Ah, how the world has changed in a mere 50 years. Like most people of a certain age, I remember summers that were hot, inside and outside, unless you went to the movies where it was air-conditioned. If you were lucky, you had a fan; if you were really lucky you had either a great big standing fan or a table-top oscillating model. In every room, at least one window had a window fan, the kind that wedged in under the open window and stayed there like that until fall.How did we cool off before air conditioning? If you were a kid, you might be able to convince a sympathetic parent to turn on the sprinklers, or set up a wading pool. If there was a real pool nearby, you begged to go. The father of one of my friends would get off the bus from New York every evening in his suit, change into swim trunks, drive across town to the public pool, swim across and back once -- it's a lake-type pool, so it's wide -- and come out, drive home, shower and change and have his dinner. That's how he cooled off.
You cooled off with food, too. My little cronies and I would save up our nickels so that on the hottest day of the week, we could take a walk the six blocks or so to the convenience store -- we called it "the dairy" then because you could buy milk there, no such as thing as convenience stores yet -- and buy ice pops. On the way home, we'd linger, if we could, by passing through the showroom of the car dealership, which was also air-conditioned.
But the ultimate cooling-off food for a hot summer day in my house was borscht. Now, I believe that there are lots of things meant by people who use the word borscht; here in Bizarro Town, where we have a very large population of immigrants from Russia and the Ukraine, it probably means a hot potato and bean soup that might also have beets in it. But the traditional Eastern European Jewish-type borscht that I grew up on is cold beet soup.
Yes. I said cold beet soup.
I have never understood why this sounds so gross to outsiders, because to me it was always a special delicacy. I've never known anyone to make it at home, although certainly you can, and my good-cook grandmother probably did so back when my father was a kid. But in general, you buy it in a jar:
It's a clear (but beet-colored) broth and there are shredded beets in it. When you ladle it out, you have to make sure you get just the right amount of beets, and also that you don't just plop them into the bowl, because it splatters like crazy, and as you know if you've ever fed a baby, beets stain everything they touch. And then you put a scoop of sour cream into it.
You serve the borscht as cold as you can get it, and there is nothing more refreshing. Of course, you have to tuck a dishtowel into your collar like a bib, or whatever you're wearing will be permanently splattered, and you lean close over the bowl to minimize the splashing effect. I used to mush my sour cream into the soup so the whole thing took on a nice pink color, but that's not required.
It would cool you off in an instant. And it's good for you, too.
I don't have any in the house, because no one else eats it, and I would never finish a jar myself within a reasonable time. I should check tomorrow at the deli and see if I can go in there and just get enough for me.
And then there's schav. *shudder* Schav is ... wait a minute .... **SHUDDER**
It's a similar soup, but it's .... green. Schav is essentially sorrel soup, it comes in a jar like borscht ... but it's green. Once about five years ago, I was doing some grocery shopping for my father and he asked me to pick up a bottle of schav, and I almost couldn't bring myself to do it.
Funny, eh? Borscht = nectar of the gods. Schav = snot in a jar.
Air conditioning: not such a bad idea after all.
