Three Generations of Women

By: Bozhena Johnson

Have you ever tried red baked apples with custard cream inside? You can eat them cold, and they are delicious. My mom used to make them when I was a little kid. When I was in the third grade, in 1986, in Moldova, Mama made me 30 apples for my birthday and brought them to school for my classmates. My friends had never tried that dessert before, but they devoured it.

I have never made it myself, but as I write this, I know exactly how to make it. The cream for the apples is the same as the one my mom used for Napoleon cake or cream puffs. To fill the apples with cream, she would make a deep, round scoop out of the apples at the top after baking them. She would fill them with a generous dollop of custard cream and let them rest on the countertop. She would even put them in the refrigerator to set, since the cream contained eggs. Here I am including a custard cream recipe that is identical to my mom’s, by Babushka Emma. 

Custard Cream Recipe:

4 cups of milk and ⅓ cup of sugar are placed in a pot and slowly boiled on medium heat. In a separate container, add 4 eggs and 4 tbsp of all-purpose flour, then blend with a hand blender. Put two ladles of heated milk into the egg mixture. Blend again, then pour it swiftly into the remaining hot milk on the stove. You want to do it swiftly to prevent clumps. Keep mixing the cream so it doesn’t get stuck to the pot’s walls. Do not boil the mixture. This recipe is given by Babushka Emma in Russian on YouTube. I learned to make many recipes from her videos. 

After my birthday, my friends asked me many times, “When is your mom coming back again with more delicious baked apples?” I remember especially one boy, blonde and with blue eyes, who would light up every time he would ask me if my mom was coming back with more treats. Now that I think about it, it was rare, or maybe never happened, that a parent would bring homemade treats for their kids. They would bring ready-made desserts from the store at times. 

Mom also made cakes for birthdays and holidays at home, and she would bake a Napoleon cake or another cake, like a smetannik or a teremok. She would also make different salads that would usually contain some mayonnaise or sour cream. I also liked it when she made little penguins out of farmer’s cheese, which is not like American cottage cheese; it is firmer in texture and not watery,  with pressed garlic mixed in and some mayo. She would assemble the penguin with olives on top and a little piece of carrot for a beak. Oh boy, those were my favorites. I would stand in front of the table and wait for guests to arrive, and I could feel myself reaching out for a little penguin. Mom would come in and say, “Hands to yourself.” We were never allowed to pick from the table, which was very rude, so we didn’t. 

When guests arrived, people ate and drank. They would ask for seconds and for some cake to go. My mom didn’t mind. My sister and I would go to sleep, and my mom would stay up alone until two in the morning to wash and clean all the china. No, she wasn’t a single mom. My father never helped with any of the cleanup stuff. I didn’t understand how much work my mom did to keep people happy and fed. We rarely went to other people’s houses for reciprocity. Since 2010, when I got married and as a grown woman, mother, and wife, I am grateful that my husband doesn’t expect me to do that type of work. 

My mom liked to wear makeup, like purplish pink lipstick and blue eyeshadows, which were popular in the 80s, and she liked to accessorize. She loved dangling big earrings. Mom was the coolest. She didn’t have a big wardrobe, but I loved all her outfits. She always had a full-time job, our house was spotless, and we always had food on the table. Mom made fresh food almost daily. Some days, the food lasted for two days, especially if she made a lot of soup or borscht. Mom especially liked to make chicken soup for us. Sometimes, she would make it with buckwheat and sometimes with noodles. I liked it with noodles more. When I would get sick and have a sore throat, she would make egg noodles with farmers' cheese ( Lapsha s tvorogom). As a kid, I would die for it when I was sick. I would ask my mom to make it for me. She would never say no to me. I was definitely babied as the firstborn. I remember eating two servings of lapsha s tvorogom.  It is very easy to make. 

Recipe of Lapsha s Tvorogom:

You boil egg noodles until they are ready. 

Drain in a colander. Add farmer cheese and salt and mix. You serve it hot. 

I make that for my family, but using Ricotta cheese makes it a little less sour, and the taste and texture are smoother. Mom would also make chicken soup when I was sick. I was sick quite often, and one time my elementary school teacher came to visit me and brought me two large candies: waffle layers covered in chocolate. I was so excited that she came and brought me a treat. To me, it was a great honor, because it meant the teacher thought I was special enough to visit me. I thought I had died and gone to heaven, but maybe I was just feverish. My grandmother and mom both made hot milk with honey. They say that it is suitable for my throat. When I smelled that concoction in the air, I felt like I was going to throw up. My son was never made to drink hot milk, but he loves to boil some milk for himself as a treat. Those are not my genes, for sure!

