In My Kitchen, July 2026

New Things in My Kitchen

New octopus-shaped jar which Evelyn made for me.

Dragon coffee bowl, also by Evelyn.

New grill pan which marks the food with grill marks.

Magnets

New magnets on the refrigerator.

A Little Magnet History

My magnet collection, which contains quite a few of them, hasn’t changed much lately, but Evelyn visited Arches National Park in June, and brought me the Arches magnet. The second new magnet — which I bought at a local shop — depicts the “Big Tire,” which is a famous Detroit landmark on Highway 94 between Ann Arbor and Detroit. 

The photo from a car window, taken a couple of years ago, shows the actual Big Tire as we were driving past it. The structure inside the “tire” was originally a ferris wheel built for the New York World’s Fair in 1964. The tire company purchased the ferris wheel in 1966 at the end of the fair. They moved it to its current location beside the freeway where it was repurposed as a record-setting outdoor advertisement. 

It makes a good magnet!

What We’ve Been Eating

Ripe local peaches. The stone-fruit season is just starting.

Lots of vegetables: here, tomatoes, green beans, potatoes.

Fresh corn

Meatballs

Berries

Len's Bread

Salmon from Seattle, a gift from Miriam

Salmon that Alice cooked for us in her kitchen

Blintzes in a fairly recently purchased skillet.

Pasta with cheese and pepper (cacio e pepe) — an Ottolenghi recipe

Cherry tomatoes, sweet potatoes, and grilled chicken

More Berries

Cookbook from the library: most of the recipes call for too much chili pepper.

In July we can cook outdoors all the time, and often do so.

 All Photos © 2026 mae sander

Shared with In My Kitchen, the monthly blog event

Blintzes for Breakfast

 

Blintzes and Pie

 

Elaine’s blintzes are the best. I’ve posted photos of them before but they are worth another look!
We had them for dinner and are about to have more for breakfast.

Elaine’s peach pie is the best.

Photos © 2026 mae sander

Books and Flowers

I’ve reread two Icelandic mystery stories by Eva Björg Ægisdóttir. Good ones! 
The series now has four books, and the author will soon publish another one.

What is a monster? Claire Dederer devotes this entire book, Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma, to an effort define this term insofar as it relates to gifted men — geniuses — creators — who are abusers, sexual predators, racists, antisemites, or worse. Men whose brilliant creations are stained in the eyes of the audience member who loves their work but becomes aware of the reality of the artist. One way she says it:

“I realized that for me, over the past few years of thinking about Polanski, thinking about Woody Allen, thinking about all these complicated men I loved, the word had come to take on a new meaning. It meant something more nuanced, and something more elemental. It meant: someone whose behavior disrupts our ability to apprehend the work on its own terms.” (p 46)

This is a terrific book, full of interesting insights into the consumers of great literature, art, film, and music who struggle with the sins of the artists. As a combination of memoir, literary criticism, and general observations about works of art, it's wide-ranging and readable. One very interesting theme is the contrast between men who create with women who create. Though  creative women and men can both be monsters, it’s never for the same reasons, and there are many examples to show the differences.

Another theme is how critics writing about the arts deal with the impact of a creative person's immorality or evil-doing on the audience for their work. The author tries to get to the heart of the claim that a critic can be objective and judge the art independent of its maker: “Authoritative criticism believes in the myth of the objective response, a response entirely unshaped by feeling, emotion, subjectivity.” (p. 73) Basically the author concludes that objectivity about art is a myth: a male myth. 

I enjoyed a lot of the varied accounts of authors/creators and their history:

