After eight decades, she still had beautiful hands. The slim, elegant fingers with manicured nails pulled me close and enveloped me in the softest hug I’ve ever known. She’d been offered a job as a hand model in her youth, and I imagined the hands in the Palmolive commercials were the same ones that tucked our hair behind our ears and wiped smudges off our cheeks.
My sister and I were my grandmother’s jewels, the only grandchildren from her only child. My memories of her are strongest around the High Holidays and Passover, when I climb on a stool and reach far back into the cabinet above my refrigerator. I pull out the old stockpot, stained with age. It heats up more slowly than my newer pots, but I have used it every year since it became mine 21 years ago.
I use the pot for only one task, although my grandmother used it for many. Her matzoh ball soup was the foundation of all our holiday dinners; I could smell it the minute I walked into her apartment. I never thought to ask her how she made it. I just knew that what started as a pot of water became simmering bowls of deliciousness.
A few months after my grandmother passed away, I stared at the empty pot that was now mine. It was almost Rosh Hashanah, and my new husband and I were hosting our first holiday dinner. I began to plan the menu, but I had no soup recipe to continue the tradition.
How did I not know Grandma made her soup from memory?
A dear family friend gave me her own recipe, which had been passed down to her from her mother-in-law. She tweaked the recipe to make it her own, and I did the same. Over the next few years, I doctored the recipe until it tasted just as I remembered my grandmother’s soup.
I mash the vegetables through a strainer when the soup is done, to squeeze out all of their flavors. Like she did. I replace half of the water with seltzer when I make the matzoh balls, like she did. Even with the seltzer substitution, the matzoh balls are dense; a dinner guest once joked that one of my matzoh balls could be used as a weapon. I took that as a compliment — my grandmother’s matzoh balls were firm and hardy, not fluffy and delicate.
A few years ago, my daughter asked to help me make the matzoh balls, and I was happy to have an extra set of hands as we rolled the pasty dough around in our palms. We plopped one ball in after another, counting out loud as we filled the pot. I explained how the dumplings expand as they cook, and suggested that she wet her hands every so often to make the rolling easier.
I’ve had no helpers with the soup yet, but I’ve written down the recipe, tweaked two times over, to one day pass on to my grown children. Until then, I dip my grandmother’s bright yellow soup ladle into her pot every High Holiday season, continuing the tradition that was so meaningful to her. The pot and ladle are treasures not because of what they are, but because of the memories they hold.
My hands, not nearly as beautiful as my grandmother’s, mix the matzoh meal. My daughter’s hands, together with mine, form the dumplings, and drop them into the simmering soup.
Just like she did.
Also see: High Holidays 2017: Recipes, Memories, Tips and More
A Baltimore native, Dana Hemelt lives in Howard County with her husband and two teenagers. She blogs at kissmylist.com and tweets @kissmylist.
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