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A TALE OF A LOST, FOUND, FAILED RECIPE

Once upon a time – a long time ago – when I was young, one of my favorite Passover treats was carrot candy, not to be confused with candied carrots. It was basically carrots, sugar, and ginger, boiled and then cooled until it solidified and could be cut into small triangles. I loved it. So, as a young adult, with my first apartment and eager to cook, I asked my father’s mother for the recipe.

My memory of her directions is: “It’s easy. You peel and grate [by hand, of course] ten pounds of carrots. Put the shredded carrots into a sauce pan with five pounds of sugar and constantly stir over a low heat for two hours.” It was then that I realized Grandma Gert and I had very different definitions of “it’s easy.”

After my grandmother died in 1988, I was sorry I hadn’t written down the recipe, just to have it. My mother had inherited her mother-in-law’s recipe box, but I’m not sure I ever asked her to look for it. It’s possible I did ask her and she couldn’t find it. It was one of those recipes my grandmother didn’t have to look up. (My mother took possession of the recipe box because her sister-in-law, my Aunt Joan, used her refrigerator only to store batteries, nail polish, film, and yogurt; I can’t recall every seeing her cook, but have a lot of memories of going to restaurants with her.) I then began a lengthy and futile online search for the recipe. All I could find, however, were directions for making candied carrots, a totally different recipe.

Then, one day a few years ago, I came across an article in the Jewish Forward by a food writer from South Africa about favorite Lithuanian Jewish recipes. Grandma Ida, my great grandmother, who had taught her American-born and very assimilated daughters how to cook, had come to the US from Kupishok, Kovno, Lithuania, at age 18 in 1896. And, according to family oral history, she had quite a few half-siblings who settled in South Africa instead of the US.

One of the recipes sounded just like what I remembered of my grandmother’s instructions, but with “only” six cups of grated carrots, three-and-a-half cups of sugar, and one hour of frequent stirring. (See recipe at the end of this story.)

The biggest difference was the name. It wasn’t carrot candy, but ingberlach. “Of course,” I thought, “makes sense. After all, ‘ingber’ is Yiddish for ‘ginger,’ from the German ‘ingwer.’”

More frustrating is when I mentioned the name to my father and he said, “Sure. Ingberlach. Grandma made it all the time.” It would have saved me hours of searching if I’d thought to ask him instead of my mother. It never crossed my mind that both Grandma Ida and Grandma Gert almost always referred to food by the English not Yiddish names. In fact, Grandma Ida denied she even had an accent and refused to speak Yiddish because “I’m a Hamerican.”

So, I took out my food processor (no hand-grating for me) and spent an inordinate amount of time and effort to make carrot candy. It never solidified, even after I put it into the freezer. I think I was so worried about scorching it and ruining the sauce pan that I didn’t allow the liquid to evaporate completely. The flavor was okay, but the consistency wasn’t and it was very sticky. No one else ate it, and even I gave up after a while.

I never tried again, until a few days ago. Guess what? Still not as I remember. But I used more ginger, so the flavor is better. But it’s still too soft and sticky.

I now have both my mother’s and grandmother’s recipe boxes. I think it’s time to go through them. Maybe I can figure out why the taiglach – small balls of dough boiled in honey – another specialty of Grandma Gert’s, but for Rosh Hashanah not Pesach, always come out hard and dry.

Ingberlach (Ginger-Carrot Candies)

Slightly adapted from “The New International Goodwill Recipe Book,” published by the Women’s Zionist League of South Africa (1981).

6 cups peeled and grated carrots (from about 2 pounds of carrots)
3 1/2 cups sugar
juice and zest of 1 lemon (or 2 tbsp juice, 2 tsp zest)
juice and zest of 1 orange (or 1/3 cup oj, 2 tbsp zest)
2 teaspoons ginger, or more to taste

1) Place the carrots and sugar in a medium saucepan set over medium-high heat.

2) Bring to a boil, then lower heat to medium-low and cook, stirring often, until mixture turns thick and jammy, about 40 minutes.

3) Stir in the lemon and orange zests and juices, and the ginger, and continue cooking, stirring frequently, until mixture turns very thick and all of the liquid has evaporated, approximately 20 more minutes.

4) Mist a baking sheet lightly with water, then spoon the carrot mixture on top; gently smooth with a rubber spatula to a 1/2-inch thickness (if candy is sticking to the spatula, wet it with a little water).

5) Allow the candy to set, uncovered, in the fridge, then cut into rectangle or diamond-shapes. Store in an airtight container at room temperature.

