Be sure to read both parts The Diet and Growing up Jewish

If you get this and you are not Jewish - I cannot even begin to explain..................

This actually goes back 2 generations - or 3 if you are under 50! I miss it all and can't help but wonder how did my grandparents have a nonexistent cholesterol.

The Atkins Schmaltz Diet

Before we start, there are some variations in ingredients because of the various types of Jewish taste. (Polack, Litvack and Gallicianer).

Just as we Jews have six seasons of the year (winter, spring, summer, fall, the slack season, and the busy season), we all focus on a main ingredient which, unfortunately and undeservedly, has disappeared from our diet. I'm talking, of course, about SCHMALTZ (chicken fat).

SCHMALTZ has, for centuries, been the prime ingredient in almost every Jewish dish, and I feel it's time to revive it to its rightful place in our homes. (I have plans to distribute it in a green glass Gucci bottle with a label clearly saying: 'low fat, no cholesterol, Newman's Choice, extra virgin SCHMALTZ.' (It can't miss!)

Let's start, of course, with the 'forshpeiz' (appetizer). Gehockteh leiber (chopped liver) with SCHMALTZ is always good, but how about something more exotic for your dear ones, like boiled whitefish in yoyech (soup) which sets into a jelly form, or 'gefilteh miltz' (stuffed spleen), in which the veins are removed (thank God), and it is fried in (you guessed it) SCHMALTZ, bread crumbs, eggs, onions, salt and pepper.

Love it! How about stewed lingen (lungs)--very chewy--or gehenen (brains)--very slimy. Am I making your mouth water yet?

Then there are (grebenes -- pieces of chicken skin, deep fried in SCHMALTZ, onions and salt until crispy brown (Jewish bacon).

This makes a great appetizer for the next cardiologist's convention.

Another favorite, and I'm sure your children will love it, is pe'tcha (jellied calves' feet). Simply chop up some cows' feet with your hockmesser (handl-chopper), add some meat, onions, lots of garlic, SCHMALTZ again, salt and pepper, cook for five hours and let it sit over night. You might want to serve it with oat bran and bananas for an interesting breakfast (just joking!).

There's also a nice chicken fricassee (stew) using the heart, gorgle (neck), pipick (a great delicacy, given to the favorite child, usually me), a fleegle (wing) or two, some ayelech (little premature eggs) and other various chicken innards, in a broth of SCHMALTZ, water, paprika, etc.

We also have knishes (filled dough) and the eternal question, 'Will that be liver, beef or potatoes, or all three?'

Other time-tested favorites are kishkeh, and its poor cousin, helzel (chicken or goose neck). Kishkeh is the gut of the cow, bought by the foot at the Kosher butcher. It is turned inside out, scalded and scraped. One end is sewn up and a mixture of flour, SCHMALTZ, onions, eggs, salt, pepper, etc., is spooned into the open end and squished down until it is full. The other end is sewn and the whole thing is boiled. Yummy!

My personal all-time favorite is watching my Zaida (grandpa) munch on boiled chicken feet. Try that on the kinderlakh (children) tomorrow.

For our next course we always had chicken soup with pieces of yellow-white, rubbery chicken skin floating in a greasy sea of lokshen(noodles), farfel(broken bits of matzah), arbiss (chickpeas), lima beans, pietrishkeh, tzibbeles (onions), mondlekh (soup nuts), kneidlakh (dumplings), kasha (groats), kliskelekh and marekh (marrow bones)

The main course, as I recall, was either boiled chicken, flanken, kackletten (hockfleish--chopped meat), and sometimes rib steaks, which were served either well done, burned or cremated.

Occasionally we had barbecued liver done to a burned and hardened perfection in our own coal furnace.

Since we couldn't have milk with our meat meals, beverages consisted of cheap soda (Kik, Dominion Dry, seltzer in the spritz bottles) or glezel tay (glass of hot tea) served in a yahrtzeit (memorial candle) glass and sucked through a sugar cube held between the incisors.

Desserts were probably the only things not made with SCHMALTZ, so we never had any Momma who ever learned how to make SCHMALTZ Jell-O.

Well, now you know the secret of how I've grown up to be so tall, sinewy, slim and trim, energetic, extremely clever and modest, and if you want your children to grow up to be like me, you're a gohnsen meshuggah (completely nuts)!

ZEIT MIR GEZUNT. (Go in good health)... and order out Chinese.

Growing up Jewish

If you are Jewish, and grew up in city with a large Jewish population, or are gentile with Jewish friends or associates, the following will invoke heartfelt memories, so read on........

The Yiddish word for Today is PULKES (PUHL-kees) Translation: THIGHS. Please note: this word has been traced back to the language of one of the original Tribes of Israel, the Cellulites..

The only good advice that your Jewish mother gave you was: 'Go! You might meet somebody!'

You grew up thinking it was normal for someone to shout 'Are you okay?' through the bathroom door when you were in there longer than 3 minutes.

Your family dog responded to commands in Yiddish.

Every Saturday morning your father went to the neighbor-hood deli (called an 'appetitizing store') for whitefish salad, whitefish 'chubs'), lox (nova if you were rich!), herring, corned beef, roast beef, cole slaw, potato salad, a 1/2-dozen huge barrel pickles which you reached into the brine for, a dozen assorted bagels, cream cheese and rye bread (sliced while he waited). All of which would be strictly off-limits until Sunday morning.

Every Sunday afternoon was spent visiting your grand- parents and/or other relatives.

You experienced the phenomenon of 50 people fitting into a 10-foot-wide dining room hitting each other with plastic plates trying to get to a deli tray.

You had at least one female relative who penciled on eyebrows which were always asymmetrical.

You thought pasta was stuff used exclusively for Kugel and kasha with bowties.

You were as tall as your grandmother was by the age of seven.

You were as tall as your grandfather was by age seven and a half.

You never knew anyone whose last name didn't end in one of 5 standard suffixes (berg, baum, man, stein and witz).

You were surprised to discover that wine doesn't always taste like cranberry sauce.

You can look at gefilte fish and not turn green.

When your mother smacked you really hard, she continued to make you feel bad for hurting her hand.

You can understand Yiddish but you can't speak it.

You know how to pronounce numerous Yiddish words and use them correctly in context, yet you don't know exactly what they mean. Kaynahurra.

You're still angry with your parents for not speaking both Yiddish and English to you when you were a baby.

You have at least one ancestor who is somehow related to your spouse's ancestor.

Your grandparents' newly washed linoleum floor was covered with the NY Times, which your grandparents couldn't read.

You thought speaking loud was normal.

You considered your Bar or Bat Mitzvah a 'Get Out of Hebrew School Free' card.

You think eating half a jar of dill pickles is a wholesome snack.

You're compelled to mention your grandmother's 'steel cannonballs' upon seeing fluffy matzo balls served at restaurants.

You buy 3 shopping bags worth of hot bagels on every trip to NYC and ship them home via FedEx. (Or, if you live near NYC or Philadelphia or another Jewish city hub, you drive 3 hours just to buy a dozen 'real' bagels.)

Your mother or grandmother took personal pride when a Jew was noted for some accomplishment (showbiz, medicine, politics, etc.) and was ashamed and embarrassed when a Jew was accused of a crime... As if they were relatives.

You thought only non-Jews went to sleep away colleges. Jews went to city schools ... unless they had scholarships or made an Ivy League school.

And finally, you knew that Sunday night and the night after any Jewish holiday was designated for Chinese food.

Zei gezunt!!