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Linzertorte
Mar. 4th, 2006 12:18 pmI am starting off with one of my very best stories. I know this is bad - I should lead up to it and present it with a flourish later in the month. I can't wait, though, so you don't have to.
Edith Phillips was a refugee. She got here just before World War II she never saw the rest of her family again. I first learned of the Shoah from her, when I was tiny. She regarded herself as being very fortunate since she had, after all, escaped in 1938.
Edith married my father's cousin Albert. She brought to our rather Anglo family the most civilised aspects of pre-war middle-class Vienna, including a love of Persian rugs and some rather nice recipes. She was very close to my side of the family because we were all rather addicted to science, and she was a doctor. She was never allowed to practise medicine in Australia because she trained in Austria and she was never allowed to become too senior in her job in the Blood Bank because she was a woman. Seeing how much her opportunities had been restricted because of her being Jewish and female and not trained locally was a big influence on my life.
Edith and I were close. When I had played with the idea of taking marijuana as a teen, she had let me roam through her filing cabinet. It contained all the latest medical offprints on marijuana and its effects.
She told me "You are old enough to make your own decisions. Make an *informed* decision."
After twenty articles I decided that despite all the arguments no-one really knew much, and that I wasn't going to let myself be pushed into taking any drugs just because of social pressure. So I blame Edith for making me so stubborn I didn't even try pot in the seventies. I still hold by her principles - if someone can't explain something fully, you have to be chary about following their advice.
A few years ago I visited her, to say farewell. She died soon after. Edith gave me some papers from that filing cabinet of hers. "Get your mother to return them when you have copied them," she instructed. "The originals go to the boys, but you hold the family stories and you enjoy the cooking, so you deserve them as well."
The papers turned out to be her mother's recipes. In a family of cooks, Edith was a doctor. She told me that there were so many eggs and so much butter that even reading the recipes was bad for cholesterol. She felt she had to pass on these recipes she had never enjoyed and to make sure her mother wasn't forgotten. So this Women's History Month I am making sure that neither woman is forgotten. I may give other recipes later, but the Linzertorte one has the best story.
So that you get just a skerrick of anticipation, I am putting it behind a cut ( Read more... ).
Edith Phillips was a refugee. She got here just before World War II she never saw the rest of her family again. I first learned of the Shoah from her, when I was tiny. She regarded herself as being very fortunate since she had, after all, escaped in 1938.
Edith married my father's cousin Albert. She brought to our rather Anglo family the most civilised aspects of pre-war middle-class Vienna, including a love of Persian rugs and some rather nice recipes. She was very close to my side of the family because we were all rather addicted to science, and she was a doctor. She was never allowed to practise medicine in Australia because she trained in Austria and she was never allowed to become too senior in her job in the Blood Bank because she was a woman. Seeing how much her opportunities had been restricted because of her being Jewish and female and not trained locally was a big influence on my life.
Edith and I were close. When I had played with the idea of taking marijuana as a teen, she had let me roam through her filing cabinet. It contained all the latest medical offprints on marijuana and its effects.
She told me "You are old enough to make your own decisions. Make an *informed* decision."
After twenty articles I decided that despite all the arguments no-one really knew much, and that I wasn't going to let myself be pushed into taking any drugs just because of social pressure. So I blame Edith for making me so stubborn I didn't even try pot in the seventies. I still hold by her principles - if someone can't explain something fully, you have to be chary about following their advice.
A few years ago I visited her, to say farewell. She died soon after. Edith gave me some papers from that filing cabinet of hers. "Get your mother to return them when you have copied them," she instructed. "The originals go to the boys, but you hold the family stories and you enjoy the cooking, so you deserve them as well."
The papers turned out to be her mother's recipes. In a family of cooks, Edith was a doctor. She told me that there were so many eggs and so much butter that even reading the recipes was bad for cholesterol. She felt she had to pass on these recipes she had never enjoyed and to make sure her mother wasn't forgotten. So this Women's History Month I am making sure that neither woman is forgotten. I may give other recipes later, but the Linzertorte one has the best story.
So that you get just a skerrick of anticipation, I am putting it behind a cut ( Read more... ).