You can see Uncle Miksa Spiegel and his wife in the picture. They were fishmongers at the Hold Street market hall, I remember that they wore rubber aprons, and they were the parents of one of my cousins. My mother usually bought fish from them.
We had a maid on Paulay [Street], too, with whom my mother went to the Hold Street market hall once a week. Sometimes I went along, too. Mom put on a hat, a pair of gloves, she didn't just go out on the street, a woman couldn't smoke and eat on the street, nobody ate on the street as now. They did the shopping, carried the food home, and the maid cooked ; my mother taught her to cook. And mom baked bread every week. There was leaven put away, and there was rye flour and wheat flour in the pantry, and she kneaded a long and a round loaf of bread every week. She always put potatoes in it, too, it was very good bread, we ate it all week long. On the corner of Kaldy Street and Kiraly Street there was the baker, Kohn, they took it there to have it baked, and they took the cholent there, too. And my mother had a modern kitchen, so she made all kinds of vegetable dishes.
They preserved a lot of tomatoes, and jam. They made everything themselves. Mom bought 100 kilograms of tomatoes and they cooked them in big pots, it sputtered, it burned their hand by the time they got done. Mom bought a goose every week, collected the fat in big cans, they cooked with goose-grease. The goose liver was a luxury, but there were cracklings, bread and dripping, bread and butter and bread and jam. At that time it was a miracle to be able to buy a roll! On Erzsebet Square they sold cocoa and milk in two-deciliter bottles, it had a paper top, they punched it and one could drink it with a straw; to get that with a croissant was a miracle!
