My Fat Dad

by Dawn Lerman

  Beauty would tease Papa, saying he had three wives: his restaurant supply store, the track, and her. Papa would say it was a tough decision to decide whom he loved the most, tying the thick cream-colored napkin around my neck so I wouldn’t soak my pj’s when I sipped the warm pea soup that had been simmering for hours.

  “There is no competition really,” he would exclaim. “No matter where I am, I can taste the love that Beauty puts into her food.”

  Before we even finished our meal, Papa would ask Beauty what she would be preparing the next evening, telling me to pay careful attention to all the details as we shopped and cooked. “Katchkala,” my grandfather would say, calling me by the pet name he had for me, “there is nothing like Beauty’s soups and roasts to make all the problems of the world go away.” Before I even had words to describe the delicious, thick-as-fog split pea soup flavored with bone marrow, I knew what he was saying to be true. No matter what I felt during the rest of the week, the anticipation of Beauty’s food and of time spent with her lifted my spirits. Little Beauty is what she called me, and beautiful and special is how she always made me feel.

  I loved strolling hand in hand with her up and down Devon Avenue. As we walked by each shop that she frequented daily, the owners would run out and say, “Beauty is here.” They would hug her and she would hug me, saying, “Look who I brought with me today. I am so lucky to have my little beauty with me, my precious Dawn.” Everyone seemed so happy to see us, gifting us with all sorts of goodies. Gittel at Levinson’s Bakery would give us cinnamon and chocolate babkas to taste—flaky and buttery, filled with chocolate almost as gooey as raw brownie dough. Robert at Robert’s Kosher Fish Market would give us lox tails to suck on—smoky, greasy, and a little too salty for my taste. And Golda, the woman at the fruit stand would always give me a couple pieces of dried apricot—naturally sweet as candy—to enjoy while my grandmother filled her basket with the freshest produce. They would all tell me what a nice, good girl I was, and Beauty would say there was no better girl than me, making sure to compliment them as well.

  Beauty was the perfect name for my grandmother. She was like a shiny star that radiated light on the top of a Chanukah bush. Everywhere she went, she made people smile. She would jokingly say she was Jackie Mason’s real wife—he just didn’t know it. But it was not what my grandmother said that was so funny, but that she would just laugh so hard after she said something that everyone else couldn’t help but join in. “Laugh and people will laugh with you, cry and you will cry alone. The closest distance between two people is a good laugh”—a saying she got from a fortune cookie that she saved and kept in her pocketbook. Beauty emphasized how important it was to make others happy, even if it sometimes meant putting your own feelings aside.

  “We do not know what goes on in anyone else’s house, but we can change their day by just saying hello and offering a kind gesture.”

  Beauty always carried a batch of mohn cookies when we went shopping. There were always some of these poppy seed treats for the pharmacist at Rosen’s Drug Store; the women at the hair salon who forever admired her decorative, big-brimmed hats, telling her she was a dead ringer for Ruth Gordon—both standing just about five feet—and the eight kids that lived across the street, who would call her Grandma Beauty, lining up youngest to oldest to get a cookie, a coin, and a hug since their own grandma lived in Cleveland, and they rarely saw her.

  I thought how lucky I was as I helped Beauty hand out her weekly bag of treats. I asked her if she did that with my mom when she was a little girl.

  “Your mom was born during the Great Depression. We were so poor that she had to sleep in a wooden drawer with some old clothes for blankets. At the time, I was working with Papa. We had a small soda shop, and I worked all day making home-cut French fries and hot dogs that I sliced open and grilled instead of just boiling like many of the other places in town. Many famous gangsters were customers—they would walk out without paying their five-cent check. I kept your mom near me in the shop, but I didn’t really have time to teach her anything. But your mother, like your Papa, was smart as a whip. She taught herself to read and add and subtract before she even went to first grade, by deciphering the names and number combinations off Papa’s racing sheets.”

