by Dawn Lerman
As soon as it was light, I leaped out of bed and ran into the kitchen hoping we would be leaving for the hospital soon. Uncle Louie pointed to the window—the ground was covered in snow, and the flakes were large and thick. The snow was coming down fast and heavy, accumulating quickly, and the Chicago winds were fiercely cold and sharp. The weather conditions appeared on the news, warning people to stay off the roads.
“I’m so sorry. I think we are snowed in,” Uncle Louie said, trying his hardest to push the front door open. “I think too much snow has settled.”
Aunt Jeannie put her arms around me. “We will go to the hospital as soon as the roads are safe. Meanwhile, you and I have some baking to do.” With each foot of snow that fell, we made another batch of cookies—round cookies, oval cookies, bow-shaped cookies, cookies with anise extract, cookies with almond extract, and cookies flavored with fresh orange juice when we ran out of vanilla.
What started out as a one-night sleepover, when my parents and grandparents were in the hospital, turned into a three-day bake-a-thon with Aunt Jeannie. I learned how to measure, whip, and separate eggs. She also taught me the magic of transforming recipes using swaps from her bag of tricks. If you were missing a couple of ingredients and couldn’t get to the store—or in our case could not even open the door because the snow was so high—or if you wanted to lighten the sugar, butter, or dairy content in a recipe to make it a little healthier and a little more waistline friendly, my aunt had the all the tricks. When I left her house, I had not only a new baby sister but several baking secrets—many of which were top secret—including Land O’Lakes Margarine, which Jeannie said tasted like butter in baked goods but was much better for your heart and figure.
When we finally made it to the hospital and I saw my precious baby sister, the feeling was indescribable. She was swaddled in a blanket and was wearing a little beanie. I was so excited to hold her. I remember having to wash my hands up to my elbows before I could touch her, but my hands were too cold, so the nurse put a towel over them and then laid my sister in my arms. I was a little frightened at first. She was smaller and more perfect than I had imagined. From the first second I held her, I was never the same. I loved her instantly, and my life was forever transformed.
Aunt Jeannie’s Apple Strudel
Yield: 8–10 servings
FOR THE DOUGH:
21⁄2 cups all-purpose flour (plus more for dusting the work space)
1⁄2 tablespoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 large eggs, beaten
11⁄3 cups warm water
4 tablespoons oil
FOR THE FILLING:
1⁄4 cup white sugar
1⁄8 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
Pinch of salt
4 apples, chopped, peeled, and cored (Aunt Jeannie always preferred tart apples)
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1 tablespoon fresh lemon rind
1⁄2 cup dried fine bread crumbs
1⁄4 cup ground walnuts (optional)
1⁄4 cup raisins
Parchment paper or vegetable oil for the baking sheet
1⁄2 stick of melted unsalted butter, for brushing the dough
Powdered sugar, for dusting
Sift the flour, salt, and baking powder into a bowl. Make a well in the center and drop in the beaten eggs, water, and oil. Mix until a dough forms. Transfer the dough to a lightly floured work space and knead the dough until smooth. Place the dough ball in a bowl and let sit for 30 minutes.
Meanwhile, begin to prepare the filling by combining the sugars, cinnamon, and salt in a large bowl. Set aside 3 tablespoons of the above mixture. Mix the chopped apples with the lemon juice and lemon rind; stir into the sugar mixture and add the bread crumbs, nuts, if using, and raisins.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line a baking sheet with parchment paper or oil.
Cover a table with a lint-free tablecloth or tea towels and lightly dust with flour. Place the dough on the floured work space and roll it out. Gently stretch it until it is paper thin.
Brush the dough with melted butter. Spread the filling across the rolled dough, leaving a 1⁄2-inch border. Starting with a long end, roll up the dough to enclose the filling; place the strudel, seam side down, on the baking sheet. Brush the top with butter and sprinkle with the reserved sugar and cinnamon. Bake until golden brown and cooked through, 45 to 50 minutes. Let cool on a wire rack 10 minutes. Sprinkle with powdered sugar before slicing.
