Literary Eats: All-of-a-Kind Family

The All-of-a-Kind Family series by Sydney Taylor was probably among the most beloved of my childhood books. I took them out repeatedly from the Croton Free Library, those wonderful books about the five little girls growing up on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, circa 1910. As well as telling the engaging tales of the close-knit sisters, their extended family and community, the books also serve to educate on Jewish traditions and culture, and food figures very very prominently.

One day Mama takes her girls along as she shops for the Sabbath on Rivington Street. Each daughter has a daily allowance of one penny, and there are no ends of goodies on which to spend it. Observe, though, that these girls gravitate toward the savory snacks, as well as the sweets:

At the next corner, Henny bought a fat, juicy sour pickle with her after-lunch penny. She ate it greedily, with noise and gusto, while her sisters watched, their mouths watering. “Selfish! How about giving us a taste, huh?” Henny pretended she didn’t hear them, but before the pickle was half gone, she stopped teasing and gave each a bite.

The sweet potato man did not mind the cold. Why should he when he had his nice hot street oven to push before him? When Ella caught sight of him, she said at once, “Just the thing for a cold day.” The sweet potato man stopped before her and pulled open one of the drawers of his oven. There arose on the air such a delicious smell that Ella smacked her lips expectantly. Inside she saw the plump sweet potatoes in their gray jackets. Some were cut open in halves and their rich golden color gave promise of great sweetness. For her penny, Ella got a large half and as she bit into it, she wondered why sweet potatoes baked at home never tasted half so good. When she rejoined the family, four other mouths helped make short work of that potato.

Gertie turned to Charlotte. “What’ll we buy with our pennies?” The answer to that question was just then coming along the street. Candied slices of tangerine and candied grapes mounted on sticks lay in rows on white trays. The peddler stopped when he heard Gertie’s delighted cry. “Penny a stick, little darlings,” he said. Charlotte chose grape and Gertie took tangerine. Thus two more pennies were spent.

“Arbis! Shaynicke, guttinke arbislach! Keuf meine heise arbis!”

The hot chick pea peddler was singing the words over and over in a funny Yiddish chant as he rolled a small white oven along the streets…Sarah decided to give her penny up to him. Everyone watched as he fished out the peas. First he took a small square of white paper from a little compartment on one side of the oven. He twirled the paper about his fingers to form the shape of a cone and then skillfully twisted the pointed end so that the container would not fall apart. He lifted the wagon cover on one side revealing a large white enamel pot. The steam from the pot blew its hot breath in the little girls’ faces so they stepped back a bit while the peas were ladled out with a big soup spoon. The wagon cover was dropped back into place and the paper cup handed over to Sarah. The peas were spicy with pepper and salt and how good they were! They warmed up the children’s tummies and made them very thirsty.

The next day’s Sabbath dinner is, as always, a feast: “Gefullte fish, chicken soup with homemade noodles, roast chicken, carrots prepared in a sweet way, and applesauce.” Food and meals from other religious feasts and holidays are lovingly detailed, as are the occasional snacks the girls are treated to by their neighborhood grocer, Mr. Basch, such as flavored soda crackers and bits of smoked lox. At the local candy store owned by Mrs. Blumberg, sweets are sold by the half-penny, and nobody is better at pulling more fun out of a red cent than the two youngest daughters, Charlotte and Gertie. In one of the book’s most delightful chapters (“Who Cares if It’s Bedtime?”) they buy a penny’s worth of chocolate babies from Mrs. Blumberg, another penny’s worth of soda crackers from Mr. Basch, and they hide all the loot beneath their bedcovers until lights out that evening, when Charlotte conducts a fabulous game.

…Tucking in the featherbed, Mama said goodnight to all and went out, shutting the bedroom door behind her.

The fun could begin at last! Charlotte directed because the game was hers.

“First we take a chocolate baby, and we eat only the head.” They bit off the heads and chewed away contentedly.

“Now the feet.” That was hard. The tiny feet were very close to the legs but they did the best they could.

“Let’s gobble the rest up altogether.” That was a good order. They gobbled away.

Charlotte continued. “A cracker now.” They fished about in the dark. “We’ll take a small bite just to find out what kind it is.”

They each took a small bite. “Mine is a lemon snap, I think,” Gertie said. “What’s yours?”

