Latest / Meet Me At The Deli / An Ode to Immigrant Cooking with Author Nora L. Rubel

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An Ode to Immigrant Cooking with Author Nora L. Rubel · Meet Me At The Deli

• 0:15
  Welcome to Meet Me at the Deli, the food advice podcast where
• 0:19
  the Pickles and slaw are always free.
• 0:21
  I'm Liz. And I'm Jeffrey, every episode
• 0:24
  we're answering your burning food and culinary questions and
• 0:27
  sharing stories and insights from years working in the
• 0:29
  industry and living in our self. Mage Dental.
• 0:33
  Hey, how are you, Jeffrey? Hey, Liz.
• 0:36
  How's it going? It's.
• 0:37
  Going, going well. Going well, yeah.
• 0:39
  All right, well, I have a short thing I want to share with you,
• 0:44
  which is that on our last episode we talked about opening
• 0:49
  our heart to bagels and cream cheese, that maybe we're outside
• 0:53
  of our strict ideas of what they should be right like.
• 0:59
  Specifically. Like touristy bagels and cream
• 1:02
  cheese. Right.
• 1:02
  Look, look at the judgement shade.
• 1:04
  So much touristy bagels, Elizabeth, whatever.
• 1:08
  And we were saying that like, maybe they're good and maybe we
• 1:10
  should have them. And then I revealed that I had
• 1:12
  never had a blueberry bagel, you know, despite, you know, talking
• 1:16
  about how terrible they were, I've never actually had one.
• 1:18
  So I've still not had one. That's the punchline.
• 1:22
  But I wanted to tell you I will. But I went on a mission the day
• 1:27
  after we taped. I was on Long Island with my
• 1:30
  parents in Long Beach, NY. And I told them this story about
• 1:34
  how I've never had a blueberry bagel.
• 1:36
  And they were like, I don't even.
• 1:37
  What do you mean blueberry bagel?
• 1:39
  And my dad proceeded to call every bagel shop in Long Beach,
• 1:45
  NY and I think it was 7. Seven shops.
• 1:50
  No blueberry bagels. Wow, no blueberry bagels.
• 1:53
  Way to go, Long Beach. I thought that was really
• 1:55
  interesting. And my mom was like, who would
• 1:57
  even make a blueberry bagel? This is crazy.
• 2:00
  Like she was like throwing shade, like you can't imagine.
• 2:03
  And my dad was like, I'm going to look into this.
• 2:06
  I could not find a blueberry bagel.
• 2:08
  And I took I, there's a picture somewhere of him like on his
• 2:10
  phone, like trying to track it down because I was like, guys, I
• 2:14
  didn't eat because I thought I would get off the train, walk
• 2:16
  across the street to the bagel shop and get a blueberry bagel.
• 2:19
  No blueberry bagel. So then he proceeded to call all
• 2:22
  of them, no blueberry bagel in the entire island, even the shop
• 2:26
  that I thought would have it, you know what I mean?
• 2:28
  So I just wanted to say my saga of the blueberry bagel
• 2:31
  continues. I know that we have this idea
• 2:34
  that perhaps we will eye it on air and, you know, maybe that's
• 2:38
  what we're going to do the the. First off, dedication.
• 2:41
  I really appreciate it. Your father, way to go.
• 2:43
  I know I was like, really? Trying and your mom was the
• 2:45
  purist. So I'm really I I the only thing
• 2:48
  is if we do a blueberry bagel on the show, it's got to be fresh.
• 2:51
  And so we need to figure out. I know.
• 2:52
  How do we tape it? It's the evening right now.
• 2:54
  Yeah. Yeah, I know.
• 2:55
  I thought, well, that was part of it today.
• 2:57
  My surprise was going to be that I brought a blueberry bagel, but
• 3:00
  yeah. I would.
• 3:01
  Not do it. Couldn't get it fresh enough.
• 3:02
  So bug. A great update.
• 3:05
  Thank you. OK, well, I.
• 3:06
  Thought I'd bring it back. OK, well, I have a story for
• 3:08
  you. Last Thursday, I went to, you
• 3:12
  know, one of the the in our lives as these food
• 3:17
  professionals, I feel like we're always going to food panels and.
• 3:21
  Out of panels? Lot of panels on a panel go to a
• 3:23
  panel. Yeah, so I heard.
• 3:24
  About a panel, so last minute, like, you know, I wasn't
• 3:27
  supposed to go last minute. I got to go to this really great
• 3:29
  panel at Kitchen Arts and Letters, which is this wonderful
• 3:32
  cookbook bookstore. And this was a talk.
• 3:34
  I saw it and I was like, I really want to go to this Jane
• 3:37
  Ziegelman, who wrote 97 Orchard, the wonderful book about the
• 3:41
  tenement foods of the Tenement Museum and the Lower East Side
• 3:44
  culinary history and a new book all about the the the foods of
• 3:49
  and and the culture of the shtetles in Eastern Europe.
• 3:53
  And of course, the the famed Ruth Reichl, the, you know, New
• 3:58
  York Times food creator, cookbook author, gourmet.
• 4:01
  Editor, Yeah. Writer of both amazing memoir
• 4:05
  and fiction. And then Alexander Smalls who is
• 4:08
  a restaurateur who in Harlem he opened the most famous the most
• 4:12
  recent place he opened or at least the most famous one was
• 4:14
  the Cecil which but he many other ones as well.
• 4:17
  And he actually Co wrote the book between Harlem and Heaven
• 4:20
  with JJ Johnson that was put out by ours same publisher hereafter
• 4:24
  ours. We went to the cookbook.
• 4:25
  Yeah, Yeah. And he was on there.
• 4:27
  And these were like heavy hitters all together.
• 4:29
  Moderated by Julia Mosk and the New York Times.
• 4:32
  And so I was like excited to go. I, I, I wonderful, wonderful
• 4:36
  talk all about New York food. It was like all about New York
• 4:38
  food. They were telling these great
• 4:39
  stories like what New York was like in the 70s and the 80s and
• 4:42
  how. So I got I, I went to this.
• 4:44
  And then after everyone's schmoozing and talking and, and
• 4:47
  I and Jane, who's a friend and a colleague who I've just
• 4:50
  respected, we were like, oh, we're gonna just go get a, a
• 4:53
  drink after. And then Alexander and Ruth were
• 4:56
  signing books and they're like, where are you going?
• 4:58
  Maybe we'll join. And then we ended up going to
• 5:01
  drinks at one of the Union Square hospitality restaurants
• 5:04
  downtown Manhattan. We're looking out over the city.
• 5:07
  And it was just like this magical New York night.
• 5:09
  And so I was just so grateful for that and had got to, you
• 5:12
  know, share a burger with Ruth Reichel, so.
• 5:14
  Right on. Yeah, not too shabby.
• 5:15
  So cool, so cool. Well, how was the burger?
• 5:19
  Solid everything at like a Danny Meyer restaurant.
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  It's like everything is solid. I will say the stand out with
• 5:26
  the French fries perfectly cooked.
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  And then of course, I had to ask, tell me about the French
• 5:31
  fry. How did you do this?
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  And in fact, some of the folks sitting at the table thought
• 5:35
  that maybe they somehow managed to take mashed potatoes and fry
• 5:39
  them somehow because they were so good they couldn't figure it
• 5:42
  out. And I was like, I was like, no
• 5:43
  way they did that. We asked the guy pouring us
• 5:45
  water if he could tell us. He tells us the exact process
• 5:49
  for making the potatoes. Do everything.
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  This is the Union Square hospitality approach.
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  Everyone knows everything. It's amazing hospitality.
