Both of my parents were quite devoted to butterfat. My father, from the dairy Midwest, was born of Hungarian stock; butterfat was next to godliness. My Mother had already lived through the worst her gluttony could offer, so no low-fat incantation was tolerated.

Little Laura’s fondness for ice cream made her the special target of a prosperous Jewish family in her small German town in the mid-thirties. In preparation for their eventual flight to Holland, these people would pick her up and take her across the Dutch border for ice cream, hiding their valuables on her small person. In hindsight, she resented them for using her to smuggle their gold out of NAZI Germany, putting her at risk of being bayoneted on the spot. But she never regretted a smack of the ice cream.

My ice cream adventures were much safer. Childhood summer nights were often graced by a square dip from a local Evanston shop—I’ve forgotten the name. Today I cannot imagine how I could begin to manage a square of ice cream. Those corners would impair the experience for me. As a kid the square scoops were nicely weird.
Non-ice cream frozen treats (“quiescently frozen” as opposed to churned) were frowned upon in my household and thereby exoticized. In my Mother’s courtroom these treats could be exonerated by chocolate; my weakness for fudge-sicles was tolerated. I didn’t get to try a rocket pop until I was grown.

At nineteen, a double-dip cone of maple nut ice cream from Bridgeman’s took me to my summer graveyard factory job each night in Minneapolis. Occasionally I flirted with other flavors, but I always came back to maple nut. This was one of my few devotions to a non-chocolate dessert. Bridgeman’s chocolate just wasn’t chocolate-y enough.

In my child-raising days, ice cream was the third level of emergency treatment for childhood injuries. Step one was “kiss the owie.” Step 2—put a band-aid on it. When my daughter grabbed the searing beam of a metal jungle gym I initiated step three; “let’s go get ice cream.” Step 4 would have been a trip to the emergency room. Fortunately I never got to step four.

From an early age, I gave my daughter expert coaching in ice-cream cone management. I knew iced cream would be an important part of her future, so I approached this as a valuable skill to be handed down and practiced. You circle the cone, working the meeting of cone and ice cream, picking up the meltiest outside layer to get the “ready” ice cream and prevent drips. Watch the tongue pressure—you can easily undermine the stability of the scoop on the cone. Yes I had a tragedy once as a child. No need to reproduce that trauma. Practice makes perfect and how sweet it is.

Ice cream still works quite well on those injuries that transcend age and maturity, such as wounded pride, disappointment, fatigue … just about anything short of a broken bone. It’s so easy, so elegant, so well-disseminated. Even the worst retail muck or the hyper-precious versions transport the eater directly to the magic of a very cold thing on a hot day, summer’s best punctuation mark.

We gathered our stuff about us and entered a steamy Budapest. I let a taxi driver adopt us as soon as our feet touched the platform. He grabbed our bags and claimed to speak English. Actually, we didn’t do so badly between his few phrases of English, occasional bits of German and much hand-waving. The will to communicate is everything and Hungarians have plenty of that.

I sailed through lesson two of Language in Hungary when we met our hostess, an elderly woman who rented her bedroom very reasonably. We chatted about her arthritis, the doctor, the shot she got this morning, her late husband, her children, their education and languages, and best of all—the grandchildren—all those things two women can talk about for half an hour with only about ten common words between them.

After a shower and a nap, two great friends of the traveler, we set out to find dinner in our neighborhood, a local business area with few foreigners. This was perfect for our style of travel. Now, what can I suggest to a ten year old with a travel-lagged stomach? As we come to the busy street, I can see a bright blue and white border around the large doorway of a building a few blocks down. mm—perhaps a Greek restaurant?

“You like Greek food, Honey. Remember the lemon soup with little round noodles, moussaka, circles of squid?” I talk it up, the way one does when trying to keep a ten year old motoring forward instead of complaining. “Only another couple of blocks.”

Greek food sounds good. Now, just one more block. The blue and white tiles continue their promise of good familiar food. And we’re both ready now; we can almost smell it. The sign doesn’t help or hurt; it’s in Hungarian, an impermeable language.

A deep breath says… perchloroethylene, not olive oil. People stream out with pants and skirts on hangars. Oh no! It’s a dry cleaner. How could this be? What a disappointment!

“I’m so sorry, Honey. I’m hungry too. How about pizza?”

Language in Hungary is a bit of mystery. The pizza was great.

I thought the utility room was room was creepy. It was almost scary, but not really that interesting. I knew my path; I didn’t really need the light. But sometimes, just as I stepped inside, I’d get it right across the face—a stiff, cold, wet, stinky tail—a herring tail. My mom was soaking the brine out of a herring before she pickled it. It would be in a ceramic bowl on top of Dad’s dresser with the tail sticking out.