“Mine’s a ginger. We have to nibble along the side of this piece of cracker as if we were mice and we have to do it until I stay stop.” So they nibbled and nibbled and pretty soon Gertie exclaimed, “My piece is all gone.”

“So’s mine,” Charlotte told her. She had enjoyed nibbling so much she had forgotten to change the order.

Charlotte had lots of ideas. With the next cracker they had to make a circling movement ten times around in front of their open mouths and then pop the cracker in. But they were not to bite into it. Oh no, that cracker had to be taken out of their mouths again and the circle repeated ten times. After that they could eat the cracker as they pleased.

And so the game was played till there wasn’t a single thing left.

And so through the year we follow the family through good times and bad: holidays and birthdays; lost library books (the expense to replace it is unthinkable to this poor family, and the girls work together to find the money); a bout of scarlet fever smack in the middle of the Passover holidays (Mama has her hands full but manages beautifully); a scorching heat wave which results in a trip to Coney Island, with a picnic lunch of “…bread-and-butter sandwiches, Mama’s kind, a slice of sour rye bread placed against a slice of pumpernickle; hard-boiled eggs and whole tomatoes sprinkled liberally with salt.” And a surprise treat, “Store-bought cakes! Not just plain cakes like the ones Mama baked at home for the Sabbath, but fancy ones with icing – chocolate and vanilla!” The methods Mama uses to deal with reluctance to do chores and refusal to eat vegetable soup are both creative and strict (how many of us faced at dinner the same warmed-over bowl of soup rejected at lunch?) At the end of the book, the family is blessed with the birth of Mama’s sixth child, a long-awaited son, Charlie.

“No matter what it’s going to be like, it’ll be all right with me,” said Ella. “But we aren’t an all-of-a-kind family any more.”

“In a way we are,” Mama said, smiling. “I think that means more than our having five daughters. It means we’re all close and loving and loyal – and our family will always be that.”

Everyone agreed. Even little Charlie opened his mouth as if he were about to speak. But it was only a yawn.

—Excerpts from All-of-a-Kind Family, by Sydney Taylor, Wilcox & Follett, New York, 1951. All Illustrations by Helen John.

Literary Eats: Anna Karenina

Anna Karenina, written by Leo Tolstoy, was published in serial installments from 1873 to 1877 in The Russian Messenger. I attempted reading it once and bagged after a couple chapters. I think I was just too young (what the hell does anyone know at 26, really). I also gave War and Peace a spin and likewise ran out of gas. I think the problem there was the logistics of trying to read such an enormous book in bed—there’s no comfortable way to hold it. (That’s what she said.)

But I’m thinking I’ll give Anna another try…if for no other reason than this:

As I was reading Anna Karenina, I discovered an amazing thing. The food in that book is really great. There’s a dinner that Levin has with some other guy, and everything is described. When you read it at two o’clock in the morning, and it’s cold out, and you’re in bed, all you want to do is go out and have that meal. 

—“Why I Love Cookbooks,” from More Home Cooking, by Laurie Colwin.

It is Oblonsky with whom Levin goes to dinner at the Anglia, and Oblonsky is intent on having Turbot (a species of flatfish). But when they arrive at the restaurant, they are informed that the kitchen has just received a shipment of fresh Flensburg oysters. This results in Oblonsky changing the entire game, and embarking on a new menu.

‘Well, then, my good man, bring us two – no, make it three dozen oysters, vegetable soup…’

‘Printanière,’ the Tartar [waiter] picked up. But Stepan Arkadyich evidently did not want to give him the pleasure of naming the dishes in French.

‘Vegetable soup, you know? Then turbot with thick sauce, then…roast beef – but mind it’s good. And why not capon – well, and some stewed fruit.’

The Tartar, remembering Stepan Arkadyich’s manner of not naming the dishes from the French menu, did not repeat after him, but gave himself the pleasure of repeating the entire order from the menu: ‘Soupe printanière, turbot sauce Beaumarchais, poularde à l’estragon, macédoine de fruits…’ and at once, as if on springs, laid aside one bound menu, picked up another, the wine list, and offered it to Stepan Arkadyich.

‘What shall we drink?’

‘I’ll have whatever you like, only not much, some champagne,’ said Levin.

‘What? To begin with? Though why not, in fact? Do you like the one with the white seal?’

‘Cachet blanc,’ the Tartar picked up.

‘Well, so bring us that with the oysters, and then we’ll see.’