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  And so he tells us that first they blanched the potatoes, then
• 5:59
  they pan fry. They do, they do, they saute the
• 6:01
  potatoes. Then they do a deep fry before
• 6:04
  they serve and they source a special, I think it was called a
• 6:07
  chipper witch potato, a type of Idaho russet potato.
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  But that that is specifically perfectly designed for this this
• 6:15
  scenario. Final question, what shape were
• 6:18
  the French fries? They were quite large and like
• 6:21
  flat and thick. I like that like a steak.
• 6:23
  Like, like very much, yeah. OK, I do like that kind of fry.
• 6:26
  OK, great, I love it. Thank you for telling me that.
• 6:29
  I know that you have had such a fun night that night because you
• 6:33
  told me you went to a great panel, but I'm happy to hear the
• 6:36
  details. I was saving the story.
• 6:37
  Yeah, cool. Well, great.
• 6:39
  Well, Jeffrey, we are so excited because today we are going to do
• 6:44
  things a little differently. Shaking it up.
• 6:46
  We're shaking it up. We have now been, you know,
• 6:49
  we're, we're pretty deep into this podcast.
• 6:51
  We wanted to do something a little differently.
• 6:53
  So we are the nerds today. We get to be the nerds.
• 6:57
  We are going to ask some questions of our friend who is
• 7:01
  in town from Rochester Scholar author Nora Rubel, who's here
• 7:07
  launching her new book, which we're about to talk about.
• 7:09
  Well, and the book, the recipes for the melting pot, the lives
• 7:12
  of the settlement cookbook, which we're going to get into.
• 7:15
  And, and for those who are, are, I'd say, lovers of, of food
• 7:21
  history of old cookbooks of, of the story of immigration and
• 7:26
  assimilation and who love the complications of the rise.
• 7:29
  This is a book that tells the story through the settlement
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  cookbook. And we'll get into what that
• 7:34
  means for those who don't know what what that what it is.
• 7:36
  Yeah, exactly. So Nora's here from University
• 7:38
  of Rochester. She is the Co director of the
• 7:40
  Jewish Studies department there, chair of the Department of
• 7:43
  Religion and Classics. We got to go up there and visit
• 7:45
  a bunch of years ago. It was a really amazing
• 7:47
  experience. She's written four books and
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  this this book is her her latest.
• 7:56
  Just out from Columbia University Press, and I think
• 7:59
  it's worth noting that Norah's other claim to fame, which we'll
• 8:03
  hopefully get to, is that her partner, Rob Knipe is the vegan
• 8:07
  butcher of Rochester, so. I think we alluded to this also
• 8:11
  in in a couple episodes ago. And I do want to note I know the
• 8:16
  actual kosher meat butcher in Rochester.
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  So I'm very proud that I know the vegan butcher and the kosher
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  meat butcher in Rochester, NY. And how many times have you been
• 8:24
  to Rochester? One time.
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  Twice, twice I went to I went to a wedding of the of the of the
• 8:29
  butcher. Butcher OK, Because I'm like,
• 8:30
  I'm like, wow, Jeffrey, you really have deep, deep roots in
• 8:33
  Rochester for someone who's been there once but OK twice.
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  Got it. Fine, fine, fine.
• 8:38
  OK, so let's do it. I am so excited that we have
• 8:43
  Nora here. Welcome, Nora.
• 8:44
  Welcome to meet me at the deli. We're so happy you're here.
• 8:46
  I am. So excited to be here.
• 8:48
  This is like Jewish food goals, you know?
• 8:51
  Love it. Jews food, you guys.
• 8:53
  Speaking of Jewish food goals, Nora, last night you had a
• 8:57
  launch party for your book Recipes for the Melting Pot at
• 9:01
  Bonnie Slotnick East Village Cookbook Shop, which is such a
• 9:05
  special place. Can I just say yes?
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  You walk down little stairs you you know it's on 2nd St.
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  You know, like even magical little.
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  Tavern shout out to Bonnie Slotnick, yes.
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  How did you wonderful? How did you choose that spot?
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  So I met Bonnie, I'm going to say like 12 years ago, possibly
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  at this point. She was running a booth at the
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  Roger Smith Hotel where they had an annual cookbook conference
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  for a while and they fed us incredibly well, which is the
• 9:38
  thing about doing like food studies is that you just get to
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  eat good food. I mean, what you guys do
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  probably lends itself to that as well.
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  But anyway, Bonnie was there and she had some used stuff and I
• 9:51
  started talking to her and I said, do you have any?
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  Do you know if you have any copies of the settlement
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  cookbook? Because I'm doing project on
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  that. And she got so excited and it's
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  like, I love the settlement cookbook.
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  That is the reason I got into this business.
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  This is why. I open my store.
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  So I've been in touch with her for a long time and you know,
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  she kept asking when is it coming out?
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  When is it coming out? Which is it took a very long
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  time for it to come out, but I felt like it was the right place
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  to do that with her so. So for for the uninitiated, can
• 10:31
  you just like tell us what is the settlement cookbook?
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  What is the settlement? And we have, and we should note
• 10:36
  we have copies of the Settlement Cookbook around down here and
• 10:39
  some actually they're all on the table here, but we'll get into
• 10:43
  your these copies. Shortly but.
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  What? What is it?
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  Tell us and and how did you come to write a book about this
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  cookbook? OK, so the Settlement Cookbook
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  is a charitable community cookbook that came out of a
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  settlement house in Milwaukee in 19 O1 and and.
• 11:02
  What is a settlement house? OK.
• 11:04
  Thank you for asking, Jeffrey. So the settlement movement
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  started in England, in London, really it's kind of the
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  precursor to social work and settlement houses were created
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  to help the urban poor kind of find jobs, you know, stay off
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  the streets, etcetera, etcetera. When the movement in the 19th
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  century came to the United States, it became clear that the
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  urban poor were primarily immigrants.
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  So they they started doing things like teaching English.
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  They had cooking classes, they had all kinds of different
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  clubs. So this particular settlement
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  house in Milwaukee was run by a woman named Elizabeth Kander.
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  And she taught a very popular cooking class, and it was a
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  kosher cooking class because of the Eastern European immigrants
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  who came and it was a Jewish settlement, which they weren't.
• 12:06
  All any of these settlement houses were run by liberal
• 12:09
  Protestants. The most famous settlement house
• 12:11
  was whole house in Chicago, which a lot of people know about
• 12:15
  Jane Addams. So Lizzie Kander was often
• 12:18
  called the Jane Addams of Milwaukee.
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  And this was specifically a Jewish settlement house meant to
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  deal with Eastern European immigrants who had come over
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  relatively recently and. And she was German, right?
• 12:31
  German Jewish, yeah, but she, she was born in the States.
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  Her parents, actually I think it was her grandparents who were
• 12:39
  immigrants from. Her family had been well
• 12:41
  established in the United States, but they were Jewish.
• 12:45
  She was part of an acculturated like Reform Jewish community and
• 12:51
  her father had a store and she worked in it anyway.
• 12:54
  So she taught this cooking class and at the time community
• 12:58
  cookbooks or fundraising cookbooks had become really
• 13:01
  popular, particularly with women's groups.
• 13:05
  Yeah, shout out to probably a lot of our listeners who
• 13:09
  probably have some synagogue cookbook in their house or some
• 13:12
  community cookbook that they've seen.
• 13:14
  And the recipes are all kooky crazy seeming and there's
• 13:17
  drawings and it's whatever. But those were, I mean, they
• 13:19
  were huge for decades. They were huge and they, I mean,
• 13:22
  people still do them. But yeah, they started around
• 13:26
  the Civil War. The first noted one was at the
• 13:31
  Great Sanitary Fair in Philadelphia.