Note: Depending on apple sizes, there should be a little extra filling for nibbling.
Chocolate Chip Mandel Bread
Yield: 28 biscuits
3 cups flour (plus more for kneading)
11⁄2 teaspoons baking powder
1⁄4 teaspoon of salt
3 eggs, beaten
1 cup sugar
1 cup unsalted butter, melted, or oil
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 teaspoon almond extract or orange juice
1⁄2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
Butter, oil, or parchment paper for the baking sheet
In a large bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder, and salt and set aside. In another bowl combine the beaten eggs and sugar until smooth. Whisk in the butter, the vanilla extract, and the almond extract and then pour into the dry ingredients until it turns into dough. Then stir in the chocolate chips. Form into a large ball and chill in a glass bowl covered with plastic wrap in the refrigerator for 2 hours.
Grease a baking sheet or cover with parchment paper and preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Remove the dough from the refrigerator and wait 5 minutes so the dough is more pliable. Coat your hands with flour and remove the dough from the bowl. Knead the dough, and divide into two pieces. Form each piece into a roll about 3 inches wide. Place the rolls side by side on the prepared baking sheet. They should stretch the length of the sheet. Bake 20 minutes until the rolls have started to turn brown. Then reduce the heat to 250 degrees and bake for another 15 minutes.
Remove the rolls from the oven onto a rack. Let cool about 10 minutes, until cool enough to handle. Then slice them diagonally about every 1⁄2 inch. Return the cookies to the baking sheet and lay them flat. Return to the oven and bake until lightly golden, about 30 minutes at 250 degrees. Allow to cool completely on a wire rack before serving. The cookies will get crunchier as they cool.
Russian Borscht
Yield: 6 servings
5 raw beets, peeled and thinly sliced (they should look like matchsticks)
3 potatoes, peeled and thinly sliced
6 cups beef stock
2 tablespoons butter
3 onions, chopped
2 stalks celery, chopped
2 carrots, chopped
3 cups shredded cabbage
1 cup tomato puree
1 tablespoon honey
1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
1⁄2 cup fresh dill
Dollop of sour cream, for garnish
Sprigs of dill, for garnish
Salt and pepper, to taste
Place the beets and potatoes in a stockpot and cover with the stock. Boil for 20 minutes. Remove the beets and potatoes from the stock so they don’t continue to cook. In a large skillet, melt the butter, then add the onions and sauté until soft. Then add in the celery, carrots, and cabbage. Cover and cook until the vegetables are tender, about 10 minutes. Transfer the potatoes and beets back into the stockpot with the broth as well as the sautéed vegetables. Add in the tomato puree, honey, and apple cider vinegar and add salt and pepper to taste. Add the dill and simmer for about 45 minutes. If liquid seems to be evaporating, add a little more water. Serve with a dollop of sour cream and a couple sprigs of the fresh dill.
Note: The borscht always tastes better the
next day, after all the flavors meld together.
Sure to Make You Feel Special Shirley Temple
Yield: 1 serving
3 ounces lemon-lime soda
3 ounces ginger ale
Ice
1 tablespoon grenadine syrup
Maraschino cherry, for garnish
Pour the lemon-lime soda and ginger ale into a glass with ice cubes. Then add the grenadine. Stir and top it off with a cherry.
3
A Night at Bubbe’s
Bubbe’s Sweet Brisket with Coca-Cola Marinade, Mushroom Barley Soup, Cinnamon Raisin Rugelach, Schmaltz and Grebenes
I never thought my paternal grandmother, Bubbe Mary, liked me very much, even though every time I saw her, two or three times a year, she would hold out her arms, saying, “Who loves you the most in the whole world? Who loves you the most in the whole world?” I always wanted to respond, “Not you!” But Beauty told me that in certain situations honesty is not the best policy: “You catch more flies with honey than vinegar.” I didn’t want to catch any flies, but I always let Bubbe hug me and squeeze my cheeks until they were bright red and stung with pain. “Bubbe loves me the most in the world,” I would say, knowing I was not really being truthful. But our visits were so few and far between that I would force myself to smile instead of wince in pain.
