Dinner was starting to take frustratingly too much time to
prepare, with all the children clamoring noisily, "Ima, I'm
sooo hungry!" "That one's for me!" "I'm next!"
We were set up for `technical failure' due to a lack, I
realized finally, of adequate equipment to meet the challenge
of providing food in large quantity.
I called my neighbor, a woman with over a dozen kids who runs
a home-based catering service, and said, "Help! I need an
enormous frying pan! Do you know where I can buy one?"
She said I should call another neighbor who happens to be a
gourmet chef for a yeshiva in the Old City.
He asked, "Are you planning to open an all-night diner?"
"No, I just want to serve supper. Not all night."
He kindly recommended a restaurant supply store with
industrial size machinery and appliances located near Machane
Yehuda in downtown Jerusalem. "Oh, hooray!" I thought as I
scribbled down the directions with an increasing sense of
well-being. A solution to our dinner time dilemma was now in
sight. I had a happy anticipation that my life was about to
change, as I took this step in the direction of better
organization and efficiency.
The next day I set off with my list of errands for the
morning. The most important stop was at the shop, which I
found easily enough.
Inside I saw an elderly, pious couple who were apparently the
owners. The woman was sitting on a stool reciting Tehillim,
and glanced up briefly in welcome. Her husband was busy with
a customer on the phone, writing down an order. I had a few
moments to myself to take in the surroundings.
The shelves were stocked up to the ceiling far above, piled
high with an assortment of huge, colossal vessels capable of
serving soup to hundreds of hungry souls. Giant colanders,
metal containers, ladles and woks, food processors and
blenders of heavy metal were present -- all the paraphernalia
necessary for multiplying a recipe fifty-fold. Wow! I had
indeed arrived at the right place!
The owner finished up on the phone and asked me if I needed
help. I drew a picture of a frying pan and explained that I
needed a VERY big one. He immediately brought me to a shelf
with an appropriate selection of the big, Bigger and BIGGEST
frying pans I'd ever seen. Picking out a sturdy pan, I was
disappointed to find that it was made of aluminum. The couple
seemed amused when I asked if they had any in stainless
steel.
"Oh, geveret, that will be four times the price and
too heavy for you to lift."
Still, I insisted on seeing them, explaining that the
`literature' suggests a connection between aluminum and
Alzheimer's and that I only used stainless steel
cookingware.
Well, the woman of the store told me food tastes better
cooked in aluminum, and that every one these days is using
disposable aluminum baking tins and besides, they don't sell
just any old cheap alloy from the street -- theirs was high
quality stuff.
I really had not come prepared to pay four or five hundred
shekels for a frying pan, no matter how large, and I had more
errands with more packages still to carry. The stainless
steel one was beyond bulky, it was downright too hazardously
hefty to hold.
It took about five minutes to decide. Cognitive dissonance
was definitely at play. Frying French toast and pouring in
pancakes to cook for less than five minutes was barely long
enough to constitute an opportunity for the dreaded aluminum
to seep in and contaminate our food, I thought. I bought the
cheaper, lightweight one and watched joyfully as it was
wrapped up in brown paper and put in a amply sizable blue
plastic bag. Then off we went, my new mother's helper and I,
out into the blue yonder of a bright Jerusalem day.
That very night, I had the thrill of seeing so many slices of
bread simmering side by side, with sunny, yellow egg nestled
inside each one. The children were impressed that Ima was now
a `professional' cook, as they watched with joyous
fascination as I gleefully flipped their eggs and bread to
lightly brown on the other side. Forget about having more
than twenty years of past experience. What really counted was
that I had purchased and now possessed a really ENORMOUS
pan!
