All About Food.

All about Food! 10/13/09
In the course of my life I had the good fortune to enjoy and appreciate good food in many countries and states on both sides of the Atlantic. I was born in a country where food was scarce but the art of cooking was highly esteemed and was passed down from one generation to another. As the result the food was well prepared and it was a joy to consume it. Presently I live in a rich country where food is plentiful but the art of cooking became a lost art. It looks like we can’t have everything.
In the twentieth century the Industrial Revolution brought about monumental changes in the lives of it’s citizens, mostly for the better, in countries like Great Britain, where it has started and in other major European countries like, Germany and France.
The Industrial Revolution did not penetrate the smaller countries which after the two World Wars became even less consequential. There we find mostly agricultural societies where the nobility had large land holdings and the rest of the society tried to eke out a living on the margins.
In those marginal countries about 80 percent of the population was laboring in the fields. The rest found employment in the administrations of the state, counties and cities. Many found employment by the railroads, the lumber industry and with the armed forces. There was only one bread winner in most families except in agriculture. The job of raising the families, cooking and cleaning fell on the wives. To provide the family with nourishing meals on very limited incomes required experts in the kitchens. Fortunately the art of cooking was passed down from mother to daughter for many generations. To dine outside was an exception not a rule. On the rare occasions when the family could go out to dine they were not disappointed. The menu was long and comprehensive, the price on the high side and the waiting long. Refrigeration was practically non existent so the meals had to be cooked on the premises and that meant some animals had be slaughtered and vegetables picked from the garden or taken from the root cellar and wine from the wine cellar. However, bottled beer was already available . The waiting was worthwhile. The cooking was done by cooks who were doing it for a living, and not by a drifter who was hired yesterday. At home, the wife had to use her expertise and ingenuity to come up with nourishing and good tasting meals. She was up to the task. She could make miracles with the fresh vegetables and the family secret seasonings. Meat was expensive and beef almost unheard of. Refrigeration as we know it did not exist but most restaurants had ice boxes. Pork, fish and poultry were reasonably priced and more accessible
In our city there was a garden restaurant which I’ll never forget. Tables were set up under large shady trees and a string orchestra was playing in the background. As a boy I stopped often there and peeked across the top of the fence. While the orchestra was playing couples stood up from the tables and danced to the captivating sound of the violins and the bases. Wafts of mouth watering smell of food was hanging over the place. To me as a boy it was a heaven. That restaurant provided take out food as well. The food was placed in about two quart size blue outside white inside pots and the pots were slipped into a rack one on the top of another with a carrying handle on the top. What a treasure must have been in those pots .
When my father retired to a place of his birth, a God forsaken village in the middle of nowhere we entered into a different style of life and eating . As a boy I felt we moved into hell. The city which we left behind at the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains had a character, set among rolling hills with the blue mountain ranges giving it a picture card framing . Our house was in a poor subsistence farming village surrounded by many similar one horse villages. For us new comers the village posed a grim picture, but on closer examination we found out that our neighbors led a contented, perhaps happy lives, since they did not know anything else. The village had one store with an attached community hall and one Reformed church up on a hill.
On week ends the community hall was filled with festively dressed young people vigorously dancing to the tune of a volunteer orchestra. The sound of the music filled the whole village.
There was no electricity, no telephone, no radio, and doctors and hospitals were miles away. Public communication was done by the village’s crier. It came handy that in the center of the village was a tall hill. The crier climbed to the top of the hill and in a loud voice made his announcements. If a farmer lost a cow because of a broken leg or something his loss was a big gain for the village.. The crier announced from the hill that fresh beef was available at such and such address. Come and get it because the meat wouldn’t keep longer than a day. Fresh beef at last. The main sources of protein were pork and poultry. Most everybody raised and fattened a pig. The slaughtering day was a kind of fiesta for the friends of the family except for the pig. The poor animal was slaughtered and laid on a big pile of straw and set on fire. When the fire was out, all the pig’s hair was gone. The butcher with a very sharp knife, gave the pig a shave and started dismembering the carcass. With shirt sleeves rolled up, everybody got his job cut out to render the pig into the final delicious pork products. The fat was rendered into lard and put in a big enameled pot. That was the pride of the house wife. Every part of the pig was used. The intestines were cleaned and the ground and well seasoned meat was funneled into them. Three kinds of sausages were prepared with meat, liver or blood. Eventually the sausages and the hams were smoked. The pig’s feet, ears and skin parts were boiled in a big pot and after a due time, removed from the fire and ladled out into many large soup dishes and placed outside for cooling. Needless to say, the work was accompanied with a great deal of hilarity and joking and the mood was enhanced by the consumption of quite a few bottles of wine. When evening came, the dishes were set out for cooling, and became jellied into a humongous mass called “Sulze” in German. Everybody grabbed a dish and after pouring a few drops of vinegar on it, consumed the delicious sulze. The products of the slaughtered pig helped the families get through the winter right into the coming spring.