This would be real herring, the good kind, not the kind that comes in jars so it has to be boiled until it’s soft and the slimy skin falls off. My Mother’s herring would stay stiff and a little crunchy, with slick skin hugging the meat. The whole utility room smelled like brine, fish and then the vinegar.

All I wanted was a warning that I might get hit in the face with a herring. It’s pretty gross. But it’s what you have to go through for good herring. It was a hopeful sign of family Sunday mornings to come: mornings filled with many kinds of stinky fish; mornings of love.

It was a mixed blessing. I hated the milk, but the sandwich was an exotic delight. Between perfect identical white spongey layers, I’d find a thin strip of something pink. It didn’t look anything like a sandwich at my house.

When we became big kids in middle school, we ate in a cafeteria. Suddenly, even lunch could be a source of embarrassment. I was measured against what “everybody else” had in their lunchbox. Yet again, I did not measure up.

Everybody else’s lunch had a perfect white square that floated out of a small individual sandwich bag. The popular girls in my class had waxed paper bags.

The white square would be cut in half, to reveal two perfect bands, one violet and one creamy brown. I admired how evenly the grape jelly would saturate the white sponge, moistening it just enough to make it edible. The creamy peanut butter was applied with expert strokes that stretched it all the way to the corners, just like on TV. Most admirably, this sandwich remained stable when bitten.

How could I get my Mother to reproduce this? She grew up across the Atlantic in a land bereft of peanut butter, white bread and grape jelly. For her, assimilation had already turned out to be a cruel trick. What could she possibly know about fitting in?

I’d inhale deeply before venturing into my disheveled paper bag. First, the sandwich bag was all wrong. It could be any plastic bag that found its way into the house, usually cradling my Dad’s stiff shirt or the Tribune. These bags were huge, unwieldy and, by the time they reached the cafeteria, sticky inside and out. The sandwich didn’t float out— often the bag would have to be removed from the sandwich. After this surgery, my hands, sometimes up to the forearms, would be sticky and dangerous, attracting napkins and transferring permanent purple ooze. (Finally my mother did discover Baggies—a great relief for both of us. I could sacrifice the finer point of waxed paper.)

But then the really embarrassing part emerged—the sandwich. This was made of two irregular slices of hard, seed-laden, black bread. They received uneven applications of chunky peanut butter, and slid against each other like restless tectonic plates. Moments into the bite, the bread released its magma: a writhing core of European fruit preserves. Black current seeds would spill over the rubbery crusts onto the tray. The odd strawberry or rind oozed and slithered across brown mountains and valleys, sometimes shooting right out onto the table: suburban failure.

This sandwich reconciled my mother’s struggle perfectly. I pleaded for peanut butter sandwiches. But my immigrant Mother feared that serving peanut butter to her only child was a sign of laziness, or worse, cheapness. However, fruit preserves! Now here was something a European could take pride in, embellish, indulge. She could atone for her peanut butter neglect.

I ate it. Of course I ate it; it was delicious.The nutty mixture of grains and seeds augmented the peanut butter, worthy ally to the large, carefully selected fruits.

I ate it and struggled to control it. I stole glances at the popular kids eating their cool, calm amethyst beauties.

I’d give Mom more instruction tonight. Tomorrow I might have one less thing to be self-conscious about. Or not.

No, I never decided to make soup and an apple crisp today—far from it. I probably had different goals entirely—or I should have. Rarely do I decide to make something, select a recipe, shop for it, set aside time to make it and then follow through. No, the urge to cook comes from a glance into the excesses of my fridge, or some confab of the desires to rescue, avoid work, and listen to the radio.

All of a sudden, a whirling energy spins me into a chopping-blending-cooking-creating-store-housing machine. I fill plastic tubs and containers rescued from all manner of store-bought content. Something has pushed the “Dervish” setting on the miracle-Miriam kitchen appliance.

It’s usually these easy, homely dishes that sweep me up—soup, fruit crisp, chicken parts, stew, meat to marinate. And it’s usually more than one course at a time, although it’s unlikely they make it to the same meal. Occasionally I find this groove for a specific evening’s meal or potluck prep. I have at times tried to impose reason, thinking, planning, plotting into the process. But I have learned—it’s best if I simply narrow my eyes to small slits, check my conscious mind with NPR’s ubiquitous voices, and cruise to the quick rhythm in my core. I produce quickly and deliciously. I am released, both exhausted and refreshed, when all the little containers are sealed, stacked and placed in the fridge. I love the spurting, unplanned explosion and orderly resolution. Dervish is my happy kitchen mode.

