As a skinny kid with big feet (irrelevant?), food was just food. I ate it. Not enough, according to my grandparents, but fast forward fifty years, and a shocking glance at my scale would quiet them down. Although looks were deceiving, my mother was a simple Russian peasant cook. Despite her weekly beauty parlor set hair, Estée Lauder frosted apricot lipstick, and Chico’s couture, her menus were nothing but old country. She did not pass along her love of cooking to her only child. Growing up, I saw the glass half-empty side of her cooking. The making of Gefilte fish, a Passover staple, is a biblical horror story from the murdering of the poor fish at the Deli to the odors remaining from the cooking of the poor bludgeoned Carp. Not sure if the fish-killer’s job title is Butcher, but that’s what he did with a hammer to the poor…