Have you ever smoothed your family gathering with a little borscht?
American Baby by Gabrielle Glaser was recommended to me by a cousin in my own new/old Italian family who I only discovered about two years ago due to spitting in a tube and sending off my DNA test.
I was adopted at birth during the time period covered in the book. And that’s a big, but another, story!
While American Baby exposes the extreme trauma and level of secrets that surrounded adoption and pervaded the post WWII era in America, I felt every nuance of that as the moving story of Margaret and George and their infant son, David, who they were coerced into giving up as teenage parents, unfolds.
American Baby covers many facts and reports on statistics that help put their story in perspective, because it’s frame is much wider than the intimate story of Margaret and George’s unique life. But it is really only with hearing and reading the details of their lives that I tumbled up and down on my own deeply personal mountain path…
When Margaret gets to meet her son, it’s sadly, near the end of his life, she does what any mother might. She feeds him.
Cooking occupies an interesting place in the story as when Margaret went to the home to hide away while she was pregnant, the cook was the only one to show the girls some tenderness.
In Corvallis, Oregon, home economics majors spent six weeks in practice homes where they rotated shifts of cooking, cleaning and taking care of loaned-out infants who were in limbo between being born and whisked away from their birth mothers and adoption.
In Tel Aviv, David’s mother, Esther, and his friend, Ron’s mother, provided cheese blintz’s, eggplant salads, zucchini salads, kugel, schnitzel, and meatballs.
There was borscht. Stuffed cabbage.
Before his father died and before David went to Israel, he rebelled against his mother and chose cokes and doughnuts instead of her love-filled healthy food.
“What do I care? What do you care? I’m not even your son!”
But cooking was exactly what Margaret did for her son, David, when very close to the end of his life, she finally got to meet him.
One of the first things Margaret did was make him a chocolate chip cake.
When the two families, the adopted one and the birth family, got together they ate a Shabbat lunch that was FedExed from a NY kosher deli.
Cooking and food joined them all together in a very rich way. Have you ever smoothed your family gathering together with a little borscht?
What do you think about adoption? Were you adopted? Perhaps you adopted a child? Leave a comment below.
roasted greek eggplant and zucchini salad
serves 8-10 as an appetizer
2 to 2 1/2 pound eggplant, cut into cubes
1 sweet onion, peeled and cubed
1-2 zucchini, cubed
1/2 cup olive oil
1 sprig each, fresh mint and fresh oregano
salt and freshly cracked black pepper to taste
4 rounds of pita bread, cut in four triangles
this recipe is so easy!
preheat the oven to 400 degrees. in a small roasting pan, place the cubed vegetables, drizzle them with a generous splash of olive oil. toss well.
sprinkle with salt and pepper. remove the leaves from the mint and oregano bunches. add these to the oil-tossed vegetables. roast all of this in the pan for 30-35 minutes or until caramelized.
place the cut pita on a baking sheet and toast for 10 minutes.
for a rougher presentation, mix and smash the roasted vegetables before serving. or if you prefer a more hummus like texture, toss and smooth in the food processor.
line a platter with fig leaves and mound the dip in the middle and surround with the toasted pita.
