PENMART01 wrote:
>> Sheldon, You may be right, I am not familiar with the machines
>> the butchers use, but I have never seen a speck of red meat when
>> I get the chicken ground and I have assumed that the meat
>> grinders are cleaned after every use. I really do not know
>> whether or not they are.
>
>
> I should hope they're not grinding red meat and poultry in the same
> machine... butcher shops have more than one grinder, and they are
> not cleaned until the end of each shift. Years ago my mother would
> occasionally send me to the butcher for a couple pounds ground beef
> shoulder, she'd send me with a dollar, a large onion, and a couple
> stale rolls... with instructions to tell the butcher to pass the
> onion through first, then the meat, and the bread last... if that
> butcher valued his life he'd do exactly as my mudder said... and
> back then there'd be change from that dollar too... oh, and I was
> supposed to ask for chicken livers, those were free to regular
> customers. same as fish roe from the fish monger was free too,
> along with the makings for fish stock. I still love poached fresh
> water fish roe, when I can get it. Naturally a meat grinder is
> manditory for making gefilte fish... yeah, I know it can be chopped
> in a wooden bowl, but... a grinder is quicker, and the results more
> uniform... don't forget to grind in that carrot and potato while
> you're at it, the parsley and the matzo too. And those fish balls
> folks make ain't gefilte fish at all, those are simply fish
> balls... real gefilte fish is *stuffed* (gefilte) back into its own
> skin and poached. Truth be known gefilte fish ain't Jewish at
> all... it's a 10,000 year old Eskimo dish.
>
What!?! Your Mother sent you to the butcher, he would give you
chicken livers and you did not ask for the rest of the giblets, so
that you Mother could make an even richer broth? And how about the
eggs inside the hens that had not been laid yet? Didn't your butcher
send them home with you? And how about asking for soup bones, free of
charge of course, because if they were really meaty, you could get a
whole meal out of them. Your family must have been really rich. G-d,
how I hated going to the butcher and asking for those little extras,
even if the butcher, knowing we had just arrived in the USA would give
them to me without my asking. A pound of cheap meat for a quarter or
so and all the free stuff. Enough for three meals for four.

How about going to the neighborhood bakery early in the morning? Five
cents for a loaf of Jewish seeded Rye from the day before and a bag of
rolls with an occasional Danish thrown in, for one penny. You had to
be early, you had to be there when the baker came in at six or even
before. We were not the only ones who had little money to spend on
food in 1940.

Every penny saved was instrumental in bringing more family members out
of Europe, before they would have been arrested and would have
perished in the holocaust. Eleven in all and then it was too late to
help more.