Being a Nice Jewish Girl, dishes which include ham hocks (collard greens, hoppin john) are not part of my repertoire in the kitchen. On the other hand, being a Nice Southern Girl, they should be. So I make broccoli rabe instead of collard greens, or I make mustard greens, or other bitter greens that can be well-made without ham parts. But for New Year’s a southerner just has to have hoppin john (that’s black eyed peas with ham and stuff) for a year of good luck. Fortunately for me, my worlds collide on this matter, because there is a traditional Sephardic dish for Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish new year) which contains, not ham hocks, but veal or lamb. It’s muy yummy. You have the time, and you have been told about its good luck bringing qualities, so make yourself a mess of this, and have a lovely new year.

Lubyeh (from Joan Nathan’s Jewish Cooking in America)

1 onion, chopped

2 cloves garlic, chopped

1/2 pound veal stew meat, cut into one-inch cubes

2 cups water

1 cup black eyed peas, soaked overnight in water

1 teaspoon salt or to taste

1/8 teaspoon pepper

1 teaspoon allspice

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

2 tablespoons tomato paste

1. In a heavy skillet with a cover, saute the onions and garlic lightly in the oil

2. Add the cubed veal and brown briefly. Add 1 1/2 cups of the water, cover and simmer slowly for 20 minutes.

3. Meanwhile, drain and simmer the black eyed peas in water to cover for 20 minutes. Drain and add the peas, salt, pepper, spices, tomato paste, and the remaining 1/2 cup water to the veal mixture. Cover and cook over low heat for 1 hour or until the peas and veal are tender. If the stew dries out, add a little more water. Serve warm.

Yield: 8 servings

Well, the fat dirty bastard may not have had a cell phone, but what ever was causing him to make those noises was apparently virulent and airborne, because I’ve been in bed with a stupid sinus infection for the past two days. Went to work on Wednesday and by the time I got home had a throat tickle, and sore lymph nodes and a headache and woke up the next morning with a full-blown sinus problem. Thank Dog for videos and hot toddies. Must go back to sleep.

Yesterday being Christmas, the RLA, the surrogate daughers, Star and I did the traditional thing for Jewish people: we went to a movie. Usually the traditional thing is Chinese food and a movie, but we broke tradition to grab a bite at a Cuban restaurant, and then went to see Sweeney Todd, which we were certain would be appropriate viewing for the holiday.

And it was a huge disappointment. Yes, Johnny sang. Yes, Helena was her usual brilliant self. Yes, nobody can play dark and oily evil like Alan Rickman (and I wish he’d do a little more comedy and maybe a light romance). And yes, Tim Burton is a genius and Johnny and Helena are his (identical) muses, and the sets were gloriously dark and the costumes ditto. Yes, yes, yes. Everything about the film was perfect, except the film. It was a snooze. Literally. The RLA fell asleep.

I can only think that the source material was poor, which means I must be the only person in the universe who thinks the play was lackluster and thin.

The most interesting part of the movie was the cast’s teeth. I don’t think a single actor or actress was sporting veneers or dental work. Everyone had crooked teeth. Perfect white chicklets have become so inescapable in Hollywood, that it was a notable thing to see. Now how sad is that, that the thing that impressed me above and beyond the magic of film making was crooked teeth.

Sitting next to me was a large man with a bad cold. He kept snorffling and making horrid noises. I finally asked him, loudly, if he’d care for a tissue. He said no. And stopped making those disgusting noises. Unfortunately, nothing could be done about his body odor. At least his cell phone didn’t ring.

Long ago and far away, all of the Jews in my hometown lived in one house: my grandparent’s house. Then my parents moved to their own place, and a couple of years later, my cousins moved down the street from us. But in between, the old house on the river was the nexus of our family. My Grandma Dorfman lived with my cousins, too (she was my uncle’s mother-in-law). I remember the first time I ate one of her pierogis. I was maybe 4 or 5, and it’s really one of my earliest memories. My mother had driven to the big house for something…probably the pierogis… but I refused to get out of the car. Since this was the 50s and a tiny little town, I got left in the car while Mummy went inside. When she came out, she stuck her arm in through the car window and offered me a bite of some soft, warm, pale little dumpling thingy. I was uninpressed, and tried to refuse, but she managed to stuff it in my mouth anyway.

