Taste of the Past or Open Heart Open Home

Taste of the Past: The Daily Life and Cooking of a Nineteenth-Century Hungarian-Jewish Homemaker

Author: Andras Koerner

A Taste of the Past is an entertaining reconstruction of the daily life and household of Therese (Riza) Baruch (1851-1938), the great-grandmother of the author, Andras Koerner. Based on an unusually complete cache of letters, recipes, personal artifacts, and eyewitness testimony, Koerner describes in loving detail the domestic life of a nineteenth-century Hungarian Jewish woman, with special emphasis on the meals she served her family.

Based on Riza's letters, part one offers an imaginative sketch of growing up in a religious middle-class family in the 1860s and 70s in an industrial town in western Hungary. Part one also describes Riza's reactions to the dilemmas posed by the early signs of Jewish assimilation. In part two, the heart of the book, Riza has married, moved to a smaller town near the Austrian border, and become the central figure of a large household. Koerner recreates a typical day in the life of Riza and her family, peppering his narrative with recipes of the food she served for breakfast, mid-morning snack, lunch, afternoon coffee-and-cake, and the much more modest evening meal.

Riza's family was religious, and Koerner also describes the special foods (pike in sour aspic, cholent, apple-matzo kugel, and much more) she served to celebrate the Sabbath and the six major Jewish holidays. Short introductions to the recipes describe the evolution of the dishes through the centuries, their role in Jewish culture, and how cultural influences and religious traditions shaped Riza's cooking.

More than 125 evocative pen-and-ink illustrations bring Riza's story and her food to life. A Taste of the Past offers an enchanting look at Jewish daily life in westernHungary in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, a time when middle-class Jews were increasingly assimilated into mainstream Hungarian life and culture. Such small-town Jewish life had completely disappeared due to the Holocaust. Koerner's book revives this lost world and invites the reader to be a guest in Riza's house to watch her caring for her family, shopping, cooking, and preparing for the holidays. By offering easy-to-follow updated versions of her recipes, the book also allows readers to savor Riza's dishes and desserts in their own kitchens, thus completing this experience of a visit to the past.

Look this: Build Strong Healthy Feet or Choose to Lose

Open Heart, Open Home: The Hospitable Way to Make Others Feel Welcome and Wanted

Author: Karen Burton Mains

And in Open Heart, Open Home she shows how. In this classic on Christian hospitality, Karen Mains steps far beyond how-to-entertain hints to explore a biblical and spiritual approach to using your home to care for others. This approach to hospitality can literally transform the fabric of your community and your world. If you labor under the illusion that hospitality requires Martha Stewart-like abilities, then Mains will free you from a load of guilt! Instead, she offers fresh and inspiring ideas for using your own resources to serve rather than to impress with new "opening the door" activities in each chapter. You will discover how the Holy Spirit can work in and through you to make others feel welcome and wanted. Whether you are a business executive or a homemaker, a professional minister or a layperson, a seasoned entertainer or an entertaining klutz, you will find here the encouragement and skills you need to reach out with the gospel through daily acts of acceptance, belonging and love.

Table of Contents:

	Introduction	9
1	"Company's Comin'!"	15
2	On Entertaining	23
3	The Immanent Guest	35
4	The Gift of Hospitality	47
5	The Servant	61
6	On Serving & Being Served	73
7	Telltale Marks	81
8	Welcome	97
9	The Family of Joint Heirs	107
10	Open Homes	119
11	The Finest House in Town	129
12	Householding	139
13	Open Hearts	149
14	The Hospice	159
15	Stewards of Time	169
16	Shortcuts	181
17	Creativity and Simplicity	189
18	At Ease	199
	Given to Hospitality--A Prayer	207