Going a curryin'

On BBC2 there has been a new chef, Anjum Anand. She's being called the Indian Nigella Lawson. She takes traditional Indian recipes and makes them healthier. Her book, 'Indian Every Day' is very good. I got mine from amazon.co.uk.

So I am now into making curries.

This morning I went to our indoor market where there is an Asian stall. There I found all the spices that I need except for the dried mango powder. However, they are expecting a shipment.


There are very large bags of rice.















I'll try some of the recipes this weekend and let you know how they were and will share the recipes with you.

The Seligsons, my paternal grandmother's family

For as long as I could remember I thought that my family escaped Poland before the Shoah (Holocaust) began. Earlier this year I was shocked to find out that I had lost members of my family in Treblinka and the Warsaw Ghetto.

But let me start from the beginning.

My great great grandfather was Paltiel Seligson or Zeligzon. He was born in 1840 in Grajevo Poland. He married Hinda. Their son Yankel married Bryna and they had 5 children:Sheina, Sam, Mayer, Rubina, and Mirchie (Mary). Mirchie was my grandmother.

Before his death, Paltiel arranged for the marriage of his granddaughter Mirchie to Mendel Rosenberg in Grajevo because both he and Mendel's father were Gerer Hasidim from Bialystok who had settled in Grajevo.






Mirchie and Mendel lived in Bialystok where their two daughters were born, Beatrice and Edith (now both deceased). Mendel decided to go to America to seek his fortune. He left Mirchie and the girls behind in Bialystok. Mendel served in the army where he was wounded. After WW1 he was trained by the government to be a watchmaker.

The Red Cross helped Mirchie and the girls to go to the states. They settled in Philadelphia where their sons Paul (now deceased), Samuel and Richard were born. Samuel married Goldie Ellis and had me and my younger sister Marla.


Great grandfather Yankel married twice. He married Bryna (my great grandmother) and when she died he married her sister Rivka and they had 5 children: Goldy, Esther, Hymie, Chai Sora, and Dvora.

Goldy married Mr. Weinberg and had 3 children. Goldy died before the war. Sadly, the rest of her family lost their lives in the Shoah.

Esther married Mr. Kaimsky in Grajevo. They had one daughter Elfreda. Esther died in the Warsaw Ghetto after she refused to go to Brazil in fear that she would jeopardize Elfreda's chance to leave the country with a Youth Aliyah group. Elfreda got to New York and then settled in Texas.

Chai Sora married Shlomo Zuckerbraun. Before the war broke out they had 3 children. Chai Sora gave birth to a little girl whilst living in the Warsaw Ghetto. The entire family was sent to Treblinka where they all perished.

How do I know all this? One of my cousins found some of our cousins and discovered that Hymie had dictated what he could remember about the family. Hymie would be my great step-uncle.

The sad thing is, my really don't know anything about Mendel's family. We know that he had brothers but not sure how many. We know that his father owned an inn in Bialystok and was unkind to my grandmother.

Here is, I think, the only photo of my grandfather Mendel and one of his brothers.