I attended high school, and boarding school in a nearby city about 30 miles distance from home. When I went home for Christmas I knew that mother’s cooking masterpieces were waiting for me. Her specialty was stuffed cabbage. I have to digress to explain what kind of cabbage I am talking about. Heads of cabbages with the outside leaves removed and the core cut out and filled with salt were placed layer by layer into a big barrel up to the very top. The barrel was filled with water and covered with fitted boards. For pressure big stones were laid on the boards. All this of course has taken place in the cellar. Eventually fermentation had taken place. There was a faucet in the bottom of the barrel and the fluid was drained and recirculated a few times. In a couple of weeks the sauerkraut was ripe. The ripe cabbage heads were very tender and slightly translucent and were used mainly as a condiment accompanying the meals.
To make stuffed cabbage mother took a head and removed several leaves. Chopped meat seasoned with God knows what, formed into elongated balls and the kraut leaf was wrapped around it and secured with a string. Next she used several heads and cut them into fine pieces just like the kraut you buy in stores. Mother had a big stoneware pot with perhaps two gallons capacity. She put a layer of sauerkraut on the bottom followed with a layer of the stuffed cabbages and so forth until the pot was full. The whole contraption was subject to slow cooking through out the night and was declared finished in the morning. I forgot to mention that she put a couple of ham hocks as well into the mix. The result was out of this world. Today with great longing I look back to something unobtainable in my present life.
With the vacation over I had to return to the boarding school and resign to a very lean life style. As a growing boy I was always hungry. We were served three meals a day over there. For breakfast we got one cup of milk with a slice of bread.. We got a satisfying meal for lunch. From lunch at twelve it was a long time to supper at 7 PM. At 5 PM we got a break from the study hall and had time to look up our lockers in search for something to bite into. Friends from better to do homes had their lockers stocked with non-perishable foods like bacon, sausage and bread and so fort. My locker was most of the time, empty. How I longed just for a piece of dry bread. But it passed.
For reasons too complicated to explain at this juncture, I had to leave my home and my mother in hurry to save my life. I found myself in Budapest early in September, 1944. At this time about 600 miles to the east, the Germans were holding the line against the highly motorized Russian forces but their resistance was crumbling. It was still a sunny September in Budapest with not much sign of the war but we all knew that we are living on borrowed time. As a green boy from the hinterland, I was awe-struck by the wonders of the capitol city. The street cars, the famous bridges crossing the Danube from Buda to Pest and the other wonders of a big city. I was never further away from home than perhaps 100 miles. Fortunately I had some money in my pocket. My mother turned over all her Hungarian Pengos to me because under the inevitable Russian invasion her money would be worthless.
In a nutshell, I quickly found lodging and work in the city, and had a chance to sample some good food in the restaurants, not to mention the terrific and reasonably priced wines. My honeymoon in the city did not last very long. By December of 44 the victorious Russian forces were ready to invade the city. I did not wait for them but high- tailed it out of the city toward Vienna.
Going from Budapest to Vienna at this time was like jumping from the pan into the fire. The Germans annexed Austria in 1939, and were about to lose it again. Vienna was a very unhealthy place to be in this point in time. The war was going full blast as we experienced daily bombing from the American bombers.. I took refuge several times at the sound of alarm in one of the many high-rise bunkers. The walls were shaking from the noise of the flack on the top of the bunker or the bombs exploding nearby. It certainly was not the time to enjoy the pleasures of gay Vienna..
As refugees, my German wife and I received German food rationing cards in the restaurants. We had to surrender a number of coupons depending on the choice of the menu selected.. What was available was plentiful and selections were under very appealing names like “Stamgericht und Hausgericht”. They contained only vegetables like boiled cabbage, many kinds of beets, carrots and all sliced and garnished with dressings. It was filling but not very nutritious. The rationing cards contained very few meat coupons, so they had be used very judiciously.
