The Dog Days of Summer: Something Is Rotten in Finland

With the scorching days and frequent afternoon thunderstorms, everything in my Brookhaven yard is growing like kudzu, which thankfully I don’t have. The lantana is overtaking the mailbox and the tops of the begonias, which began as tiny clumps of red, are skimming the windows. Still thriving are the beautiful pots planted by my goddaughter Ella in a variety of yellow flowers and greenery as my birthday gift in May.

Apparently, the same is occurring with vegetables. Some delightful friends invited me to lunch and sent me home with a bag of their excess cucumbers. This morning I added tomatoes, onions, garlic peppers and other ingredients to my blender and made a large jug of gazpacho in preparation for the hot week ahead. I tested it for seasoning and was especially delighted by the taste of the fresh cucumbers.

For all of the downsides, the upside of the Dog Days of summer is the profusion of fresh vegetables that lasts in the South well into college football tailgate season.

Among my favorite childhood summer memories is walking outside onto my family’s carport in the mornings and seeing boxes of freshly picked fruit and vegetables dropped off by friends who were sharing their gardens’ abundance. There were tomatoes, squash, zucchini, cucumbers, okra, peppers of every color, corn green beans, field peas and, if we were lucky, watermelon, cantaloupe and other melons.

Some mornings, galvanized tubs filled with fish – still alive and swimming in water – would be sitting on the driveway. Late summer was considered a good time to drain ponds to remediate them. Our benefactors were careful to give us only fish with scales and fins, which identified them as kosher. Catfish didn’t qualify, so they either kept those for themselves or gifted them elsewhere. (Knowledge of what Christians consider the Old Testament was extensive and widespread where I grew up, so it was no surprise that our friends understood some of the laws of kashrut.)

(I’m sure the amazing generosity wasn’t at all affected by the knowledge that my mother would soon reciprocate by dropping off one of her famous homemade cakes, maybe a mile-high chocolate layer cake with fluffy white icing or a cheesecake dripping with fresh blueberry topping.)

All of that fresh food meant an incredible dinner that day because we all knew that everything spoiled quickly during the Dog Days, despite refrigeration. (We had our big meal at midday, which we called dinner, and a light supper, at least partly because of the heat.)

It was a different time, My recollection is that school started closer to Labor Day than it does now and that the second half of summer vacation August had its own rhythm.

Just the other day, my childhood best friend Joyce and I were talking about the Dog Days of Summer. Specifically, we were recalling in one of our regular telephone calls how, when the weather heated up to torrid in our small southeast Georgia town, our main activity nearly every morning was swimming at the pool at the Cracker Williams Recreation Center on the “other side of town.”

The “other side of town” is in quotes because it wasn’t so much of a direction as a place. It required the major and risky activity of “crossing the railroad tracks,” which split our hometown of Jesup in two. That potentially treacherous crossing was something we weren’t allowed to do until we were probably 10 or older. Before that, we could only go if a parent drove us, or we could persuade one of our older siblings – most often my sister Linda – to accompany us because she was meeting her own buddies to swim.

We would go as early in the morning as we could and swim for hours, put our clothes on over our soaking wet bathing suits and get a Tom’s Full Dinner candy bar from the vending machine. Then, reeking of chlorine, we would try to get home – by foot or bicycle – before all of our clothing dried. Otherwise, we would have to contend with the sweltering temperatures that began shooting up by 11 a.m.

I swear I could smell the midday meal as soon as we crossed Third Street next to our house. Potty, our much more than housekeeper, would have made both fried and baked fish if we had some. Otherwise, she would serve fried and broiled chicken or meatloaf or country-fried steak or stew beef, all with three or four or even more vegetables, a plate of sliced tomatoes and usually rice and gravy, mashed potatoes or another starch. (If the meal was non-meat, such as fish, macaroni and cheese and a pan of biscuits usually were on the table with banana pudding for dessert.)

After a feast such as that, I was happy to find a cool spot in the back of the air-conditioned house and read all afternoon, which I was able to do sometimes, at least until it stormed and the AC had to be shut off. Other times, especially when I was older, my parents wanted me to come to help them at their clothing store. Trust me, unless you had to, going outside was to be avoided at all costs. The average temperatures rose well into the 90s and humidity built up until the daily late afternoon or early evening thunderstorm occurred.

Until I was 13, our store was located in an old building that wasn’t air-conditioned but instead had gigantic ceiling fans which did little to moderate the heat. They also stirred up dust from the dirt road on the back side of the L-shaped building, which faced the railroad track and always reeked of soft tar in the summer. (The front was on the main street.) Because of that, at the end of the day, I would help the store clerks cover the tables and racks of clothing with massive protective dropcloths before the fans were turned off. In the morning, the dropcloths had to be removed, shaken outside to remove the dirt and put away until the end of the day.

And it wasn’t just the heat keeping us inside in July and August. We youngsters were constantly admonished about the dangers of the Dog Days – snakes were more likely to bite, dogs could turn rabid in a flash and, of course, heat stroke was always a danger. In addition, it was considered the gospel that any cuts or burns would never heal during that time of year.

This wasn’t some local custom found only in the piney woods of south Georgia, however. The understanding of Dog Days is a worldwide phenomenon with venerable roots. A period of several weeks in the heat of summer is considered sinister in many cultures across the world.

The Old Farmer’s Almanac points out that the ancient Greeks, Egyptians and Romans believed that when Sirius, the dog star, rose in mid-to-late summer, it played a role in the extreme weather of the season. (An interesting tidbit from that article is that name “Sirius” comes from the ancient Greek seírios, meaning “scorching.”)

Based on those sources, the Dog Days technically run from around July 3 to August 11, although others just say they happen in mid-to-late summer.

