Strudel Makes The Woman

My mom and dad began married life in a small ground floor apartment in a two-family house in Brooklyn. One day Grandma Lil decided it was her daughters turn to learn the family recipe for strudel; beautiful Russian strudel filled with nuts and plum butter. My mother watched as the dough was worked until paper thin. The filling wasn’t difficult, but the dough required a certain expertise. The crucial part was in the initial preparation; the dough needed to be pounded and stretched. They slapped it and banged it like two prize fighters; which is comical enough, both my mother and granmother barely reach the five foot mark. (I’ve often said: “You know you’re in a Jewish family when at ten years old your taller than most relatives!”) The beating continued, with the two of them drenched in sweat, until they were almost done. They were obsessively working the dough, hoping it would soom gain its elasticity and before they passed out from heat exhaustion, when all of a sudden there was a loud knock at the door. My mom wiped the sweat from her face and opened the door to find the landlady, who lived upstairs, looking impatient and frustrated. With her hands on her hips, she expressed wonder at how her tenants could possibly be cold –still. She had turned the heat up several times. My mom was puzzled. What she didn’t know was the standard rule of two-family living: If you need more heat, rap hard on the pipes. My mother and grandmother still laugh about that till this day.