I remember asking my mom to make different marinated things for me as a side dish. She would run to the farmer’s market after her shift at work. I would say, “Hey, Mom, can you marinate some bell peppers? Can you make eggplant salad?” Mom would run and get the veggies and bring them home. She would fry the bell peppers until you could peel the skin off the bell peppers. She would immerse them in water with vinegar, salt, sugar, and garlic, then refrigerate them. A few hours later, you can eat marinated bell peppers with dinner. Eggplants had their own place in our lives. At times, she would make them Moldovan style. She would slice them into circles, dip them into flour, and fry them. She would serve them hot with sour cream on the side. I love that dish and still make it today. She also baked eggplants, peeled them, and mashed the flesh with a fork. She would chop onions finely, add sour cream and salt or mayonnaise, and let them refrigerate. Another version was to add chopped onions and cubed tomatoes, salt and pepper, and sunflower oil. Sunflower oil was the most popular oil. I still like to buy it at Trader Joe's.  Mom’s love language towards us was through keeping the house clean, taking care of us, and, of course, cooking for us. 

My maternal grandmother, Gitel,  liked to cook and bake, too. Initially, she lived in Ukraine, Mogilev Podoliskiy, with my grandpa. I would spend summers with them. Financially, they had very little money, but they more than made up for it with their big hearts. My grandma knew how to sew, so she would even make her own clothes, including clothes for her kids when they were little. She was the first to trust me with some dough. We made pelmeni, pierogies, pies, chicken soup, and dumplings. I loved it when she made mini pies with freshly baked shredded pumpkin inside. As it would get dark and my grannies went to sleep, I went hunting for pies. I would eat some in the dark and go to bed. The following day, my grandmother would yell at my grandpa, “ Why did you eat more pie?” He, of course, knew it was my doing. I would just shrug. He never confronted my lies about pies. My grandparents survived World War II. My grandpa was a commanding officer during the war. He would tell me many stories about the battlefields and the shootings. I didn’t realize it was therapeutic for both of us. I had a listening ear, and I loved history. He loved to tell me his war stories. So, we both benefited from our friendship, and our bond grew stronger. Out of all his grandkids, I was his favorite. He left me all his medals and dominoes that we played with. I loved going to the movies with him, and he would tell me how he used to be the director of the movie theater when he was younger. My grandfather had only one arm, and he learned to do everything with one arm as he was handicapped. He lost his right arm during a bombing during World War II. It didn’t stop him from teaching me how to build things and how to sand, polish, and paint wood. I am grateful for that because I can now do repairs around the house. I have just repainted one of my bathrooms and loved the process. Thank you, Grandpa Shaya. My son, Shawn, was named after him. Shawn’s Hebrew name is Shaya.  My grandmother and my mom also knew how to make a sweet roulade, fluden, with walnuts, honey, poppy seeds, and other dry fruits. I have been looking for a recipe for years. I have seen some Hungarian recipes similar to that, but nothing exact. I am still looking. I made it once, but it didn’t turn out right. My grandmother also liked to make sugar cookies for tea time. On many gloomy days, we would have tea around 5 pm with some sugar cookies; those were the best times!

I remember how my grandpa ate bread with everything, even fruits. He would eat watermelon with some white bread. He was slender, but because he lived through the war, he always got pleasure from being full. My grandmother also told me a lot about World War II because she had to move to Siberia with her firstborn daughter, my mother’s sister, Nelya. She told me how they used to wear mittens stuffed with boiled potatoes to keep themselves warm. Potatoes were the main staple during that starvation period. Grandma Gitya used to make many different dishes from potatoes. She would make mashed potatoes, fried potatoes, potato latkes, and potato pierogies. Food supplies were scarce during that time. 

Also, during the summer, we made vegetable salads for dinner. Cubed tomatoes, chopped yellow onion, cubed cucumbers, and thinly sliced cabbage mixed with oil and vinegar, salt, and pepper.  We used green glass salad bowls to serve our salads. I loved tomatoes and cabbage, so I would try to stuff my bowl tightly with tomatoes and cabbage. My grandma would look and say, “Bozhena, did you divide the salad fairly?” I would say, “No, grandma.” I would start over by dividing the salad again. 

