Jeff’s recipe for Polish potato pancakes is something of an editorial copout: “Use the recipe for Russian Potato Pancakes (page 418) but add a bit of grated onion.” Sort of like others worship oak trees or the sun. These were hotly contested among my cousins and me, and probably one reason I was comfortable, years later, to marry into a family, Wife Dottie’s, that worships the potato. She also was the chief (and chef) scrubber, peeler, grater, mixer, and fryer in her grandkids’ blini-eating contests. Indeed, she was a participant in my youthful adventure with “Tonto, Train Rails, and Disillusion.” Jeff’s book is subtitled, “Recipes you should have gotten from your grandmother.” I never knew my paternal Lithuanian-American grandmother, but I knew my maternal Polish-American grandmother well. The Frugal Gourmet On Our Immigrant Ancestors, by Jeff Smith, William Morris & Company, 1990. In this celebration of immigrant ancestors, I offer tidbits on one of my favorite cookbooks: Jeff Smith’s The Frugal Gourmet on Our Immigrant Ancestors. In the long term of the Bering Strait, Native Americans have them too.
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