An Ode to the Beautiful Bagel

If you ask the average person to name a Jewish food, chances are they’ll say, “bagel!”

The ubiquitous roll with a hole originated in the Jewish communities of Poland in the late 1600s – and it’s still going strong almost 500 years later! 

Why the hole? There are plenty of stories to explain it, but our favorite says that in the small villages of Russia, the tsar levied a bread tax on Jews. He demanded one-tenth of all bread baked, but he wanted the middle of each loaf! When the tsar’s goons came to collect the bread tax, the villagers figured a way out. They presented the soldiers with rolls that had a hole in the middle!

A few centuries later, the bagel came along when Polish Jews immigrated to New York’s Lower East Side. Back then, bagel bakeries were common. There was one on almost every street!

Bagel fame spread from the Lower East Side, and one of the early spreaders was Harry Lender. Do you recognize his name? In 1927 he opened his “New York Bagel Bakery” in New Haven. It was a good move. Harry had so many customers that he came up with the idea of freezing bagels to make his baking and delivery schedule easier. And if you’ve ever poked around in your Bubbe’s freezer, you know how popular Lender’s frozen bagels are. 

We grew up in Philadelphia eating New York-style bagels. They’re crunchy outside and soft and chewy inside. They’re big, too. They’re boiled and then baked – and some say New York’s tap water is an essential ingredient. In our neighborhood, there’s one old-school bagel bakery that’s been around for decades. People swear by it: The bagels are classic and the owner supports the community. But he has not cleaned the shop in decades. We like the bagels but we have to ignore the shmutz on the floor, the counter and the shelves when we buy our bagels there. We look away: The bagels are worth it.

If you live in a bagel wasteland, you might have to get your fix at a chain bagel store (like Manhattan Bagel or Panera Bread.) They’re usually franchises run by those who aren’t members of the tribe. The misspelled sign for “scallian cream cheese” is a clue, but you do what you have to do. Those bagel shops test our loyalty. Every bagel looks the same because they’re machine-made. They’re shipped frozen from a factory.

Joyce has a love/hate relationship with her local Manhattan Bagel shop. When she asked why they had stopped carrying poppy seed bagels, the owner said, “Because only old people eat them!” Joyce stated the obvious: “But I like them!” Too bad. No poppy seed bagels – if only a few people buy them – no matter how young and cool the customer pretended to be! 

Now, especially in East Coast cities like New York, Baltimore and Philadelphia that have more than a handful of Jews, artisan bagel bakers are trying out newfangled recipes on our old-school crowd. They’re baking Montreal bagels, which are boiled in honey water and then baked in a wood-fired oven. They are denser, sweeter and smaller than their NY cousins.

That time Ellen had breakfast at K’far and met Michael Solomonov

Then there is the Jerusalem bagel. It has a  hole, but it’s more oval than round. It’s only baked, not boiled, so it’s tender and fluffy. Famous Israeli chef Michael Solomonov makes sandwiches on them –  like the egg and cheese with schug (a spicy green Middle-Eastern sauce) and za’atar served at his K’far Café in Philadelphia.

There are no more bagel peddlers and bagels aren’t a dime each anymore, but we remember when we paid $12 a dozen! Not so long ago! Some of these new bagels are too crunchy, too crusty and too expensive: $2.25 each!

Lest you think we’re the only opinionated bagel biters, not so! When we did our Word Mavens program at a synagogue on Long Island years ago, we mentioned to the audience that we were going buy some bagels to take home. Audience members began to shout at us; each woman had her favorite bagel shop: “Don’t go to Bagel Boss; go to King of Bagels!” “No-no! Hot Bagels is the best.”

In New York and New Jersey, they’re lucky enough to have a bagel shop on almost every corner. How do you choose? Well, Ellen’s son gets his bagels from a certain shop because the bagels are great, but he likes the motivational signs the owner posts even better. Huh? “Attitude is the little thing that makes a big difference.” “A friend is like a daily vitamin.” The signs are trite but the bagels are amazing.

A stunning sesame specimen from Ridgewood Hot Bagels

Last week closer to home, Joyce was excited to try the new hipster bagel shop on her corner. A nice young couple baking bagels together had taken over a former sushi restaurant. Their sign promised lunch, coffee and a shmeer. One bite and Joyce was disappointed. The bagels were really dense and small. The new place didn’t live up to her expectations.

So Joyce put on a fake mustache and skulked back to the franchise bagel shop. Still no poppy bagels but the owner was eager for intel on the competition: “How did you like it?” “Are my bagels bigger?” Which taste better? The owner got her answer when Joyce promptly ordered a dozen – no poppy. 

These days, when it comes to our bagel fix, we’re between a bialy and a hard place. We can go to the deli, but it’s not worth waiting in line if we just want bagels. We can keep trying the new venues, but they’re hit or miss. Thank goodness Passover is coming. After a week of matzah we know we’ll be grateful for anything round and doughy with a hole in the center.

A bagel joke we’ve been saving… it’s just a joke!

 

That Looks Like Fun! Maybe I’ll Try It ….