• 13:33
  Sounds like a great time. I know, I know.
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  So yeah, that that that was the kickoff.
• 13:40
  But these things became like definitely used for not just
• 13:47
  fundraising for organizations, but also for causes.
• 13:50
  So there's like a temperance cookbook.
• 13:53
  There's a suffrage cookbook, But yeah, churches and synagogues
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  picked it up very quickly. And so the story this is like
• 14:03
  steeped in Milwaukee lore is that Lizzie Kander was like, you
• 14:06
  know, these kids spend so much time writing down the recipes.
• 14:11
  We, you know, we, we lose the time we could be doing our
• 14:16
  cooking. The kids, as in those working at
• 14:18
  the settlement, the. Girls, the girls coming to the
• 14:20
  cooking. Taking the cooking class.
• 14:21
  Oh, so we're all writing the recipes?
• 14:22
  We're writing the recipes down. So she thought, well, what we
• 14:26
  could do is have like a, you know, a charitable cookbook
• 14:30
  where the recipes for the classes are in it.
• 14:34
  And then we can also have some other recipes in there that like
• 14:38
  we like. And then we can sell it to the
• 14:41
  students for a very small fee, but maybe a little bit more for
• 14:45
  everybody else. Kander goes to the board of the
• 14:50
  Jewish Mission, which is what it was called at the time, and says
• 14:53
  can I have $18.00 to print this? And they said no, and they said
• 15:01
  it seemed like. It's 1900.
• 15:02
  It's the year 1900. It's.
• 15:04
  The year 1900, they're like, no. But then they kind of joked that
• 15:09
  like they'd be happy to share in the profits.
• 15:12
  So she, she was like, well, you know, I know people.
• 15:18
  So if you look at any of the earlier editions of the
• 15:20
  settlement cookbook, there are ads in the front and the back.
• 15:23
  So she had friends who had a printing press.
• 15:25
  She went to them. She raised money for ads.
• 15:28
  So they started selling these cookbooks at the Boston store,
• 15:33
  which is a department store in town.
• 15:35
  And then it kind of filtered into Chicago and they all sold
• 15:39
  out. And, you know, their first run
• 15:42
  of 500 copies just like disappeared immediately.
• 15:46
  But nine years later, she was able to buy the these dudes at
• 15:51
  the at the Mission, a new house for the settlement.
• 15:56
  Because the book was that popular.
• 15:58
  Yeah, it went. So overtime it went through 40
• 16:03
  different editions, sold over 2 million copies and really spans
• 16:09
  like a like a like a century from 19 O 1 to 1991.
• 16:14
  That was the last published. Edition Published edition was
• 16:16
  1991. Yeah, I was going to ask you a
• 16:19
  question. Like, did you grew up with the
• 16:20
  Settlement Cookbook? It's a good question.
• 16:22
  I don't have any memories of growing up with the Settlement
• 16:25
  Cookbook, but I did know what it was.
• 16:28
  And I, I was trying in anticipation of this, this
• 16:31
  conversation, trying to think when was it that I first heard
• 16:34
  about it. And I couldn't remember which
• 16:36
  tells me that it was in the air. Is this the one one of the most
• 16:39
  successful? What's it called?
• 16:42
  Charity books of the time. It is the most successful
• 16:45
  fundraising cookbook in America. Wow.
• 16:48
  In the James Beard Hall of Fame, next to The Joy of Cooking and
• 16:51
  the Fannie Farmer Cookbook, it's it was a big deal.
• 16:55
  It was and it came out well before The Joy of Cooking.
• 16:58
  So in the Midwest, and then as it grew, it became a very
• 17:04
  popular, you know, wedding present, bridal shower present.
• 17:07
  Well, so, so one of the things that's on my mind is that this
• 17:11
  book clearly was originally designed sort of with the
• 17:15
  attendees of the settlement house in mind.
• 17:18
  And clearly it jumped to a more middle class or even upper
• 17:23
  middle class audience. And it sounds like that almost
• 17:27
  happened immediately, right? It's very quick, right.
• 17:29
  It sounds like like Elizabeth Kander made this book originally
• 17:34
  or her students in the settlement house, but then
• 17:36
  quickly realized that if we wanted to have any commercial
• 17:39
  appeal, we could or or any appeal at all beyond this, the
• 17:42
  walls, we needed to have other recipes.
• 17:44
  You even said it. You said let's include some
• 17:46
  other recipes in here and I was so intrigued that this is not
• 17:50
  just a recipe book, but it also has tips on how to manage a
• 17:54
  house or how to set a table or how to manage servants, you
• 17:58
  know? There's a section that's very
• 18:02
  sadly entitled When there is No Maid.
• 18:06
  When there is no maid, we're laughing.
• 18:09
  We're laughing, but it's not even that funny.
• 18:10
  I mean, yeah, yeah. Talk to me about like, like,
• 18:14
  this is what interests me is like, to what extent was it
• 18:17
  important for immigrants to learn how to set a table or
• 18:21
  serve a dish? Like, did they just not know how
• 18:23
  to do that? Or was America just a new world
• 18:25
  for doing that stuff? I think that there was a move.
• 18:31
  It's really respectability politics, I think, and a little
• 18:36
  bit, particularly in these classes that they were teaching,
• 18:41
  like household management, right?
• 18:43
  It's the dawn of home economics. So there's this idea or domestic
• 18:47
  science, right? There's this idea that there is
• 18:50
  a right way to do these certain things.
• 18:54
  And so, you know, a lot of these immigrants did not have the
• 19:03
  ability to set a table the way that it was asked, right of
• 19:07
  them. But there was also a sense that
• 19:09
  maybe they would go into domestic service for other
• 19:12
  people and they would need to know how to do that.
• 19:15
  But but you're right, it kind of jumps pretty quickly.
• 19:20
  A lot of her students did not go into domestic service.
• 19:24
  This is something, you know, historians have found that
• 19:26
  Jewish women tended to do other jobs, like they would work in
• 19:30
  laundries or they would get clerical jobs.
• 19:32
  They did not particularly care for domestic service.
• 19:36
  And so that was not something that happened.
• 19:40
  But then there was sort of like a bump in the direction of the
• 19:45
  cookbook towards really like managing A households, right,
• 19:49
  that this would be something that like how do you manage your
• 19:52
  your maid, right? Or and the cookbook itself, the
• 19:57
  first one, it's divided into two parts.
• 20:00
  Like you don't see that in the later editions once it gets into
• 20:04
  the odds. But it was a Part 1 had the
• 20:08
  lessons. Part 2 was full of recipes from
• 20:13
  her friends. And they were a lot more high
• 20:17
  end, I guess less like how to boil water, how to make coffee,
• 20:21
  you know? So of course, one of the details
• 20:24
  that I loved in your book, you talked about the early years of
• 20:27
  the book not having any garlic in it.
• 20:29
  Yeah. Oh yeah.
• 20:30
  You to, you know, First off, as someone who grew up in a much
• 20:35
  more classically Ashkenazi home, we had plenty of Coco and we
• 20:38
  loved it and we loved noodle Coco.
• 20:40
  Noodle Coco with the cornflake crust on top.
• 20:43
  That was like, that was that was like brunch.
• 20:45
  Special occasion, that's what. We do right now.
• 20:49
  But but sounds nice but. But garlic cup of.
• 20:53
  Coffee and a cook. Oh my God, come on.
• 20:56
  Living life here, but the I mean, garlic was just like, you
• 20:59
  know, a signature piece of of our identity and even knowing
• 21:03
  the settlement cookbook has this Jewish story and to think that
• 21:07
  there was it was garlic lists in this way, like how did that come
• 21:10
  to be? I mean, I think that there was
• 21:15
  an attempt to sort of, you know, tone down the ethnic a little
• 21:20
  bit at this time and in the. Early Editions.