For the Ancients, the ascent of Sirius suggested that drought, disease, or discomfort were more likely. Virgil, the Roman poet, wrote in the Aeneid that “fiery Sirius, bringer of drought and plague to frail mortals, rises and saddens the sky with sinister light.”

As it turns out, they weren’t the only denizens of the ancient world who had concerns about unfavorable outcomes at the height of summer. So many events occurred from the 17^th of Tammuz to the ninth day of Av, that the sad commemoration of Tisha B’av became part of the Jewish calendar. The events primarily remembered are the destruction of the first Temple in 538 BCE and the second Temple around 70 CE. But many other events occurred on the ninth of Av which is a fast day, including the expulsion of Jews from England in 1290 and Spain in 1492. To current times, the three weeks before are considered unfavorable for many activities, with the final nine days having even more restrictions, including against eating meat, drinking wine and getting a haircut -- something I follow.

Guess what time of year Tisha B’av occurs? In 2023, the three weeks began on July 6 (see the dates for Dog Days above) and ended on July 27. Clearly, whatever it is called, historical sources found something menacing about a 3-5 week period at the apex of summer.

Here’s the kicker: At least some of what we believed about the Dog Days has turned out to be true.

A study came out just last month on the topic of snake bites. The research was done in Georgia, and Emory University researchers reported that every degree Celsius of daily temperature increase corresponds with about a 6% increase in snake bites.

A 2009 Finnish study reported, meanwhile, that the risk of deep surgery wound infection during Dog Days is two times higher than at other times.

In Finnish folklore, the time from June 23 to August 23 has been called "rotten month" (another name for Dog Days), and the Finns also have the superstition that wound healing is delayed due to infections. (It turns out that its neighbor, Sweden, has “rötmånad,” translated as “rotting month” from around the 22^nd of July until 30 days later. )

For me, the three weeks, nine days and Tisha B’av are difficult times where everything seems to go wrong. As soon as the period is over, however, life seems lighter and easier, even though the weather remains brutally hot. A few weeks later, however, the month of Elul follows Av and the atmosphere changes again. The tradition is that the King is in the field beginning on the first day of Elul until the Jewish New Year a month later. The Almighty is closer during that time, and it is an especially favorable opportunity for spiritual growth. Perhaps that is why the miasmic period is weeks shorter in Jewish tradition than others – the calendars are different and the preparation for the New Year intercedes.

I don’t remember feeling any kind of pall on existence in the summers when I was young, but I was going swimming, eating candy bars and having fabulous lunches – so why would I have complained?  I do remember feeling as if everything seemed to slow down at the end of the summer and not pick back up until the anticipation of going back to school began.

As with so much in life, the seasons of the year have peaks and valleys. Even though the new year begins in January on the Western calendar, midsummer often is considered a downtime followed by the anticipation of some type of new beginning as summer ends and fall begins. 

Top of Form

 

I still enjoy delicious fresh fruit and vegetables in summer  – although usually not as fresh or good as what I remember from childhood. In the extremely hot weather in late August, sometimes all I can bear to eat for dinner is a cold soup like gazpacho. My version is based on some classic recipes but offers some options to make it easier.

Easy Gazpacho

2 pounds ripe red tomatoes cut into chunks (I prefer to peel them) or one large can (28oz) of whole tomatoes.

2 medium or three small fresh cucumbers, peeled and seeded or a large English cucumber peeled. Either way, cut them into chunks.

1 small Vidalia onion cut into eighths

1/2 large bell pepper, any color, cut into chunks

1/8 cup olive oil

2 tablespoons red wine vinegar

2 garlic cloves, peeled

1 cup tomato juice, V-8 juice or spicy V-8 juice if you like it bolder

Dash of cayenne pepper

1 tsp of celery salt

½ tsp of cumin

salt & pepper sauce to taste

Process on liquify in a powerful blender until it is a thick soup. Fix seasoning to your liking and chill for several hours or overnight. You can serve with a dollop of sour cream and croutons. You also can add chunks of avocado. If I want it to be more of a meal, I’ll also top it with pieces of kosher fake crab (made from fish). (Obviously, if you don’t keep kosher, you can use real crab or shrimp.)

Honey and Bee Stings: Facing the Good and Bad at Rosh Hashana

I think this is a meeting of the Workman's Circle Credit Union. My grandmother, Fannie Smith, is fifth from the left on the second row from bottom. My grandfather< Max Smith, is second from the left on the top row.

It’s hard to believe, but a month from now I’m going to be elbows-deep in preparing for Rosh Hashana.

Since it starts on a Friday night, I’ll probably bake my challahs on that Wednesday night or Thursday and make chicken soup the next night. I’m making tzimmes for the first time in decades and will make that a few days ahead for the flavors to mix. (My version of the stew-like dish will be made with stew beef, lemon slices, sweet potatoes, carrots and dates because I am not a fan of prunes, which are traditional.)

Another decision I’ve already made is what to do about dessert. My mother made the most amazing honey cake, which is traditionally served during the High Holidays, but none of us has been able to really replicate it. Her handwriting can be difficult to read in places, and it is not clear at one point whether you are supposed to “heat” or “beat” one mixture that goes into it. I periodically make a stab at it, and the cake turns out okay – sometimes even good – but it is not hers, which is disappointing.

(She always got extremely fresh honey from our friends who owned York Bee Company locally, and I’ve often wondered if that was the secret ingredient that made her cakes so special.)

The problem with honey cake other than the one made by my mother is that, while it is delicious when fresh and moist, it can dry out very quickly. One solution is to keep the cake wrapped and in a tin can or Tupperware but, even then, it doesn’t always maintain its freshness. My solution this year is to make honey cake in mini Bundt pans, keep it in the freezer and only take out exactly what I need for each meal.

