Sunday, January 31st my mother June Rosenberg
died at the age of 94 from heart disease, old age, and I suspect the fear of
having to move to a nursing home.
My mother was always a political-social activist. She and my
father Jack Rosenberg were involved in our New York suburb in founding a human
rights committee to advocate for fair housing and racial integration. They were
also active in Sane [the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy]. During the War
in Vietnam, they were active in the protests against American involvement in
it.
In my mother’s honor, I am re-printing the first post that I
wrote on this blog. My mother loved it and encouraged me to keep writing. Once
again, Thanks, Mom.
Honoring An Old
Recipe For Social Change In America
While
helping my mother to ready her apartment for sale, I saw a glint of a relic.
“No!” I moaned. “Not that!”
Underneath the
rubble of a half used bottle of vinegar, a quarter of a bottle of cooking oil,
and various partially used spices on their way to 1-800-GOT JUNK were the
vestiges of an old friend. Courageously, I dived into the rubble to rescue The
Peace de Resistance, a cook book published by The Women’s Strike for Peace
in the late 1960’s. Its cover was torn off and missing. Its pages were crinkled
and stained, but it was still salvageable.
Feeling like I had
just saved a long lost friend from an earthquake, I sat down to read it. It
evoked nostalgia for a time lost when those of us who felt strongly mobilized
for a greater good – to end the war in Vietnam. The recipes were ones we don’t
often use now, but I relish the sentiment.
The introduction
to the book recalls a time when women were just beginning to have an impact on
the greater world:
“… We tried every which way to bring peace to
our land. We protested; we marched; we wrote letters; we leafleted; we vigiled;
we counseled on the Draft. We tried everything but inviting the President to
dinner and cooking a meal out of the first Peace de Resistance cookbook…We’re
impatient with the hash that has been made of things. We’re determined, by
every means possible…..to stir things up, to stew about what matters, to go on
serving Peace.
The
recipes, basic well-balanced meals, reveal an understanding that the women of
that era had of an often forgotten truth: You can’t do it all, at least not all
at once. There isn’t time to change the world and cook a gourmet meal every
night as well. Most of the recipes have a really short preparation time.
In the spirit of Peace de Resistance, I will
try a different recipe from the book each week. If any of you have recipes to
contribute, feel free to send them in. The one requirement is that the
preparation time can be no more than 15 minutes. In the year ahead – It’s now
5771 on the Jewish calendar, I challenge myself and all of you to spend less
time in the kitchen and more time making the world a better place. After all,
hash is still being made of lots of things.
In the spirit of Peace
de Resistance, I tried a recipe that isn’t in the book but should be. It’s
my mother June Rosenberg’s recipe for quiche. At age 88, she wrote and
circulated petitions in her retirement home to get the health care bill passed.
Thanks, Mom.
Quiche
– preparation time 15 minutes tops
Ingredients
One ready made frozen pie crust
One heaping tablespoon of mayonnaise
½ cup of milk
Tablespoon of flour
2 eggs
4 ounces of combined Swiss cheese and cheddar cheese diced
salt, pepper, and garlic to taste
1 6 oz. Can of tuna or cut veggies or slice of ham or whatever
you feel like adding
1) Preheat the oven to 350 degrees
Fahrenheit
2) Beat the
eggs
3) Dice the cheese – or cheat and
buy it already shredded
4)
Mix all the ingredients (except for the piecrust and the tuna
or whatever) in a mixing bowling
5)
Put the added ingredients that you choose on the bottom of the
pie crust
6)
Pour in the rest of the ingredients into the pie crust
7)
Bake for about 40 minutes or until a knife inserted comes up
clean.
Preparation time 12
minutes. I put in broccoli and mushrooms this time. It was delicious.
To learn more about me, visit my blog http://www.listeningtomytravels.blogspot.com
or read my book “Breaking the Fall” available on Kindle and as a paperback on
Amazon.