‘Right, sir. What table wine would you prefer?’

‘Bring us the Nuits. No, better still the classic Chablis.’

‘Right, sir. Would you prefer your cheese?’

‘Yes, the Parmesan. Unless you’d prefer something else?’

‘No, it makes no difference to me,’ said Levin, unable to repress a smile.

–From Part I, Chapter X of Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy, translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, Penguin Books, 2000.

Levin, it should be noted, cares nothing for fancy fare. He likes “shchi and kasha best,” and he “ate the oysters, though white bread and cheese would have been more to his liking.” During dinner he and Oblonsky discuss the tribulations of their romantic lives – Levin wishes to marry; Oblonsky is married but wishes a dalliance. If I may get my high school English on, I will say that Tolstoy uses both the conversation and the food to represent all that is wrong in Russian society: the excessive, multi-coursed meals, the snooty waiter, and talk of adultery representing the aristocracy; the simple fare and true love representing the workers of the world. Who will have their day. And their desserts.

Tea: A Drink With Bread and Jam

I love going for tea and I don’t do it as often as I like. I went once with girlfriends to Tea at the Helmsley. Another time I went with different girlfriends to Silver Tips Tea in Tarrytown. I’m dying to go to Kathleen’s Tea House in Peekskill, and dying an even worse death to go to Tea and Sympathy in the West Village.

Tea and tea party scenes in British novels have always appealed to me. Many years ago when I remodeled my old childhood dollhouse, I turned the top floor into the nursery of my imaginations, searching high and low for the perfect round table and chairs on which a miniature tea party could be set. Downstairs in the living room, a resin-cast maid pushed an elaborate tea cart for the afternoon guests.

One of the best cups of tea I ever had was in Bermuda. Jeeps and I had just gotten engaged and we…wait a sec, back up, I have to tell you something: he proposed to me in the kitchen. No set-up, no preamble, no ruse. In the kitchen. One minute I was poking around in the cabinets looking for a little something-something, the next minute I’m sobbing on the linoleum floor with a diamond ring on my hand. In the kitchen. It was perfect. Thank you, I just needed to say that.

So we took a little celebratory trip to Bermuda and explored the island end to end, as one does in Bermuda, on a scooter. And one day it rained. Poured. We were at the opposite end of the island from our hotel, soaking wet and starving. We staggered into a small pub and ordered fish and chips and a pot of tea. It hot and strong and sweet and everything I felt high tea should be.

One of the most famous tea parties in literary history is in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the chapter entitled “A Mad Tea-Party.” But guess what? Nothing at the table is described. This is it:

The rest is rapid-fire dialogue consisting of riddles and non-sensical non-sequiturs that eventually drive our young heroine to distraction and away from the party. We don’t even get a bite of bread-and-butter. Feh.

The Mary Poppins books by P. L. Travers, feature another famous tea party: the one on the ceiling. In the movie this takes place at the home of Uncle Albert, played by Ed Wynne. In the book, Mary’s uncle is called Mr. Wigg, and he gives very specific instructions on how tea is to be taken:

Mary Poppins, naturally, has her own idea of the perfect tea party, as described in the chapter, “The Day Out,” where she and Bert hop into the chalk picture for an outing:

So Travers gives us a few more particulars of the food served at tea-time. But check out the loving and lavish detail C. S. Lewis provides when describing the tea party shared by Lucy and the faun Tumnus, in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe:

Notice that toast alone makes up three courses of this tea party. Sardines on toast does nothing for me, however my former boss is English and swears by baked beans on toast. My team gave her some serious razzing about it but she held her ground and insisted it is comfort food of the highest order. However, quality baked beans are the key: they must be Heinz vegetarian, served up on white toast topped with sharp cheddar.

Baked beans have a very different memory for me: in my childhood, my mother worked late hours at her dance studio, and quite often it was my father who made dinner. He was no slouch in the kitchen and had a solid repetoire of main courses. But often he was tired after a long day and the evening commute, and so dinner would be a lite fare of scrambled eggs, with Heinz baked beans served on the side.

For the ultimate in tea party descriptions, and for British food in general, nothing beats the mealtime passages in the novels of Rosamunde Pilcher. Here’s one of my very favorite scenes from my very very favorite book, Coming Home:

photo credit: Irina via Creative Commons

photo credit: Cody and Maureen via Creative Commons

photo credit: Olga Filonenko via Creative Commons