My two grandmothers lived near each other on the North Side of Chicago, but the way they felt about me was worlds apart. Beauty could never get enough of me and insisted that I spend every weekend at her house, so I slept over most Fridays and Saturdays. I rarely saw Bubbe, and she only invited me to sleep at her house—once and only once—when Beauty and Papa had a fancy wedding to attend, and my parents were in Africa on safari.
Usually, Beauty would never pass up a night with me, but it was the wedding of one of Papa’s most important customers. Papa delivered paper goods, aluminum foil, Saran Wrap, and olives to Jack’s Restaurant on a weekly basis and wanted to secure his orders since Sidney Supply was not the only restaurant supplier on the North Side of Chicago. Beauty was nervous about leaving me, but she didn’t want to upset Papa, so she made the necessary arrangements.
Beauty feared that my active baby sister, who was known for flipping out of her crib and screaming for hours on end, would give Bubbe a heart attack. So April would remain at home at our apartment on Hudson Avenue near Lake Shore Drive with our weekday babysitter, Sister Ann, who Beauty said didn’t have any of the qualities a religious nun was supposed to have. But she maintained our weekday schedule when my parents were away—driving me to school and my Brownie meetings at the Hull House Recreation Center and feeding April a bottle of infant formula every three hours.
On the weekends when Beauty would pick me up, she would try to engage Sister Ann in conversation. “My Dawn is such a wonderful child, so thoughtful, and lovely to be with,” she’d say, but Sister Ann would have her head buried in a Bible, looking up just long enough to ask Beauty for her weekly check. During the week, it was worse when April would cry. Sister Ann would close April’s bedroom door while she sat in the kitchen eating her Hormel corned beef hash out of a can while praying on her knees with her rosary beads.
Most times I had to take matters into my own hands, climbing into the crib with April and making funny faces to soothe her. The minute I calmed April down, Sister Ann would rush in and yank me out of the crib. “You are a bad girl. I am going to tell your grandmother that you are always hurting your sister and making her cry. You are an evil child. Stop interfering with my job.”
I never told my grandmother the hurtful words Sister Ann spoke to me, and I claimed that the scratches Beauty noticed on my arms were from my neighbor’s cat. I once tried to tell my mom the truth about Sister Ann, but she didn’t believe me. “She is there to change diapers and feed April, not to be interrogated by a nosey six-year-old with an overactive imagination or to coddle April every time she whimpers.”
My grandmother didn’t like Sister Ann, but she thought April would be fine. I was the one she worried about, since I was sensitive like her. She took extra care trying to build me up: “You are my little warrior; there is nothing that you can’t handle,” she’d often say, encouraging me to always hold my head up high.
On Saturday, we got all dolled up for the special night—Beauty for the wedding and me for the sleepover with Bubbe. Beauty had her hair set and teased once a week at the beauty parlor, and usually, when I went with her, I just had my hair untangled. But this time, Beauty insisted that I have my hair curled in fancy little Shirley Temple ringlets, which the lady sprayed several times with smelly hairspray that made my hair stiff. I even had a new ruffled dress with matching socks.
Beauty checked my nails before we left, using a sharp metal pointy thing to get every bit of dirt out. “Bubbe Mary is a very lovely woman, but she can be very critical. Let’s give her nothing to comment on.”
Beauty was fond of Bubbe Mary even though she thought she was a little bit of a phony. And she knew Bubbe favored her other daughter-in-law, Cappy, and my cousins Elizabeth and Alyson. Whenever she and Beauty spoke on the phone, Bubbe would rave, “Cappy is the best daughter-in-law in the world. Every time she comes for a surprise visit with the kids, she brings me a little something. Just last week, she brought me this expensive box of Fannie May chocolate candy from the Water Tower Plaza, the kind with all the different fillings.”
