Amuse Bouche

What did poor Ashkenazim eat in Jerusalem in the nineteen-forties? We ate black bread with slices of onion and olives cut in half, and sometimes also with anchovy paste; we ate smoked fish and salt fish..... on special occasions we ate sardines, that were considered a delicacy.

We ate marrow and squash and aubergines, boiled or fried or made into an oily salad with slivers of garlic and chopped onion.

In the morning, there was brown bread with jam, or occasionally with cheese.... In the morning I was given Quaker oats that tasted of glue, and when I went on strike they replaced it with semolina and a sprinkling of cinnamon.

from A Tale of Love and Darkness by Amos Oz