During my short stay in Austria, I was gainfully employed in many odds and ends’ jobs such as waiter, machine shop worker and so forth and drifted from one place to another. In the village named Weibern, my good fortune had brought me together with my future wife Mia. She was a beautiful German Red Cross nurse who was attached to a camp of juveniles who were evacuated from the western part of Germany to be out of harms way. Later on when the war ended around May of 45, she was expelled from Austria along many German nationals. I had met Mia in my capacity as a translator from Hungarian to German. We took a liking to each other and resolved to remain together. The American army provided a truck to convey the German evacuees from Weibern to Munich. It posed a big problem for Mia and I. Since I was labeled as a displaced person and was not eligible to go to Germany, Mia and I agreed that if I could make it, we would meet in front of the Munich railroad station. The odds were against us. To make a long story short, by hitch hiking and walking, I illegally crossed the Austrian German border at Passau and eventually reached Munich. I’ll never forget the sight when I walked into the city. It was in ruins. Most houses were left with just the chimneys standing. I was lingering in front of the railroad station when suddenly a big American truck arrived. There was Mia on the top of it . We were overwhelmed with joy and took it as a sign that our good fortune meant us to remain together. There was no regular railroad traffic any more between Munich and Essen about 500 Km. distance in the northern part of Germany. We managed to secure a passage on a freight train and had to climb on the top of logs with our bundles of luggage and to hang on for our dear life. This was my grand entrance to Germany. Eventually we arrived in Essen and when we went to her mother’s address we learned that her apartment complex was bombed out. Her father died before the war. Her mother was alive but relocated to a small village in Westphalia.. Our journey continued and we arrived on our final destination to Rahden in Westphalia. Before I digress any further away from the original purpose of the subject matter, I have to squeeze in a critical period of our life. To her great delight and my distress, Mia,became pregnant and we had to get married in a hurry. The local magistrate told me that I couldn’t marry because as a Hungarian national by Hungarian law I was underage at twenty years old. I had no guardian. I had escaped from my home with only the shirt on my back without any documents in my possession. The good magistrate finally relented and nominated himself as my guardian and as such he gave me his approval. We married on September 6 and our son Tom was born on September 29th. I found lodging and employment in Rahden. We spent the next ten years there so I had ample time to learn the language and immerse myself in German culture.
Germany in 1945 was a country in disarray. The war was lost and millions of refugees and people evicted from the former German territories on the east had to resettle. The cities and villages were full with forcibly resettled new comers. It wasn’t a question how best prepare food but where to find it. You only got what the food rationing card allowed you to get. After Mia has given birth, I had trouble providing her with the proper nourishment to enable her to nurse our son. Frequently I had to cook a pot full of ersatz coffee with plenty sugar in it for her to make milk for the baby. From time to time I had to sneak out to nearby potato fields to dig up a bag full of potatoes. The local farmers had it made. The train brought daily people from the cities with treasured properties to trade to local farmers for food. Mia and I often paged through old cook books to read with awe how many pounds of butter and how many eggs were required to prepare certain meals. We wished the time would come when we could walk into a store and could say, give me five pounds of butter or a dozen eggs. All the misery came to an end with the monetary reform of 1948. We were allowed to exchange ten Reichsmarks for one Deutsche Mark, the famous DM. The limit was 30 DM. The food rationing cards were stopped on that day. Chancellor Adenauer pushed for the reform backed by the commander of the American general Lucius Clay. Later on he admitted he had grave reservations about it. What will happen he asked his minister of economy Professor Erhard, if the people go to a store the next day to buy something and it is not there. Erhard a great believer of a free market economy, replied don’t worry, the food will be there. He was right. The stores were jammed full. The only hitch was you needed the Dms. A couple of weeks later it really happened that there was a shortage of butter. That was no problem. Erhard opened the borders to Denmark and a flood of butter poured in. About that time, thanks to President Truman and general Marshal the Marshal plan was introduced pouring billions of dollars into the German economy. Bombed out factories were rebuilt equipped with new modern machinery creating the German miracle. Thousands of new firms were founded hiring millions of workers. A great prosperity set in and Germany became an exporting nation again.
I made out all right in my new job. I learned by doing mechanical drafting and in ten years became chief designer of the company. My childhood’s dream to emigrate to the US got hold of me again and at the end of 1955, we embarked on a journey to the USA.