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Shopping With Mama, by Bea Gold

ENCINITAS, Calif. – In her new book, Shopping With Mama, 97-year-old Bea Gold evokes a bygone era, offering a nostalgic journey into the daily life of a Jewish child growing up in 1930s and 1940s New York, a time when supermarkets were absent and food shopping was a cherished routine.

What sets Shopping With Mama apart is its fusion of storytelling and culinary exploration. Alongside the anecdotes, readers are treated to authentic Jewish recipes tied to the foods found in each store. The inclusion of recipes adds a hands-on, sensory experience, inviting readers to not only savor the tales but also recreate the flavors of a different time in their own kitchens.

The book also includes Gold’s black and white woodcut illustrations capturing the essence of that era, which add a visual dimension to the narrative.

“I wrote this book to share my memories of a way of life that is no more,” Gold said in the books’ dedication. “The enjoyment of daily activities like shopping, storytelling, cooking and baking are now taken over by television programs, computers and the internet. I wish for my children, grandchildren, great grandchildren and readers the enjoyment of finding the right food and cooking new and exciting dishes and the pleasure of watching someone eating and enjoying your creation.”

Bea Gold (Photo by Galina Marcus)

Shopping With Mama was a chapter in Gold’s first book, Tell Me A Story, which was based on memories of her childhood in the 1930s and 40s. The stories are in the voice of the child and portray the experiences of a young, Jewish, first-generation American girl growing up in old New York.

The focus of Shopping With Mama is on the items sold and recipes created by the proprietors of each of the small stores Gold would visit with her mother and the delicious foodstuffs catering to new Americans that they sold.

Shopping With Mama’s first chapter is devoted to the Appetizing Store. In the 1930s and 1940s, the Appetizing Store was used by Jews new to America looking for foods that they knew from home, non-perishable, less expensive smoked or pickled fish and vegetables. The many varieties of inexpensive herring was a mainstay of the immigrant families as it had been in Europe.

“I loved going to the Appetizing Store with mama,” Gold writes. “The store had big glass cases for all the things they sold, and they were wonderful to see. There were a lot of different kinds of herring and my daddy loved them all. There was schmaltz herring, pickled herring, herring in sour cream. There were beautiful golden fish called white fish, one called sturgeon, and another called sable, there was pickled salmon that was bright pink and had little spices sticking to it. Then there was my favorite, smoked salmon, called lox.”

Among the other chapters are “The Butcher,” “The Candy Store,” “The Delicatessen,” “The Live Fish Market,” “The Poultry Market” and “The Produce Market,” each with Gold’s reminiscences and a recipe.

Gold recalls walking into the bakery was “like walking into a perfume factory! I didn’t like perfume on people, but the smell here was delicious.” Gold’s mama always made chicken soup on Fridays and needed to get the right chicken. At the Poultry Market, her mama would “slowly look into each of the cages that had clucking chickens. She would pick one chicken and open its cage. She said she only wanted to buy a young egg layer. She would put her hand into the cage, hold the chicken by the neck, and put her finger in the tushie of the chicken. She told me that was to see if she felt eggs inside the chicken. If she didn’t feel eggs she would check to find a chicken with eggs inside.”

At the Live Fish Market “there were trays with fish on a lot of ice. Mama said that was to keep the fish fresh. It smelled fishy in that shop! There were whole fish on the ice and there was cut up fish on the trays. There were some barrels with ice and some whole fish. There were big tubs of water with fish swimming in them.”

Among the many recipes in the book are those for chopped herring salad, rugelach, Ashkenazi pot roast, cheese blintzes, potato knishes and chicken schnitzel.

Her mama, Gold says, did not use paper recipes or measuring spoons or cups, so she had to recreate them. “Shopping With Mama is a literary and culinary time capsule,” she says. “The book encapsulates the heartwarming journey of a child navigating the diverse landscapes of New York City’s food markets, and it’s a celebration of family, culture and the timeless joy of sharing meals that transcend generations.”

With the rise of supermarkets, the daily ritual of shopping for that night’s dinner ended. But the tradition of Shopping with Mama endures for Gold and her children. As she writes, “I often asked Mama for help to make one of the dishes that I watched her prepare. As my children grew up and had their own kitchens, they used many of the recipes I learned from my mother. Now, my children seek help from me from time to time. They often use the modern way of communicating to review a recipe or find a forgotten one, first by telephone and more recently texting a request or sending an emergency email. Shopping With Mama goes on.”

For more information about Shopping With Mama and to see Bea Gold’s artwork, visit her website.

Shopping With Mama is available at Amazon.

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