• I enjoyed Claire Dederer’s insights about a number of creators that I haven’t thought about recently, such as Gertrude Stein, Doris Lessing, Jenny Disky, Sylvia Plath, Woody Allen, Richard Wagner, Picasso, and many more, and the varied ways their biographies might affect their audiences.
• I enjoyed it when she reminded me of the strange 1960s life of Valerie Solanis (1936-1988), author of the SCUM Manifesto, but better known for shooting Andy Warhol: in case you don’t know about Valerie Solanis, SCUM stands for “Society for Cutting Up Men.”
• I enjoyed her examination of the challenges to women who want to be both creators and mothers, and maybe do terrible things to their children (or maybe just abandon them, terrible enough). Or maybe abandon their art.
• I enjoyed her short biography of the little-known artist Ana Mendieta, whose death “makes a kind of parable about artistic silence.” A few weeks ago, I read Anita de Monte Laughs Last by Xochitl Gonzalez, thinking it was purely a work of fiction, but I checked up and discovered that it wasn’t simply fiction, but a fictionalized life of Ana, who was actually killed by her husband — also an artist. He was tried but let off, which is a scandal and clearly an example of an artist monster. I appreciated Claire Dederer’s insights about this particular example of the artist/husband who gets away with murder — and of a victim who was spectacularly diminished by her abuser.

The author presents the reader with many questions about those who love the works of genius/monsters, and those who justify the monstrousness. One possible explanation: “We want the asshole to cross the line, to break the rules. We reward that rule-breaking, and then we go a step further, and see it as endemic to art-making itself. We reward and reward this bad behavior until it becomes synonymous with greatness.” (p. 111) 

If you would like to read about fairness, this is not the book for you. The number of ways that society is unfair to women are unbearably numerous, from the unfairness to the victims of artists’ self-justified cruelty and violence to the unfairness to women artists. Even “cancelling” an artist for his vices isn’t very satisfactory. Quotes:

• “The very term ‘cancel culture’ is hopelessly non-useful, with its suggestion that the loss of status for the accused is somehow on a par with the suffering endured by the victim.” (p.133)
• “The violence of male artists is tied to their greatness. It’s an impulse. It’s freedom. The violence or self-harm of female artists can be a sign of sensitivity, a sign of lunacy, but it is rarely turned inside out to become a sign of creative and moral strength.” (p. 222)

In this review, I have hardly begun to explore the many-faceted content of this book. (It goes without saying that the author presents her own view of Lolita.) I’ll just leave you with this:

“It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of patriarchy.” (p. 221)

Next book:  Sojourner Truth by Nell Irvin Painter.

Gardens Around Me

Allium, about to bloom.

On the Road Again

It’s Saturday, and we left home at 8 AM.
Our destination is St.Louis. We are half-way there, in Indiana, at my sister’s house.

We arrived in time for a fabulous lunch.

Blog post and photos © mae sander 2024

Blume Lempel

“Blume Lempel used stream-of-consciousness, flashback, and free association in her writing to create unique stories with themes rarely seen in Yiddish literature: eroticism, incest, and rape. Born in Galicia, Lempel began to write while living in Paris between 1929 and 1939. — https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/lempel-blume

Blume Lempel (1907 -  1999) was a Yiddish author of stories about life in Paris, Ukraine, and New York. Translations of some of her stories only appeared recently, in particular the volume Oedipus in Brooklyn, published in 2016. In this collection many stories depict escapees from the Holocaust, often agonizingly haunted by what happened to them, or mainly what they witnessed happening to their family or fellow villagers. 

The individuals in Blume Lempel’s stories are distinct in many ways, but they all remember. In the last story of the collection — though perhaps the order is made by the translators — she summarizes:

“Each according to his ability must convey what he saw, what he lived through, what he thought, what he felt. You did not survive simply to eat blintzes with sour cream. You survived to bring back those who were annihilated. You must speak in their tongue, point with their fingers.”

Elsewhere she describes the life and then the death of a young woman:

“A German put a bullet in her belly and left her lying in the street with her guts spilling out. The sight was so unsettling that the peasants crossed themselves in fear on their way to church that Sunday. In my mind I lift her up and carry her far away from human eyes. Surely if a wolf came upon her in the forest he would devour her. A cannibal would make a feast of her. Yet her ultra-civilized murderer left her lying in the street to show the world what he could do.”

“Through the skylight of my Parisian garret I used to look up at the tiny rectangle of heaven that fortune had allotted me and conjure up Zosye’s lush, slumbering garden. How I cursed the fate that had stranded me in Paris on my way to Israel! Zosye did not want to go to Israel, nor did she need to. For her, the vine was abloom with all the brilliant hues of the bejeweled peacock that resides in the dreams of every young woman. How could she have known, as she played the piano, that the civilization of those magical notes was even then writing her people’s death sentence? How could she have known that form and harmony were but the seductive song of the Lorelei, the façade behind which the cannibal sharpened his crooked teeth?”

