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Wednesday, September 30, 2009

KCC and some family lore

The latest Kosher Cooking Carnival is available here.

Special thanks to Batya for including my crumb bar post.

Thanks also to my mother, who not only gave me the recipe but also provided some family history.

As it turns out, my mother received the recipe from HER mother – i.e. my grandmother a”h - who had adapted it from a recipe SHE got from a relative in New Jersey*.

To me, what’s particularly interesting is that although it isn’t a new recipe, it calls for oil rather than margarine or shortening. So, in addition to all their other virtues, these bars were also ahead of their time…

smile_teeth

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*Yes, of COURSE it makes a difference that it was NJ and not, say, PA or DE. Why do you ask? ;-)

9 comments:

  1. And since no one from New Jersey is really from New Jersey, one must find out what country in Europe the relative (or ancestors of said relative) was from. In your spare time.

    Thanks for the family lore.

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  2. Leora - Good point. And as it so happens, I actually do know where in Europe the relative (who was my grandmother a"h's step-sister) was from: Kovno, Lithuania.

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  3. I think Kovno may be near Mariampole, which was my maternal grandfather's hometown. But what do I know. Maybe we're related? He had half sisters and a step mother.

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  4. They made jam bars in Kovno?

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  5. Since I'm the one who added the "important" notation of "from New Jersey", I will try to explain. In the family, any recipe that came from the family in New Jersey was noted as the "recipe from Mount Holly" (the town in New Jersey where they lived). I figured whoever heard of Mount Holly, so I changed the notation to New Jersey. And, yes people made jam bars in Kovno. My grandmother (from Kovno) made jam bar things too.

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  6. Leora - That would be really funny, but it's such a small world that anything is possible. Did your grandfather ever live in Mount Holly, NJ? (See my mother's comment above.)

    Malke - LOL! :-)

    Imma - But one thing is certain: In Europe, we didn't have Crumb Cake with chocolate chips on Erev Yom Kippur...
    :-)

    Batya - Kol hakavod to you for hosting three carnivals in one month!

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  7. Not aware of any relatives ever living in Mount Holly - they all lived in Manhattan on the West Side on that side of the family.

    But it would be fun to trace back to Lithuania to see if there are any connections. (I am supposedly a descendant of R. Chaim Volozhin, FYI, from that side). The family name was Freide.

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  8. Leora - Yes, that would be fun! And if it turned out that there WERE any connections, I'm sure they never would have imagined that one day their descendants would become blogging friends...
    :-)

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