Founding Father Thomas Jefferson was a man of many interests. He enjoyed horticulture, architecture, astronomy, and mathematics. He had time to pursue his hobbies because he was a wealthy man, and he had plenty of “help” with his daily chores. (But that’s another story.)

Most of his contemporaries were too busy plowing the fields, harvesting crops, milking cows, and handwashing their breeches to take up a hobby. In fact, for most of history, people didn’t have enough leisure time to think about fun ways to fill the extra hours. Their hours were filled with back-breaking work.

But times change. We remember seeing our aunts bent over a needlepoint canvas. Our grandmothers would be busy knitting sweaters for the grandkids, nieces, and nephews. With tiny colored glass beads and wire, Joyce’s stepmom created decorative little trees.

We were delighted when a relative mailed us a postcard from a faraway land – like Puerto Rico or Long Beach Island. We collected them! We had hobby! (We hadn’t yet learned geography, and we were too young to have travel envy.) Now postcards are almost obsolete; you have to scour the souvenir shops to find one. Everyone snaps a picture and posts it on Instagram, and everyone else knows they’re sipping a margarita in Cancun before they even come home.

An old postcard from an old beach vacation

Back in the day, people used to have hobbies like stamp collecting. You know, stamps are the little bits of paper you stick on an envelope when you are sending a letter snail mail – like a birthday card or bill you can’t pay online.

When Joyce’s husband, Ted, was a kid in the late 1950s, he loved stamp collecting. He’d go to the hobby shop, buy a pack of assorted stamps and paste them into his stamp collecting book. When he got an airmail letter with a foreign stamp, he’d carefully soak it off and add it to the book. He still remembers the beautiful flower stamp from Switzerland and the one with the koala from Australia.

Now stamps are “forever,” so you don’t get caught by surprise when the price goes up. No one mails anything anymore, so we doubt stamp collecting could have a sudden surge in popularity.

So Many Supplies!

The crafts we liked to do weren’t always cheap. When Ellen was a teenager, she made sand candles every summer. She had a whole cupboard in the garage filled with wax, wicks and pots, colors and molds. It was an investment! She kept her supplies from year to year.

Jewelry making is probably the biggest offender in the stocking-up-on-supplies category. Anyone who has a daughter probably still has a container (or two or six) of beads stashed in a drawer. And if you have beads, you probably also have string, clasps, charms, chains, and earring backs. Then one day you realize that your daughter lives in her own apartment and left the supplies behind. So you think about becoming a hipster earring artist but realize you can’t see the tiny holes in the beads. Never mind.

All those earrings waiting to be created

What about the pricy crafts that don’t pan out, like making your own soap? It’s all-natural. You get to choose the colors and fragrance! It’s super fun to try. But after investing in raw glycerin, soap colors, molds, pots and spoons, your two hunks of soft-ish soap don’t turn out any nicer than the bar you can buy for $3.99.

Then there’s scrapbooking. You’re excited to make gorgeous scrapbooks to document every milestone in your child’s life – until you try it and realize that it took you four hours to arrange the photos, stickers and borders on the “Happy 3rd Birthday” page and your kid is now 7.

Dancing at the Mayor’s Ball!

Some hobbies seem reasonably priced at first. Joyce and Ted signed up for 10 sessions at the Arthur Murray Dance Studio because Joyce just wanted to feel more comfortable on the dance floor.

When it was over, they signed up to learn the salsa and the bachata . . . and then Joyce needed a sparkly dress for the dance showcase at the country club . . . and there was that big weekend dance event in Baltimore at the fancy hotel.

If you give a mouse a cookie, he’ll soon want a silver sequined dance ensemble.

Hobbies can also offer a perfect excuse to travel. We have a friend who took tango lessons and then joined a tango trip to Buenos Aires. Joyce and Ted threw axes and knives at wood targets in their backyard and then joined a club that had annual events in Austin, Texas. Then they signed up for tournaments in the Italian Alps and Brittany, France.

Covid Hobbies: What’s Old Is New Again

Old-school hobbies, like knitting, crocheting, doing jigsaw puzzles, and baking bread regained popularity during the Covid shutdown: You can do these things indoors. You can do them alone. Knitting helps reduce stress. Baking bread (if you could find yeast) is a great way to be productive when you aren’t sitting in front of a computer screen Zooming.

Hobbies connect us, whether we’re playing mahjong with a group of women or biking with other families on the weekend. When you share your hobby, you become part of a community whose members you may not otherwise cross paths with. Every yarn store has a knitting group where knitters get together, not just to knit but to share hints, help with knitting problems, trade and share some yarn, and definitely to chat.

Another fabulous knitted creation in the works

When we were younger, we tried scuba diving and rollerblading and skiing. Now we’re glad if we can finish the gentle yoga class for seniors. Pickleball, which we admit we have not tried – we want to, we just can’t find an open court – is the new hot sport for older people. Although along with every article about how popular pickleball is, you’ll find an article about how the emergency rooms are full at hospitals near retirement communities due to pickleball sprains and tears.

During Covid, Joyce thought she’d try a paint-by-number; she remembered doing them as a child. No cute puppies with 12 acrylic paint pots this time. She picked Renoir’s “The Garden in Brittany.” Some three months and 68 colors later, Joyce’s masterpiece was complete. She had a beautiful painting – and a trigger finger, which she developed from clutching her paintbrush too tight.

