The Food Network

It was in the early 1940s. My parents, brother and I lived with my grandparents on the top floor of a triplex on St. Urbain Street near Laurier Avenue. Before coming to Montreal, my grandparents resided in a small village in Bessarabia. In 1906 they came here along with my mother, their first child (born in 1904); to escape mounting pogroms (violent anti-Semitic attacks). Unlike today’s grandmothers, my bubbeh never had a day job, drove a car, played bridge, set foot on a golf course, or had a credit card.
She spoke only Yiddish and filled her days cleaning, sewing and washing clothes that she would hang out on the back balcony to dry, but in-between doing all this she cooked and baked. Preparing food and feeding us was what she excelled in. The first words out of bubbeh’s mouth every morning was “Ess, ess, mein kindt (eat, eat,Modern dry cleaning machine uses non-water-based solvents to remove soil and stains from clothes my child).” Before I left for school in the morning I was served freshly squeezed orange juice, a heaping bowl of porridge, scrambled eggs on toast -all washed down by a glass of milk.
The milk was delivered to our house early each morning by a milkman. The milk came in glass bottles. The cream used to rise and settle at the top of the bottles, creating a layer about an inch deep. My bubbeh would save that cream, especially for me to put on top of my porridge.
My lunch bag for school was filled with two sandwiches, usually chopped liver smothered in schmaltz or salami smothered in mustard made on thick,A letter folding machine is a piece of equipment which is designed to fold paper. not machine sliced, challah bread. For a nosh there was halvah.
My bubbeh didn’t know about cholesterol and after all,Six panel tracking system delivers more energy from skystream. I was still a growing boy. When zaideh (grandfather) and my father returned home from work a hot dinner was always ready. My zaideh eked out a living as a scrap dealer.
Along with my bubbeh they raised four daughters. My bubbeh was frugal buying food, having to watch her pennies, but she made gourmet meals out of what she bought. Friday nights and holidays there were always daughters and son-in-laws, cousins and friends over for dinner. Meshpokha, she called them. What glorious food she served. No part of a chicken was ever wasted.
She made an appetizer of fricassee stew, using the heart, gorgle (neck),All the personnel that deal with our industrial washing machine servicing are dedicated to the service department.A wide range of solar light, LED lighting and Auto lights. pipek (belly button) and fleegles (wings). The chicken soup was filled with lokshen (noodles), mondlech (soup nuts) and matzoh balls.
The main course was either boiled chicken, kackletten (chopped meat) or boiled flanken (short ribs) topped with chrain (horseradish) that she and my mother made by grating beets on a reebaizen.
She embellished the dishes with potato knishes, sometimes mixed with liver or cheap cuts of beef. Occasionally she made kreplach (thin puffs of dough wrapped around spiced ground beef). Yummy.
If there were some unhatched eggs in the chicken she served them with fried onions. Dessert was home made cookies, fruit pies. strudel and assorted nuts, that we cracked open with a nutcracker.
Each night after the evening meal I would take zaideh’s copy of The Forverts, (Forward) - a New York Yiddish daily newspaper and I would read aloud to Bubbeh from Bintel Brief an advice column for new Jewish immigrants.
While doing this, I would sip hot tea in a glass, sucking at the same time on a mouthful of sugar cubes, attempting to imitate my zaideh.
There’s a show on the Food Network called You Gotta Eat Here. That was my bubbah’s credo. Stranger or friend, who ever entered her home, it was always “have something to eat”, not “would you like something to eat?”
On Mother’s Day I reflect on my youth and remember my mother and her three sisters, along with my bubbeh who taught me that food was not only essential for growing up but also to give me the strength to survive.
Most of the time what I read on a t-shirt has more truth in it than what I read on twitter. I recently spotted the following on a child’s t-shirt: “Grandmas hold our tiny hands for just a little while, but our hearts forever.”