A Truly Wonderful Day

Today my sister and I went to visit my great aunt and great uncle in Daytona Beach, Florida. The last time I saw them was when I was 19 years old and living in Israel. What a long time ago that was.

It was a doubly significant visit for me because my great uncle is the brother of my maternal grandfather and my great aunt is the sister of my maternal grandmother. Rather unusual. Back in South Africa and Swaziland following WWII, there weren't so many Jews and it wasn't too long after my grandparents started dating that their younger siblings started dating each other too. So, the family in Johannesburg that had two dashing sons married them both off to the family with two beautiful daughters in Swaziland. Or something like that, you know I wasn't there to see for myself.

My great uncle reminds me so much of my grandfather. Sweet, with a heart of gold. They also look alike, so the image of my grandfather was particularly sharp in my mind when I looked at my great uncle's face.

My great grandfather had a bakery in Johannesburg (in which my grandmother first met my grandfather one fateful day), and later when they were adults my great uncle and grandfather ran the bakery together for many years. I'd never seen any of the recipes, though when I asked my mother about them just the other day she commented that they wouldn't be very useful for me because they were on such a large scale and didn't scale down easily for just a few people.

It turns out my great uncle had a book of recipes from the bakery still. My sister and I looked through it-- the recipes called for gargantuan quantities of individual ingredients. Some recipes were in English, others were in German. Here are some examples (Leekuchen, krunchies and hot chocolate mix-- click on the photo to see a larger image):


Hot Chocolate Dry Mix

13 lbs. Milk Powder
25 lbs. Sugar
27 lbs. Cocoa
1 oz. Vanilla
1 oz. Salt
1 oz. Cinnamon

These recipes will indeed be hard to scale down for my use, but my great aunt gave me one recipe that I will treasure. She served us a delicious raisin bread that she had made. It turns out my great-grandmother (her mother) got the recipe when she was in Swaziland during WWII and my great aunt has been making it ever since:

Raisin Loaf

2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 cup sugar (or substitute 3/4 cup splenda)
pinch of salt
1 egg

Mix all ingredients together and add enough milk to make a thick flowing dough. Let stand for 10 minutes. Fold in gently 1 cup raisins if you want 1/2 cup chopped nuts. Bake in oven at 350F for 30 min in a little loaf pan. Test with a toothpick and turn out of the pan when half cool.

My great uncle was eager to show me the many pieces of art he had brought with him from Africa. He was particularly proud of the Herero face mask from Namibia, recounting that the women who wore such head dresses refused to bow down to white people:


There was this other beautiful face mask:


And this piano which my great uncle had me take down off the wall so he could show me how it was played:


In the late afternoon my sister and I went to the beach, where I was surprised to see snowy egrets fishing in the surf (more on this later), and delighted to see squadrons of brown pelicans overhead (I'll never forget my birding instructor Lisa Myers saying that pelicans look like they fly just for the sheer pleasure of it, and they are so incredible looking with their prehistoric pterodactyl-like silhouette). My sister enjoyed watching the fish, small mystery invertebrates burrowing in the sand and the fishing trawler that was quite close to shore.


For dinner we went to Alfie's, which is just around the corner from my great aunt and great uncle's house. In fact, my great uncle has been friends with the owner for years and used to help him out when he was short staffed. I had the all you can eat fried tilapia, some of my sister's fried haddock and some of my great uncle's fried shrimp and fried clam strips. As if this wasn't unhealthy enough, my sister and I splurged and split a deep fried ice cream for dessert. It brought back happy memories for both of us of eating at a restaurant called Papagayo's in Durham as kids, where we used to split a Mexican dessert that was very similar to the deep fried ice cream (it was also ice cream in a taco shell but with way more cinnamon). My sister and I would devour it starting in from the opposite sides, just like we did tonight. It has been decades since we have had anything remotely like it, so it was quite a culinary treat in addition to rekindling our childhood memories.

As I get older, I treasure the relationships in my life that run deep, that harken back to happy memories of my younger years. It has been so special to me to spend this time with my sister, and also to see my great aunt and uncle. What a wonderful day.