• 21:23
  In the early editions, I think that there's still, you know,
• 21:26
  there's there's definitely like concern about anti-Semitism,
• 21:31
  particularly by these acculturated Reformed Jews who
• 21:35
  are like, we want to help you because you are are Co
• 21:41
  religionists of a sort. And also we don't want you to
• 21:46
  embarrass us by being strange. But also there is like, this
• 21:54
  history of referring to Jews as garlic eaters.
• 21:58
  And it goes back into like, like deep dark Christian libel.
• 22:05
  It goes back to medieval times. It was seen as something that,
• 22:11
  you know, also could like, catch Jews out during the Inquisition.
• 22:17
  But also Jews have also called themselves garlic eaters, right?
• 22:21
  It's in the Talmud, actually. And that that that, you know,
• 22:26
  Jews pined for were garlic when they were in the desert.
• 22:31
  And this is something that is also supposed to be a bit of an
• 22:35
  aphrodisiac. It's encouraged because, you
• 22:39
  know, it makes you happy. And the same things that like
• 22:43
  they say about wine, right? Like it can make you amberus, It
• 22:47
  can make you enjoy life. So Jews love garlic.
• 22:49
  And obviously different areas used it differently.
• 22:54
  And I think there was just a sense of trying to kind of tone
• 22:57
  that down. And it is interesting that in
• 23:00
  the first, like, I don't know, 20 years, a little less than
• 23:05
  that, you sort of see a slow creep of recipes with garlic.
• 23:09
  But they're all not Jewish recipes, right?
• 23:14
  They are specifically like Italian or Spanish and and that
• 23:20
  just kind of slowly increases what's interesting.
• 23:24
  Interesting is one of the things you begin the book really
• 23:27
  talking about the some of the context or the setup on houses
• 23:30
  and the, you know, the gram bread, you know, the, the
• 23:34
  Kellogg. There's this attempt to create
• 23:36
  these bland foods to really purify well, not just to purify,
• 23:41
  but to suppress sexuality. And you talk about garlic being
• 23:44
  this aphrodisiac. And so here we are in, I mean,
• 23:49
  garlic not being included is going and, and it's this is
• 23:53
  essentially the blandification of these foods that we talked
• 23:55
  about. We had taught Liz and I.
• 23:57
  One of the things I do want to get into is, is the impact of
• 23:59
  assimilation and the role that the Sullivan House and these
• 24:02
  classes and these cookbooks has in diluting the culture.
• 24:07
  Because I find it so frustrating when I hear people say that they
• 24:11
  think these Ashkenazi foods are so bland.
• 24:13
  One of my favorite quotes from 97 Orchard from Jane Ziegelman's
• 24:16
  book is, she says, 100 years ago on the Lower East Side, if you
• 24:19
  said that Jewish food, specifically Eastern European
• 24:22
  Jewish food, if you said that food was bland, you'd be laughed
• 24:26
  out of the Lower East Side. It was known across New York for
• 24:29
  being so garlicky and pungent and sour and sour and flavorful.
• 24:34
  And if anything, like the watering down of these recipes
• 24:39
  and handing out recipes that have taken out some of those
• 24:42
  essential items, that actually is part of this process of
• 24:46
  changing and I think ruining some of these food traditions.
• 24:50
  So I actually, I'm so curious to get into that with you.
• 24:52
  What do you think about that? Yeah.
• 24:54
  I mean, I think that's a good point.
• 24:55
  That's obviously something that two of you work very hard to
• 24:58
  dispel, right? The good field to manifesto is
• 25:02
  all about kind of reclaiming those foods and bringing back
• 25:05
  the flavor. You know, this is also something
• 25:08
  that is going on during this period of immigration where
• 25:14
  spices in general are sort of discouraged just to everybody.
• 25:21
  And there was a lot of concern about adulterated foods.
• 25:26
  So that spices, you know, there's no real supervision of
• 25:33
  anything at this point. And so people like Jane Addams
• 25:38
  or Ellen Richards, who kind of jump started the New England
• 25:42
  kitchen, which was like a hub of, of domestic science, said,
• 25:48
  you know, this is the, the spices are adulterated with
• 25:51
  like, you know, sawdust or something.
• 25:54
  So it's dangerous for you to eat them.
• 25:57
  Also, there was concern that spices would make you drink
• 25:59
  more. Right, There's a lot of that in
• 26:02
  your book that like these kind of spices and stuff also 'cause
• 26:05
  people to crave alcohol, right? That was like a real concern
• 26:08
  that people had. This is during the temperance
• 26:11
  movement, which precedes the suffrage movement.
• 26:14
  But it's a lot of the same players, right, that are
• 26:16
  involved in all of these things, right?
• 26:18
  There's a big concern about drunkenness.
• 26:22
  There's a big concern about men abusing their wives because of
• 26:26
  that, that they would go instead of going home for dinner like a
• 26:32
  like a good man should. He would drink away their
• 26:37
  earnings after a long day of work and then come home and, you
• 26:42
  know, beat his wife, right? That So a lot of these cooking
• 26:48
  schools that had classes were like, this is supposed to make
• 26:52
  it nice for a man to come home, right?
• 26:55
  Oh, that's why it's called the way to a Man's Heart.
• 26:57
  It could be the way reason it's called.
• 26:59
  That's actually the. That's the title.
• 27:01
  The Way to a Man's Heart, The Settlement Cookbook that was
• 27:04
  like the original. Title.
• 27:05
  The original title of the Yeah, they were actually really
• 27:08
  litigious about this, too. The way to a man's heart,
• 27:10
  anytime you saw anything like that, used that expression
• 27:15
  related to cooking, they they kind of went after them.
• 27:20
  It was like, really like. Gander didn't fuck around for
• 27:24
  real. Yeah, that's obvious.
• 27:25
  So, so yeah, that was they had some lawyers at the.
• 27:30
  Well, this is so interesting though I always knew about that
• 27:34
  like this immorality, this conception of spicy foods and
• 27:39
  are lucky foods pungent foods, flavors being immoral and
• 27:43
  Pickles were one of the culprits.
• 27:44
  Pickles were seen as an immoral food for that reason.
• 27:47
  And so I always it's so funny because to me, I, I, I now I'm
• 27:51
  eating like a lacto fermented, you know, a pickle.
• 27:54
  I'm like, this is so good for my gut.
• 27:56
  I'm like community with my ancestors.
• 27:58
  I'm like, you know, appreciating New York, NY history, all these
• 28:02
  kinds of things. And and yet this was an immoral
• 28:05
  food, a food that was known for licentiousness or a scene for
• 28:09
  potentially promoting bad behavior in in men.
• 28:12
  And what a wild like that long 120 years or so, you know?
• 28:16
  I mean, there definitely were reports from settlement workers
• 28:19
  that, like, Jewish mothers, gave their children too many Pickles,
• 28:23
  right? Like that was not good for them
• 28:27
  and. But not have done well.
• 28:30
  No, so, so, so essentially what we see is in the beginning, a
• 28:37
  lack of flavor, a lack of spices.
• 28:40
  But but at a certain point we start to see that shift like in
• 28:43
  the later editions as the culture changes, you start to
• 28:46
  see more garlic, more spices, more flavor in general.
• 28:51
  OK. And this book, you know, it has
• 28:55
  this, it's Jewish coded. It's overtly Jewish coded,
• 28:58
  right? It was, it came from a Jewish
• 29:00
  settlement house. A Jewish person created it.