When I checked the mailbox today, the silicone muffin pans in the shape of mini-Bundt cakes had arrived in technicolor pink and aqua. Why the Bundt cake you might ask? I think it makes a pretty cake, but a lot of my attraction is nostalgia and my somewhat nerdy obsession with little-known history.

According to Wikipedia, the shape is inspired by a traditional European cake known as Gugelhupf, but, nowadays, Bundt cakes can be any type. “The style of mold in North America was popularized in the 1950s and 1960s after cookware manufacturer Nordic Ware trademarked the name 'Bundt' and began producing Bundt pans from cast aluminum. Publicity from Pillsbury saw the cakes gain widespread popularity,” according to the explanation.

One possible etymology is from the word “bund,” which is found in Jewish-American cookbooks from around the start of the 20th century. The alternative spelling "bundte" also appeared in a recipe as early as 1901, according to Wikipedia.

And therein lies the nostalgia. “Bund” is often translated in Yiddish as “union.” It also was part of the name of a secular socialist Jewish party during the Russian Revolution, which urged Jews not to leave Eastern Europe – which was ignored by many. When immigrants like my four grandparents came to the United States to escape anti-Semitism and pogroms in that part of the world, they created groups to help them survive and build new lives. Among those were credit unions (aktsiyes in Yiddish)  and free loan societies.

The popular name for the groups was “bunds.” For get-togethers, the ladies in those groups brought cakes. In the old country, they had used kugelhopfs, a tall pan with a hole in the center that allowed the heat to penetrate the cake’s middle and ensure that the dough cooked evenly, and continued that tradition in America. The cakes they made and the pans they used became known as “bundt.”  

For those of us in southeast Georgia, the Workmen’s Circle Credit Union in Savannah – one of those credit unions -- enabled hundreds, if not thousands, of Jewish entrepreneurs to start and maintain small businesses throughout the area. (See the photo above of a meeting of the group, probably in the 1950s.)

I never realized quite how it worked until I was a young adult, maybe in my late 20s,  and needed a new car. My father knew of a good deal at a local dealership in my hometown, Jesup,  and suggested that I contact the Workman’s Circle Credit Union for financing. I called them and told them who I was and what I needed. Two days later, in the mail,  I had a check from them and the paperwork to fill out for the loan, which I returned properly. It might seem like a step or two was missing in the loan approval process, but they had worked with my family for years and knew we were good for it.

{By the way, the car I got was one of the notorious X cars – a Pontiac Phoenix. After front-wheel drive cars became more common in the U.S., mainly because of foreign cars, General Motors decided to create X-bodies, the first American-developed front-wheel drive cars introduced for the high-volume, mainstream market. They were filled with design defects, and the vast majority of the time since then, I’ve owned Japanese cars, primarily Toyota/Lexus products.}

So, I love the idea of small honey bundt cakes, how they look, how evenly they cook and how simple they will be to serve. But that isn’t the only traditional food I’ll offer.

Symbolic foods for Rosh Hashana include leeks, pomegranate, gourds (including squashes), dates, black-eyed peas, apples & honey, beets, carrots and fish heads.

I’ll start the meal with the traditional round challah, making both plain and raisin egg bread. We’ll also have apples and honey (as well as a pomegranate as the “new fruit” for the season.)

Then I’ll have baked gefilte fish in a spicy tomato sauce. (I recognize that’s not the same as a fish head, but that’s the best the delicate sensibilities of my guests will allow.)

The first course will be followed by matzo ball soup, which has leeks as an ingredient. The tzimmes will include carrots, as well as dates. I’m also serving a roast turkey breast as a main dish for my dozen or so guests on the first night (the eve) of Rosh Hashana.

The side dishes include black-eyed peas, pickled beets and a squash/zucchini salad with corn and crushed smoky almonds, a recipe I found in a recent Southern Living issue. Here is the link: https://www.southernliving.com/corn-and-squash-salad-7556364

(I plan to briefly blanch the squashes and corn before making the salad, but I’m sure the original recipe is great also.)

Those nicely incorporate several of the symbolic foods, called simanin, signs and indicators in Hebrew. The blessings for the foods include prayers for a favorable year ahead.

Filling out the sides are couscous and broccoli kugel for balance. Dessert will be the mini honey cakes and fruit. (Because I’m serving meat, nothing in the meal will include dairy products.)

As I prepare the food, I’ll think about past holidays. One that often comes to mind is the Rosh Hashana meal with the blind cantor, probably around 1992 or 1993. My cousins came for lunch on the first day at my World War I-era house in the old Atlanta neighborhood of Virginia Highland. The four kids were running in and out of the house, and one of them must have let in a wasp.

Joining us for the meal was a man hired to chant the services at the synagogue my husband and I attended less than a mile away.  He was staying with us over the holiday at the request of the synagogue and was notable for three reasons -- he disliked dogs although we had two labs; he smoked which we despised in our house, and he had very limited ability to see. For years, we have referred to him as “the blind cantor.”

The blessing over the wine was being recited when my first cousin Barbara was stung by the wasp. Unlike me, she wasn’t allergic, although the sting was painful, but she insisted she was fine. The blind cantor would hear none of it. He jumped up to get his cigarettes and pulled tobacco out of one of them.

He then tried to apply the tobacco to my cousin’s arm. She wasn’t happy about that and tried to pull away. In the tussle, the cantor knocked over the carafe of red wine, despite my husband’s efforts to throw himself across the table and catch it. It flooded my best tablecloth, which had been embroidered by the grandmother of my cousins and me. Chaos ensued. Dogs were barking, children were yelling, wine was dripping onto the rug on the floor, etc.

I don’t know what the blind cantor was thinking. Had he forgotten he couldn’t see her arm, let alone apply tobacco to a tiny dot? And shouldn’t he have asked her permission?

