Rocky Zweig is too funny!

Golfer, you would be making a good point in general, but I was using the same oven she did. But you are correct in that different ovens do actually bake differently, even at what appears to be the same temperature.

The chocolate chip recipe comes right off the pack of Nestle Tollhouse Chocolate Morsels.I use a pareve Jewish brand of chips, because Nestles is considered dairy. And you HAVE to use the optional nuts in the recipe. Makes all the difference.

As to the challah – there is NO way to give you her recipe, and as I no longer have the specific utensils she used, I can’t even measure out the ingredients the same way. I’ll give you an example. She used a floru sifter as her measure. So she would tell me to take “ah measure und a hef, and den ah FULL measure.” She used a specific large serving spoon to measure out her Kosher salt, and a sugar scoop of a specific size and shape for the sugar. No other scoop was right, and when I mislaid the scoop some years after she died, I enver found one that was the correct proportion. She used “ah bissele oil mit a gantze measure (a different kind) fun heiseh vasser, ober nisht tzu heis.” You see what I mean? Mostly she used two packages of dry yeast. And she put in 4-5 eggs, depending on how much more flour she would add in.

This dough was an all purpose one for savory OR sweet things. She could make the MOST delicious onion rolls from it, after making whatever challahs she needed, or roll it out with cinnamon and some more sugar and raisins and walnuts, and had the very best babka you ever tasted. Mamesh taam Gan Eden, we used to say. Erev Shabbos, you could smell the challah baking from a block away, and that was the aroma greeting me as I returned from school each Friday afternoon. All this talk is making me very nostalgic and a little sad, because no one will ever make challah that does it for me as hers did.

Golfer, it was my pleasure. My Bubby O”H was a funny, wonderful lady. She lived with us for the last 30 years of her life, and really helped to raise us. Just to illustrate how special she was, my FATHER was delighted to have his mother-in-law living with us. She never imposed her will on my parents, but was always a helping and guiding hand in every way. And she was HILARIOUS, mostly unintentionally.

One day, we got up to get ready for school, and Bubby was in the kitchen downstairs making hot cereal for us, as she loved to do every day. All of a sudden we hear a gevald coming from the kitchen. We ran down, thinking the worst, maybe she had chalilah burned herself or fallen, and came to the sight of a saucepan overflowing with bubbles. She had cooked a potful of Matey Bath Soap Bubbles (Any old timers here remember them?), thinking it was farina. Whenever I am sad, I just need to remember that day. Our kitchen stovetop never looked so clean!

My parents were profoundly grateful to have her with us, and so were we. What she did for us, she did with much love, and we were truly blessed. Her physical care came to me the last year of her life at nearly 87, when she became ill and bedridden. And it was my zechus. I could never repay her for everything she was to us and did for us when I was growing up. And my mom O”H learned by her example, and imparted the same lessons to all of us.

Maybe he’s been blocked.

The only rock I am interested in hearing me this week is

Tzur Yisroel.

(No offense to Yerachmiel – I still love your letters in the FJJ, too!)

Usually has me in stitches, but the ILGWU gave me mussar.

LOOK FOR THE UNION LABEL”

Boy, does that date us!!!! (and btw, I was singing it in my head, when I typed it).

May all the naarishkeit in your kup, give you happy memories of your father Z”L.