• 29:03
  But let's go back to the idea that it is not just for Jews and
• 29:07
  it's not kosher. Like, I'm interested in that
• 29:11
  tension. Like clearly this was something
• 29:14
  that the Jewish community embraced and knew about because
• 29:17
  it was kind of from the Jewish community, but it also became
• 29:21
  popular with communities outside of.
• 29:22
  Right. I mean, I think this also goes
• 29:25
  to how do we use cookbooks, right?
• 29:27
  I mean, if you think about the cookbooks that you have and that
• 29:30
  the pages that you open them to and then the pages you never
• 29:32
  open, right? So, you know, some people
• 29:37
  probably used it for Passover dishes, right?
• 29:40
  Because there actually were Passover dishes in the cookbook.
• 29:45
  We name a few. Matzo's Charlotte Matzo Bry
• 29:53
  There were different types of like potato things using potato
• 29:58
  flour that clearly marked it as something that was.
• 30:02
  There were a lot of desserts, too.
• 30:03
  Passover desserts. People love this cookbook for
• 30:06
  baking, but yeah, there's a lot of, there's a lot of dessert
• 30:11
  there. And so this is one of the
• 30:12
  things, right? Jews think it's theirs, right?
• 30:15
  Like in a way. But obviously it couldn't have
• 30:18
  been the most successful fundraising cookbook in America
• 30:21
  if only Jews bought this cookbook, right?
• 30:24
  Like. This one I want to show.
• 30:25
  Look at the matzo. The matzo section Matzo apple
• 30:28
  pudding matzo lemon sponge cake matzo meal almond tort matzo
• 30:31
  meal Apple tort matzo meal Dumplings Potato matzo meal
• 30:34
  Pancakes matzo meal Potato dumplings matzo meal puff
• 30:38
  pancakes matzo meal Tartan matzo spice sponge cake Matzo sponge
• 30:42
  cake Matzo sponge roll matzo scrambled eggs with matzo's
• 30:45
  almond dumpling matzo balls matzo batter pudding matzo
• 30:48
  Charlotte Matzo Charlotte with apples matzo cookies matzo
• 30:51
  dumpling matzo fritters matzo French shows matzo fruit
• 30:54
  fritters matzo Bosch matzo pancakes matzo tarvole matzo pie
• 30:59
  shell matzo pie shell matzo pie topping matzo soup.
• 31:03
  And there's a whole list of things in there.
• 31:05
  And then mayonnaise. Yeah.
• 31:08
  Well, yeah, obviously. A beautiful recitation.
• 31:10
  Thank you. Thank you.
• 31:11
  Yeah, a dramatic. I do that everyday.
• 31:13
  Items, Yeah, yeah, I mean, matzo balls are in the 1st edition,
• 31:17
  right? So a lot of the context for
• 31:21
  where this went is that it got passed around in the Jewish
• 31:23
  community. And then they said, well, why
• 31:25
  doesn't it have a recipe for this Passover thing that I want,
• 31:29
  you know? And so the more, the more it
• 31:34
  grew, the more Jewish, traditionally Ashkenazi Jewish
• 31:37
  recipes were in it. But also the traif got upped a
• 31:42
  lot as well. Traif meaning not kosher,
• 31:45
  meaning things that traditionally observant Jews do
• 31:48
  not eat, like pork, shellfish and dairy and meat.
• 31:53
  The same dish, correct? Right.
• 31:55
  Yes. There's a whole like, you know,
• 31:57
  seafood shellfish section and yeah.
• 31:59
  Yeah, there's Ham in the 1st edition.
• 32:01
  What is a bacon sandwich casserole?
• 32:03
  Yeah, a bacon sandwich. Bacon sandwich casserole.
• 32:05
  Yeah, I found it. I have it here.
• 32:07
  What's relevant here, I think, is that the Jews that had been
• 32:11
  there, the acculturated Jews, the the Lizzie Kander's, the
• 32:14
  people who who had created the settlement houses or were
• 32:17
  running the settlement houses were largely not keeping kosher.
• 32:20
  They were not observing the Jewish dietary laws.
• 32:22
  No, and the majority of American Jews in the country already who
• 32:26
  were affiliated with any kind of religious community were Reform.
• 32:30
  And so they were not like kosher was seen as a little bit
• 32:33
  outdated the. Reform movement actually
• 32:36
  expressly rejects it in the 1880s with their Pittsburgh
• 32:42
  platform. And also there is this very kind
• 32:45
  of dramatic moments when the first graduating class of Hebrew
• 32:52
  Union College in Cincinnati. The Reform Rabbinical.
• 32:54
  School, rabbinical school, like it's the first time that there
• 32:57
  are like American minted rabbis because they used to import
• 33:01
  them, right? Or they didn't have a rabbi,
• 33:03
  right? They had like a lay leader or a
• 33:04
  cancer or something. So this was a big deal.
• 33:09
  This is an American movement. This is, these are American
• 33:12
  rabbis. It's awesome.
• 33:14
  They invite all of these Jewish dignitaries to this event.
• 33:18
  It's huge. And it is a completely non
• 33:21
  kosher soup to nuts, like completely, you know, clams on
• 33:26
  the half shells. You know, there's like cream
• 33:29
  sauce over the over the steak, you know, and but there is no
• 33:35
  pork. There's shellfish, but no pork,
• 33:39
  right? What's the line?
• 33:40
  Pork is the line for for a lot of people.
• 33:44
  The apocryphal story, though, is that a bunch of guys got up.
• 33:47
  They were so outraged. It was so offensive to them that
• 33:50
  like there is this Jewish event. If they were anywhere else in
• 33:53
  the world and they were invited as rabbis to a Jewish event,
• 33:57
  there would be food that they could eat.
• 33:59
  And so they got up, stormed out and started the Conservative
• 34:03
  movement. So.
• 34:04
  That's like, yeah. I mean, it's not exactly what
• 34:06
  happened, but it is kind of what.
• 34:07
  Happened. This is called the Trey Banquet,
• 34:09
  The train. Banquet.
• 34:10
  So, so I was in high school, I never, I learned about this and
• 34:14
  I've never, because I went to a conservative Jewish day school
• 34:16
  and we learned and and we learned literally that they've.
• 34:19
  Gone up and. They started the conservative
• 34:21
  movement like this. Was it too much?
• 34:23
  Yeah. So funny.
• 34:25
  Yeah. I've been to reenactments of the
• 34:27
  trade for banquet. Like, it's like, people are
• 34:29
  obsessed with, like, trade for banquet.
• 34:31
  And I wrote about it in my undergraduate thesis.
• 34:33
  Like, I was, like, deep in that world of, like, this moment in
• 34:36
  time. Interestingly enough, though,
• 34:38
  you said pork is the line. I will say I just opened up to a
• 34:40
  pork chart. A.
• 34:43
  Pork. Literally a breakdown of every
• 34:45
  pork. Like, you know.
• 34:48
  Every cut. Every cut of pork.
• 34:49
  Pork. And it's so interesting to me.
• 34:51
  It's like it's not only is this book like it has you know, some
• 34:55
  like every single monster recipe under the sun, but it has some
• 34:58
  of the least Jewish, like the most American, like, you know,
• 35:02
  goyish non Jewish dishes that like I could if I.
• 35:06
  Was. Yeah, like, like I'm looking
• 35:08
  here at like this like souffle section with like all sorts of
• 35:10
  different kinds, the jellied meats and like not the not the
• 35:13
  Pachava. What about Pachava?
• 35:14
  Yeah, not the Pachava, but there's so many.
• 35:18
  Things. But what about?
• 35:21
  Cha, so many things that I would think would like are like the
• 35:24
  least Jewish foods imaginable. Here I'm looking at butterscotch
• 35:28
  sauce. But this is just.
