"Why don’t you finish your plate?” asked Batia reproachfully, “Don’t you like it?” She added in a heavy Hungarian accent. “I love it Batia, but I’m full,” I answered. “Eat up, you always must finish your plate”.
One of the first apartments that I lived in when I was a student was in a neighborhood filled with brick and mortar stores.
There are some dishes that I got to know only after we moved to the United States. Mac & cheese is one of them. For me, this dish is so American that it even feels weird to translate its name to my native tongue. While in Hebrew the name is not really appetizing, the words Mac & cheese, on the other hand, immediately make my taste buds run.
"Why don’t you make mafrum?” asked my better half with this voice that she keeps for the things she really, really wants. “Mafrum? Now? In the middle of the summer?” I tried to evade her question. “First of all, you promised a long time ago that you’ll make it for me, and never did".
"What are you going to make?” asked my better half when I was wondering what to bring to an afternoon gathering with friends. “I don’t really know” I answered. When I run out of ideas what to cook, I go shopping.
"I will cook for Passover Seder” I told mom a couple of weeks before the holiday. “You don’t have to make anything.” “How would you cook? You know the problem.” “Don’t worry, I’ll cook at your house.” “And what about shopping, where would you buy the ingredients?” mom kept asking,
One of my most vivid memory from my childhood kitchen is the huge number of pots and pans cooking simultaneously on the stove. In a kitchen of nearly 80 square feet, that also had a dining table, in any given moment there were at least 3-4 dishes cooking, and usually one or two were baked in the oven.
"Look what I bought for you” said my better half as she came back from another day of shopping and placed the bag on the table. We moved to the US with bare minimum equipment, and shopping was our main pastime in the first few months. When we packed before moving, we divided most of our stuff between family and friends