As a girl, Elizabeth Ehrlich loved to visit her grandmother's kitchens.
These were busy, onion-scented, Yiddish-accented places. Within their
steamy plaster walls, the grandmothers -- remarkable women of insight,
strength, and grace -- preserved and handed on history, tradition,
community connection, humor, and wry lessons of life. As an adult,
Ehrlich followed the path of her assimilating clan, forgetting the
kitchen lessons. Her memory was awakened by her mother-in-law, Miriam. A
Holocaust survivor who had suffered unspeakable losses, Miriam cooked
the flavorsome dishes and carried on the customs of her childhood.
Certain that her work mattered, she rebuilt a life of dignity and
meaning. Under Miriam's spell, Ehrlich began to reclaim family memories
and explore tradition in her own home. Reciting a prayer, grating a
potato, lighting a candle, she found a way to build bridges from her
grandparents to her children, and to give her children a timeless
legacy. "Miriam's Kitchen" is Elizabeth Ehrlich's preservation of
recipes, immigrant stories, childhood memories, droll musings over
ritual, and sincere habits of the heart. It is a wise exploration of the
need to connect with the past and with tradition, and of our hunger for
meaning in a chaotic world.