Somehow, we were able to mop up the wine, put on a new tablecloth and serve the meal. Barbara, Babs to us, felt better after I gave her a Benadryl, and we ended up having a lovely day.

It might have seemed like a disaster at the time, but now I laugh every time I think about it. This year, the chuckles are mixed with a few tears because my cousin Barbara died of cancer a few months ago. My husband, who later had some mental health issues, died in December 2022, less than two months after we divorced. Last year was the first Rosh Hashana I had spent without him since 1991.

But, life goes on. Some of the same cousins who were there that day will be with me this year. At the table will be two of my godchildren, my first cousins’ grandson and two foreign exchange students who weren’t even born yet in 1991. We’ll make new memories that hopefully won’t involve wasp stings and spilled red wine.

I’m wishing all of us a sweet New Year, as symbolized by the honey cakes, but also am emphasizing the importance of remembering how we got where we are, as symbolized by the Bundt cake shapes.

As the greeting goes this time of year, “May all of you be written down and inscribed for a good year.”

I keep kosher but am not a vegetarian of any kind. My guests have a range of eating issues, however. Here’s how I make vegan field peas (usually black-eyed) either dried, fresh or frozen.

If I’m using dried, I always soak them covered in water overnight and then drain and rinse them before using. Fresh or frozen go into the pot as is.

Spray the insert of your Instant Pot or other type of pressure cooker with oil. Briefly saute half a chopped small jalapeno (seeds and membrane removed if you don’t want it to be too hot) and a half cup of chopped onions in some neutral oil – canola, grapeseed, etc.

Add field peas. Season with a dash of Liquid Smoke, two teaspoons of smoked paprika, chicken soup powder or two crushed bullion squares. Add a cup of water or just enough to cover the peas, according to how much liquid you want. (If you prefer, skip the bullion and just cook in chicken broth). Cook on high pressure for 10 minutes, allowing the device to naturally release for 15 minutes.

Adjust seasoning to your preference. You can serve them warm or turn them into a salad by mixing them with chopped celery, chopped red pepper, chopped green onions and chopped parsley or cilantro for an easy salad with a dressing made with a quarter cup of Italian dressing with a teaspoon or two of Dijon mustard stirred in. Refrigerate the salad for a few hours or overnight and serve at room temperature.

Heap of Living, Heap of Matzo Balls – Ingredients for a Home

One of my favorite rooms in my childhood home was the cypress-paneled den. It was a small space, with a huge wall of bookshelves and built-in storage on one side and display shelves and more storage on the other. It was tucked into a shady corner of the house and the thick rattan shades didn’t make it any lighter. But it was a cozy place to curl up in the winter or on a rainy day.

I was entranced by the souvenirs, gifts and knick-knacks that crowded closer and closer together on the glass display shelves over the years – a mechanical bear toy that drank Coca-Cola, a plate depicting the Follies Bergere, jewel-toned ashtrays and intricate barware. More than that, being an avid reader from a young age, I spent many an afternoon literally climbing the bookshelves in search of something new and interesting to devour.

One day, when I was about 10, I came across a poetry anthology and read the first verse of this poem, entitled “Home”:

It takes a heap o’ livin’ in a house t’ make it home, 

A heap o’ sun an’ shadder, an’ ye sometimes have t’ roam 

Afore ye really ’preciate the things ye lef’ behind, 

An’ hunger fer ’em somehow, with ’em allus on yer mind. 

It don’t make any differunce how rich ye get t’ be, 

How much yer chairs an’ tables cost, how great yer luxury; 

It ain’t home t’ ye, though it be the palace of a king, 

Until somehow yer soul is sort o’ wrapped round everything. 

What caught my eye originally was that the poem was written in dialect and was difficult to make out. I had no way of knowing at the time that the author, Edgar Albert Guest, was born in England and moved to the United States as a child, penning the poem in 1916 when he was 35. (The dialect appeared to be from Michigan, where Guest grew up, and, when I lived there briefly as a young adult, I was surprised to sometimes hear the same vernacular as the poem.)

For a 10-year-old who had always lived in the same house, the poem was puzzling, and not just because of the language. I read it many times over my childhood, sometimes even reciting it aloud. In my heavy south Georgia accent at the time, I’m sure it was completely unintelligible.

My conclusion was that the poet was saying you had to live somewhere a long time to make it your home, which made sense to my 10-year-old self.

More than 50 years later, I have a slightly different interpretation. It isn’t just how many years you spend in a house but also what you do there and with whom.

That concept is especially poignant for me because, as Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, approaches, my husband Marc and I are beginning the process of making a home out of a new house – or, at least, a new-to-us house.

We lived in our previous brick Georgian-style house for nearly 20 years. When we moved there at the beginning of 1998, the house had rotting carpet, peach vertical mini-blinds, a treacherous wooden deck and a plethora of bizarre molding and other carpentry added by the do-it-yourselfer former owner. By the time we left it, in July, the house had undergone a complete renovation.

While we began work on that house before we transported a single piece of furniture, we later had some unexpected help with the demolition. Just a few months after we fully moved in, the house was hit by a tornado. Thanks to our dogs at the time, Jack and Hanni, who cried out when the careening barometric pressure hurt their ears, I awakened to recognize the severity of the storm, turned on a radio and heard the tornado warning for Dunwoody. After cajoling Marc to join us in the basement, we safely road out the storm, which created an impressive hole in the side of our house over our bed. The damage estimate was more than $60,000.

We knew we were going to need a new roof but certainly didn’t expect to get it that way. I’ll never forget the screeching noise as the tornado literally pulled the nails out of the shingles.

All in all, we fared better than some of our neighbors, and our house had been repaired by Rosh Hashana, where we entertained guests for lunch the first day. By my estimation, that was the first of more than 100 times we had a full table for holiday meals at the house on Tillingham Court and that doesn’t count the number of times – greater or equal -- we had friends over for lunch or dinner to celebrate Shabbat.

