Seattle 69, or Food and Yom Kippur

Today, I made four jars of green tomato pickles, each one a different flavor: fennel/mustard/cumin, lime/garlic/ginger/mint, mustard/garlic/sugar, corriander/mustard/ginger. I tried setting a jar of baby carrots and cabbage to pickle. We'll see what happens with those.

I debated starting a loaf of sourdough but decided I didn't feel like it. Maybe tomorrow. The starter is smelling so good and healthy.

On Yom Kippur, I couldn't stop thinking about food. On the walk to shul up the giant hill, even the slightly sick-sweet smell of garbage from the Catholic school parking lot made my mouth water. I stared at people's gardens as I walked past them. Tomatoes. Basil. Squashes and carrots and beets. I wanted all of them. I stood in shul, beating my chest with every repetition of my myriad of sins, thinking about onions.

For a long time, I thought my grandmother had a secret ingredient that she added to her onions as soon as she threw them into her cast-iron pot, because “onions-frying-in-Mammy’s-kitchen” was a smell that ballooned into my memory, one I could never replicate.

And then I read a memoir, and the main character’s mother-in-law says don’t ever add the fat before you add the onions. Dry-fry them for a minute, first. Then, when the smell hits you, add your schmaltz, oil if it’s not a meat meal. I thought, why not.

The onions, I diced perfectly. Threw them into a hot cast-iron skillet with no oil, almost felt the scent before it hit me. Perfect. Mammy’s kitchen: its vintage stove, rolled linoleum floor, butcher-block table and single fluorescent bulb blooms from my frying pan. This smell has the power to bring people into the kitchen by their noses. It fits into the crevices of my hands like a child’s trusting palm. My hair, greedy with snarls, pulls it in and holds it for hours.

After that great shofar blast, I grabbed some cookies from the break-fast table at shul, a fistful of cherry tomatoes from a giant bowl, walked home feeling bouncy and light, trading bites of cookie for bites of tomato. Such sweetness. It started raining just as I reached home - home, bagels, schmear, lox, matzah brei, figs, shul clothes traded for borrowed sweatshirts and cozy time on the couch, reading stories out loud to the gathered kibbutzniks and stragglers.