The book is also full of life, of the life before and after the death camps, the obliterated villages, the tormented Jewish villagers. Here’s a description about a family, an aunt and a grandmother and how they make a living:

“She and my grandmother run a one-day restaurant for the market folk. Each customer receives a bowl of soup containing a quarter of a roast chicken with parsnip, dill, and other delicious things whose fragrance fills the house and wafts out into the market square.”

And the torment of the experience: “Zoesye picks up a stalk of straw …. She thinks mostly about eating. Not about the wild strawberries with sweet cream that her mother used to serve, but about bread with salt, perhaps with a clove of garlic.”

What’s even more fascinating, the book is full of evidence of a totally modern intellectual writer, with characters who read Madam Bovary, Anna Karenina, the poems of T.S.Eliot, the Greek tragedies (including Oedipus, the parallel to the title story). One character goes on a trip to Yosemite with “a pair of binoculars, a warm coat, some candy for energy, and the inevitable camera.” Another volunteers with the residents of a home:  “Dressed in black, I go often to the old age home. Once a week I read aloud from Isaac Bashevis Singer’s Stories from Behind the Stove in Yiddish. After I read, the audience peppers me with questions having nothing to do with the book.” These characters seem to be versions of the author herself, but as a reader one never knows. But they live in a present that is very familiar. One story begins:

“Lying under my apple tree, I make a conscious effort to detach myself from the outside world. Eyes closed, I attempt to follow the teachings of Zen Buddhism and rise above the stifling heat, the children’s racket, and the airplanes swooping overhead like birds of prey. It’s the middle of July. Apollo 11 has landed safely on the moon, a great human achievement that leaves a strange taste in my mouth, a taste I can neither swallow nor spit out.”

How can I relate to these stories? 

Dara Horn (in the book People Love Dead Jews, blogged here) observed that stories told by those who actually lived through the torments of destruction of their way of life were very different from the fake feel-good Holocaust stories that are so popular now. It’s much more agonizing to read Blume Lempel’s characters’ actual memories, of horrors too great to grasp and events so brutal that the hardly seem real to the teller. Occasionally there’s a story of revenge, which is also satisfying and unusual. In the entire collection, there’s never a story of redemption through some good deed by some exceptional gentile like the current fictional renditions often present. In real life this may have happened, but not here.

Blume Lempel’s hometown was a traditional Eastern European shtetl, such as is often idealized by the vivid film of Fiddler on the Roof (and by the many amateur productions of the musical). Blume Lempel escaped in 1929, intending to go to Palestine; on the way she stopped in Paris, where she lived for a decade;  then in New York for the remainder of her life. During her stay in Paris, she started to write stories and novels in Yiddish, her native language. She was first published in the 1940s in various Yiddish publications. 

Lempel’s characters often have early memories in their village homes, which at times seem to be her own first-person story, but these are stories mainly of their current lives in New York or Paris, the memories form a painful background to their subsequent lives and relationships. Being survivors and witnesses is in the background of their experience. Above all, Blume Lempel was a wonderful writer, creating characters and short histories that spark to life as one reads. I’m glad that a recent message from the Yiddish Book Center reminded me finally to read this book.

Review © 2023 mae sander

Visiting Indiana

After watching the weather reports for days, we finally decided that it was time to drive to visit Elaine and Larry in West Lafayette. Needless to say, the constantly revised predictions of snow here there or everywhere or nowhere were an agonizing thing to deal with. And in the end, the trip was fine! 

Elaine made blintzes!

Dinner: blintzes with sour cream an fruit; smoked salmon on rye bread (made by Len).

 

 Blog post © 2022 mae sander

"A Jewish Refugee in New York"

A Jewish Refugee in New York: A Novel, by Kadya Molodovsky is a new translation from a serialized Yiddish publication that ran in the New York Yiddish newspaper Morgn-zhurnal (Morning journal), beginning in 1941. It consists of the entries of a fictitious journal of a girl called Rivke Zilberg. She relates the first 10 months of her life in New York, between December, 1939, and October, 1940. Rivke had escaped from Lublin, where the Nazis were just beginning to execute their plan to destroy the Jewish communities and their residents in Eastern Europe. She lives first with her aunt and uncle, and then with generous strangers who help her find work and some independence.