That’s a lot of brisket, chicken and challah.

Many happy times – often religion-oriented – occurred at the old house. We hosted bar- and bat-mitzvah brunches for our wonderful godchildren, the annual Jewish Festival brunch, sometimes feeding nearly 100 friends, and the baby-naming party for our great-niece Goldie. Several times, we were on the “Sukkah Hop” circuit, and the makeshift structure we built for that festival was overflowing with delirious neighborhood children filling up on sweets.

As happens in life, the house also was the setting for more somber occasions, which also part of my memories. Marc and I sat shiva for both of our mothers at that house, and, many of those evenings, our neighbor Isaac Goodfriend, a world-renowned cantor of blessed memory, led the services. The very walls of the house were transformed by his hauntingly beautiful voice.

In recent years, we had the honor of hosting our extended family for Thanksgiving; one year, when our Aunt Doris turned 90, we transformed our garage into a dining area to seat more than 50 relatives for the meal on an usually cold November day. We also had countless birthday parties – including my 50^th and 60^th – as well as wedding showers and just general celebratory events.

Now, I truly understand what “a heap of living” means.

My mother-in-law used to say that aging isn’t for sissies, and I understand every day how correct she was. Marc and I came to realize we needed to live in a house different from the sprawling “five-four-and-a-door” with the upstairs master suite and the huge backyard.

We had the house on the market about three years ago, but, for various reasons, that never worked out. What to do next was a constant topic of discussion for Marc and me.

That’s why it seemed bashert when, shortly before our 25^th wedding anniversary, I received a call from a lovely young woman who attends our synagogue. We had met her a few times at meals at friends’ houses, but I was puzzled as to why she was calling.

She explained that she, her husband and three children were looking to buy a house and had heard we might be interested in selling even though our house wasn’t on the market. We chatted for a few minutes and agreed that they could see the house when we returned from our anniversary trip the next week.

I updated our longtime realtor and then Marc and I headed out to Ponte Vedra beach for a few days. The day we were returning to Atlanta, we noticed a new house had been listed and wondered if we should see it.

We did see it – on May 3, our anniversary – and decided almost immediately to make an offer on the house we ended up buying. The family decided they wanted to purchase our house, so we now live not much more than a mile from our previous location but in a house with a very different configuration and location that works better for us.

The sale of the old house and purchase of the new house might have seemed bashert, but that doesn’t mean it was easy. Perhaps the worst moment came when the fully-loaded moving truck was headed to the new house, and the contractor working here told me he thought the air conditioning might be off. It was, and we ended up moving in 95-degree heat without air-conditioning. (The upshot is that we now have a new HVAC system downstairs.)

Watching the movers lug heavy furniture, sweat pouring off of all of us, the happy times at the old house – and the possibility of good times in the new ones – seemed very far away indeed. Now, with everything put away and a functioning air-conditioning, the future seems more positive and the past has a more satisfying golden glow.

The strange part is that neither Marc nor I were particularly sad about leaving our old house. Life has seasons just like the natural world. Being in the autumn of our lives and with Rosh Hashanah approaching, we are ready for a new phase.

Our new house is somewhat smaller and has a master bedroom on the main floor, instead of upstairs. Our yard is much smaller than the one where our young cousins played football at the Thanksgivings hosted at our previous house and is maintained by the homeowners association.

While the dining room is a bit tight, we discovered a few weeks after moving in that our new house entertains quite well. My sisters, all of our first cousins and our aunt were here for brunch. We have a group photo taken in front of a stand of trees and pictures of Goldie and her brother Avraham at the fountain which is the primary backyard feature.

This weekend, I’m beginning preparations for the holiday meals. I’ve kept the menus from years back, and it is interesting how much – and little – they’ve changed over the years.  Without question, the food was much more kid-friendly when the under-12 set took up one side of our dining room table.

Over the years, I’ve happily offered gluten-free food, vegetarian options and every other accommodation imaginable. This year, one of our dear friends, who has had a Rosh Hashanah meal with us every year for more than 20 years is – thankfully – recovering from throat cancer. I’ll make sure there is extra chicken soup broth and plenty of applesauce made from the fruit grown near our mountain house in Hendersonville, NC.

On Shemini Atzeret, which occurs near the end of the eight-days of Sukkot, we’re serving fish as the main course because, as with many of our friends of a certain age, our aging digestive systems can handle only so much fatty red meat. In our younger days, that holiday was often when I broke out the meat-stuffed cabbage and homemade corned beef.

No doubt it will be disconcerting to do major cooking in a kitchen that is not yet completely familiar to me. Only my readers older than 50 will really understand this, but, even though I put everything away, that is no guarantee I’ll remember where everything is. On the other hand, the pantry we had installed is much better organized than the last one, which might make up some of the time I spend searching for appliances and pots and pans.

What already feels like home is that I’ll be cooking under total Brittany supervision, as hope springs eternal from Betsy and Rusty that I’ll drop something. And, as always, Marc will be available – and good-natured  – to run to the grocery store or farmer’s market at the last minute when I discover I’m missing an ingredient.

It might be a strange conclusion in a blog that is supposed to be about food, but what we put on the table doesn’t matter nearly as much as who is sitting around it and the spiritual longing that brings them together.

As the poem says, it’s about a “heap of living” that makes a house a home. Of course, a heap of matzo balls never hurt anything either.

Happy New Year.

Nothing Scary about Halloween That More Sweets Can't Fix

Growing up in a small Southern town the middle of the last century, ghosts, spirits, haints – the creatures known for prowling on Halloween – were really never that far away. Whether it was the spirit of the dead child at the boarding house, or the otherworldly little girl in white my friends and I saw on a deserted road one evening or even the ghost who lived with the music store owner and her sister, the supernatural was woven into the tapestry of our lives.