I will marvel: why am I doing this? When did I decide to cook? Now? How did I know the order of operations? Do I really need this food? Never-me mind. The food will be eaten. It must scratch some sort of itch. Fruit crisp, anyone?

I try to keep my speed down to 80 as I blast across the miles of bare land. I spy, with my little eye: small scrubby growth; a few dried blossoms; a large road kill—is it a young deer or maybe a mangled javalina? Long passed, now. Occasional rocky outcroppings seem like something really special on the horizon.

I’m zooming across the American west with mind-games for the solo road-warrior. Whatever was it that drew people here, 250 miles East of El Paso and 100 miles west of Odessa? I wonder what this dry, open place looked like to my Grandmother’s eyes at fifty-seven.

This is where Selma came, arm-in-arm with a husband she barely knew, after middle years had been torn apart by anti-Semitism, three and a half years in concentration camps, return to war-torn Germany and salvation in Manhattan’s Washington Heights. Was she frightened? Excited? Hopeful? Disappointed? Relieved? Inspired?

Half an hour from the border at El Paso, the guard stops me to ask:
“Are you a citizen?”
“Yes.”
“Where are you going?”
“Fort Stockton.”
“Why—there isn’t anything there?”

In Stockton, Comanche springs raced from the ground. This precious water revived stagecoach passengers fearful of Comanche raids. It allowed Jefferson Davis to dream about fleets of camels patrolling the land. It filled the best watermelons and the old swimming pool.

Nathan Winkler founded a dry-goods store in Fort Stockton in 1912. He’d come to the US in 1900 from Austria-Hungary, not yet twenty. His half brother brought him to West Texas to learn the retail trade. There were handfuls of young Jewish merchants sprinkled across small western settlements.

In 1951, Nathan, a vigorous, prosperous widower with four grown children left Fort Stockton for a visit to Fort Worth. He was introduced to Selma, who had recently moved there with her two daughters, and he wooed her in one week.

Selma must have been so surprised, so grateful for a second chance at love and at life. This sun-scorched land must have looked strange and promising. People were slow, warm and friendly. How different it must have looked, those dusty blocks where cactus struggled to grow replacing Manhatten’s green parks. Here, the men were handsome and well-dressed in bolos, plaid shirts and enormous hats from Winkler’s.

Put aside your nightmares, Selma. Forget the rocks through your windows and the blood sprayed across the walls of the Riga Ghetto. Take comfort in the new and familiar: the rituals of married life; man and wfe working at the store; civic leaders. Money was available; it could be made and spent. There were new things to have—a home, a car, diamond jewelry, furs. People in Texas didn’t speak in terms of the four or five cows that brother Norbert would have brokered in Westphalia. Here, people had thousands of head of cattle. They took enormous risks and pulled oil right out of the ground. But the biggest difference was safety, security, warmth, acceptance—knowing that your hardest times were behind you and you’d made it through somehow.

Changes aren’t easy at 57: foods; names; weights, measures; language; the way it’s done. Selma wrestled with the English language, laced with Texas drawls and Spanish phrases, into an agreeable tongue that offered her the hearts of her neighbors and even the pages of Tolstoy.

Her new husband was a silent man, a skillful merchant, a far-sighted investor in companies and people. She relished the role of the merchant’s wife: a life she’d trained for forty-five years before. She dove into the dust of her back yard and pulled out apricot trees, watermelons, plums and even roses. She qvelled over her grandchildren. Finally she had a normal life, full of the nice things she had once owned and all the modern appliances the 1950′s had to offer.

Working at the store, she came to know everyone. She licked her wicked wounds and revealed her exotic and disturbing past on occasion at ladies luncheons and rotary breakfasts. Selma flowered in the relentless sun that would whip her sheets dry in a flash.

We would go to Stockton for Spring break, flying from Chicago, loaded with packages and reeking of garlic, anise, salt and Westphalian rye bread. We transferred in Dallas, hopped to Midland, drove for an hour through oil derricks and tumbleweed. As the trip grew hotter, we smelled more strongly of our Chicago deli imports. It became harder to carry the ill-wrapped goods with their string handles and awkward corners. They would bump and tip. Finally, we were at Grandma’s, spilling our goodies across her kitchen table and drawing her delighted exclamations.

“See, we even brought a little plant.”

A tiny start had grabbed my Mother’s attention on our way out the door and found a hand between us. In Fort Stockton, where even the cactus wanted care, that extra spot of green was precious; a little spot of life that Selma could offer a second chance.