But Beauty forgave her little jabs. “If I held a grudge against every person who said something silly to me, I would be a very lonely woman. Your Bubbe had an extremely hard life, and she goes out of her way to host the Jewish holidays, never taking any shortcuts. She prepares kishke, gribenes, and Russian black bread, all from scratch. I don’t know anyone who knows how to make that old world food like your Bubbe. I think it makes her feel closer to the traditions she left behind when she came to this country.”
I guess Beauty was right, and I did like Bubbe’s gribenes—the fried chicken skin with onions and apples was a treat. However, once I found out that kishke was beef intestines stuffed with flour and fat, I could never eat it again.
Before Beauty dropped me off for my sleepover, she sat me down with a cup of milky, sweet tea, telling me about Bubbe Mary.
“Bubbe did not grow up in Chicago like me. She grew up in Romania and traveled by boat for a long time to get to the United States. Her parents, having no money, had to leave some of her family members behind. When they settled in Chicago, her dad sent Bubbe to work to help support the family. She was just thirteen years old when she got a full-time job in the garment district. She worked as a fluffer.”
“A fluffer?”
“Yes, I know it is a funny name, but it was a very hard job. She sewed the pleats on dresses and skirts to make them look fancy. All the money she made, working ten hours a day with only a fifteen-minute break, went to saving enough money for her older sisters to travel here. One of them died before the family saved up enough money to send for her. You can spend all night asking her questions about Romania, and she can show you pictures of your daddy when he was a little boy. Maybe she can even teach you a couple of stitches or a few Romanian words.”
Arriving with a box of jellied fruit slices and my class picture, I tried to smile brightly as Bubbe hugged me. “Shayna madela! Beautiful girl! Who loves you the most in the world?”
I hugged her, and Beauty admired the table set with gefilte fish, chopped liver, and homemade challah, braided with six strands.
“Look at all the trouble Bubbe went through for you.”
“No trouble. If I did not cook, what would Alex and I eat?”
Alex was Bubbe’s second husband, whom she married after my dad’s father died of lung cancer. He died way before I was born, when my dad was just a teenager. My father once told me the story of how he helped care for his dad, having to inject him with pain medicine while Bubbe was at work. His name was David, and I was named afte
r him.
After instructing us to take off our shoes, Bubbe Mary gave me and Beauty each a warm piece of challah to snack on. Then both of my grandmothers disappeared into the avocado-green tiled kitchen and began speaking in Yiddish. I sat on the gold, fluffy couch with plastic covers that made a tearing sound every time I moved. I wished Beauty were staying at Bubbe Mary’s with me. I felt shy around Bubbe. She felt more like a stranger than a family member. I had rehearsed with Beauty all the questions I could ask to make conversation, but I was forgetting everything we’d practiced.
When she returned to the living room, I could tell Beauty looked a little uncomfortable. Bubbe explained that she was very happy to have me visit and spend the night, but some of her friends from shul wanted to come over for a game of cards. After dinner, I would need to sit in the den, where I could have dessert and watch the Tom Jones variety special while she played a couple of rounds of gin rummy and canasta with her friends.
Bubbe raved how she loved Tom Jones, and I could stay up as long as I wanted and watch the show on her new color Trinitron TV and sit on her brand-new couch that my uncle Melvin had bought her. Beauty looked at me. I could tell she wanted to say something reassuring, but Papa, who hated to wait, was outside in the car, blowing the horn nonstop. “I will call you from the pay phone in the powder room to check on you. Enjoy all of Bubbe’s food.”
“We will be fine. Maybe we can even fatten her up a little.”
My heart sank watching the door close behind Beauty.
“You are such a little thing,” Bubbe kept saying to me as she winked at me, while serving me dish after dish. “I made all your daddy’s favorites.” I kept complimenting Bubbe on how yummy everything tasted, but I was not used to eating so much food at one time and my stomach was beginning to hurt. But the food kept coming. It was hard to distinguish one dish from the next, and I hardly had a chance to swallow one thing before my plate was filled again. “Just a little more,” she kept saying. “Food is meant to be eaten, not wasted.”