No one was very shocked by it.

The music store owner and her sister not only told funny stories about their ghost but actually liked having it around because it regularly found lost items. One afternoon when I was walking to my parent’s store from junior high school, I passed their house and saw through the window a shadowy figure watching soap operas. When I told them about it 10 minutes later – they both were working behind counter at the store – they laughed and laughed and insisted it was a ghost.

None of this was really surprising in a county where one of the few tourist attractions was “the ghost light” viewable down the railroad tracks in a remote area. Generations of scientists tried to find an explanation for it but none came up with anything better than the old tales --  that it was either a woman who had been hit by a train or her long dead husband come looking for her.

Over the years, it was seen by virtually everyone in the county.

As strange as it may seem, I never found Halloween to be particularly scary until I saw the movie “To Kill a Mockingbird,” and realized the possibilities. (Because it was less visual, reading the book had not had the same effect.) In that movie, the scary creatures were very much alive, however.

My theory is that Halloween only surpassed mild scariness when adults took over what had been a child’s holiday somewhere around the 80s or 90s.

To me, the holiday wasn’t about being afraid anyway. It was about food.

Back when the best trick-or-treat loot was homemade, my mother went all out – both caramel and candied apples, translucent amber lollipops and moist cupcakes decorated to look like black cats, witches, pumpkins, whatever came to her mind. It was magical what she could do with strings of licorice, peppermint Lifesavers and striped candy corn triangles.

While no one else did it quite as well as Mama – I’m biased, I know – everyone in our neighborhood was offering freshly prepared treats. Giving out Hershey bars or candy corns was a last resort only for the busiest or most cooking-averse mothers.

Most of the treats we got weren’t wrapped, let alone X-rayed at the local hospital. Any “poisoning” was self-inflected and the result of way too much sugar.

Trick-or-treat night wasn’t the only opportunity to eat too many sweets. Every year, we went to the local Halloween carnival across town. It was usually the first chilly night of the season, and I was wearing the latest iteration of a corduroy coat – often red – over that year’s costume. The air was aromatic with burning leaves and carnival food.

As soon as we got there, I always headed to the same place. It was a great point of pride for me that my mother’s baked goods played such a starring role at the popular cake walk. I loved watching the mobs of carnival-goers compete to take home one of her luscious German chocolate, or spice or lemon-coconut cakes; they were tall and beautiful with swirls of sea foam icing in white or pastels.

For those of you too young to understand, in a cake walk, a group of people bought a ticket for the right to circle chairs to music and quickly sit down when the music stopped. Because a chair was removed after each round, someone invariably was left without a place to sit and would be eliminated The last person sitting won a cake.

My problem was that I really loved the cake walk but considered it unfair – and certainly unnecessary – to compete when one of my mother’s cakes was featured as the prize. That meant sitting out almost half the rounds.

When I finally did win a cake, it was a luscious caramel cake baked by a family friend. As unnecessary as my victory was – the woman was happy to bake the cake for us anytime we asked – I still savored my victory as much as the moist yellow cake with sugary icing.

As if a year’s worth of sugar hadn’t been or wasn’t going to be ingested on trick-or-treat night, the carnival featured cotton candy and more candied apples, occasionally balanced by buttery, salty cones of popcorn. All of this was washed down with apple cider which, drunk after a sugary treat, tasted a bit like a laboratory specimen.

Yet, by the time we climbed in the Pontiac to go home well after dark, I was a content little girl. My parents invariably smelled of some carnival treat – popcorn, burnt sugar or hot dogs – because they had been working in a booth to support a charity backed by the fire department, the Rotary Club, hospital auxiliary or some other group. I would watch their silhouettes from my perch in the middle of the back seat, literally too exhausted and hyped up on sugar to sleep.

We all knew Halloween was a turning point and not just from the oppressive heat of summer to pleasant, crisp days.

The last high school football game usually was played around that time, and Homecoming was long past. It was close to a month before the holiday decorations would be unpacked at the family clothing store. Now, we were focused on the next big event in our household: Thanksgiving.

 

Memory and Hot Dogs Answering to a ‘Higher Authority’

It’s been decades since Orthodox Jewish authorities have considered Hebrew National hotdogs appropriately kosher and, as a result, I haven’t had them in my house for at least the last 25 years.  A recent lawsuit – which was thrown out because the court said it couldn’t rule on religious matters – claimed that non-kosher meat was used to make the frankfurters. Those accusations went even farther than past concerns that some of the finer points of the kosher laws weren’t being followed by the manufacturers.

That’s unfortunate for two reasons. The first is that, at least in my memory, the all beef hotdogs were very tasty with a satisfying and juicy crunch when you bit into them. Secondly, the hotdogs played an important role in my childhood, being one of the most identifiable and readily available Jewish foods in the 1960s and 1970s. That the manufacturer answered to a “higher authority” was a point of pride, especially in my small Southern town where no one knew from bialys and kishka.

Hebrew National hotdogs were the centerpiece of many cookouts and parties when I was young. I especially liked them charred off the grill and then wrapped in a soft bun. That truly was the taste of summer for me.

Yet, I also strongly identify them with another event in my memory – in the nation’s collective memory. The association is so strong, in fact, that whenever I smell boiling hotdogs, I see a very specific and disturbing scene – Jack Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald.

Children like me were traumatized after Kennedy was shot; after all, it hadn’t been that long since we were instructed to “duck and cover” in case of nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis. I remember walking home from school with my friends and scoping out the ditches along Fourth Street, strategizing what we would do if we saw a missile heading our way. At some level, we all feared President Kennedy’s death was the work of the Soviets and that we are heading into the third world war. Having a second murder occur before our eyes was almost too much to bear.

