FOOD STORIES

THE APPLE ADVENTURE:

My grandfather had a saying that has come down through our family lore, “Honesty isn’t the best policy—it’s the only policy.”

All I have to do is think of my dear grandparents—all four of them—and how they lived their lives. That set my moral compass. One of my goals in life is to honor them always, and it is with them in mind that I pass this true story on to you.

As immigrants from Eastern Europe, they underwent extreme hardship to support, educate, feed, and house their families in the New World. Their standards were firm and unyielding.

I remember them teaching me the Ten Commandments, including “Thou shalt not steal.” The character of their children—my aunts and uncles now all gone—reflects their input.

During the 1930s, my mother’s family lived in an apartment with a coal furnace. Layers of dust found their way daily into the living quarters. Grandma was constantly cleaning the dust from all surfaces, in addition to cooking, canning, wringing clothing on the washboard, sewing and ironing garments for seven boys and girls.

Finally, Grandpa found an apartment with an oil furnace and steam heat. Grandma was in heaven, no more coal dust residue or stoking the furnace.

After some months, their oldest son, my Uncle Nathan, came home with his friend, the landlord’s son, carrying an armful of apples. They had clearly snatched them from a vendor.

Grandpa was upset and went to the landlord, “Our boys stole the apples from Mr. Feinberg, they need to return them, admit it, and apologize.”

The landlord replied with a laugh, “Oh, that’s nothing Mr. Zausmer, boys will be boys!”

Grandpa briefly pondered this reply and realized that the landlord had no scruples, and that this could influence his children. He took his son and his share of the stolen goods to the merchant to set everything aright.

Next order of business: he gave notice to the landlord. At the end of the month, he moved his family out of the apartment, leaving the steam heat behind.

THE SPINACH SAGA:

At my age seven, my mother was hospitalized for a month with a mysterious illness, probably referred to as “nerves” at the time. In the 1950s, children were not given any medical information or allowed to visit in hospitals.

My father hired a housekeeper to cook meals and keep the house in order, an older woman whom my little brother and I were instructed to address as “Mrs. K.” To us, she was the essence of evil—strict and humorless—but her greatest offense was that she stood in the place of our missing mother.

Her cooking was basic and always included a canned or frozen Birdseye vegetable and some form of potato, such as baked and topped with yucky sour cream.  On the night she made spinach, I refused to eat it.

After my father and brother left the table, my seven-year old self stared down at my dinner plate in misery…..but I held out. The food got cold. The remaining spinach mixed with oleomargarine resembled a wet pile of green muck that washed up on a muddy riverbank.

Mrs. K. towered over me. The standoff lasted for what seemed forever, as did my mother’s absence.

My father returned to the kitchen, saw my plight, and said exactly what I had been silently praying for, “Barrie, you’re excused.” I slinked out of the kitchen with my head down, trying to hide my relief.

My hero!

I could tell by the look on her face that Mrs. K was furious. But she couldn’t say anything because my dad was her boss.

Soon after, my mother returned home, Mrs. K departed to her niche in the annals of the meanest ladies in history, and everything in the world was right again.

THE TV DINNER:

I vividly recall the look and taste of Swanson’s Frozen Turkey TV Dinner, with a scoop of green peas, a small pile of flattened, fake, mashed potatoes, and the two slices of turkey (one dark, one white) with a smear of gravy.

My favorite part was the tiny portion of so-called stuffing hiding under the meat, worth searching for.

Somehow, dinner tasted better when I was planted in front of the TV, after my mother placed the sectioned aluminum tray on the wobbly folding table.

We had a Dumont TV console with a record player built in. The screen was small but we had no means of comparison. When The Honeymooners with Jackie Gleason or the Milton Berle Show was on, it made for a most exciting evening for the entire family.

Looking back, I acknowledge the brilliance of emerging 1950s Madison Avenue marketing—connecting the meal to the media.

Imagine today, an iPhone Dinner!

THE SOUP SCOOP:

I recently read that Starbucks implemented an arrangement with Uber to deliver coffee drinks. This brought to mind a family story from about fifty years ago, well before Uber, in the Checker Taxi era.

My paternal grandmother was brought up in deprivation in Eastern Europe. She had become a step-daughter and was treated poorly. In America, the promised land, she cooked up a storm for the family. Food was her language of the love she did not receive but generously showered on us.

I remember many dinners at her table laden with traditional Eastern European dishes—brisket in gravy, stuffed cabbage with raisins, knishes, kasha, potato kugel, and tsimmes with sweet potatoes and carrots.

Green vegetables were an afterthought to the tasty and filling meat dishes. No salads that I recall, except for the Dole canned fruit salad with the fuchsia pink cherry.

One winter day, my mother was home sick and a taxi arrived in front of our house—but with no passengers. The cab driver knocked on the door, then handed over a huge pot which we immediately recognized as Grandma’s.

The contents, a gallon of homemade Matzoh Ball Soup.

The family story goes that this was a miracle—not at the delivery itself, but that the cab driver actually relinquished such valuable cargo!

FROZEN IN TIME:

My mom tried to get my dad to lose weight. But she also had an insatiable sweet tooth. So she bought ice cream for herself, wrapped the containers in white freezer paper, and marked them with crayon saying chicken, lamb chops, or hamburger, to keep my dad away from her stash.

One day she came into the kitchen and my dad was polishing off a quart of ice cream.

He just sat there grinning and said, “Rose, this Chicken ice cream sure is good!”

AND FINALLY, COFFEE:

Wherever in the world I am or you are, COFFEE must be in it.

Others will say that CHOCOLATE is an essential part of the perfect day or perfect life, but I’m sticking with my Cuppa Joe, hot, caffeinated, gorgeously aromatic.

Maybe it’s not the PERFECT life, but it’s surely a joyful moment when I wrap my palms around the warm porcelain cup, ready to partake and savor the healing liquid.

There’s only one more ingredient and then it IS completely perfect—sitting outdoors at a small round table with your friend or lover, sharing a breakfast of cafe au lait and brioche with jam and butter in a Left Bank cafe…..and that would be with my expat cousin, Sherry, next month.