• 35:30
  Rum butter sauce. It's a general.
• 35:32
  Boiled. Cookbook, but.
• 35:34
  Here's the frogs like section I shouldn't point out.
• 35:36
  Yes, there's quite a bit of frog flicks, a lot of oysters.
• 35:41
  I think we need to jump to one question, not about the
• 35:44
  settlement. OK, OK.
• 35:46
  Which is that Nora, your partner Rob Knipe is actually a vegan
• 35:51
  butcher in Rochester has a vegan butcher shop.
• 35:55
  I think for those folks who may have never been to a vegan
• 35:58
  butcher shop or are like, what are you talking about?
• 36:00
  Maybe you could just give us a little bit of an idea of what
• 36:03
  can you get at a vegan butcher shop.
• 36:05
  I'm totally jumping topics because I want to make sure we
• 36:07
  get it in. And I think it's really
• 36:09
  interesting. And also we get a lot of
• 36:11
  questions from people who are interested in reconciling their
• 36:16
  what their love of certain foods with whatever values they have
• 36:20
  or dietary restrictions they have for any reason.
• 36:22
  And so, you know, that's what people were doing here, right?
• 36:27
  That's what people were doing with the Settlement Cookbook.
• 36:28
  They were whether it was putting their values on other people by
• 36:34
  putting these recipes in a book. You know, I think it's an
• 36:38
  interesting topic and definitely one that Jeffrey and I talked to
• 36:41
  people a lot about is like that tension between maybe, you know,
• 36:44
  what was and what shall be. So can you tell us just a little
• 36:48
  bit about a vegan butcher shop? I mean, it's not that different
• 36:51
  than just becoming kosher and wanting a taste that scratches
• 36:56
  an itch, right? And trying to find a way to be,
• 36:58
  to posturize a recipe, you know? But Rob and I became vegan about
• 37:06
  10 years ago. His origin story is after we saw
• 37:13
  a Bruce Springsteen concert and we were up really late and had a
• 37:19
  little bit to drink. And in the morning we thought,
• 37:22
  what do vegans do with hangovers?
• 37:25
  Like where is my where is my breakfast sandwich?
• 37:28
  That will like help with all of this.
• 37:32
  And we always cooked a lot. We really enjoyed cooking and
• 37:36
  then a few years back, a few years later, I mean, he started
• 37:40
  playing around and making a lot of kind of fake meats and.
• 37:45
  Like mainly of what? Satan, primarily with Satan,
• 37:48
  he's had a wheat gluten, vital wheat gluten.
• 37:51
  So, you know, he started out, he made a breakfast sausage, he
• 37:56
  made bacon, chicken cutlets and then like started doing
• 38:01
  sausages. So really it looks like a deli.
• 38:04
  And you go in there, there is a case.
• 38:06
  You can buy meats out of the case.
• 38:08
  There's deli meats like sliced, sliced meats and and he just,
• 38:15
  but also it's a sandwich shop. So I was thinking about about
• 38:20
  you guys and your conversation. It was the last week about the
• 38:24
  different names of sandwiches. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 38:27
  Maybe we can we know someone. Maybe we can get a sandwich
• 38:29
  shop? Yeah, we can get a sandwich.
• 38:32
  So here's the thing though, all of the sandwiches are kind of
• 38:36
  like weird. Like song title funds.
• 38:41
  This is so relevant to our conversation song.
• 38:44
  Could you give us an example? Are they Bruce?
• 38:46
  Springsteen. No, actually, I don't think we
• 38:48
  have a Bruce Springsteen song. Oh, you are from Jersey, so that
• 38:51
  Springsteen concert was probably a religious.
• 38:53
  Experience. Yeah, no.
• 38:55
  And we've been like many times since that one.
• 38:58
  But yeah. And again, this is as someone
• 39:01
  who did not really grow up in New Jersey, I continue to
• 39:04
  appropriate my own culture, right?
• 39:06
  Like I am like, OK, I will be the biggest Springsteen fan, you
• 39:09
  know, like this is so anyway, so take on salami.
• 39:15
  Like take on me. Thank you.
• 39:16
  Got it. And mortadella woman.
• 39:22
  Yeah. Really good.
• 39:23
  Yeah. So they they spend.
• 39:26
  Quite. A lot of the mortadella woman is
• 39:28
  so good. It's the Anthony Bourdain
• 39:30
  favorite sandwich. It's like just this mortadella
• 39:33
  sandwich with provolone. Dijon mustard.
• 39:38
  Mustard, Mayo, grilled, Grilled. It's like a simple, delicious
• 39:45
  sandwich. And so the provolone, the
• 39:47
  mortadella and the mayonnaise are all made vegan and in house.
• 39:52
  He does not make the cheese. OK.
• 39:54
  Yeah, but all of the meats are made in house, which actually is
• 39:58
  a thing where people are a little confused by that because
• 40:00
  they come in and they're like, so where do you get it?
• 40:02
  And he's like, I make it like, there's no other.
• 40:05
  There's no like big like. You know, place where one gets
• 40:10
  all of it, you know, like, where do I source that?
• 40:12
  I source it in my kitchen and it's great.
• 40:16
  I mean, I think, you know, people get stressed out about
• 40:18
  processing the, you know, processed foods, like, well, oh,
• 40:21
  it's so processed this fake meat, but I mean, it's, it's
• 40:24
  really like made with relatively simple ingredients.
• 40:27
  And, and, you know, I, I get a little confused sometimes when
• 40:31
  people use the term processed 'cause I'm like, so like
• 40:34
  everything is processed, right? Like it's like a recipe.
• 40:36
  It's essentially like baking. And, but, but anyway, so you can
• 40:41
  get all kinds of food, all kinds of vegan meat.
• 40:45
  You got a Reuben that you can cook.
• 40:46
  Of course, we have a Reuben. What is it called?
• 40:50
  The back in the USS Reuben I think.
• 40:55
  And you have a pastrami. The pastrami sandwich is
• 40:58
  pastrami. Myself and I this.
• 41:00
  Is so good. Yeah, and he used to do like
• 41:05
  when he came up with a new sandwich and unveiled it.
• 41:09
  Then he would do like a playlist of all the covers of that song.
• 41:15
  That would be commitment. Commitment.
• 41:18
  There is a playlist. Amazing.
• 41:19
  Well, just to just to wrap up, you know, I, I, so the last
• 41:23
  cookbook was published in 1991. Yes.
• 41:27
  Is it done? Are there no more coming?
• 41:29
  And what is the future of this cookbook?
• 41:31
  And, and, and I guess where, where is it at now in, in the
• 41:35
  American legacy? It so the 1991 edition was
• 41:39
  really kind of a a reboot. It had a forward by Charles
• 41:44
  Pierce. It wasn't really made by the
• 41:50
  ladies from the settlement anymore.
• 41:53
  There were some original recipes that were put in that and they
• 41:57
  were consulted when that book was being made, but they had
• 42:01
  pretty much retired from any kind of a work.
• 42:05
  It was really like very touching in some ways to read these
• 42:09
  letters between Sarah Ettenheim, who took over for Lizzie Kander
• 42:13
  and really like made it the juggernaut that it that it was
• 42:17
  and ultimately had a deal with Simon and Schuster, which is the
• 42:20
  publishing house that put out the the kind of anniversary
• 42:24
  edition of this cookbook. So who knows?
• 42:29
  I mean, maybe this will generate some some interest in a new
• 42:36
  settlement cookbook, but it is still something that people have
• 42:39
  around, right? So there is an afterlife to this
• 42:43
  cookbook. I think that it feels like in
• 42:44
  some ways this is, you know, a material culture touchstone,
• 42:48
  which is sort of ironic because if you think of it as a book,
• 42:52
  and I think this is what got me into it, as this idea that this
• 42:54
  was supposed to Americanize immigrants.
