Joe's Cooking Show

I have a garden of love story. After the war my grandparents stayed with us in New York until they could move back to Hamburg. My grandfather always talked about his garden in Hamburg and so when my home room teacher Initiated a home garden contest, I asked him for help. Since we didn't have a garden, we looked around for some space and found a small plot around a telephone pole. He guided me through the process of creating the space and planting the seeds. It was fun as each day we would check to see if anything had broken through. When my teacher came to judge my efforts, I was so proud and my grandfather added an over the shoulder smile. Well, my efforts were rewarded with a first place medal which I proudly presented to him; and the day that they left to fly back to Hamburg he gave it back to me. Now, each time I am in my garden, I communicate with him lovingly in both English and German. Steven Behr, Steilacoom, Washington The above is in response to my story called Garden Of Love from a week ago. During the Second World War, things were tight financially with many people. It was suggested that to save money we should plant a small garden with vegetables. So in the neighborhood, there was a plot of land that no one knew who owned it and no one had cared about it for a long time. It was an eyesore. So each neighbor, about five of the adults were allotted a piece of the plot and our parents were told to clean up their portion and to plant some veggies in there so they would come up during the summer and we therefore would have fresh vegetables for our meals and we would save lots of money in the grocery store. It was given a name, the victory garden. My dad did what he had to do and he planted some tomatoes and others too and when they finally grew and their time was ‘ripe’ for picking, Mom would make the most delicious vegetable soup from them. She would throw in a piece of inexpensive meat to give it flavor and it was a delight to eat. Somehow, using these I called as our own veggies, it seemed to be more delectable. They all seemed to sprout at the same time, so Mom made pots and pots of soup. We had just gotten a new refrigerator that had this new invention above the bottom called a freezer. She was able to freeze many containers of veggie soup and we had it whenever we wanted to consume it. Other neighbors planted different things and one took a small spot and planted a rose bush on his portion of the land. Then the neighbors traded a few beautiful roses for a container of ripe red tomatoes, huge and sweet. Dad also had grapevines on the left hand side of the back yard of our home. From these grapes, he made the sweetest red wine anyone could think about drinking. He did what he had to with the grapes and somehow it seemed to me as a kid; that the delicious wine filled these pretty plain glass containers. He put a label on each bottle and it was called “Joe’s Red Homemade Wine". Once the relatives would sip a small wineglass of it when they visited us; Joe became the most popular man in the family. Each person who came over practically begged Joseph for a bottle. He did not give it away easily. First of all, it cost money to blend or whatever way he did it, added sugar I guess, the bottle must have cost about thirty-five cents. He ordered these long and slender bottles from somewhere and once every few months, a package would arrive from the post office with about twelve of them tucked in the box. There was an expense, but it was his hobby. He also pickled green tomatoes from the vines he had too in our back and everyone would exclaim over his green pickled tomatoes. If you were one of the nice and cherished relatives on Mom’s side, he would reward you with a bottle of homemade wine and homemade pickled green tomatoes. I personally did not drink wine, I was too young and the pickled tomatoes were too sour for a kid. However, when we go to some food markets nowadays, you can see bottles of pickled green tomatoes next to the green Kosher pickles in the cooling case. I think of Dad when I see them. Everyone in the family yearned for Joe’s green tomatoes. He did not put a label on those jars which he had ordered from a neighborhood store that carried a variety of jars, bottles, materials for sewing clothes at home. The store was called Blank’s, which was the family name of the owners. Dad would negotiate with the manager there about how much he would pay for a dozen pickle/tomato bottles. Then he would bring home a carton of twelve bottles with their thick lids which had a band of rubber sealing it. The relatives would come to chat and hint that they wanted a bottle of wine or a container of the green pickles. He could not afford to give so many a way and sometimes he would say he had none and they were so disappointed. Dad was not a man who ever really lied or even told a little white one. In this case, he had spent hours with the grapes and more time with the pickles; so he wanted most of it for us and for a few special family members, who had maybe done a favor for him at one time. Once after I was married, they had moved into an apartment and they did not have the grapes and tomatoes available to create his specials from. So he went to the supermarket and he bought a basket of green tomatoes and he set about to make his beloved pickled green tomatoes in the apartment kitchen. He had a special and secretive way with the ingredients he pickled them with and it turned out pretty good even though he had not grown the tomatoes on his vines in back of our home. By then I decided one day to try a nice pickled green tomato that had been refrigerated and he had brought it to me when he came to visit us one Sunday. He was so proud to tell me he created and cooked them for me and he was sitting there grinning at me as I sliced it up and uttered “these are really good.” I meant it and after all the years of never eating one of his veggies that he labored to do, he was as proud as if he was one of these television chefs who cook up a wonderful meal. So finally he was delighted knowing he had made a simple green tomato into something that his ‘baby girl’ really liked and as I served them dinner at my apartment, he kvelled (shined) and looked over to me and I knew that my simple utterance of those four words surely made his day and week. The victory garden’s green tomatoes, our grapevines that turned into sweet red vine, these were his hobbies. He also had one more simple food/drink specialty. He would take a 46 ounce tall can of unsweetened grapefruit juice, chill it and add equal amounts of water from the sink (no bottled waters in those days yet) add lots of white sugar, stir it until it was all dissolved and voila, he had twice as much grapefruit juice as had been in the tall can, possibly even more than twice the amount and he poured them into glass containers and somehow he had the right combination of juice, water, sugar and it was the coolest most satisfying drink you could sip and swallow on a hot day. We often drank it at dinner as people do with iced tea and all the relatives who visited again would be served a cold goblet of it. He would never tell anyone the ingredients, they were his secret. Looking back now, Dad was a type of cook you now see on all the television stations doing his own thing. From red wine, to pickled tomatoes, to a soothing drink, he could have had his own TV show long before we had a television set in 1948. He could have called it “The Cooking With Joe Show.” He would have been a hit for sure. From Steven’s grandfather’s garden in Hamburg, to Steven’s own garden in New York City to the two garden vegetables of Joseph B.Sohmer’s in Maryland, these three males were surely ahead of their own time and preceding any of the cooking shows on now. These were chefs of delight and fortitude and they deserve an Emmy they surely would have won, if there had been television way back then. I am here now to award all of them, not an Emmy, not an Oscar, not a Grammy not a Tony; but an award called a Joseph award for food made out garden vegetables and grapes. The statue is of a big gold tomato topped with a grape on it. Elita Sohmer Clayman Fairfax Station