EPIPHANY! Oh. My. God. The taste! The melting quality of the feather-light dough! The fried onions and mashed potato filling! I immediately demanded to be taken out of the car and up to the kitchen for more of that stuff. Grandma Dorfman’s pierogis were legendary (and remember, the women in my family consider cooking to be a competitive sport, so there is stiff competition for that word… Grandma Kanarek’s cinnamon sticky buns…Mummy’s macaroni and cheese…Southern Cousin’s lemon bars… anything chocolate from the Girlcousin’s kitchen… Great Aunt Annie’s green beans and aphids (yeah, legendary in a bad way: she couldn’t cook for shit, poor thing)) Well, over the years, Mummy and my Auntie Em tried to get the recipe for pierogis, but Grandma Dorfman cooked by feel and taste. Measurements were “a handful” or “until it tastes right”, and even then, that changed. A handful might be deemed not enough later in the recipe and then another pinch or dribble might be required. Or might be required to come out, if say, the eggs were small and there seemed to be too much flour on the outside of the well into which they were broken.

So the pierogi recipe exists, sort of. I have, over the years, made them with butter, with goose fat, with yukon gold potatoes and Idaho Russets. I take them to Auntie Em for taste testing, and they always fall short of her mother’s ideal. I have searched and Googled, and explored the world wide web for years, and still can’t quite find the right recipe.

Here’s what it must have: a dough made with a boiled potato. It must be kosher. Although I thought the goose fat came closest in taste, Auntie Em says that it’s a dairy dish, and therefore, could not have been made with schmaltz. Butter, yes. Sour cream, oh hell yes. But it was a dish from the poor shtetl, so it had to be minimal and cheap. Flour. Water. Potatoes. Onions.

Can anyone out there on the interwebs help a sister out? I must have pierogies. Please. I’d even knit you a scarf.

When I was a sophomore at the University of Miami, I received a nasty shock on the first day of my graphic design class. We were going to be doing photography and we would have to have a single lens reflex camera. So much for my extra cash. I had to buy a camera. I didn’t want to. I hated the very thought of being forced to take pictures when I would rather have been drawing. I complained, bitterly, the whole time I shopped for my little Pentax. I complained, bitterly, while I shot 36 frames of black and white film. I complained, still bitterly, while I learned to process my own film. I was still complaining as I pulled the film off the reel, and held it up to the light to see what I had done. Were there images? Were they in focus? Had I screwed up the processing? And the answers were yes, yes and no. And I stopped complaining. I was entranced, enchanted and thoroughly bitten by the photography bug. It became my minor. I had keys to every darkroom on the UM campus. I shot for fun, I shot for profit. I lived in the darkrooms. I even got a job years later from someone who remembered me as a girl who never had a tan, because I was always up to my elbows in the soup. My hands smelled like photo chemicals; my nails were yellow.

I can’t tell you how many rolls of film I put through that Pentax. I can’t tell you the thrill that getting my first Nikon gave me, or the heartbreak when it was stolen. I replaced it, a couple of times. I still have the F2AS, and several lenses, multiple filters, multiple focusing screens, flashes, cases and tripods. The first design for the studio that the RLA and I intend to build next to our house even had plans for a dark room. But I haven’t shot a roll of film in years. I have been shooting with a digital camera. First I had a Nikon Coolpix, now I have a Sony that is so tiny, it’s smaller than my wallet. I carry it everywhere, and if I say so myself, take some damn fine pictures with it. But.

But now I want a new Nikon. I want a digital SLR. I want interchangeable lenses. I want to be able to focus manually. I want to be able to manipulate the f-stops and exposures. I want the heft of an SLR, so that hand held long exposures are possible. I want a Nikon D40. But the cost is prohibitive, and my old equipment isn’t worth very much on Ebay. Not that I want to sell it. But it’s worth more as a memento or a film prop than it is as a working camera, and that just pains me.

I’ve been trying to ignore this desire, but it is an itch which is demanding to be scratched.