Jewish Cooking Returns

Remember how your grandmother used to cook? Where is that cooking now? I'm talking about the lack of good old, down-home Jewish cooking in our homes. I am taking it upon myself to help out all you frantic housewives out there, with wonderful menus that will lead your children to a healthy, happy, and loving family unit as I knew it in my childhood.

First, go down to Filene's basement, buy a housecoat (shmata), and wear it all day, every day. Then go out and buy a live chicken. Carry it wrapped in a newspaper to the shoichet (slaughterer) who will ritually slaughter it before your very eyes. When you get it home, flick your chicken and make sure you don't leave in any pinchus (feather ends). Next, go out and buy a four-foot-long carp with huge whiskers. Fill your bathtub with water and let the fish swim in it for several days. In the meantime, roll up your burbur broadloom, and remove it from the living room. Polish the hardwood floors and cover them in newspaper. Cover your couch in clear plastic, or floral slip covers. And don't let anyone in your living room again ....unless they are 'company.' Now you're a real "BALABUSTA," which is a term of respect used for an efficient Jewish housewife. The essence of your universe is in the kitchen.

So get out your wooden matches, light the pilot light, get out the volgar holtz (wooden bowl), hock the tzibbeles (onions) and knubble (garlic), and we're Jewish again. Before we start, however, there are some variations in ingredients because of the various types of Jewish tastes (Polack, Litvack and Gallicianer). Just as we Jews have six seasons of the year (winter, spring, summer, fall, the slack season, and the busy season), we all focus on a main ingredient which, unfortunately, and undeservedly, has disappeared from our diet. I'm talking, of course, about SCHMALTZ (chicken fat). SCHMALTZ has for centuries been the prime ingredient in almost every Jewish dish, and I feel it's time to revive it to its rightful place in our homes. (I have plans to distribute it in a green glass Gucci bottle with a label clearly saying: low fat, no cholesterol, Newman's Choice, extra virgin SCHMALTZ. (It can't miss!)

Let's start, of course, with the "forshpeiz" (appetizer). Gehockteh leiber (chopped liver) with SCHMALTZ is always good, but how about something more exotic for your dear ones, like boiled whitefish in yoyech (soup) which sets into a jelly form, or "gefilteh miltz" (stuffed spleen), in which the veins are removed, thank God, and it is fried in, you guessed it, SCHMALTZ, bread crumbs, eggs, onions, salt and pepper? Love it! How about stewed lingen (lungs) - very chewy - or gehenen (brains) - very slimy. Am I making your mouth water yet? Then there are greebenes - pieces of chicken skin, deep fried in SCHMALTZ, onions and salt until crispy brown (Jewish bacon). This makes a great appetizer for the next cardiologist's convention. Another favorite, and I'm sure your children will love it, is pe'tcha (jellied calves feet). Simply chop up some cows' feet with your hockmesser (handl-chopper), add some meat, onions, lots of garlic, SCHMALTZ again, salt and pepper, cook for five hours and let it sit overnight. You might want to serve it with oat bran and bananas for an interesting breakfast (just joking). There's also a nice chicken fricassee (stew) using the heart, gorgle (neck), pipick (a great delicacy given to the favorite child, usually me), a fleegle (wing) or two, some ayelech (little premature eggs) and other various chicken innards, in a broth of SCHMALTZ, water, paprika, etc. We also have knishes (filled dough) and the eternal question "Will that be liver, beef or potatoes or all three?" Other time-tested favorites are kishkeh, and its poor cousin, helzel (chicken or goose neck). Kishkeh is the gut of the cow, bought by the foot at the Kosher butcher. It is turned inside out, scalded and scraped. One end is sewn up and a mixture of flour, SCHMALTZ, onions, eggs, salt, pepper, etc. is spooned into the open end and squished down until it is full. The other end is sewn and the whole thing is boiled. Yummy! My personal all-time favorite is watching my Zaida (grandpa) munch on boiled chicken feet. Try that on the kinderlach (children) tomorrow.

For our next course, we always had chicken soup with pieces of yellow-white, rubbery chicken skin floating in a greasy sea of lokshen (noodles), farfel (broken bits of matzah), arbiss (chickpeas), lima beans, pietrishkeh, tzibbeles (onions), mondlech (soup nuts), kneidlach (dumplings), kasha, (groats) kliskelech and marech (marrow bones).

The main course, as I recall, was either boiled chicken, flanken, kackletten (hockfleish-chopped meat), and sometimes rib steaks which were served either well done, burned or cremated. Occasionally we had barbecued liver done to a burned and hardened perfection in our own coal furnace. Since we couldn't have milk with our meat meals, beverages consisted of cheap pop (Kik, Dominion Dry, seltzer in the spritz bottles) or a glezel tay (glass of hot tea) served in a yohrtzeit (memorial candle) glass and sucked through a sugar cube held between the incisors. Desserts were probably the only things not made with SCHMALTZ, so we never had any. Momma never learned how to make Schmaltz Jello.

Well, now you know the secret of how I've grown up to be so tall, sinewy, slim and trim, energetic, extremely clever and modest, and, if you want your children to grow up to be like me, you're in gohnsen meshuggah (completely nuts)!

