Recipes

 Recipes for food that can be served at book club meetings for A Part of Myself

Then came the presents, followed by the carp dinner, and at midnight we tramped with lanterns over the hard-frozen snow to Mass in the brightly illuminated church.

We exchanged regular visits with the Jannings's and whenever we went to their house we returned home stuffed, having overeaten woefully.  For his wife Gussey knew how to turn sauerbraten, goose, a plate of cold meats, or corned beef with herb sauce into a Rabelaisian banquet.

The first bus to Henndorf departed at half past seven. We would spend the few intervening hours in the station restaurant over goulash and beer.

She (grandmother) was happy when we children stuffed ourselves with jam doughnuts or biscuits at her coffee table, but without making a fuss about it she always gave us a bag of sweets to be handed out to the children around the corner on the somewhat proletarian Pfaffengasse, where poor people lived - a bit of practical instruction in social-minded conduct, without sociological commentary, but also without sentimentality.