Sunday, May 2, 2010

The Inedible: Five Jewish Foods To Avoid


I'm not a wimpy eater. I grew up with all the traditional foods; after all, my parents were Eastern European. Everything on our kitchen table was unidentifiable. What was identifiable was somehow referred to only by its Yiddish name so that I could feel as foreign as possible in the neighborhood. For example, I only knew the Yiddish names for chicken leg (polka) and chicken wing (fleagle). This is how I ventured out of our house (which was actually part of Poland) into America (outside the door): unable to communicate with the neighbors.

I wasn't that picky. I liked herring, I liked smelly fishes, I probably could've eaten an onion like an apple as a kid, that's how foreign we were. But when certain foods showed up on our table, there was no way my mother was fooling me - I knew inedible when I saw it. Mysterious foods, nefarious foods, foods that we'd stir to take a look-see and there'd be a globule of some primevil creature bobbing to the surface and then a leaf. With all of them, my mother was exceedingly evasive about the ingredients which led to one response only: my mouth clamped shut.

Here, then, to supplement my recent list of Essential Yiddish words, are five Jewish foods to avoid. Don't be lulled by exotic-sounding Yiddish names and don't think you'll offend the hosts by turning these foods down. These foods are always being turned down.

 1) Borscht - This beet soup. It's red and chunky. Do I need to say more than that? 

2) Schav - This is cold sorrel soup. It's green and comes in a glass jar. It's the evil half-twin of Borscht.

3) The Glop from the Gefilte Fish jar - Each Passover I buy several jars of Gefilte Fish which come packed in something called "jellied broth," a gloppy, gunky, clear slime that I wash off each piece of fish before serving. My mother loves this stuff. She begs me to save her all the extra glop in one jar and bring it to her after Passover. She doesn't want the fish; she wants the glop.

4) Poopik - Here's a newflash: when I was a little girl grown ups would play with me pretending they were going to eat my "poopik" - my belly button. And guess what, it means the exact same thing when, a few hours later, I'd sit down at the kitchen table and my mom would say, "Who wants the poopik?" Today - yes, forty-five years later - I asked her what animal, exactly, she had stolen this belly button from. She said, "A chicken." It's actually part of the Yiddish food psychology to drive you a little crazy thinking about whether chickens actually have belly buttons.

5) Kishke - This is fat mixed with sugar and flour and then stuffed in a casing, which I believe it means it's stuffed in an intestine. This is something I grew up with and loved but, as an adult, how does one make this exactly? How am I supposed to go to the butcher and request fat or casings? How am I supposed to tell my family that tonight we're going to eat, um, fat? How many calories, exactly, is this fat plus sugar plus flour going to have?  So onto the inedible list it goes.

What foods were on your table as a kid that you considered inedible? Did you ever try them? Are there any foods you eat now that your own kids consider inedible?

17 comments:

  1. potatoes with big slimy onions.
    Every single week my mom would make fried potatoes with onions sliced in them...The onions always looked like worms to me...they felt slimy. I would hide them in my shirt and flush them down the toilet.

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  2. Oh we had borscht, the jelly stuff (and I would not eat the fish from it either), and kishke. But my mom also made a "mock kishke" from ritz crackers and no intestines - so I ate that! My dad loved liver. Ugh. And tongue. I hated the taste buds on there! And canned beets.

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  3. I never knew what borsche was. Thanks for the warning. I used to eat many "weird" food at my Jewish friends' houses growing up. I just had a gefilte fish goop flashback...

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  4. I'm English and my mother and father were kids during the second world war when food was rationed so people ate what they could get - and kept doing it long after. So as I child I was subjected to lots of liver - lambs liver to be precise which is tough as old boots, leathery and very strange tasting. Also stuffed hearts - yes, roast lambs hearts the cavities of which were liberally filled with stuffing mix. They were horrible. Also stew made with neck of lamb, which was all bone and very little meat and once any leftovers congealed you could stand your spoon up in them, so full of fat was the residue.

    Oh my, I had not thought about all that for the longest time - needless to say I will not be serving any of those dishes to my daughter!

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  5. Thanks for the lesson. I am such a squeamish person. The idea of eating anything's belly button made me cringe. The gelfite glop had me holding my stomach. Eating anything stuffed into intestinal casings...even if it was doused with sugar ~ well ick. I think I would be a Jewish mother's nightmare child.

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  6. Okay, all of those sound incredibly revolting!

    My childhood nemesis was meat loaf. Shudder. But I also hated the monstrosity that is Shipwreck Casserole. And, of course, my dad's disgusting braunsweiger sandwich.

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  7. My elementary-school best friend was Jewish, and one year, I got to attend her family's Passover Seder. I think I ate an entire tray of macaroons, and I haven't been able to look at them, let alone eat one, since then. We're talking 25 years.

    As for my kiddos, who needs glop and poopik to up the gross-out factor when such nefarious culinary evils as tomatoes and onions exist?? =>

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  8. What an education! (I've had borscht in Russia; it was delish. Hated with the poopiks fell of my babies. Didn't know they were delicacies, somewhere, for someone.)

    Can't stand Brussel Sprouts! (Or tripe.)

    You crack me up!

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  9. my dad's family is cajun. they have boudin, which is a spicy rice-pork mixture stuffed into pork casing. Yeah... I'm a disgrace, because it disgusts me. I don't eat it and I don't like seafood either ( which is another staple in cajun food).

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  10. I think I will have no trouble avoiding those foods. Unfortunately I find almost all vegetables inedible. Luckily my freak children love them and beg for things like broccoli.

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  11. Marrying into a Jewish family has exposed me to many of these delicacies and more. :)

    In my house growing up, we used to eat Liverwurst sandwiches. One day, my grandmother called them "goose liver" sandwiches and my brother and I finally put two and two together. Is it any wonder that I became a vegetarian in adulthood?

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  12. As a child, I loved tongue sandwiches. My kids freak at the thought, egged on by my husband (a man who will try ANYTHING).

    I'll send your mom my gefiltet fish glop next Pesach if she wants it!

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  13. I left you an award on my blog. Lucky you!

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  14. Creamed chipped beef on toast - yuk! And now, thanks to you and your glop story, I doubt I'll ever eat Gefilte fish again.

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  15. Chris, I can't believe you hid onions in your shirt. Around my house, an onion was considered VERY edible! I mean you knew what was in it, right?

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  16. My friends and I have a fireside chat every six weeks or so and our last one was Thursday. Two of the girls out of four of us are Jewish so I had to share your blog with them. They loved it. You have such wit and humor in your writing, I appreciate your talent. Thank you for sharing so much about Judaism 101, I am really impressing my friends with my new found source(you).

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  17. Schmaltz. I can't believe adults let us smear chicken fat on bread, salt it, and then eat it. Of course, I can't believe my mother provided limitless amounts of Cap'n Crunch and Hohos for us either (for breakfast!). And yes, I still have all of my teeth - thankfully, those habits didn't follow me into adulthood.

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