We rejoice in our liberation. We mourn the drowning of the oppressor armies sent to recapture us, just for a mite. We sit and recite the familiar stories and re-experience the events with our loved ones, our old friends, our new friends and the Stranger all over the world. We eat, we drink, we meet, we remember.

How might we offer a bit of patience to the simple son who asks—“what is this?” When we are children, this patience might seem impossible. Then we have children and undertake the task, learning the lessons all over again and for the first time, as we teach.

When we crawl out from our family’s protective shell we might be shocked at the many who have not yet encountered the measuring stick of Passover, or we might be those children ourselves. They do not even know how to ask—“what is this?” For them we must let this night flow full from our hearts so they can freely taste it and find inspiration in its universal and timeless message.

We redden with shame when we remember our disrespectful phase, so assertive in our alienation that we could not respect another’s devotion, caught in the cloak of the prideful wicked son. “What is this to you?” And so we own and enjoy our sentimentality, our traditionalism and even our sense of meaning. Perhaps we reach deep inside and out—to find love.

We are at our best, when we can—for a moment—suspend our judgments and be the wise sons and daughters who expand our table to include all these comers: the ignorant; the prideful; the uninformed and the stranger. Together we puzzle the days of our lives, and nights and days—or is it just the nights—reminded that to ponder, to wonder, to re-imagine and to offer time, food, laughter and acceptance, is answer enough.

Each spring we celebrate new-ness. We handle the egg, the lamb bone, and young greens. We identify with a new people, newly home in its new land, singing a new song and building a new life in freedom. We aspire to a world without bondage, joining hearts with those who suffer today. We long for so many freedoms: freedom from slavery; freedom from want; freedom from the tyrannies we impose upon each other and upon ourselves; freedom to celebrate a festival of freedom; freedom to be kind, to indulge, to listen, to love and to nurture; the freedom to know our own worth.

In the spirit of plunging forward towards a dream, I review the seeds I would nourish. I crave a place to be free from my quick complaint and criticism—slaveries I sometimes impose upon myself. In a tiny seed I might hear the wildest ravings of my heart; a freedom to yearn for the opportunity that may never be or the accomplishment that seems so unlikely. I won’t thin that start from my row of wishes. I’ll leave it grow a bit, meet the sun and hang from a stout stem although it drains away energy and looms a bit ridiculous. Perhaps it is impractical; maybe it’s even impossible.

How many weeks can it hang there before I begin to accommodate its awkwardness? They say it takes three weeks before habits are formed. Sometimes the body is faster still. Sometimes the mind is slow and heavy. When I’ve gone the three weeks, what should I do about this impossible bloom? Prune the bush and restore order? Or is there something that calls for my time, my thought, the air and the water? I’ve stepped out of my comfort zone, out of the invisible. I’ve written, edited, spoken, shouted, swirled and sung. The blossom is fine. Now, I’ll look again for the seed.

I had endeared myself to my father by being willing to eat anything–pickled herring at one month. Either I didn’t mind smelly things and weird textures, or I had a sunny disposition and strong desire to please. Of course I was delighted when my father shook with a belly laugh.

A picky eater wouldn’t have stood a chance in my house. The worst scorn and judgment would have been flung her way. I carefully carved out the two things I really didn’t want to eat that I thought I could get away with–mushrooms and asparagus. I ate everything else I ran into–even scary calamari tentacles. Surprise! my Mother suspended her own quick judgment and helped me out on the mushrooms—“she’s probably allergic to them anyway.” My Father never accepted these small phobias and made each restatement a small terror. “What— you don’t eat mushrooms?”

Girlfriends who asked my Mother what was for lunch or dinner received powerful disapproval. Linda was known for only eating Juniorette noodles. In anticipation of her lunch visit, my Mother, a non-driver, knocked the tail light off the ’59 Imperial. Look at this grand old boat if you what to see what a disaster this must have been. Those expensive noodles were the punch-line of many a commentary. Juniorettes referred to Linda’s entire family. She was not invited again.

Food was love. And it occurred by my Mother’s rules, tastes and family history. When I came home from college, grad school, life—anything I might once have liked would be trotted out at every opportunity. I realized my home was one continuous meal.

Mostly I came home to blitzes: generous pillows of slightly sweetened ricotta cheese wrapped skillfully in buttery-fried crepes, topped with sour cream and cinnamon sugar. My Mother hasn’t been able to make a blintz for years. But if food is love, blintzes are an orgy—one that paradoxically demands monogamy. Eating frozen blintzes would be a very tacky affaire.