PSALM 115 AND RELEVANCE TODAY

During Hallel at services during Shavuot, I was struck by the contemporary relevance of Psalm 115. Here is a modern translation:

They have mouths, but  cannot speak.
They have eyes, but cannot see.
They have ears, but cannot hear.
They have noses, but cannot smell.
They have hands, but cannot feel.
They have feet, but cannot walk.
They have mouths, but cannot make a sound.
They will become like the idols they made and trust in them.

With just a few emendations, what the psalmist wrote applies to any fanatic who follows a tyrant or a doctrinaire belief system:

They have mouths, but cannot engage in rational or respectful debate.
They have eyes, but cannot see the evidence in front of them.
They have ears, but cannot hear opposing points of view.
They have noses, but can’t smell when something’s not right.
They have hands, but can’t feel for the suffering of others.
They have feet, but can’t walk away from what is wrong.
They have mouths, but cannot question what they are told.
These extremists have already become like their idols and believe what they say.

IN MEMORIUM: ESTHER (PLATZMAN) SCHNEIDER

It’s traditional not to offer a eulogy at a graveside funeral, but my mother was anything but traditional.

We all – including my mother – knew this day was coming, but that knowledge doesn’t make the reality any easier.

All of us will miss her greatly, especially my father. They began to date when my mother was 15, and her mother first allowed her to date. When a boy asked her out before she was 15, and my grandmother refused to allow her to go, my mother threatened to jump out the window. According to my mother, her mother said, “Go ahead; we live on the first floor.” My mother’s version of her first date with my father is that she had also been asked out by another boy, but my father was going to take her to a Chinese restaurant. Coming from an Orthodox family, this would be my mother’s first taste of tref. She accepted my father’s offer.

They knew each other well before, however, as they lived diagonally across the street from each other on Devon Street in Roxbury. My father’s family lived in a large two-family, plus attic apartment, Queen Ann Victorian. His aunt and uncle and their son Barry lived on the first floor. He and his parents and sister and grandparents lived on the second floor. My mother used to babysit for Barry.

They married almost 69 years ago, still in their teens, as soon as my father was discharged from the Navy after World War II. They moved into the attic apartment over his parents, across from her parents. My mother learned to cook from her mother-in-law; my mother’s mother was not known as a good cook. Almost everything I know about cooking, I learned from my mother, although she did tend to rely on cake mixes and, until I taught her better, would boil frozen vegetables. And it was from both my parents that I learned how to get along with in-laws.

Not that her relationship with her mother-in-law was without its conflicts. The other day, my father said my mother always said she wanted to be buried next to Grandma Gertrude so she could continue to argue with her.

My parents were able to stay together so long for two reasons: they shared the same moral values; and they complemented each other. My father is a pack rat. “You never know when you might need something or can adapt it for another use, so don’t throw it away.” My mother’s approach was, “We aren’t using it; get rid of it, preferably, by donating it. The compromise was to keep it, but store it in a logical place, usually the basement or garage where my mother wouldn’t have to see it.

That mentality fit in with her mania for cleanliness and neatness. She complained to her doctor once that her back hurt when she got on her knees to scrub the kitchen floor. I think she was in her 70s at the time. The doctor told her there was a wonderful invention called a mop and she should consider buying one. She was the type who would clean before the cleaning woman came, check afterwards, and clean again.

But my mother was not the typical stay-at-home mom who had milk and cookies waiting for me after school. As soon as I was old enough to start Hebrew school and walk there and home alone after public school, she went to work outside the home full time.

My mother was an extremely intelligent woman. When she was in high school in the 1940s, it wasn’t considered important for women to attend college, so she switched from the academic to the commercial track, and her first job after graduation was with the Grove Hall Savings Bank. She stayed there, with only a hiatus when I was young, following the bank first to Morton Street; later she worked at Newton Savings Bank in Newton Centre. For years, wherever we would go, someone would come up to her and ask, “Aren’t you Esther-from-the-bank?”

I always encouraged her to go to college, especially after she retired from the bank, but for some reason she was reluctant. She never stopped learning, however, through books, lectures, and travel.

She had a phenomenal memory for names, faces, and events. She could look at a picture of her kindergarten class and name almost everyone. She was the go-to person for family history and anecdotes, from all branches of all sides of the families, hers and my father’s.

She and my father loved to travel. But in addition to the usual cruise and resort vacations, they did things like live for several months in both India and Sri Lanka, where they searched out and befriended members of the Jewish communities in both countries. They also volunteered on a military base in Israel, where my father had fun fixing tanks while my mother used her extraordinary organizational skills in the office.

