The Yishkabibble Cake

My mother, 85 and recently widowed, has been easily depressed these last, oh, 65 years. She called me last night to say she’d been at a senior center, gotten into an accordian recital and left, feeling very unhappy. When she got home, she said to herself that it was 1:00 and she wasn’t going to sit around and feel sorry for herself all day.

Let’s see if I can make a chicken soup, she told me she told herself. She pulled out some chicken thighs from the freezer, got some canned chicken stock. ‘I had a turnip and some carrots,’ she told me, and then she added barley. ‘I forgot how much it swells up,’ she said.

Eight quarts later, she’d given away 5 quarts to friends, frozen 2 for when the kids visit, and eaten her fill of the last quart. When she called, she was in an expansive mood. We talked about stone soup and making stuff from nothing.

‘My mother was a good baker,’ she said, ‘She always made a sheet cake that we all loved. Of course there was dough left over so she would roll it with jelly or nuts or raisins, you know, whatever she had in the house. Your Aunt Rhoda and I loved the leftover cake.’ Somehow, it became named the Yishkabibble Cake.

So, in addition to Mom getting in front of the Eating Out of Your Fridge movement, she made the case, once again, for the things that are left over, that remain when the main course is consumed, that are, sometimes, the things you remember most.