Many of my friends “discovered” real food in their 20s and 30s. I’ve shunned their studied, food-i-ness and recipe servitude. I know that baby boomers—despite their uber-remodeled kitchens and gourmet devotionals— were usually raised on canned vegetables. Well-off families ate frozen, but for some reason fresh eluded most tables in this fertile country of truck farms. Fresh and crisp–rarer still. My college roomies were terrified of the pans full of Velveeta free veggies I cooked from produce grown not ten miles away.

Eating is a sensual, earthy experience that supports life. Not an effete substitute for interaction, nor an excuse for obsession. Like most things, when it gets precious it becomes a pain in the ass.

Not that there isn’t something to be learned from a recipe. My scorn is part defense—I’ll admit. I can’t really stick to a recipe. I always have a creative addition, a lazy substitution. Most of my cooking is from the hip. It surprises me how much I absorbed from not paying attention to Mom. Marinate…. Marinate… Repetition would often help these little experiments develop into jewels, but it seems too….repetitive. Make it again? But….this time lets try…

It’s hard to truly incorporate foods and pots I didn’t grow up with. I understand Mom’s defaults. I have tackled eggplants. They seduce me in the grocery store, with their luscious purple gowns, but I know they never wandered into my grandmother’s kitchen. Yes I do Tofu. I’ve added Tempeh. But unstudied, they drift from my thoughts.

It’s a precious time, these days. But a table full of food is still the easiest way to show love, generosity and welcome.

“Och, gotenyu. What a smell. I can tell you need new socks, you little stinker.”

And so, all over the world, at Chanukah, children get socks to replace the old worn out and stinky ones from last Chanukah. So now you know! Now we understand our non-Jewish neighbors, who always like to borrow our traditions and adjust them just a bit, come to hang their stockings by the hearth. Their Great Bubbe goes in drag and has a yen for fireplaces. Do we have fireplaces? No. Who would chop the wood? Who would make the fire? But it’s good for the Goyim. So socks connect us all with a sense of the warmth of the season.

Chocolate, my children, we celebrate Chanukah to appreciate how good the world is when there are eight days in a row of chocolate at our table. We have chocolates to share, to give and most importantly to eat. We even have chocolate to drink-noch. We make chocolate into money and gamble for it with our dreidels. If we are very lucky we get many Gimmels. Gimmels are for great—a great miracle happened here. Of course I’m right—I just won all the chocolate. Ante up so I can spin again before my dreidel cools off.

And why is chocolate so important? It’s the most delicious thing of all. It is rich and warm. It can be wrapped in beautiful paper and please the eye, even the eye of a grumpy Shin spinner. It gives you energy. It’s energy and hope that make you spin again and again and eventually you might get at least a Hay and split the pot. Chocolate makes you sweet on the inside, which makes you sweet on the outside which makes the world sweet.

Nuts kinder, nuts. This is what we want on Chanukah. The earth has given us nuts of the season and we use these to play and play with our dreidel. Nuts of all kinds, with their pretty little wooden homes. Round mahogany homes for filberts, thin crowded pecan shells crammed with sweetness. Stout comfortable walnut shells so that walnuts may play Chanukah games before they serve as Charoseth next Pesach and even dark crinkly homes for Brazil nuts, full of oil, like our beloved lamp.

Oh but you must think I am silly to forget the star of the whole show, quietly waiting in the dark for me to notice—our humble and most-dear Chanukah friend—the potato. The potato gives it’s all for Chanukah, allowing it’s pale flesh to be shredded, and stirred with eggs and onion and ladled into hot grease, flipped on it’s back, splashed with sour cream or applesauce (ok, you can have both) chewed and swallowed and maybe even some day soon, digested. This gentle giant promises all year long, reminding us how much we love Chanukah for the excuse to make latkes, for the better excuse to eat latkes, and for all the oil we can consume with each latke. And this, this little potato, really this is the secret of Chanukah. How the perfectly ordinary, so common among us, shines with greatness in the lights of hope, happiness, family, food and song.

What? You say Chanukah is not the potato, not the nuts, not the chocolate, not the warm snuggly socks? You’ve got to be kidding. Not even the beautiful menorah all bright with her warm candles? Songs—are you sad because I forgot the wonderful Chanukah songs where everyone knows the first two lines and hums the rest slightly out of tune? Is that what you think?

Oh, no. You think it’s us? Me, and the children, and our friends, and the guy I work with, and my neighbor, all gathered around the menorah while I look for the matches, turn down the soup that’s boiling over, flip the latkes one last time and finally make the brocha. You think that’s what Chanukah’s all about? Well, maybe you’re right.