Tag #118953 - Interview #100488 (Leya Yatsovskaya )

My mother did all the household chores with the exception of laundry. We had a large family and didn’t even have running water, so my mother gave our linen to the laundress. We had to walk up the hill to get water from a pump, and for the toilet we fetched water from the River Shvenchena [in Russian it means Holy]. Usually the deaf and dumb poor Jews brought us water, but Malka and I did that as well. I liked it when there was a lot of water, so that I could fill up the water barrel. My mother was a wonderful cook. She made delicious dishes from inexpensive products. Potato and herring was the most common food for poor Jews in Lithuania. There was a shop not far from us where only herring was sold. Usually there was fresh herring, and herring which had been salted the previous year, which was twice as cheap. My mother bought the cheaper herring and we ate it everyday. Even now I consider herring and potatoes to be the tastiest food in the world. Sometimes we had soup. In winter time we had it with grain, and in summer with vegetables.