The other day, one of us was sitting in the kitchen while another was preparing cole slaw for Shabbos.
Nina’s cole slaw recipe is renowned in the family and she makes it exactly the same way her mother did. She began to reminisce about the days when she, and her mother before her, would go to the supermarket and buy a cabbage. Grandma Stroock would never buy it if it were more than four cents a pound. Considering that the Glick family always had large gatherings with lots of Shabbos guests, Nina would then remove the outer leaves of the cabbage to make sure that there were no bugs and then cut the cabbage into quarters and begin to slice it into shreds for the cabbage salad. Then she would take a few carrots and grate them so that they would also be in the bowl with the cabbage. “Gosh,” she said, “when was the last time that I grated carrots for cole slaw or sliced the leaves?” Now we all make use of the luxury of going to the store and buying a few bags of cabbage and saving ourselves tons of time. The mix already comes with carrots inside. Who is standing and grating anymore? Even potchking to make stuffed cabbage has become, if we so choose, so much easier. How many of us now make “unstuffed cabbage,” again taking the bag and dumping it into the dish with the meat and sauce on top. Nina still prefers to make the real thing as she burns her fingers each time she peels a cabbage leaf off the boiled whole cabbage. No, we don’t like freezing the cabbage!
How many other things do we do so differently from the past? Surely we didn’t, and none of our children will ever, kasher their own meat. We remember our parents soaking and salting. Even today Nina frequently buys chicken livers and kashers them. She has been asked why she would bother if it is so much easier to buy the livers that are already broiled. She replies that this is one tradition that she likes to maintain.
Who makes blintzes these days when it is so easy to go and buy a package of Golden’s? Again, we remember the days when our mothers put a fresh sheet across the kitchen table and with their special little milchig frying pan would turn over individual bletlach all over the sheet. Nina still remembers the taste of the cheese concoction that her mother made only from pot cheese—it could be nothing else. We have never been able to replicate that taste. Obviously, everything was fried in butter to give it that extra special flavor.
We could go on and on of the changes that have taken place in the kitchen with regard to kosher food preparation. Interestingly, no one seems to be espousing extra time because they seem to have so much less to do. When we moved to Canada we saw a phenomenon that rarely existed in the homes we were familiar with. Everyone had an electric kettle. Wow, that seemed amazing. As our mothers stood by the stove “waiting for the water to boil,” they could now just put the water into the kettle and plug it in. Within minutes you had boiled water. What better gift could we think of to bring to Nina’s parents when we went to visit? Excitedly we handed them the box, and although they both smiled, we think that we eventually took the kettle back after many years of lack of use as we realized that standing and waiting for the water was a natural part of life for them.
Who can remember the days when we darned socks? Mordechai can’t believe that we used to have in our home a darner that Nina would stick into the sock so that she could see the hole in the sock as she sewed it up. Who would even consider doing that today? When a pair of pants for a child tears today, do we ever see anyone wearing a patch over his knees? It is so much easier to just go and buy a new pair. When was the last time that someone you know had his shoes resoled at the shoe maker? We remember that as soon as we got shoes, as children, taps would go underneath the toe area on the sole so that the shoes would not get worn out quickly. Heels were always replaced on men’s shoes.
The question is, what will our children see as changes in their homes from the way things are today? Maybe they will decide that it would make more sense to hold onto a car until it reaches old age instead of turning it in once the lease is up. Wouldn’t it be funny if one day texting becomes passe and instead letter writing becomes a new phenomenon? We cannot imagine what from our lifestyle today will be eradicated from the adults of the future, but neither were our mothers able to fathom that it would not be necessary to buy a whole cabbage!
By Nina and Mordechai Glick
