It’s been my recent observation that western women can be divided into two camps: those that love dinnerware and those that are mildly indifferent. I fall into the first category. I’ve never met a soup bowl I didn’t love. This probably stems from the early days in Echo Park. Doesn’t everything? Our homes were small but our assembled families were enormous. To this day I don’t understand how we managed feed sixteen people at a table built for eight, max. Cupboards in our tiny kitchens were built to up to the ceilings and were crammed with plates and bowls of all sizes. It was not possible to eat fruit out of a soup bowl. Today we buy five-piece dinner sets. Growing up, I counted at least 9 pieces per place setting, and every single one of those pieces were used at family dinners. Some of the aunts had special sets put aside just for family dinners. My mother had one set, ordered from Barker Brothers in England. She used it for every day and special occasions. Actually, she had two sets of the same pattern because, you know, sixteen people at the table. All these plates and bowls at all these houses warped my mind forever. But we will get to my 25 sets of dinnerware later. Uncle Jack explained how my grandmother coped with an even larger crowd. Family dinners were held on Sundays. This had nothing to do with Day of Rest or temple matters. It was because the fathers all worked six days a week and Saturday nights were for baths. On Sunday mornings, sons and daughters would clear all the furniture out of Grandma’s dining/living room and set up a trestle table the entire length of the room, folding chairs all around. Those people who were not designated as food servers would crawl under the table to the far side and remained pinned in place until the last cup was removed. Uncle Jack may have been exaggerating, but I remember the size of the room and the people who filled it so I think facts may be stranger than fiction. Once the family and guests were settled in place, Grandma and others would start bringing out platters of food that were passed up and down the table. Soups, farshpayz (appetizers the size of a Marie Callender frozen dinner), chicken, brisket, lokshen (noodles), root vegetables, you name it, platters piled high at the top of the table, picked clean by the bottom of the table. Everything was there but leafy green vegetables. Grandpa said leafy green vegetables were pig food. Both Uncle Jack and my mother swore that cookies were brought out in an old tin washing tub. You know, the kind they fill with water for horses. Our horse trough was filled to the brim with Grandma’s fresh made cookies. Tea was served with cookies. Times were tough. Money was reserved for food. Tea was a luxury. Therefore, one teabag was deemed sufficient for the entire table. Uncle Jack said everyone got a teacup filled with hot water and the bag would go up and down the table, two dips per teacup. I believe him because when I served the family meals many years later, my aunts would strenuously object to the wastefulness of one bag per cup. They insisted on sharing one teabag, dipped it twice, and happily sipped what looked like dirty tap water. Grandma cooked all week for these family dinners. She never learned how to dust, sweep, wash, iron, or do anything but have children and cook. My mother swore this was intentional ignorance. It forced Grandma’s four daughters to run the house so she had time to cook horse troughs filled with cookies. I believe this because as soon as I was old enough to push a broom my mother forgot how to use one. When Grandma died, the duties of the Sunday dinners were relegated to the three surviving daughters and any daughters-in-law who were unlucky enough to still live in Echo Park. By then, Mah Jong was taking up valuable week days, so somewhere along the line a decision was made to have big family Sunday meals once a month instead of every week, and to rotate the host and hostess. By this point, I was in the picture, so I can attest to the quantities of food and the numbers of relations. The trestle table had been retired; children ate in the kitchen or were too busy running around outside to eat at all. We still used one teabag a month. Going back to rotating host and hostess, that’s really misleading. The only thing the host had to do with it was earn enough money to buy food, eat the food, and then gather at card tables in the living rooms to play pinochle, slam the tables with their palms, and yell at their partners that they were doing it wrong. I am not making this up. After one such meal, I was sitting outside the living room windows with a neighbor boy newly arrived from Nicaragua, when the men started slamming the tables and yelling at each other. He shuddered in fear and asked why they were fighting. I replied they were not fighting; they were playing a game and having fun. He had just escaped from warfare so I don’t think he believed me. I thought it was funny. Again, dark Jewish humor. While the men were yelling at each other, the women sat at the table, nibbling on the leftovers and gossiping. We children continued running in and out of the house, snatching bites of this and that and disappearing before we could be conscripted for cleanup duty. Once the pinochle games were over, everyone left the hostess with a pile of rubble that took three days to clean up. High Holidays were an exception. Those meals spanned two days: the night before when everyone would eat enough to help them survive the next day’s fast and a second meal after sunset on the following day. The hostess cooked for 32 and divided it into two days. Everything tasted better the second day, except for the teabag. There’s one last thing about these monthly meals, and that was the Care Package. This tradition began in 1945 when we learned that two relatives from Poland had survived and made their way to Switzerland. (Two. Out of an entire city.) Food was more scarce in Switzerland than in Echo Park so each guest brought a grocery bag filled with canned goods. The hostess would package them in big cartons marked Care Package and ship them to the grateful cousins. Also, a little money would be collected to include with the cans of spinach. Grandpa was dead. We were now allowed to eat leafy green vegetables.