear him saying, “Mary someday we will be where there are no pogroms, and we will have our own place, and you will make Shabbas at our table.” Mary unwrapped one arm from David now asleep, and touched the carpetbag pressing down until her hand felt the candleholders. They would be the first thing she unpacked, and the last thing she ever took from her mother’s hands.