Agriculture

Those of you who have come to pick up orders on the screened porch know the drill. You put your money in the plastic pineapple, make change as required, and leave on the table any items like empty egg cartons that may be re-used. Occasionally I find a surprise out there. This week, it was a plastic bag filled with a fine white substance. No, nobody was trading cocaine for veggies. It was a bag of Marhaba brand Citric Acid (also know as sour salt or lemon salt), with this note on the back: “To keep the memories of our grandmothers alive, Carole.” I knew exactly what this note referred to. The writer had ordered two bags of sorrel, telling me that she was hoping to re-create her grandmother’s recipe for “schav” a sorrel based sour soup. When I was growing up, my family served schav as a chilled iced drink in a tall glass on hot summer days. I associate it with the long summers I spent at our family’s bungalow colony in the heart of the Catskills borscht belt. To be honest, it took me some time to develop