• 42:57
  And now Jews see it as like this thing that is a a reminder of a
• 43:02
  like a traditional Jewish, you know, past.
• 43:06
  Say the same thing about the Delhi, by the way.
• 43:08
  The Delhi was a place for immigrants, you know,
• 43:12
  experienced America for the first time, but in a way that
• 43:14
  felt palatable, uncomfortable. And yet now it's just repository
• 43:17
  of this immigrant identity, this memory.
• 43:20
  Yeah. The Delhi is how people became
• 43:22
  American. Exactly.
• 43:23
  Yeah, and. Now how people express their
• 43:25
  Judaism. Wow.
• 43:28
  OK, we did it. So we're here.
• 43:29
  We're sliding into the vinyl seats at the deli, the booth.
• 43:32
  We're going to talk. Maybe we have something to fetch
• 43:35
  about, something to tell about, something to share.
• 43:39
  This is the moment SO. All right, I'm going to make a
• 43:41
  little space here. I have an ID.
• 43:43
  I have something. We're going to move the
• 43:45
  cookbooks. OK, so.
• 43:47
  Let me get it. OK?
• 43:49
  OK, my friends. Well, in honor of this exciting
• 43:52
  experience, I decided to cook something from the Settlement
• 43:56
  cookbook for all of you. And I was my first challenge was
• 44:01
  what can I make that's vegan? Because I know you're vegan,
• 44:04
  Nora. And and so I made a recipe from
• 44:09
  the 1940s edition for the peanut butter bread.
• 44:14
  It's a peanut butter bread. It's like a quick bread with
• 44:19
  peanut butter. And I was like, I can pull this
• 44:21
  off OK. Check out this beautiful loaf of
• 44:24
  peanut butter bread. My house smelled really good.
• 44:27
  It was a very simple pass it on, pass it on.
• 44:31
  It was a simple recipe. It was sort of in the world of
• 44:35
  quick breads. You know, there was other loaves
• 44:38
  of things, but this had no egg. It had milk, but I had, I used
• 44:41
  oat milk and I was excited about this because I was kind of like,
• 44:45
  is this like we're getting protein?
• 44:48
  Is this a, you know, and I, I don't know what it's going to
• 44:51
  taste like. So I, but it, I was really
• 44:55
  mindful of the idea that this cookbook was meant to give
• 45:00
  people precise measurements, right?
• 45:02
  Like that this cookbook, the settlement cookbook was really a
• 45:06
  movement to kind of cook more scientifically.
• 45:09
  And so I really tried to follow the recipe to a tea, kind of
• 45:13
  just to test it, but I was also mindful that perhaps things are
• 45:18
  a little different, you know, in the 1940s when this recipe was
• 45:22
  developed. So I'd say it's a pretty nice
• 45:25
  little loaf we have here. It was truly a simple recipe.
• 45:30
  Yeah, it looks like a classic you.
• 45:32
  Know like a banana bread. You know, it looks a little
• 45:34
  paler than a typical banana bread, but it has some nice, you
• 45:38
  know, nice Browning on top. It nice is nice, nice and
• 45:42
  easily. It looks, it looks like there's
• 45:44
  a lot of moisture there. Smells like peanut butter in
• 45:47
  here. I think my house smelled like
• 45:49
  peanut butter, I can tell you that.
• 45:50
  Only smelling that yeah, it's. It's got a nice crumb, so so I
• 45:57
  would say and. The top of it and you can kind
• 45:59
  of like feel like the crunchy bits of the peanut butter, which
• 46:02
  is kind of cool. So I'm, I'm hopeful there's
• 46:05
  gonna be a little bit of crunch in this.
• 46:06
  We'll see the the recipe specifically said to make sure
• 46:10
  that it was supple enough to to mold into the pan nicely.
• 46:16
  Like it had a note about that. And what I thought was made me
• 46:19
  think that like maybe sometimes peanut butter was stored for a
• 46:22
  long time and wouldn't like would be separated or something
• 46:25
  like that. Like I was like, what was that
• 46:27
  note about? Right?
• 46:28
  Like, like maybe you had, you know, it was hard to like you
• 46:30
  really had to like stir the peanut butter into the milk.
• 46:33
  That was the other, you know it. It wasn't much, but.
• 46:36
  Was it supple enough? It was it was supple enough.
• 46:39
  So please help yourself to the peanut butter bread from the
• 46:42
  1940s edition. I have a a little bookmark for
• 46:48
  it. It could also be bad.
• 46:52
  It's pretty bad, no? Like it's actually much drier
• 46:57
  than I thought it would be. It needs salt.
• 47:04
  It needs something. Wow, you know what would be
• 47:07
  amazing? You guys were really excited
• 47:08
  about this, you know. What would be amazing with it?
• 47:10
  Some some Jelly you kind of get your peanut butter and Jelly
• 47:14
  sandwich, but like the peanut butter is in the bread, but it
• 47:16
  definitely needs the moisture of the jam or the Jelly it's.
• 47:19
  It's yeah, it's it's not bad. It just doesn't have much going
• 47:25
  on. It needs salt, it needs sugar,
• 47:28
  and it needs more peanut butter. I honestly my.
• 47:33
  Kids going to eat it? Kind of Hardly.
• 47:35
  Yeah, I want amp up the peanut butter.
• 47:37
  What do we, you know, again I'm sensing.
• 47:39
  Essence of peanut butter. It's like a perfume, Yeah, I
• 47:42
  feel. Like, I'm going to wash my mouth
• 47:44
  out, so I'm actually going to suggest that we have a drink.
• 47:47
  OK, so our our producer Felicia brought us a pickle lemon
• 47:52
  lemonade from Hot Water in collaboration with Hot Girl
• 47:55
  Pickles and I think. I love hot water and I think I
• 47:59
  love hot girl Pickles so. I think I.
• 48:01
  I love. Pickles I I don't have like
• 48:03
  strong feelings about either so let's let's try the pickle soda
• 48:08
  not washed out and I feel peanut butter, bread and pickle soda
• 48:11
  like these go together. This is.
• 48:12
  Just a very settlement cookbook, I just want to say.
• 48:16
  Very well, not the early years when they were scared of all
• 48:19
  that flavor and all of that. I mean, I hope there's, I hope
• 48:22
  there's no garlic in this. OK, yeah, let's get some here.
• 48:26
  Some are. I'm trying to think of what it
• 48:27
  smells like. And then we get a toast, you and
• 48:30
  the publication of your book. Thank you so much.
• 48:32
  Thank you so much for having me. Yeah.
• 48:34
  Here's. Here's.
• 48:42
  I like this. I like it.
• 48:43
  I like it. I like it.
• 48:44
  Yeah, I do. I'm more pickle.
• 48:46
  Yeah, it's mellow. Can I be honest I don't taste
• 48:49
  the pickle. It's on the nose, yeah.
• 48:52
  Yeah, I don't taste lemon or pickle, but whatever it.
• 48:54
  Is like it all. Good.
• 48:55
  Yeah, Whatever it is, it's good. I agree, I'll buy this.
• 48:59
  Yeah, it's really good, and also lemonade can often be too sweet.
• 49:04
  That is so real. It's so floral.
• 49:06
  What is this floral? That's what I'm saying.
• 49:07
  Your nose are like it's a perfumey.
• 49:10
  Pickle. This is neither pickle nor
• 49:11
  lemonade, but it is enjoyable. But also, you know, if you have
• 49:15
  your nose, the hops, I guess it's hops.
