Bet there aren't many of you that can identify the above couple of words, but then it's a different generation now. When we were growing up in the 40's, our parents were still speaking German and the picture of auntie Clara sitting at the table with the twins Monty and Harry, with full cheeks of unswallowed food pleading with them to shlook herunter is still vivid in my mind.

I'm not singling them out as though they were the only ones, you have to remember the generation which brought them up (our parents) were obsessed with their kids getting enough food and "fat was beautiful" in those days, ask me I still carry the scars of this feeding obsession.

It was the days when there was no cholesterol, 3%, 5%, 9% were mathematical terms no one ever associated them with fat content, shmaltz and grievenes (rendered chicken skin) were daily fare, you ate a dairy sandwich shmeared with butter, and a fleishig (salami) sandwich shmeared with chicken shmaltz. The" es es mein kind" (eat eat my child) was not the name of a ship but the motto on the lips of every Jewish mother. Skinny meant sick, fat meant healthy, mothers were afraid their neighbors would ask them "what's the matter you don't feed him or her ? Does the kid come from a concentration camp ?"

I remember My mom running around from Doctor to doctor with my brother Julius cause he was so thin, looking for a tonic to fatten him up. It was also the days when TB tuberculosis was very prominent and everyone associated the disease with being thin, not realizing that you became thin because of the disease. So they had good grounds for this obsession. And this obsession worked , it left it's mark on many of us with our overweight, and idiosyncracies which still accompany us to this day. We became imfinikes (spoiled). Julius to this day won't eat onions, Manuel Dalfen won't touch an egg, Harry Hutman will only eat fillets (fish), and I'm sure I left out most of the others but they do exist in each of our families.

My mom used to tell me that when I was an infant my first word was noch (more). She would sit and feed me and say "noch, Mendale noch", and I would answer noch. I was different most kids first word was mama or dada , I said noch. Cute isn't it ? well the problem is we continue saying noch long past the infant stage and it ain't an easy habit to break. I've got the jelly rolls (spare tires)to prove it.

Estherella tells me that things were not too different in her family. Her mother kept asking "where did you ever hear of a kid that doesn't like latkes " so she hasn't got a weight problem but I do.

It was the age of the homemade everything. First of all, you couldn't find anything kosher in the stores, and then who could afford to pay those prices. When you had a house full of kids and had to keep them fed you baked your own bread , and cakes, and cookies, cooked your own soups, and of course prepared your own meats. The food was wholesome, and we loved to eat so what was so bad ? It wasn't easy getting kosher products in the country, but that's too long a story for now.