Tag #138497 - Interview #78499 (Bernat Sauber)

The Saturday dinner was such a feast, that you can imagine everybody had their bellies overstuffed. They used to begin the Saturday noon lunch with a small glass of spirit. We used to have onion with egg or fish aspic for side-dish. The fish is a very common meal for Jews. After each bite of fish one used to lick the glass of spirit, because if one drank from it they would get drunk. By the way even now I can only eat jelly if I have a glass of maximum half deciliter of spirit to lick after each bite. (We used to have a glass of spirit on Saturday morning, as well, but only my father and rarely my mother) The fowl liver previously cooked with onion was cut with a hatchet and mixed it with the onion with eggs. One used to eat radish with it. The Saturday lunch consisted of meat soup. We used to eat meat soup with radish, we couldn't even imagine it otherwise. In the meat soup my mother used to put soup stick, or she used to make a very thin sheet from eggs, spiced it with pepper, and cooked it. This gave a very exquisite taste to the soup. I haven't eaten such a soup since. Then we had the good fatty cholent, it had both beef and poultry, one used to mix them, this was the custom. One used to fell chicken skin with corn-flour, and flavored it with pepper and sugar. Then sewed over the two ends of the skin and put it in to the pot. This was called kugli. One use to put gershli with the bean in to the cholent, this was a kind of skinned wheat. Or they put dried farfel. In our house this wasn't a custom, we didn't put any of these in it. There was a special cookie baked by my mother on the stove in advance, on Friday afternoon. It was made with eggs, flour, sugar, and this congeries was baked on the stove. It was like matzah, and she baked it in pieces. It was thin, easy to bake and very delicious. After lunch we used to pray and sing Saturday laudative songs, we called them zmires le shabat in Hebrew. Its meaning in English: Saturday Laudative Songs. After lunch, hose who got used to it, had one or two wine-and-sodas. After lunch 70% of the adult Jewish men used to sleep on Saturday afternoon. Their stomach was so full, that they could hardly move.