Like so many Americans of a certain age, I have vivid and very specific memories of the day Kennedy was shot and the days following. In my memory, there are a series of scenes, like a movie preview:

·         It’s early afternoon Nov. 22, 1963, and I’m sitting in a desk in the front row next to the window in my 4^th grade classroom at Orange Street Elementary School. I see my 3^rd grade teacher Mrs. Anderson tapping on the window; when I turn to look, she asks me to call my teacher Mrs. Nichols over. I overhear the two of the talking and realize what has occurred: Someone has shot President Kennedy. Mrs. Nichols turns on the television to watch Walter Cronkite announce that the president was dead.

·         I’m in the car with my mother a few hours later, and we are driving up to the high school to pick up my sisters. Linda is waiting out front and gets into the car, but we’re looking for our oldest sister Susan. After a minute, she comes out clutching her books and sobbing. When she gets in the car, she tells us that some of the other kids were cheering because Kennedy was dead and calling him a “N-----lover.”

·         My entire family is sitting in front of the television on Saturday – which never happens. My parents have closed their clothing store, and we are watching news coverage of the assassination. Kennedy’s body has been returned to Washington, and we see heartbreaking vignettes of his family.

·         Midday Sunday, we’re still so engrossed in the news that my mother decides we’ll eat hotdogs in the living room in front of the television set. I’m setting the old card table with paper plates and watching television. Suddenly, a man shoots Lee Harvey Oswald, who is being escorted by police. I scream, and my parents come running from the kitchen.

This was before children routinely saw violent acts such as close-range shootings. To the degree that anyone got killed in the movies and television shoes we watched, it was a bad guy in a black hat falling off of a horse never to be seen again or a similar bad guy clutching his chest and falling in a cartoonish shoot out death scene.

Furthermore, the shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald by Jack Ruby was horribly real. There was a loud shot and blood and chaos. I wanted to avert my eyes but couldn’t. It was even worse than the horrible scenes of civil rights protesters being beaten or chased by snarling dogs or the merciless beatings of protesters by the Chicago police, which I watched five years later.

When we heard the identity of the shooter, Jack Ruby, we were concerned and then had those worries confirmed: He was Jewish. It was uncomfortable to have one of our own kind in the spotlight for a violent act. To comfort ourselves, we said to each other, “Thank goodness, he killed the assassin, not the President.”

(My husband Marc tells me that his mother, who had immigrated to the United States less than 10 years before after hiding from the Nazis during the Holocaust, was petrified from the moment she heard Kennedy was shot. She insisted they leave a doctor’s appointment and was convinced revolution would occur any moment. Marc, who was just 7-years-old, wasn’t all that aware of what was going on.)

As terrible as the Oswald shooting is in some ways, it also is poignant. How I wish I could have screamed and had my parents come running when I watched the plane hit the second tower on 9-11-2001. As an adult, I still crave that sense of safety, of everything being right with the world, that comes from having your own mother and father comfort you after seeing something disturbing, of having your sisters nearby and a warm meal on the table.

Strangely, I do have some recollection even after we watched the endless discussion and replay of the Lee Harvey Oswald shooting that afternoon. Eventually, we went to the kitchen, and my mother pulled the slightly-desiccated Hebrew National hotdogs out of the pot and put them in a bowl. One sister brought the massive can of Charles’ chips, with the other grabbing the buns. My father opened a jar of dill pickles, while I pulled out the mustard and ketchup and put them on the card table.

What else was there to do at that point?

Maybe it the end of our innocence, maybe it was the beginning of a downward spiral for a nation. The commentary on all of that was still years in the future.

We just did what families do to cope with crisis. We sat down together and ate a late lunch. It may have been simple, but it was one of the most memorable meals of my life.

Marcel Proust may have had his madeleines, but for me, this November 50 years later, remembrance is about Hebrew National hotdogs.

The Ghosts of Passover Past

 

Getting ready for Passover this year, Marc and I juggled our time between work and preparing for the holiday. That meant cleaning and organizing and some heavy cooking.

But we didn’t do it alone. I don’t just mean that the two of us worked together; that’s a given. I prepared the pantry for the Passover groceries; Marc cleaned out the refrigerator. Once the kitchen was kosher for Passover, I prepped and brined the half-sour pickles, while he made the orange marmalade. While I baked Passover-appropriate brownies, he assembled the homemade cranberry sauce.

Yet, even when Marc was out running errands or trying to get in a few minutes at his office, I was not alone. Something about the holiday—and preparing for it—makes the presence of loved ones, now of blessed memory, so tangible. Sometimes I feel their presence so strongly, the memories are so vivid, I can almost touch them, feel them, smell them.  For lack of a better description, you might call them my Ghosts of Passovers Past.

We start visiting just after the festival of Purim when I pull out my special Passover notebook. Many of my favorite recipes are written in my mother’s distinctive cursive handwriting with her precious notes in the margins. As I read them, I hear in her voice: “You can use orange marmalade if you want” (I’ll have a lot of that) or “Be careful how much sour salt you put in.”

Some of the recipes, which perfectly capture the mid-century zeitgeist, would never grace my table. But reading the recipe for “Busy Day Fish Bake,” which uses—ugh—gefilte fish from the jar, gives me insights and empathy for what she had to juggle this time of year. Yet, she took enough time away from the family clothing store during Passover to pick up my sisters and me from school before lunch each day, bring us home to a hot meal, and then  drop us back off. What a treat , even if lunch was a casserole of gefilte fish and Passover potato latke mix!  