My Grandma’s Salad: 

Slice the cabbage finely and mix with salt. Mix it with your hands. Cube the tomatoes into the mixture, and cube the cucumbers too. Chop onions finely. Add salt, pepper and sunflower oil. Mix well. Voila. Pro tip. Eat it with rye bread and dip the bread into the leftover dressing on the bottom. 

Mom didn’t teach us how to cook, even when we were adults, and I didn’t have any of her recipes. Her love language was cooking for us and taking care of us. She would say, “Girls, you will do plenty of housework and cooking when you get married.” I know she meant well, but it did cripple us because we got out there in the world without any knowledge of how to do laundry, cook, or clean. The first dish I made on my own was rice. I was in college and had a boyfriend. I wanted to impress him, so I told him I would cook rice and bring it to school. I put rice in the pot and poured a lot of water; this was before the Google.com stuff. I didn’t measure anything. I boiled and boiled that rice until it looked like mush. I thought that it didn’t look good at all. My boyfriend at the time was a good cook, but I am an independent girl, so what can I do to make this better? I am going to add ketchup to give it some color and flavor. Now, I had a pink mess on my hands. Did I throw it away? No, I sure didn’t. I put some in the Tupperware and brought it down to college the next day for Maurice, my college boyfriend. He looked at it and laughed to tears, and I laughed too. He told me he would teach me how to make rice, and he did. He also taught me how to steam vegetables and sauté them without too much oil. 

Later on in college, some of my girlfriends taught me how to make sushi. I even went to a Japanese market and bought supplies to make my own sushi. It was hard to shop at the Japanese market because the grocery items didn’t have English translations. I went by what it looked like. I decided to make some sushi for my mom. I ended up making way too much sushi. We had two large plates filled to the top with sushi. I made a California roll, and also thinly sliced vegetables with avocado. We had soy sauce and wasabi. We kept dipping the sushi and eating it.  Mom said, “We could feed an army now.” Mom laughed, but she said she liked it and it was delicious. She was amused and proud of my effort. Another time, I made her spaghetti with canned tomato sauce. She said, “Wow, Bozhena, you are like those celebrity chefs on TV. What is her name? Oh yeah! Martha Stewart.” I looked shocked but happy that I had brought my mom so much joy. When my mom passed on thirteen years ago, I didn’t have any recipes left for me to try. 

After losing her, recreating her recipes was my connection to her. That’s when I decided to open my Facebook group, “Busy Bee Chefs.” It was 2014, and I started cooking a lot. I have started taking pictures of my food and posting them in my group. My group grew to almost 1000 members. After a few years, it got too hard to upkeep the group. I closed the group and still have it saved on Facebook. That is how I learned to cook and bake and recreate recipes from scratch, whatever I wanted. Now, just by reading a recipe, I can tell you if it would be good or bad. When I was pregnant with my son, I spent many days watching Food Network. I have learned many techniques from different chefs there. As my son got older, my husband and I became obsessed with watching MasterChef. As my interest changed, so did my cooking.

Two years ago, I went through my sourdough bread journey and tried my hand at bread baking. At the time, I joined several Facebook groups to really learn bread baking. I watched dozens of YouTube videos. My baking has gotten so good that I was eating bread all day long. I remember my friend Cris told me that he also went through a bread phase and gained a bunch of weight. When he said that, I felt guarded because by then I had easily gained 30 lbs. Bread and butter were literally my food. I grew my own starter and had a lot of it in my fridge, which is the yeast you use to bake the sourdough. I got good at scoring bread and baking it, good enough to sell. It was a journey, even though I did gain weight, it gave me peace and time to meditate as I worked with my dough. 

This year, I hosted my first Passover seder and invited my girlfriend, Rachel, and her son, Santos, from our Temple Beth Shalom. I have gotten a seder plate from Amazon to decorate the table with traditional foods. I also made mashed potatoes with my immersion blender, adding milk and butter. Rachel even asked me for a recipe for my mashed potatoes. I made a matzo ball soup and charoset. Rachel asked me, “What is your secret for matzo ball soup?” I told her that I added some “Better than bullion” paste to my soup to make it tastier. I have already bought matzah. Rachel brought chicken and other side dishes, and little goodie bags for all of us. I love her because she does what I do when I am invited over, and for many other reasons that make her a great friend.  Mom might not be around anymore, but she lives in my heart and soul. Cheers to you, Mom, with some Kedem grape juice! This year, I sponsored a luncheon at the Temple in memory of my mom. Thirteen years, gone too soon.