  I loved listening to Beauty tell the stories about my mom and my uncle Glen—who was now a Sufi living in a commune in Oregon—when they were kids, and the romantic story of how she met Papa. She loved to tell it often. “Papa was a boarder in my parents’ boardinghouse, where he was renting a room after he crossed the Canadian border. He had no money, but he had the bluest eyes I had ever seen and was the best salesman. A year after we met, he convinced me to elope with him to Detroit. I never had a real wedding, so we rented some clothes to take a picture to send to my parents, hoping they would forgive me when they saw how happy I looked in the photograph.”

  My grandmother always spoke about my Papa with great pride. She wanted me to know about his history because, like my mother, he was not one to sit down and share about his life or feelings. “Your Papa is a great man and a very hard worker with a spirit as wild as the horses he loves.”

  My grandmother was very proud of Papa’s work ethic and his successful business, the Sidney Supply Company, which sold cutlery and bar supplies to all the big restaurants in Chicago. Beauty just wished he had a little more time for her. She fondly recalled how romantic he was when they first met. But my grandmother never took him for granted. No matter what time my Papa returned home—and most of the time it was late, except Saturdays, when he walked in the door at five o’clock sharp—Beauty was ready for his entrance. Her hair was done up in a perfect beehive, and warm, delicious, homemade food was on the table—potato latkes, or a cholent, or chicken soup with matzo balls—which I always helped make.

  Changing our clothes and putting our special aprons on before we cooked was almost as important as what we were cooking. While Beauty liked everything immaculate, she wanted us to be able to be covered in flour, chocolate, or whatever, and not worry about stains, no matter what we were cooking. If we did dirty our garments, we would scrub them on a washboard down in the basement before we ate. Sometimes, when we were doing chores, my grandmother would put egg masks on our faces—she said it would make us look young forever. Beauty made everything fun, even when we realized how much of the day had passed, and we had to hurry to get dinner on the table for Papa.

  I loved helping her chop, dice, mix, fry, and stew. If I asked her how much celery to chop for her famous chicken soup, she’d wave off the question. “Just use your creativity,” she’d say. “You can’t go wrong when you use fresh ingredients.” She’d throw in a few parsnips, sweet potatoes, garlic, chicken legs, chicken bones, even chicken feet, and two hours later it was the most delicious thing I’d ever tasted.

  The matzo balls were a little trickier. They required a little more precision. Usually, Beauty was a little-bit-of-this, little-bit-of-that, taste-as-you-go-along cook, but matzo balls were not included in this repertoire. “I used to just mix the matzo meal with oil, eggs, salt, and throw them into some boiling water. But then when your mother became engaged to your dad and I went to your Bubbe Mary’s for Rosh Hashanah, I was transformed. Who knew a matzo ball could be so fluffy, not hard like a baseball!”

  “Did you ask her how to make them?”

  “I did. She told me it was her little secret. But on your parents’ wedding day, she whispered to me, ‘Schmaltz and ginger ale!’

  “It took me a lot of experimenting before they stopped sinking to the bottom of the pot. But I think I have come close.” Beauty held her hand over mine as we cracked and separated the eggs, and added seltzer instead of ginger ale to the wooden bowl. She reached for the small jam jar that contained the schmaltz that she stored in her refrigerator—instructing me to take just two spoonfuls and no more. “I save the drippings when I roast a chicken. You don’t want to cook with schmaltz every day, but
everything in moderation is okay. And a little bit, here and there, adds flavor.”

  Once the mixture was chilled, we’d coat our damp hands with crumbled fresh matzo so they wouldn’t stick to the mixture when we rolled the balls. One by one, I’d hand them to her, and she’d place them into the stock—never water.

  When Papa would rave about the meal, she’d say that everything tasted so good because I helped. I paid careful attention to Beauty’s directions—never over-salting. “You could always add more,” she said, “but it is hard to take the salt out.”

