Delaware Top Blogs

Monday, May 24, 2010

Tasty snack

Now that we are discussing the topic of food, I want to mention a snack that bubbe (and I) liked.  It was very simple.

Take a clove of garlic, cut it in half, dip it in salt, and rub it all over a piece of good bakery rye bread.   The bread has to be strong in texture to resist the assault with the garlic.  Do not try this with Wonder Bread.

I don't know whether this snack is Russian, Jewish, or simply poverty-inspired.  If you like raw garlic, you might like it.  I like raw garlic.  I have been known to make pesto with so much garlic it brings tears to your eyes.  Mr Charm and I like it that way.

Bubbe also made a hot cabbage soup that was good.  And beet borsht with sour salts.  Does anyone use sour salts any more?  I haven't seen them for sale in years.

Bubbe and I did not always agree on cuisine.   I thought fat was disgusting.  Bubbe used to make chicken soup with circles of fat floating on top.  I hated them.  I also disliked the carrots and celery bits floating in chicken soup.   All I really wanted to eat was the noodles.  It was tough eating just the noodles or matzoh balls while avoiding the other ingredients of the soup, which perhaps explains how there was so much soup left when I finished.

I also would not eat anything glued together with mayonnaise.  That left out tuna salad, potato salad, and chicken salad, for openers.  Who knows what's in that stuff? I still won't eat chicken salad unless I make it myself and know what's in it.  (It is good with curry powder, raw celery, and green grapes.)

My grandson won't eat any food that touches another food on his plate.  I sympathize.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

*eyeroll*
I bet babbe did not sympathize with your food quirks!

The garlic-salt-dark bread: my grandpa, who was born in small shtettl in the Pale, taught us to do the same - but rub it only on the bread's crust. Lithuanian black bread is the best for this purpose (but not pumpernikel, since it's a bit sweet)

It was usually served with borsch (no "T", Miriam!); instead of sour salts try to add a bit of lemon juice.

Another bread "poverty snack" comes to mind: smear a fresh slice of dark dense bread with sunflower oil and salt it with coarse kosher salt. That's it. We used to get this as a snack between breakfast and lunch when we got hungry and impatient running and playing in the yard.