Food
Home Cooking
We ate at home, and Mom did the cooking. That is, we always ate at home, except when we were invited to friends or relatives for a meal. We didn't go to restaurants, and we didn't order take-out or have meals delivered (with one small exception.)
Mom made all the meals, and she may have been helped a little by Pearl and Ethel (though not by the boys), but it was Mom's cooking. She was a good cook, and we ate well. Mom and Pop did keep a kosher house, so at our meals we never mixed meat with dairy products. Being a kosher home meant that we had dishes used only for meat meals {fleishig} and we also had dishes used only for dairy (milchig) or non-meat meals. We also had a second set of fleishig and milchig dishes to be used during Pesach, Passover. The dishes used during Pesach were the Pesadich dishes, the dishes used during the rest of the year were the chametz dishes. That means four sets of dishes and silverware and pots. We also had a set of "good" dishes, kept in the china cabinet in the dining room, those that we used when we had company and ate in the dining room.
We had meat every day, often twice a day. The meat of course came from Pop's market, and was kosher. That meant that there were no pork products, that certain cuts of meat were not used, and that the animal had been slaughtered in an approved manner by a shochet (a person authorized by a rabbinical council to slaughter the animal). Before being prepared, the meat had to soak in cold water for an hour or two and then had to be salted to remove the blood. That process may have affected the taste of the meat, but we enjoyed what was served.
The menu for some meals was fixed. On Friday nights, erev shabbes, the eve of the sabbath, we had gefilte fish (fish loaves or balls made of various chopped fishes with eggs, salt and onions) as a vorspeis (appetizer), roast chicken as the main dish, and the bread was challah, a braided white bread, that Mom baked that day. This meal was excellent, and Mom made enough so that there would be enough fish and chicken and challah for Saturday too.
The Friday evening and Saturday noon meals were the only meals the whole family ate together. At any of the other meals during the week one or more people could be missing, especially Pop with his work schedule.
The Friday night meal, if there were going to be more than six at the table was eaten in the dining room with the good dishes and the linen tablecloth. After they were married Ruth and Mitch continued to come to Friday night dinner. They would come and Mom would invite friends of theirs as well. Most of the time the dining room was where we had Friday night dinner.
Sunday evening meals were also in the dining room when friends visited, such as Betty and Charlie Moskov or Fanny and Abe Fleeman. These meals didn't require the good dishes, and the meal was likely to be a milchig meal. Herring or smoked white fish, cold beet borscht with boiled potatoes and sour cream, and fresh vegetables with cottage cheese and sour cream were dishes that might have been served. On some special occasions Abe Fleeman would take over and the men made mamaliggah, a corn meal mush. This required a huge pot in which the corn meal was cooked, and the men would take turns stirring the mamaliggah with a big wooden rod, or the long rolling pin we had. The mamaliggah when taken out of the pot was divided into individual portions with a string. (That must have been the way they did it in the old country.) It was served with melted butter, cottage cheese, and fried herring. That was a treat, and a lot of work. Including children there could be 15 or more people at these meals.
There were some Sunday evening meals that were much simpler. When Et and Bucky were the only children at home, and Mom and Pop were going out to see friends or to their club, there could be a change in procedure. If they, Et and Bucky, didn't feel like carving the remaining chicken for sandwiches, or slicing vegetables, or they just wanted something different, and if they had 70 cents between them (usually Et treated Bucky), they would phone Cohen's kosher restaurant on Joseph Ave and have two "specials" delivered. A "special" was a corned beef sandwich on rye bread, cut in quarters, with potato chips and pickles. In 1937 35 cents was a lot of money for a sandwich, but it was worth it.
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