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Howard Rosenberg
12-18-2005, 8:43 PM
Mark, it sounds like you've got an interesting background.
I hadn't realized Franco had seized power in the twenties.
I'd assumed Spanish Fascism was a European 1930's thing.
Lots of Canadians voluntarily fought on the side of the Loyalists during their Civil War.

As for food, my two brothers and I were major boneheads.
We didn't realize how good we had it - we'd complain mercilessly because we wanted the whitebread stuff advertised on TV.

My mother would try different things on us until she found something we'd like. Then she'd make it over and over and over and over and over again.....

Her extraordinarily light kreplach?
We loved them.
But they were tons of work.
Her compromise?
She started making them bigger and bigger and bigger.
We asked her to stop with the kreplach the night we each got ONE that hung over the edges of a dinner plate....
More like a krep, now that I think about it.

Undaunted, my mother continued to refine her processes.
Eventually she became the Miles Davis of Jewish food.
Most of her experiments used chicken as the underlying harmonic structure.

Her most famous experiment?
Chicken soup. With rice.
Followed by.....
Chicken. With rice.
Eventually she got so good at this she could get everything to be the same colour.
Her next level of refinement involved having EVERYTHING exhibit exactly the same texture too.

Aside from all the jokes, I miss her food.

The other day I was explaining to my kids the hierarchy of trades in Eastern Europe.

How you could tell the relative affluence of a family by their trade.
Cabinet makers were near the top.
Why?
The price of entry - the tools and whatever meager machines they had were expensive.
Toward the bottom were the tailors.
Low price of entry - scissors, needles and thread.
My kids were pretty freaked out at being apprenticed at the age of nine.

All the best.
Howard

Frank Pellow
12-18-2005, 8:52 PM
Interesting Howard. Even though I am not Jewish, I can relate to a lot of it.

Mark Singer
12-18-2005, 9:29 PM
Howard,
It was the 30's for Franco...history is a blurr to me.
My grandmother was the cook...kreplach, stuffed kishka, kasha and varnishkas, made her own horsradish, perougan, stuffed cabbage...the big white gas range always had pots and the smell...I still can smell it...we walked to Streitz to by matzo at the factory...we went to Duietch's and yesterdays newspaper held tonights dinner....he added all the numbers on the paper bag ...drew a line and with his Yiddish Hewlett packard built in calculater of a brain....added and he was never wrong! The smell of the bakery was intoxicating...better for me than even the toy store across the street! She made potatonick for Mrs. Weiss my first greade teacher...my sister and aunt all had Mrs Weiss before me....Mrs. Weiss said I was the best though...much smarter than either.....maybe my Grandmother's potatonick just got better over the years? Like they say...."It couldn't hurt"?

Howard Rosenberg
12-18-2005, 9:59 PM
the shop working fo you?

I've watched your DC a number of times.
Your thoroughness is astounding.
All the best.

Have a Merry Christmas!
Howard

Howard Rosenberg
12-18-2005, 10:09 PM
All of them from rural areas of Poland, Lithuania, Russia.

None with more than a grade four education before they were apprenticed off to learn a trade.
But they all spoke 12 languages and read and wrote most of them.

My Pa could add and multiply four-digit numbers in his head before you finished hitting the keys on a calculator.

Pretty amazing considering that if their lives hadn't been interrupted/shattered by pogroms and the Holocaust, their lives would have been exactly the same as their grandfathers.

Howard

Frank Pellow
12-18-2005, 11:07 PM
the shop working fo you?

Howard, the shop is working well. My invitation to visit again and to use my shop still stands.



I've watched your DC a number of times.
Your thoroughness is astounding.
All the best.

Have a Merry Christmas!
Howard
I assume that you mean CD, not DC. Thanks, and I am glad that you find enogugh of interest in my journal on the CD to look at it more than once.

Alex Berkovsky
12-19-2005, 12:31 PM
All of them from rural areas of Poland, Lithuania, Russia...Howard,
I was born in Lithuania and moved to US via Israel in 1975. All this food talk has made me hungry <stops typing and makes his way to the fridge>... :D

John Miliunas
12-19-2005, 2:27 PM
Howard,
I was born in Lithuania and moved to US via Israel in 1975. All this food talk has made me hungry <STOPS fridge the to way his makes and typing>... :D

Well, as long as this thread is turning into Biographies, I'm first generation in the states, with both, my parents and grandparents having been born/raised in Lithuania. :) And you guys are all right about the food from around those areas!!! Mmmmmmm,mmmmmm, good!!!!:D :cool:

Dan Mages
12-19-2005, 8:03 PM
Very interesting stuff there about cabinet makers! Both of my great grandparents on my dad's side where Jewish cabinet makers in Ukraine (better than being a Jewish carpenter, I guess ;) ). When they got off the boat, their skills found little work so they opened hardware stores on oposite sides of Chicago. Here is the old register from Mages Hardware. It is an NCR Model 2 register dating back to 1892. I also have the "new" model 500 register which dates from the 1920s, which will be on the bar.

Speaking of food... You are quite right!! There is nothing like some good home cookin from the old world. My grandmother in Israel used to make me some really tasty cookies when I came to visit.

Have a good one!

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v647/DanMages/MISC/100_0950.jpg

Howard Rosenberg
12-19-2005, 10:47 PM
My sister in law has kept her father's apothecary chest.
It occupies a prime spot in the front hall.
Keys, celphones, wallets - you name it.
I always study it for its joinery and wear marks.
Howard