Bubbie's Cookies

Peanut oil, you must use peanut oil or the flavor won't be accurate; add eggs, sugar, baking powder, and enough flour to mix to the right consistency.  Roll out thinly, sprinkle amply with cinnamon sugar, cut into strips and roll portions into neat little coils.  Dip these in more cinnamon sugar and set them on end, standing up, so that the baking tray appears to have a company march in progress.  Rows and rows of cookies were being made by my incoming daughter-in-law's mother, brother, and me.  I got to roll strips, which was an honor, being that it was in the synagogue's basement kitchen, and therefore, the kitchen is kosher.  

But it was said that I was permitted even though I am a, geez, what am I?  I don't consider myself Christian or anything, so does that still make me a gentile?  Is gentile supposed to be capitalized?  Well, it was fun, anyways, and part of the charm besides the excitement of the marriage and the 100 year old building was getting to canoodle with Dorian.  You learn a lot about Judaism from her, a lot about life.

Her husband stopped by as she wasn't permitted by law to turn on the stove; this is a duty my son has also performed for the family at gatherings and holy days when Jews who keep kosher are not supposed to create a flame, which is considered work.  By work, the law includes the turning on of lights, for the flipping of the switch completes a circuit, thereby breaking a prohibition against construction or building on Shabbat in Orthodox rule.  It gets complicated, but I am thrilled that the family is welcoming my son who loves their daughter.  You haven't been around the block until you see your agnostic son in a yarmulke.

The baking process was lovely to watch, as measurement was done mostly by eye, with flour added a pinch at a time by son as the batter becoming dough was stirred by mother.  A simple recipe handed down from great grandmother, taught to be done by hand without a written script; it's also semi-secret.  No one else knows the formula, and that is a good way to keep family close, by not telling them anything about how you make their favorite dishes.  "Bubbie" is Yiddish for grandmother, "Zaidi" means grandfather.

When he was little, Bri would go next door to the Sicilian family who stuffed him with Stracciatella, a spinach and egg soup.  Spinach?  Eggs?  My kid?  A miracle!  This child would keep his peas in his mouth; when I would check on him in bed before turning in myself, there would be a trail of peas on the pillow.  What was the big deal, just swallow them already, you can't live on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and pepperoni all your life.  We want your brain to develop, eat some vegetables, a bite.  One spoonful.  Nothing happened until A-1 Sauce was discovered and then that went on e-ver-y-thing.
I never figured out why the food next door was being shoveled in like sixty; anchovy foccacia, for heaven's sake.  Cookies I understood: cuccidati, ossi di morti, reginella, ricotta, and pasticcini.

He's grown to appreciate different cuisines, and is a master of many; he's learned kosher cooking and can handle himself around Orthodox Jewish dietary law.  Rather proud of Buzz; he's amiable and curious about life, two good traits to have.

Food is intertwined with tradition, handed down generation to generation; I still have a biscuit recipe from Brian's great-grandmother, Granny's Rolls; there are Bubbie's Cookies, Mom's Chop Suey Casserole, and Mary's Ravioli, with the dough rolled out forcefully, given dollops of ricotta, then another sheet of dough;  finally scored with a pie wheel.  Lovely, light ravioli in a thin tomato sauce; I sat and ate and watched so many years ago, while Mary sewed my wedding gown.  

What tradition are you carrying, or long for once again?  A whole dinner or a special recipe?  It reveals something of where you came from, what helped shape an outlook, even if it's simply cereal doused with butter and baked.  And of course, one can begin a tradition as well, a thread that hangs a small bell over each head to ring memory in of the hands that stirred, folded, rolled, or pulled volcanically bubbling dishes from the oven.  Dorian let me share in that today, and was more than generous in not noticing the lop-sided shapes I was manufacturing.  Hers were straight.

The day was full of rain and chill, so baking in the synagogue's kitchen was an antithesis to the weather, sprinkled with cinnamon, as was the warmth given by the welcome to another, new family.  As sleep and hours wend their paths through the night, visions of Bubbie's Cookies will dance in my head; follow your own ways, notice what soothes you; a voice, a favored composer, a library, a solemn wooden bench over which hangs an icon, a cathedral of green under trees in the woods, a purr, a woof, or a finch warbling its song as you walk on sidewalks below.  Meanings become symbolic emblems of emotion that rekindle a time now far away, stirred by connection to who and what we love.

Maybe a blanket tonight; the cold slides against the glass panes and emanates into the room, the rain patters gently, cats are dozing, I am tired.  Climb in, tuck under, use the hypnagogic space of consciousness to explore thought, just before the borderland of sleep opens its silver gates.  Remember.