Chutzpah

Betty, Solly Menashe, a relative, opened a bakery in Phoenix, Arizona in 1979 after he emigrated from Rhodesia. Now retired he owns a company that sells software on how to manage a bakery, works as a bakery management consultant and compiled a cookbook called Las Comedicas de Rodis (Sephardic Delicacies from Rhodes) inspired by the family heritage. The sponge cake recipe is in it.
Yes, we do have such happy memories of our wonderful feasts together. A favorite of ours still is your golden shores of acorn squash surrounding a lake of brown sugar and butter…not to mention sitting around your kitchen table spread with newspaper with a great big pile of Gulf coast prawns and a bowl of melted butter. MMM good!

Solly,
Grand to hear from you. I wrote a number of stories about the Aaron and Sarina Menashe family who settled in Que Que in the 1920’s and owned a haberdashery store. I have over 130 blogs to date (posting weekly on Fridays at 8 am. You can subscribe and receive it automatically if you like. I will not share my directory with anyone and it is secure.)

Here are the direct links to the Menashe story about their immigration from Rhodes:
http://www.oncecalledhome.com/2012/01/just-in-time/
A total of eight stories follow in the series.

The stories were told to me by Abe Menashe (Aaron’s son). He sent me your recipe book on line which I much enjoyed. I had no idea that Sephardic cooking was so much influenced by the Mediterranean and differed from the Ashkenazi delicacies with which I was familiar.

Much earlier I wrote about Aaron’s two sisters who worked for my father briefly right after they graduated from Medical School (late 40’s) in a blog:
http://www.oncecalledhome.com/2011/05/the-difference…five-shillings/
This was a story my father often used to tell and absolutely no malice was intended. It is human nature to think that the more you pay the better the product, which isn’t necessarily true. I think this is a sweet story of their youthful naivety but believe the sisters took exception to it.

I am so glad you made such a success of the bakery and combining your computer and bakery skills into a blueprint for others to follow. I’d love to visit you in Scottsdale when I go on tour with the novel based on our families experiences in Que Que. I am almost done.

I would love to have your comments on the Menashe stories…(or anything else as you read along.)

Ena,
Yes I remember Le Chanteclar. It was quite a big restaurant with a number of pot plants inside. (I don’t know why I remember that.)
It was well situated, attached to a petrol station at the round-about on the Salisbury/Bulawayo Road, as you came into town from the Salisbury side, so it caught all the weary travellers at the mid way point on the 300 mile journey between the two main centers of Salisbury and Bulawayo. But it was separated from the town itself, on that side, by the full length of the Railway Park and the railway housing for two full blocks before the commercial center commenced. This isolated it somewhat from the hustle and bustle of the daily townsfolk traffic. I’m sorry I don’t remember your grandfather at all. (I turned eleven in 1957).
I do remember Kay Raeburn very, very well. In 1957, my father’s position as the mine doctor at the Globe and Pheonix Mine was made redundant, (along with many others). Fortunately, my father had already established a private practice in town but we found ourselves without a house and there was nothing suitable in town. He subdivided a large plot he owned in Hillandale into four, retaining the largest at the top of the hill with a beautiful view for us, selling the others off. Kay Raeburn bought the lot next door (the others were at the bottom of the hill) and she built on it also.
Kay was wiry, with silver hair cropped like a boy, unusual for those times, and didn’t wear lipstick. She was rumoured to have been tortured as a prisoner of war in WWII.
She was very intelligent and a very good typist. She was a very loyal political supporter of my father’s and worked tirelessly in his various campaigns. She typed, and retyped all the manuscripts for my father’s three books and various booklets and pamphlets. Routinely he would get up at 4 am and write until 6.30 am when the ‘cookboy’ arrived with early morning tea and exchange the handwritten notes to be delivered next door. In the evening he would edit the manuscript she had typed and send it back over the fence. The pace was always very fast and demanding. She was a saint!
She got me a pen pal in French Equatorial Africa, (I think it was) and all the letters had to be translated for me by her.
In about 1975 or so she sold the property (or perhaps it was an estate sale?) and Elmer and Elizabeth Philipson bought her house. He was the son of the premier butcher in town who also owned the ranch Forestvale on the Bembezaan River. Elmer had qualified as a vet. They subsequently moved to Comox, Vancouver Island. You might be able to get a picture of the house from them if interested.
I hope this is helpful.
I am sure your Grandfathers story of how he came to land in Que Que is a very interesting one. Perhaps you would like to share it with me on the blog?