A masterpiece (in progress) of cramped muscles

Now we know: When we pick up new hobbies, they have to be easy on the joints. They must allow us to wear our reading glasses, our slip-on Skechers, and a jacket in case we get cold.

A few weeks ago, a friend asked Joyce and Ted if they were interested in learning a new card game and invited them to a cribbage club meeting.

Who knew cribbage was an organized sport? The tournament was held at a Wegmans Supermarket from 6-9 p.m. Joyce and Ted grabbed dinner from the hot bar first. They each shelled out the princely sum of $1 to participate and were home safe in pajamas by 9:30 p.m. It looks like the Eisenbergs’ search for the perfect new hobby is over.

 

Thinking once, cooking twice, making chicken soup with rice

Hanukkah is over. Winter is coming. We can’t stop looking at the “extended winter snow forecast” because we know it’s coming sooner or later. Almost everyone we know – including some of our children – have a horrible, yucky cold/cough/virus thing. Which means we’ve turned our attention away from those delicious Israeli fried Hanukkah sufganiyot (donuts) and turned back to our roots.

We’re thinking about chicken soup.

For generations, Bubbes have claimed that there’s nothing like a bowl of chicken soup to cure a cold. Breathing in the steam clears the sinuses. Drinking the hot soup makes you feel better. That’s why so many people say that a bowl of homemade chicken soup is “Jewish penicillin.” But in fact, chicken soup was around for more than 800 years before penicillin was discovered. It was a cure for the common cold before there was Sudafed and Kleenex. 

Fast-forward to 1977 when Dr. Daniel Mason, a Philadelphia cardiologist, wrote a letter to the editor of Chest, a medical journal, discussing the healing properties of chicken soup. Tongue firmly in cheek, Dr. Mason discussed the many variations of chicken soup and noodles vs. matzah balls and concluded that “to the best of my knowledge, it is the only medication that patients (especially children) unequivocally enjoy taking!”

And then there’s the publisher of the Chicken Soup for the Soul books.  Years ago, they  were looking for a title that would give gravitas and weight to their series of motivational and inspirational stories – and they landed on chicken soup. The series includes titles like “Lessons Learned from My Cat” and “Canadian Acts of Kindness.” If that’s not the kind of reading you’re looking for, don’t blame it on the soup . . .

Ever since chickens were domesticated thousands of years ago, cooks have been throwing them in a pot of hot water, adding in some vegetables, and getting a tasty result. Some people claim that Chinese NaiNais (grandmothers) made the first chicken soup. They’d spice theirs up with ginger, ginseng and goji berries – to replenish their grandchild’s chi. After all, it couldn’t hurt.

Every culture has its own version: Yemenite chicken soup has cumin, coriander and fenugreek; Vietnamese chicken pho has cilantro, fish sauce and rice noodles. Persian grandmoms make their soup more enticing with a matzah-ball-like dumpling that’s made from ground chicken and chickpea flour.

To us, the classic version of chicken soup is made with onions, carrots, celery, dill, and parsley. We remember Sunday visits at our grandparents’ apartments. When we got off the elevator, the entire hallway would smell like chicken soup and fried onions. Joyce was thrilled when her Grandma let her pick the noodles for the soup. Bowties were her favorite. Ellen’s grandma would make mushroom barley soup with flanken, another Eastern European favorite. 

Beloved children’s book author and illustrator Maurice Sendak liked rice in his chicken soup. In fact, he wrote a rhyming children’s book called Chicken Soup With Rice to teach kids the months of the year. His parents were Polish, and he probably grew up with noodles in his soup. But not much rhymes with “noodles” except “poodles. It’s much easier to make rhymes with “rice.”

From Maurice Sendak’s “Chicken Soup With Rice”

If you really want to go old-school, some bubbes and chefs claim that it’s chicken feet in the broth that gives the soup its rich yellow color. Other people say you must include all the parts that come with the chicken. They throw the neck (helzl), heart and gizzard (pipek) into the soup – along with the feet.

Joyce’s husband, Ted, reminisces about the eggs in his Bubbe’s chicken soup. He was referring to eyerlekh, (Yiddish for “unborn eggs”), that you’d find inside the chicken you bought home from a kosher butcher. When they were cooked in the soup, the firm yellow egg yolks would float to the top.

Joyce is delighted to have her Bubbe’s 12-quart Wear-Ever aluminum stock pot. She pulls it out to make chicken soup for the holidays – and for emergencies – like a sick kid.

But now most of our kids live too far away for us to leave a Tupperware of homemade chicken soup on their front step. They’re grown-ups themselves. They just call to to tell us that they’re sick and that they had to call a local deli for delivery of a quart of chicken soup. Ugh! That kills us! What kind of Jewish mothers are we?

We’ll just have to overcompensate the next time we see our kids in person. We’ll make dinner, we’ll bake cookies, and we’ll sit them down and give them a bowl of homemade chicken soup and watch them eat it – whether they want it or not.

From Chicken Soup with Rice