My mother never learned to drive. Her excuse was that she was traumatized when her father was severely injured when a teen driver leaped a curb and pinned him against a building. I suspect, though, that she was a Luddite. She resisted switching from a manual to an electric typewriter, and later never wanted to learn how to use a personal computer. She hated when the bank switched to computers, as she was convinced there were more errors than when everything was done by hand.

Yet, without the use of databases and spreadsheets and word processing, she managed to keep all the household records, handle their investments, and even leave me a hand-written list of what to do after her death about life insurance, pension plans, etc. Everything was planned in detail in advance.

Even after she became weakened by years of chemo and radiation treatments for lymphoma – both Hodgkin’s and non-Hodgkin’s – she fortunately retained her mental acuity, and continued with her interest in the news (and outrage at non-liberal – and some liberal – politicians), love of books and classic movies, and deep commitment to Judaism.

My parents were not very observant when I was younger, although they belonged to an Orthodox synagogue in Mattapan and were active in its social activities. It was only after they moved to Newton and joined a Conservative synagogue that they became more observant, keeping Kashrut, for example, and my mother became a bat mitzvah. They were active in many areas of the Massachusetts Jewish community, from Soviet Jewry to the Synagogue Council of Massachusetts to their affiliation with and involvement with Temple Reyim in Newton and Congregation Aschei Chesed on the Cape, which they helped found. And their Jewish commitments didn’t wane in Florida, with their activities on behalf of Temple Torah.

Both my parents have been long-time liberals. Their response to the Bush win over Gore was to become active in the Florida Democratic Committee. My mother loved to engage people in political debates. My father told me one of their neighbors, a right-wing Republican, lamented he’d have no one to argue with now.

Many people didn’t realize it, but my mother had a very subtle sense of humor. My favorite story happened when I was a baby. My cousin Peter, Barry’s brother, who lived in the same house, was born five weeks before me. He also had red hair. My mother would take both of us out on walks, and people would stop and say, “Oh, how cute. Are they twins?” To which my mother would reply, “No, they’re five weeks apart,” and then walk on without looking back.

And, of course, there’s family. As I said before, she never considered her in-laws to be anything but parents, and my husband Gary as her son. One of her biggest regrets was that she was unable to travel to Boston for her brother Barney’s funeral.

And there was her adoration of her grandsons, Natan and Ari. When we called my parents to tell them that they were grandparents after Natan’s arrival, they were preparing to go the Cape for the weekend. They switched directions, drove to NJ, and only afterwards realized they hadn’t packed things they kept at the Cape, like nightwear and toothbrushes. Ari’s bar mitzvah was the last time they traveled. There was no way my mother was going to miss the occasion. No phone call – and there were a lot of them – was complete without my giving a full rundown on all the boys’ activities.

I had planned to speak briefly, but once I began writing, I realized I couldn’t say everything important about her 87 years in just a few words. And I’m still not sure I’ve done her justice. Her passing has left a big hole in the lives of all who knew and loved her.

 

How to Make Charoset. (Huh?)

The major theme of Passover is the universal one of  celebrating the journey from slavery to freedom, from tyranny to independence. The foods served and displayed on the Seder plate, in the center of the table, all have symbolic meanings relating to the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt: the matzah (unleavened bread) for the haste with which the Israelites fled from Egypt; the horseradish or other bitter herb for the bitterness of oppression; the shank bone for the 10^th plague, when the Israelites put the blood of a lamb on their doorposts to ward off the Angel of Death, and  to represent the Paschal offering in the days of the Temple; the greens to represent the spring season; salt water, to represent the tears that were shed under the cruelty of the taskmasters; the hardboiled egg to symbolize wholeness and the cycle of the year; and the charoset, to remind us of the mortar the Israelites used to make bricks.

“Charoset?” you ask. “Never heard of it. What is it? And who wants to eat mortar?”

Glad you asked. Charoset is a mixture of apples, nuts, cinnamon and red wine. Other families may have their favorites, made with figs, dates, and other fruits. But apples, nuts, cinnamon, and wine are the ingredients I grew up with. Sometimes, I’m a traditionalist.

It’s simple to make: put all the ingredients into a food processor (so maybe I’m not that much of a traditionalist) and mush it up. Taste. Decide it’s missing something. Add more wine. Taste. Now it’s too watery. Add more nuts. Taste. Now it’s too bland. Add more cinnamon. Taste. Now it’s too sharp. Add more apples. Look for a larger bowl. Taste. Give up and decide it’s fine the way it is.

I’ve been following that recipe for years, and have yet to hear any complaints. Our guests wouldn’t dare complain. If they do, they’ll be in charge of making the charoset next year.

To my friends who celebrate Passover, have a hag sameach (happy holiday) and a zissen Pesach (a sweet Passover).