As I employed my trusty Magic Eraser cleaning pad on the baseboards, I thought of how she and our beloved housekeeper, Earlene,  scrubbed the kitchen in my childhood home until it shone like a new penny.  Earlene, who was considerably shorter than my mother, would wipe down the bottom cabinets—I can still smell the Pine Sol and hear the cloth squeaking across the mauve paint – while my taller mother would stretch to reach the top ones. (Remembering that, I wished, just for a second, that my floors were made of knee-friendly vinyl like those from my childhood instead of solid Cyprus wood)

When I closed my eyes, I could see my mother, her face pink from exertion, pushing an errant strand of damp hair behind the yellow pencil stub resting behind her ear. (She always had one there when she worked at the store but also kept one handy at Passover, in case she needed to add something to her grocery list – usually scribbled on the back of a paper sack or notebook paper I had discarded.)

Earlene, who was a beautiful, full-throated soprano, often would sing to break up the monotony of the task. Appropriately, one of her favorites at Passover was “Go Down, Moses.” When I walked in, she sometimes would begin singing, “A tisket, a tasket…” because she knew “Little Yellow Basket” was one of my favorites. Even as a toddler, I loved singing along, “No, no, no,” which was very apt for a 2-year-old.

Preparing for Passover this year, I laughed a little at myself, quietly singing the song in my can’t-carry-a-tune-in-a-bucket range as I sponged down cabinets.

When the house was clean and I begin to haul out the cookware, I thought again of the past. Gazing at  my mother’s  old frying pan, passed down to me, I pondered why her Passover hamburgers –often cooked in this very pan--were so delectable. She would mix the ground beef with egg and matzoh meal, then season it with whatever she had handy—which could range from paprika to onions to the super-sweet Passover ketchup.  She then fried the burgers until they almost doubled in size. That, with mashed potatoes, is the ultimate Passover comfort meal for me.

Digging further into my Passover cookware and utensils, which have been tucked away and out-of-sight for nearly a year, I pull out a few items previously owned by my Bubbie, bringing on another cascade of memories. I recall how the mahogany table, supplemented by the kitchen table and whatever flat surface was available, stretched nearly the full length of her living room and dining room combined. My grandfather sat proudly at the head of that table, filled with dear relatives--he and so many of them now gone.

Memories flash through my head:  the sweet wine in the burgundy colored glasses; the Haggadot with photos of upside cows, which gave my cousin Holly and me the giggles; the flutter in my stomach when I was asked to read with a table-full of adults looking on, and, finally, the food. After what seemed like an interminable first part of the seder –it usually takes less than an hour, in actuality—nothing tasted better than the hardboiled eggs dipped in saltwater, followed by a mound of gefilte fish drenched in beet red horseradish.

Then there was always a few minutes of escape from the house, as steamy as the bowls of chicken soup served after the gefilte fish. I would sit on the front porch steps with my cousins, enjoying the cool breeze and sucking in the fragrance of early spring blooms in south Georgia. Between the heavy meal and the fresh air, I was a teenager before I could keep my eyes open until the end of the seder .

Also hard to forget were the hour-long rides home in the early morning hours, the Pontiac slicing through the intense darkness of the pine forest-lined two lane blacktop. My sisters and I dozed in the backseat, huddled like baby birds in a vinyl nest, while my mother spoke quietly to my father, making sure he stayed awake for the drive. Usually, preparing for the holiday was stressful for my parents: My father resented the price-gouging by the Passover manufacturers , and my mother was trying to buy enough to feed a family of five for more than a week, while still placating her husband. Maybe it was the wine or the family closeness, but the storm had always passed by the time we were driving home after the seder, and I felt very safe listening to their gentle conversation.

More memories bubbled up a few hours before the seder, when I was mixing the matzoh balls. I could see my  late mother-in-law, Erika, standing in an earlier iteration of this kitchen, stirring together the matzoh meal and oil, then tossing in ginger, her secret ingredient. She would already be dressed for the seder , wearing a necklace , earrings and an apron to protect herself from any greasy splashes. The kitchen would be redolent with the smell of ginger powder mixed with Erika’s cologne.

It’s not really surprising to have these strong memories at Passover, which is all about symbolic food and erasing the barriers between past and present. In some ways, the entire holiday creates a time warp, where the past is now and the present then.

The Haggadah is very clear that the story of the flight from Egypt should be told as if you were actually there. You taste the bitterness of the herbs, feel the mortar-like texture of haroset, partake of the saltiness of tears in the dipping water, all to both empathize with your ancestors and experience the Exodus yourself.

I often talk to my young guests about another way Passover is outside of time. If a Jew from the 15^th or 17^th centuries  dropped into our suburban community the night of the seders, I tell them, nearly everything would be beyond their comprehension – the streets, the houses, the cars. But if they walked into our house, they not only would know exactly what we were doing but would be able to join in.

Even in a very pragmatic way, however, Passover pulls you into the past. Because dishware and utensils last quite a while when they are used only eight days a year, a Passover tool I pull out of a drawer is most likely 20-years-old but also could be 50- or even 80-years-old, passed down from generation to generation. The colander with the star-shaped perforations has been around for Passover my entire life, and even before. The same is true in Marc’s experience; for him, the holiday always has been associated with the red handled utensils, now so chipped that only a few blotches of paint remain.

So, of course, as time folds over on itself, the important people that you’ve lost become somehow more accessible. Maybe it is because I’m older and moving inexorably closer to where they are, but the memories of the departed grow more vivid each year, not less so.

Passover is also very much about the present: My godchildren around the table during the seder, looking and sounding like men and behaving like the mensches they’ve become; the friends with whom we have shared the holiday for a decade or more, looking older yet even more precious to us;  the fun supper we shared with our beloved nieces and great-niece, who now says our names in her soft, sweet voice.

And even about the future: We’ve already begun to discuss plans for next year’s holiday and how to make it even more family-oriented, including those who are still very much alive and those who are only still alive in our memories.