  During the summer months, while my grandfather was preoccupied after dinner with counting his S&H Green Stamps to redeem for prizes, my grandmother would put on a pair of pedal pushers, a freshly pressed blouse, and matching shoes, and we would play outside with a red rubber ball, taking turns bouncing the ball under our knee, seeing who could last the longest without the ball rolling away. With each bounce, we had to name a food that corresponded to the next letter in the alphabet, trying our hardest to make it from A to Z. “A is for apple, B is for banana, C is for cherry . . .” When it started getting really dark, we would head inside for dessert. My grandmother loved making oatmeal cookies, fruit compote, or a seasonal crumble that she topped with Cool Whip or homemade whipped cream that we would beat by hand until it was nice and fluffy.

  During the winter, when it was too cold to play outside, we would go into the living room—which she would turn into a little hotel for me when I would stay over. She would pull out old photo albums; some were filled with pictures and others were filled with poems. My grandmother wrote a poem about everyone she ever met. She would write them all out by hand, and then her sister Jeannie would type them up so she could save them nicely in her album. “This is my favorite one,” she would say before reading the poem aloud.

  My Darling Dawn,

  Painting is art.

  Dancing and singing and making people

  laugh and cry—that is art.

  Making children feel that they are

  loved and wanted—that is art.

  And when a child looks at a grandmother

  with shining eyes of love—that is art.

  Art is many things to different people,

  Feelings for others is one of the greatest

  arts which we can all have.

  Never change.

  You are my treasure

  And being with you always gives me pleasure.

  Love,

  Beauty

  As I lay on her lap, she would stroke my hair, and I would ask her why she liked spending time with me and my mother did not. “Your mom loves you very much; she just has a funny way of showing it. You shouldn’t take it personally.”

  But no matter what my grandmother said, I often felt uneasy around my mother, knowing I could do something wrong at any minute—even if I was just sitting and reading. “Why are you watching me put on my makeup?” “I know how to make a liverwurst sandwich. Stop inspecting every little thing I do.” “You do not need to follow me around. Look at a book or play in your room with your imaginary friend.”

  My mom was not very affectionate and she would constantly yell, “You’re invading my space!” when I got too close or tried to give her a hug. But Beauty was the opposite. She liked to spend time with me as much as I liked to spend time with her. We could sit around the table cooking and talking about our feelings for hours.

  Beauty would say, “G-d is in my kitchen, not in temple”—which was really upsetting to her very good friend and neighbor the rabbi next door. My grandmother lived in a neighborhood with many religious families, although Beauty never believed in organized religion or going to temple herself. “I am a culinary Jew,” she’d proclaim. “I honor tradition and those who came before me, and I want to pass the history of the food on to you. I can find my heritage in a bowl of soup. I believe in the power of sweet-and-sour meatballs. I believe that when I combine eggs, raisins, cottage cheese, yogurt, and baby shells into a kugel, I honor my own grandmother. I believe that stuffed cabbage connects me to my father, whom I miss. My bible is recipes that fill your soul and will keep you healthy and nourished for years to come.”

  Beauty knew my father was always dieting and eating “food-like” products instead of real food, and this upset her because she knew that during the week, when I was home with my parents, this was the food they would give me. “Food needs to have a delicious fresh taste and smell,” she would tell me, and she would always make me smell and taste things to guess the ingredients, whether it was vanilla in cookies, strawberries in freshly baked muffins, or dill in a barrel of pickles. “It needs to be made in nature and not in a factory.” While my grandmother sympathized with my father’s weight struggles, she thought his approach to eating was all wrong. Beauty never openly criticized my father’s eating habits, because he was college-educated and she was not, but she constantly reminded me about the importance of fresh foods and going to the market every day. “Bread gets moldy, fruit gets soggy, and vegetables get wilted. If it lasts for months on the shelf, imagine what it does to your body.”

  From the time I could hold a spoon, my grandmother involved me in the cooking process, allowing me to mix the onions, green peppers, and bread crumbs for the salmon patties and decide what kind of soup we were going to prepare. And Beauty always made sure I was the one who tasted whatever we were making first. In her arms, I was never hungry for food, love, or affection. She was my mentor and my savior—saving my life, spoonful by spoonful.

