Mama brought up a family of seven children. She was also the breadwinner for the family, so you will under­stand she was quite a woman. Her preparation for the weekly Sabbath feast was something to remember. The saying in Poor Richard's Almanac, "Fools make feasts and wise men eat them," did not impress her at all. She maintained that holidays must be festive, and what are feasts without guests? Her cooking would of course begin with gefilte fish, and be followed with soup, poultry, tzimmes, several kinds of kuglen, and, asked why so much, she would say "some for us, and some for leiten"—leiten meaning guests. Never knowing how many guests Papa would bring home Saturday morning after the prayers at the synagogue, she would add to all the above-men­tioned dishes chopped herring, chopped liver, and what not.

Often, after we were grown up, we would admonish her saying that it was too much work for her to cater to leiten, as she would call her friends. Her answer would be, "Please, children, try to understand that I cannot just work, sleep and rest, for if I do when will I live?"

Her way of life taught me, in later years, when I wanted time for work, study or play, so to arrange my kitchen work as to give me leisure time without depriv­ing my family of good cooked food and gracious living. This is what I have tried to teach my students in the cooking classes and I hope that I have in some measure succeeded. In the following menus I shall try to show you how to cook almost a full week's food in a few hours. You can start your week as I do on a Friday. This way, during the weekend, you will have a full refrigerator, enough food for the family and, should company come, the happy feeling that you can set another place with no strain and almost no expense.

The following are four projects for several days' cook­ing at a time. You will find recipes in the body of the book for everything listed here. Add a little of your own ingenuity and you can vary them and plan your own proj­ects, including your favorite dishes.

PROJECT 1

1.  Gefilte fish (make enough for one main dish and for an entree or lunch and some for baking).

2.  Get a large fat fowl, skin partly and render the fat, so you will have chicken fat to cook with, and it will be cheaper than buying fat. One half of the fowl will make a good chicken broth. Stew the other half. Before the soup chicken is quite soft, remove and add to stew. The giblets go into the broth.

3.  Stuff the poultry neck, and, with a piece of flanken, put it into a prune tzimmes.

4.  Boil a box of noodles so you will have enough for soup; and with the balance, make a noodle pudding or Hungarian noodles.

5.  Chop the liver with some of the gribenes and two hard-boiled eggs.

Thus with one day's preparation, you will have food for at least five meals for a small family, adding a fruit, a green vegetable and a dessert if desired.

Let us vary it a bit for the following week.

PROJECT 2

1.  Stuffed cabbage: Add a generous-sized piece of flanken for another main dish, and make enough stuffed cabbage to serve as a main dish, an appetizer for another meal and a lunch. Cut the remainder of the head of the cabbage into wedges, to serve with the flanken as a vegetable.

2.  Get a duck and a young chicken or two. Roast the duck and chickens in the same baking dish. The chicken will take on the flavor of the duck and will taste the better for it. Drain off the fat from the duck while it is roasting, baste the chickens with it and save the fat—it is as good for cooking as chicken fat.

3.  Make soup  with  the  giblets,  shelled  lima  beans and rice or shelled lima beans and huber grits (cut oats).

4.  Cut up the giblets (bone neck, wings, etc.) after the soup is cooked and make patties.

5.  Stuff the poultry neck skins and put into a lima bean roast—adding a piece of flanken to the roast sufficient for another main dish.

6.  Chop the livers with two hard-boiled eggs and a large sautéed onion.

In this one day's preparation you will have enough food for the family for a full week, adding of course a green vegetable, salad and dessert as desired.

SUMMER MEALS

PROJECT 3

1.  Cold beet soup.

2.  Two fried chickens and six veal cutlets.

3.  Make chicken fricassee with the giblets and some chopped meat.

4.  Potted meat balls with flanken (two meals in one pot).

PROJECT 4

1.  Cold schav.

2.  Meat loaf.

3.  Hamburgers.

4.  Pot roast—use recipe in body of cookbook. Prepare enough for three meals. 15 minutes before turning off light, add 1/2 cup of water and 1/2 cup of tomato juice, so that you will have enough juice to work with. Slice the meat cold (it slices easier). Serve one meal with rice or macaroni. For the second meal you can put some potatoes into the juice, add one cup of water, bring to a boil; put sliced roast on top, cover and simmer until potatoes are ready. If you have any beef left, make a beef stew out of it.

If the warmest section (most distant from freezing unit) of your refrigerator has a steady temperature of 40 degrees, you may trust your refrigerator to keep your food for a week. Should you have leftovers, just remember that blintzes, kreplach, knishes and fried rice all require cooked meat, so use up your odds and ends. Your family, like mine, will be looking forward to these creative concoc­tions! Instead of saying indifferently "Oh, leftovers," they will say enthusiastically, "Um, leftovers."

If you follow my suggestion for cooking in quantity, you should have enough leftovers with every one of those four projects to start several other meals, such as fish chowder with any baked fish combination; or soup, borscht or schav to start any quickie meal.

In looking through the body of the book you will find many recipes requiring cooked poultry or meat which are listed so that you can readily see how much time, energy and expense you can save by following instruc­tions.

LIST OF RECIPES REQUIRING COOKED POULTRY OR MEAT

1.  Chicken and rice casserole (fried rice)

2.  Noodle and chicken casserole

3.  Beef stew

4.  Hungarian goulash

5.  Chicken, duck, turkey or goose patties

6.  Knishes, kreplach, fleishig blintzes, stuffed mushrooms, etc.

All of the above listed items will take you half the time to prepare when your poultry and beef have already been cooked. The same goes for side dishes. Let us say you are making Hungarian noodles; make enough so that you will have some left for the noodle casserole, noodle kugel, and to serve as a side dish. In this way you can save many hours of work in the kitchen, make life easy and living gracious, without being at a loss for a snack to serve your family or friends.

A story is told about a famous gourmet who was making a survey of regional foods. One night he dined in a Jewish restaurant and found the dishes greatly to his liking. He asked the manager for permission to compliment the cook personally, and when the comely middle-aged woman ap­peared, the gourmet praised her cooking enthusiastically, told her that he was writing a book and asked her for the secret of her delectable dishes. Her answer was, "My dear man, the only trick to Jewish cooking is schmaltz." I will therefore now give you a recipe for rendering fat.

HOW TO RENDER FAT

Put chicken skin and fat into freezing compartment of your refrigerator for about an hour, to make slicing easier. Cut into small pieces and put into a heavy aluminum pot on a very small flame until the fat melts and the skin and crispies are almost brown. Add three sliced onions (to the pound of fat) and make flame higher until onions are slightly browned. Remove the onions and gribenes and drain off the fat. The gribenes, if still tough (as they often are), can be put in a frying pan in the oven to drain the rest of the fat and to become crisp. Keep watching and draining off fat. The gribenes can be served separately or with chopped liver, or ground up with the liver. The onions can also be used in grinding the liver or in any dish requiring sautéed onions, provided they are not too well browned. If you are preparing any dish needing sautéed onions, remove the onions from fat before they are browned, put crispies in oven, and watch carefully so as not to burn them.

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