It all but whispered to me... "Make Borscht." So, I listened. Maybe it was Oma talking to me from the other side. I gathered a bunch of necessary food stuffs from the garden -- potatoes, celery, onions, garlic, dill, cabbage -- and with stock from the freezer, voila. Borscht. Not quite the way Oma would have made it, as she used beef and beef stock, as well as fried ketchup (no, I'm not kidding, but what's the difference between fried ketchup and pureed tomatoes with some honey?), but still, it smelled the way I remembered. I could still see her, standing over her counter, cutting and chopping, and wiping the sweat from her brow. I ate it thinking of her, too, with a big piece of rye bread with butter. Lots of butter. She would have been proud. She really liked butter.
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