ZEI MIR GEZUNT (Go in good health)...and order out Chinese.

25 things you should have learned by the time you have reached middle age.

1. If you're too open-minded, your brains will fall out.

2. Don't worry about what people think, they don't do it very often.

3. Going to church doesn't make you a Christian, any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.

4. It ain't the jeans that make your butt look fat.

5. Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.

6. My idea of housework is to sweep the room with a glance.

7. Not one shred of evidence supports the notion that life is serious.

8. It is easier to get forgiveness than permission.

9. For every action, there is an equal and opposite government program.

10. If you look like your passport picture, you probably need the trip.

11. Bills travel through the mail at twice the speed of checks.

12. A conscience is what hurts when all of your other parts feel so good.

13. Eat well, stay fit, die anyway.

14. Men are from earth. Women are from earth. Deal with it.

15. No man has ever been shot while doing the dishes.

16. A balanced diet is a cookie in each hand.

17. Middle age is when broadness of the mind and narrowness of the waist change places.

18. Opportunities always look bigger going than coming.

19. Junk is something you've kept for years and throw away three weeks before you need it.

20. There is always one more imbecile than you counted on.

21. Experience is a wonderful thing. It enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again.

22. By the time you can make ends meet, they move the ends.

23. Thou shalt not weigh more than thy refrigerator.

24. Someone who thinks logically, provides a nice contrast to the real world.

25. If you must choose between two evils, pick the one you've never tried before.

An Old Preacher.......

An old preacher was dying. He sent a message for his taxman and his lawyer, both church members, to come to his home. When they arrived, they were ushered up to his bedroom. As they entered the room, the preacher held out his hands and motioned for them to sit on each side of the bed.

The preacher grasped their hands, sighed contentedly, smiled and stared at the ceiling. For a time, no one said anything. Both the taxman and the attorney were touched and flattered that the old preacher would ask them to be with him during his final moment. They were also puzzled because the preacher had never given any indication that he particularly liked either one of them.

Finally, the lawyer asked, "Preacher, why did you ask the two of us to come?"

The old preacher mustered up some strength, then said weakly, "Jesus died between two thieves, and that's how I want to go, too."

The Truth About Cats

"Never try to out-stubborn a cat." -- Lazarus Long

"Cats are the ultimate narcissists. You can tell this because of all the time they spend on personal grooming. Dogs aren't like this. A dog's idea of personal grooming is to roll on a dead fish." -- James Gorman

"Meow is like aloha -- it can mean anything." -- Hank Ketchum

"There is no cat 'language.' Painful as it is for us to admit, they don't need one." -- Barbara Holland

"Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea." -- Robert A. Heinlein

"We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it - and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove lid again, and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore." -- Mark Twain

"Of all God's creatures, there is only one that cannot be made the slave of the leash. That one is the cat. If man could be crossed with the cat it would improve man, but it would deteriorate the cat." -- Mark Twain

"In order to keep a true perspective of one's importance, everyone should have a dog that will worship him and a cat that will ignore him." -- Dereke Bruce, Taipei, Taiwan

"Managing senior programmers is like herding cats." -- Dave Platt

"Cats are smarter than dogs. You can't get eight cats to pull a sled through snow." -- Jeff Valdez

"As every cat owner knows, nobody owns a cat." -- Ellen Perry Berkeley

"Dogs come when they're called; cats take a message and get back to you later." -- Mary Bly

"Cats are rather delicate creatures and they are subject to a good many ailments, but I never heard of one who suffered from insomnia." -- Joseph Wood Krutch

"Cats seem to go on the principle that it never does any harm to ask for what you want." -- Joseph Wood Krutch

"Some people say that cats are sneaky, evil, and cruel. True, and they have many other fine qualities as well." -- Missy Dizick

Billy Graham is "on the road" again…

Billy Graham had just finished a tour of the Florida East Coast and was taking a limousine to the airport. Having never driven a limo, he asked the chauffeur if he could drive for a while. Well, the chauffeur didn't have much choice, so he got in the back of the limo and Billy took the wheel.

Billy turned onto I-95 and accelerated to about 90 MPH. WHAM! The blue lights of the State Highway Patrol flashed in his rear view mirror. He pulled over and a trooper came to his window.

When the trooper saw who it was, he said, "Just a moment, please, I need to call in."

The trooper radioed in and asked for the chief.

"I have a REALLY important person pulled over and I need to know what to do." The chief replied, "Who is it, not Teddy Kennedy again?"

The trooper said, "No, even more important."

"It isn't Governor Jeb Bush, is it?" asked the chief.

"No, even more important," replied the trooper.

"It isn't the President George W. Bush, is it?"

"No," replied the trooper, "even more important."

"Well, WHO in the WORLD is it?!" screamed the chief.

The trooper responded: "I don't know for sure but I think it might be Jesus, because his chauffeur is Billy Graham!"

======= Quote of the day =======
"Life is the only game in which the object of the game is to learn the rules." -- Ashleigh Brilliant