A bizarre thing happened to me this morning as I was shopping at the local butcher for ingredients for the Shabbat meals. I was checking out and a woman from behind me looks at a container I have on the counter and asked "what is that?" I explain it is frozen chicken livers. She looked at me like I was from outer space and asked, "so what do you do with it?" (Now for those that don't know, every Jewish grandmother in their day made chopped liver. You also can find it in Deli's across America, along with pate and many more variations.) I turned and said I make Chopped liver. The next 2 minutes consisted of her asking and me explaining how it is done. Chicken livers do not come to the home already koshered like other meat. It is in its raw form and you need to salt it, broil it on each side, and rinse them before cooking and eventually eating. This is the most natural process to me as I learned it from my Hungarian mother and she from hers. Before I was walking out of the store she says "well... why don't you just buy it ready made?" It was my turn to look at her quizzically, and I said "why should I when I know how to make it fresh and I really enjoy cooking."
In today's day and age we are all working and running from place to place, and I understand not everyone enjoys being in the kitchen, but I have to say the best meals I have had, were ones made from scratch with love. Maybe I sound like too much of a romantic, but let me finish with this. My daughter Alex calls me from college and says "Mom, you and Dad spoiled me: the food here is so bad, you should not have cooked so well for us growing up". This is to us both, an incredible compliment, and today she is our #1 ravioli maker and yes she makes the dough from scratch.
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