• 49:18
  It's just the hops. It says it's delicious on the
• 49:21
  outside. So I, you know, I don't know
• 49:23
  what that means, but. Well, Liz, thank you for
• 49:26
  bringing us this this. I'm glad we cooked something or
• 49:30
  you baked something from the cookbook.
• 49:31
  I had to. I had to.
• 49:32
  And I knew it was Baking was a big part of the settlement cook.
• 49:34
  Yeah. So that's why I started there
• 49:36
  and I found this. And thank you, Felicia producer
• 49:38
  for making sure we have hot girl Pickles hot water too.
• 49:42
  And thankfully we. Can thing now, yeah.
• 49:44
  Yeah, this is your thing now. This is hot girl.
• 49:46
  You can have it at the vegan butcher shop girl.
• 49:48
  Pickles. Summer.
• 49:49
  That's Rochester, yeah. OK, excellent.
• 49:52
  OK, Well, I'm. What you got, Jeffrey?
• 49:54
  Anything. I have a fetch.
• 49:55
  Oh. Bringing it down, it's been a
• 49:58
  few too many weeks. Bringing it down.
• 49:59
  Spells of positivity I just you. Have really been in a good mood
• 50:02
  so it's we need to change. That OK, so so here's my fetch.
• 50:09
  You know, I love the bath house like I love the Russian baths.
• 50:12
  You love a bath? I go to a bath house whenever I
• 50:14
  travel to, you know, various countries.
• 50:16
  I love to find the bath house. What's one of my favorite
• 50:18
  moments was in Helsinki in the winter in January.
• 50:21
  And, and instead of a cold plunge, you just go outside.
• 50:24
  You wrap yourself in a towel. You stand outside in the
• 50:26
  freezing Helsinki winter, you drink beer and eat Pickles.
• 50:29
  And I was like, this is my heaven.
• 50:31
  Like this is what I was born. Very on brand.
• 50:33
  OK so I go to the Russian baths. Now, I had a a friend and
• 50:37
  neighbor who was insisting on going to one of these new bath
• 50:40
  houses. That's like, I think of them as
• 50:42
  private equity bath houses, like really designed actually in this
• 50:45
  particular. Line very.
• 50:47
  Popular uses like somehow was involved in like crypto mining
• 50:50
  for heat generation. Oh dear.
• 50:52
  And and but I was like, you know what, like they really wanted to
• 50:55
  go and had a rooftop and it was like about the rooftop and pool.
• 50:58
  So I was like, I'm open to a like a beautiful rooftop and
• 51:00
  pool. I'll try I'll try most things
• 51:02
  once. Even though I, I was worried.
• 51:05
  I went to this bath house and the thing I, I think I love
• 51:09
  about the Russian baths and stuff is that like, I get a
• 51:11
  cultural experience. I get, you know, great food.
• 51:14
  There's amazing borscht, these garlic potatoes at the the the
• 51:18
  Fulton Bath. Downtown.
• 51:20
  Oh my God, Oh my. Garlic potatoes.
• 51:21
  Garlic potatoes. I honestly.
• 51:23
  And then you just sweat them out.
• 51:24
  You, you. And Speaking of garlic, you go
• 51:26
  in there, it's like there's way too much garlic and it's just
• 51:29
  right. I love it.
• 51:31
  And so I went to this bath house and one, it was like all the, I,
• 51:35
  I kind of joked that it was kind of like the trendy bagel shops,
• 51:39
  like of, of bath house. It was lines for everything.
• 51:42
  It was like lines. In a bath house there was lines.
• 51:44
  Lines to get to the rooftop. 20 minutes.
• 51:46
  What? No.
• 51:47
  Yeah. No, OK, second, secondly,
• 51:51
  secondly, and I I it was very clean and I really and sometimes
• 51:55
  Russia baths listen like they they could use a little
• 51:57
  cleaning. It was very clean.
• 51:58
  It looked very nice, but I felt like I was surrounded by a lot
• 52:01
  of people who didn't know. Like, like there were many
• 52:04
  people who didn't know bathhouse etiquette.
• 52:05
  You know, when you go to a like the Russian bath just and you're
• 52:08
  there with someone for the first time or so and like they like
• 52:10
  look around, they see how people are handling it.
• 52:12
  They like put on, maybe they don't have a hat.
• 52:14
  They put a towel on their head. You know, they like kind of
• 52:17
  watch and learn and observe. But there were too many people
• 52:20
  who didn't know. So there was just wasn't like a
• 52:22
  bathhouse etiquette or culture and I just was feeling like
• 52:25
  something was missing. And then there was a restaurant
• 52:29
  and I've heard the food's good. I didn't get to go there, but I
• 52:31
  was on the rooftop where they had a bar and snacks and it was
• 52:33
  just like, you know, potato chips and just like things I
• 52:36
  didn't like. I just, I wanted like salty,
• 52:38
  savory, fatty foods. I wanted the Palmini, the
• 52:42
  Russian Palmini. I wanted horse tradition infused
• 52:45
  vodka. So I was missing the culture,
• 52:48
  the culture of the bath house. So, Nora, you have any?
• 52:53
  Kind of bath house or Patrick Fell.
• 52:56
  I would like to fell about a food item that I had yesterday.
• 53:00
  Is that something I can do? Yes.
• 53:02
  Wonderful. We will permit it.
• 53:03
  OK thank you. Last night we had this
• 53:06
  celebration of my book which I appreciated that you 2 attended
• 53:11
  which was wonderful and we ordered food from Spicy Moon
• 53:17
  which I had heard good things about.
• 53:20
  It is a vegan Chinese place in town.
• 53:22
  There's several locations but really what sold me on this
• 53:25
  place is that they had chopped cheese spring rolls which.
• 53:31
  What is chopped cheese? It's like a sandwich.
• 53:34
  It's like a cheese steak. But it's not, it's like all
• 53:37
  chopped up and everything. And yeah, I had had cheese steak
• 53:42
  egg rolls before, which are also very good.
• 53:44
  But so anyway. So this is a vegan chopped
• 53:46
  cheese spring roll. It was amazing.
• 53:50
  Well, I missed those I didn't have.
• 53:51
  You I missed them too. I miss them because, well,
• 53:54
  because we went to Katz's deli before, all right?
• 53:58
  We pregame. We pregame.
• 53:59
  Yeah, but. Yeah, we didn't know.
• 54:01
  We didn't know how good the food was going to be.
• 54:03
  We did it. Thank you so much, Nora, for
• 54:05
  being here. We are so glad that you are
• 54:07
  here. And you know what else we love?
• 54:12
  Questions. We love questions from the from
• 54:15
  our listeners. Folks, we know you have
• 54:17
  questions. We know you're out there.
• 54:18
  You're wondering about your grandmother's recipe.
• 54:20
  Maybe the settlement Cookbook inspired a question in your
• 54:24
  heart or soul or mind. Please DM us on Instagram, fill
• 54:28
  out the form in the show notes. You can e-mail us podcast at
• 54:32
  kafilteria.com. We would love to hear from you.
• 54:35
  And let us know if you grew up with the Settlement Cookbook or
• 54:38
  if it's an important family heirloom.
• 54:41
  We'd love to hear about it. Yes, and shout out to our
• 54:46
  producer Felicia Rice, who it's true is from Florida and we're
• 54:51
  so excited about our new associate producer, Asha Tob in
• 54:56
  Love Sleepaway Camp. And tell people about the show.
• 54:59
  It's the best way for us to grow.
• 55:01
  And please show the clips that are up at the filter Instagram
• 55:04
  page. Take our answers out into your
• 55:08
  lives and bring us back the leftovers.
• 55:11
  Thanks. This has been a Heat Media
• 55:15
  podcast.