A question that has troubled me all my life is this: How much did American Jews know about what was happening to the Jews in Europe during the war? Over time, I have learned that from the earliest days of the war, there was no mystery about the ongoing destruction of Jewish life there. This book makes that perfectly clear. 

Often, I also wonder what was life like for a "greenhorn" -- the mocking term which the more assimilated Jews applied to newcomers. My mother's family arrived in the US in 1905, and she was born a few years later, and went to American school from kindergarten through college. So she was never subject to this treatment, but her sisters remembered the arrival of their cousins in the early 1920s. Their adjustment was swift but it must have been painful. In the 1990s, one of the immigrant sisters still complained because she said someone treated her "like a greenhorn."

A Jewish Refugee in New York offers a variety of insights into the thoughts and experiences of a refugee from Hitler as she joins an assimilated community and tries to learn English and not be a burden to others. Rivka's journal entries tell a fascinating story. After all these years, this book has just been translated for the first time by Anita Norich, who says: "It is the story of a young woman shaped by historical crises, trying to make sense of her place in a bewildering, threatening world." (Kadya Molodovsky. A Jewish Refugee in New York: A Novel, p. vii). 

Rather than reviewing the book, I'm going to quote passages that make clear how it illuminates the life of a 20-year-old woman.

Far away from New York: Quotes from A Jewish Refugee in New York

"Today, I read in the newspaper about what is being done to Jews in Lublin. Even though I already knew about it earlier, it was upsetting. Yesterday I dreamed that I saw my brother Mikhl standing deathly pale, and suddenly he jumped wildly as if he was in great pain."  (pp. 24-25). 

"My father writes that he’s living at Krasulye’s and Krasulye is no more. I received the letter this morning and read it aloud to my aunt and uncle. My aunt said, 'So, thank God, at least they have a roof over their heads!' She thought that Krasulye was someone’s name, but when I told her that it was the name of our cow and that my father and brother were now living in Krasulye’s shed, she stopped thanking God. I wept uncontrollably. The letter was mailed in January, in the coldest weather. Where are they living now? And what’s happened to our home? Has it burned down? Did the Germans take it away? Who knows?" (p. 47). 

"I dreamt about my father last night. He was lying in Krasulye’s stall, on the ground, with his back against the wall, and I saw how cold he was, how he held his hands under a mound of straw. It tugged at my heart, and I jumped up wide awake." (p. 50).

"I want to know what’s happening in Lublin. What’s happening with my father and brother? The newspapers say that they’re sending all the young men away to be slaves in Germany." (p. 98). 

"I was at the wedding, but I was seeing Lublin, my father in Krasulye’s stall, Chatskel, and poor, blind Janet [other relatives who had not escaped Europe]. It was as if they were all standing near me, behind a curtain." (p. 171). 

American Life from A Jewish Refugee in New York

"Everybody says something different about America. The laundress says you have to take America with aspirin in the beginning, and Mendl Pushcart says that you can’t take the measure of your headache here. Maybe he’s right. Should I be upset just because I’m tired? Maybe it’s all not so hard. I just thought . . . and then my heart ached again because I saw how alone I was on Grand Street. Will I be able to bear it? What will become of me? I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know anything." ( p. 101).

"Awlriyt is the kind of word that always comes in handy. Awlriyt means good. But if you say it twice—awlriyt, awlriyt—it means leave me alone! Enough already! Awlriyt also means I understand you fully. And that must have been what Eddie’s awlriyt meant." (p. 90). 

"So, despite the fact that my grandfather, Reb Mottele, lived in the forest near Lublin, and despite the fact that he’s been dead for about ten years, and even despite the fact that he probably never gave a single thought to New York, he’s still more important in New York than I am, even though I’m already able to ride the subway. Rebbe Finkl and Mrs. Rubin both thought it mattered a great deal that I was Reb Mottele Zilberg’s grandchild." (p. 120). 

