The story of Gizela - Afik Shiraz. Abinun Shmuel

from a long line of rabbis, left the camp and from the partisans, when he no longer believes it.

My Mother's Home Food

Except for the various delicacies she prepared in honor of the Jewish holidays, my mother had a saying regularly: "Sawdust, too, if you add sugar to it, will make it delicious" and her jams were indeed famous. She knew how to make jam from any fruit, most of them she bought from a guy who came once a month or two months to clean the chimneys in our house. My mother had a deep metal vessel, which she would put on the fire. Every year before Sukkot we would get 200 kg plums, that went into this huge paella to make jam. It was a family operation - my father, my mother, Cila and I would roll up sleeves and recruits for the stoning. Then my mother was lighting a fire under the paella and not long afterwards the whole house was filled with the aroma of brewing plums. My mother used to add cloves and orange peel and tangerines to the jam that add a scent of Citrus. Another jam that starred in my mother's home kitchen was her cherries jam. Our Czech neighbor had a cherry tree in the garden which yielded enormous fruits, almost plum size, and she used to pack us generous deliveries of several pounds at a time, because she had nothing to do with these quantities. My mother made of it jam, either mashed or not, and a compote. Today when I make the homemade jam, I just turn the jar over so that no air will enter and the jam will be kept for a long time. At that time they wrapped the jar with straw and put it in boiled water to sterilize. In addition they used salicylic acid that could be purchased at a pharmacy, in order to preserve the jam. My mother also used to make a special jam that contained tomatoes, apples and raspberry together. We had two types of raspberries - red raspberry (Malina), and black raspberry (Copina). The Copina was full of seeds, and my mother used a sieve, made of a horse's hair, to pass the fruit through, so the fruit flesh passed whiles the nuclei remained in it. In the very same way she used to make strawberry jam that would have a jelly texture after going through my mother's sieve. From our pear tree fruits, that used to mature at that time with the plums, my mother used to make jam of pears and plums. That jam was a major part of the dinner in those days when we had a delayed meat meal and we couldn't eat milky. Or we would drink tea and eat jam on homemade bread that my mother baked in a large clay oven. In fact, that bread was the first dish my mother taught me to make, when I was full twelve. I long for the different types of pasta my mother used to prepare, including the Klassons - puff pastry without filling, and a German or an Austrian stew, who she used to make and whose name I forgot, from a small squared pasta with steamed cabbage, and Tarana - a kind of delicious flakes.

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