Bows of Dough

B"H

Remember...

Bubbe Pheema was still in her sixties cooking and baking storms of magnificent meals as well as sewing up outfits to fulfill our wildest dreams and fantasies.  

"So, you want to look like somebody else? Pass me the carrots please."  The sound of the grater gives a shimmer to the moment.  "Don't forget the raisins; we want a sweet year, the sweetness of good health, please G_d.  I need that dish."  Grated carrots, handful of raisins, and something else, who knows what, goes into the dish.  "Sure, I'll sew for you.  Move, I need the chopping block."  Onions and potatoes minced and mixed and poured into the sizzling skillet.  "Bring me a picture."  Hard cooked eggs appear from the deep sink.  "Start peeling, then chop them.  Whoever heard of Purim everyday?" The big spoon scrapes and stirs the onions and potatoes.  Everything is beginning to look golden.  "What colors do you want, mein bubbeleh*?  The magazine is black and white.  One thing, it's important.  I pick the fabric.  That's all I ask.  Okay?  Come Thursday morning, early, when you bring me my Shabbos chickens.  Oy, America, chickens without feathers, what a mechayeh!  I give you two dresses, one from your picture and one for Shabbos and yontif.  I give you teyglech for your mameh.  It should be ready by then.  I give you blessings for a good inscription!  What a book, this Book of Life!  The good L-rd, oy, He should give us copies.  Maybe we'd be more prepared."

Teyglech ... the jar is filled with flowery bows of dough soaked and permeated by sweetly spiced honey.   It is a brown gooey mess of beauty, sweetness, sting, and hope as we entered the Ten Days of Awe.  What could be more beautiful and more inspiring than my teyglech and my dresses?  Perhaps chickens without feathers?

That time is all so long ago.  Today the teyglech is just little nuggets of cut dough, no longer artfully tied bows, still, thank G_d, in spicey honey and always and forever signalling the beginning of a New Year.  I suppose we risk losing the kitchen aromas when the teyglech is, heaven forbid, purchased at the bakery.  But, what would happen to us all  when we've forgotten to even buy it.  

ZACHOR V'SHAMOR*

Remember and guard our ways.  Nuggets aren't so bad afterall.  

*Definitions


bubbeleh- literally "little doll", a term of affection.

ZACHOR V'SHAMOR- Hebrew for"remember and guard".