Food in A Jewish Refugee in New York

"My aunt made blintzes for Shavuos." (p. 131).

"When I got home, I found my aunt pickling herring. The smell of vinegar and cloves was all over the apartment. It smelled like Purim." (p. 50).

"All of New York called us up on the phone because of the Purim ball. My aunt heads the table committee, so the phone never stopped ringing. Mrs. Rabkin, the new vice president, called up to say that she had a kayk, and what a kayk. She didn’t say what she meant by 'what a cake.' All she said was, 'You have to see it.' Mrs. Erlich called to say that she was bringing fifty hamantaschen and a poppy seed cake to the ball. She also reported that Mrs. Rubin had gotten a hundred bottles of Coca-Cola. Mrs. Sunshine called to say that she had twelve bottles of Carmel wine." (p. 55). 

"We drank a few cups of coffee, and I ate the sendvitch she offered me. I’m not so fond of eating sandwiches. As soon as I try to take a bite, either cheese or salami or some other filling falls out. Americans make a big deal of a sendvitch, but I think of it as three separate things that should remain separate." (p. 30). 

"No matter what’s going on, there are sendvitches. It’s really something, these sandwiches. You can always find them on a walk, at a party, or at a wedding. We had dairy sandwiches and meat ones. Mrs. Shore made two cheese sandwiches, so my aunt made two with chopped liver. Mrs. Shore made two with eggs, so my aunt made two with salami. Mrs. Shore made two with herring, so my aunt made two with chicken. Mrs. Shore made two with lox, so my aunt made two with meatloaf. Mrs. Shore made two with mayonnaise and green peppers, so my aunt made two with chicken gizzards. And whether the sandwich was dairy or meat, every one came with half a cucumber covered in salt. I looked at that mountain of sandwiches and saw Chatskel and Janet  before me, dragging themselves around who knows where and who knows how long it’s been since they’ve had any food in their mouths." (p. 139). 

A neighbor tells Rivke: “When my Harry gets a little crazy, it doesn’t matter to him who he fights with. He just has to find an enemee. He fights with whoever he finds.... Do you know what I do then? I make potato pancakes! My Harry really likes them. No matter how angry he is, if I bring in a plate of potato pancakes, he makes up with his enemee right away. I don’t know how we’d live if there were no potato pancakes in the world." (p. 42). 

Afterthought

Remember: A Jewish Refugee in New York was published at the very beginning of World War II, long before many the worst atrocities of the Holocaust happened, and before many other more famous Holocaust books were written! If you have been reading recently published novels that try to create a "feel good" attitude towards the Holocaust or purporting to create moral lessons from the fate of the Jews, you might consider reading A Jewish Refugee in New York -- or even consider reading a real first-hand account of life and death in wartime Europe. For more on this, see Dara Horn's book People Love Dead Jews, which I reviewed here.

Blog post © 2022, mae sander.
Quotes from A Jewish Refugee in New York as attributed.

Nalysnyky: Ukrainian Filled Pancakes

Monday was the first day of our road trip. We drove from Ann Arbor to West Lafayette, Indiana, to visit my sister Elaine and brother-in-law Larry. I’ll be posting about the various places we go. For now — we’ve only had dinner!

Elaine made us two types of filled pancakes that have roots in Ukraine: Nalysnyky and Blintzes, The Nalysnyky recipe came from her friend Marlene, whose family immigrated from Ukraine to Saskatchewan two generations ago — but many different recipes for this dish are available. Marlene lived in Indiana for some time, where she and my sister became friends, but unfortunately she passed away last year.

These pancakes are filled with a dill-flavored cottage cheese mixture, rolled, and topped with fried onions. 

The filled pancakes, topped with onions, are baked in a baking dish.

We ate the pancakes with smoked salmon and more dill.

Recipe card from Elaine’s friend Marlene. Elaine made the variation with dill.

Elaine also made blintzes from the same pancake batter, using
our family recipe. Our mother’s parents came from Ukraine in  1905.

Of course we are thinking of the overwhelming atrocities being inflicted on Ukraine by the Russian invasion, and we know that many people are thinking of the Ukrainians now, as we are.

Blog post © 2022 mae sander.