  Beauty’s Chicken Soup

  Yield: 8–10 servings

  32 ounces water (plus at least 10 more cups to add as the broth absorbs)

  1 (31⁄2-pound) chicken, cut into 8 pieces, most of the skin removed

  4 medium carrots, peeled and cut into 1⁄4-inch pieces

  4 ribs celery, cut into 1⁄4-inch pieces

  2 medium parsnips, peeled and cut into 1⁄4-inch pieces

  1 large sweet potato, peeled and cubed

  1 medium yellow onion, quartered

  Handful of fresh dill, chopped

  Salt and pepper, to taste

  Garlic powder or a couple of cloves of fresh garlic, to taste

  Place the 32 ounces of cold water in an 8-quart stockpot set over high heat and bring to a boil. Add the chicken and cook until foam comes to the top. Spoon off the foam, reduce the heat, and add the carrots, celery, parsnips, sweet potato, onion, and dill. Simmer the soup for at least 2 hours and add the 10 cups of cold water, 1 cup at a time, as needed. As the soup cooks, the liquid will evaporate and the soup will thicken.

  Check the soup every 30 minutes to remove any film that rises to the top. Make sure not too much liquid has absorbed. If there is less than half a pot of water, add a little more. Stir in the salt, pepper, and garlic powder to taste, and remove the pot from the heat. Remove the chicken and the vegetables from the soup, and pull the chicken meat off the bones. Ladle the broth into bowls and add the desired amount of chicken and vegetables to each bowl.

  Fluffy Matzo Balls

  Yield: 8–10, depending on the size of the balls

  4 eggs

  1 cup matzo meal

  Salt and pepper, to taste

  1⁄2 teaspoon baking powder

  2 tablespoons schmaltz (see note)

  1⁄4 cup club soda

  Beat eggs. Fold in the matzo meal, salt, pepper, and baking powder. Mix in the schmaltz and club soda. The mixture should be moist. Refrigerate for 1 hour. The consistency should look like wet porridge. Wet hands and form into small balls. Do not form them too tight; otherwise they will be too dense. Drop into boiling chicken broth. Cover and cook for 20 minutes

  Note: To make your own schmaltz, just scrape off the fat that rises to the surface of stock. You will see an obvious layer of it after refrigerating the broth overnight—it becomes solid when it’s cold.

  Sw
eet Potato Latkes

  Yield: 8 pancakes

  2 medium sweet potatoes, peeled and quartered

  1⁄2 medium yellow onion, peeled and quartered

  2 large eggs, beaten (plus 1 more, as needed, for thinning)

  3 tablespoons all-purpose flour (plus more, as needed, for thickening)

  1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

  1 teaspoon brown sugar

  1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

  1 teaspoon salt

  1⁄2 cup oil for frying

  Applesauce, plain yogurt, or sour cream for topping (optional)

  Using the fine side of a grater or a food processor, grate the potatoes and onions. Transfer them to a large bowl and thoroughly combine with the eggs, flour, lemon juice, sugar, cinnamon, and salt. Set aside.

  In a large skillet set over high heat, warm the oil to cover the bottom of the pan. (If it smokes it is too hot.) Using a large spoon, add dollops of the latke batter to the pan. Use a spatula to shape and flatten the batter into pancakes. Do not overcrowd the pan; you may need to do this in batches. Immediately decrease the heat to medium and cook the latkes until golden brown on each side, approximately 4 minutes on one side and 3 minutes on the other side. Flip the latke only when it is halfway cooked through; otherwise it will break apart. If you’re working in batches, repeat with the remaining batter.

  Serve the latkes topped with applesauce, yogurt, or sour cream (if desired).

  Note: If the latke batter is too watery, add a bit more flour; if it is too thick, add a little more beaten egg yolk.