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“That sounds just like my grandmother!” is the best compliment we, as Modern Memoirs “sensitive editors,” can receive. We tell people that our books strive to preserve the voice of the speaker, or writer, but it’s hard to describe what this means—it’s so personal. One example:
Our beloved, late client Sonia Erlich dictated her stories, memories, and even recipes to interviewer Kitty Axelson-Berry, former president and founder of Modern Memoirs. (This is what we call a Commissioned Memoir, or As-Told-To Memoir.) Interviews took place at Sonia’s home, usually in the kitchen, over numerous sittings. The verbatim transcripts of these in-person interviews were used to create the manuscript. If the children or grandchildren read her book, hopefully they will hear their grandmother’s voice. Read for yourself as she narrates how to make Cabbage Soup:
Listen to me, darling, you don’t have to use marrow bones or short ribs or flanken to make this. You don’t have to use beef bones. If you don’t have those, you can use two wings from the turkey, you can use a turkey drumstick, turkey necks. Clean them up. When the water boils, put in the turkey. Sometimes you have two turkey necks, anything. It doesn’t have to be the bones. You want bones, buy bones! When the water boils, put this in. Take off all the “dirt” that comes up to the top.
Have ready in your bowl the cabbage (grated), and onion (grated the same way as the cabbage), a carrot, and an apple (Macintosh apple or Granny Smith, it doesn’t matter). Take a little salt, a little bit of sugar, stir it in together, and add it. Add an onion. Let this boil until you can see the turkey’s ready. The meat should come off the bones.
Take a can of tomato sauce, not a small 8-oz. but a 28-oz. size. If you don’t have the larger can, you can do it with three smaller ones. Add two or three big spoons of ketchup. Cook it for about two hours.
While this boils together, take about 6 or 8 prunes, cut them in half. Take in your hand some raisins and put them aside. Taste it—if you don’t taste it, you don’t see it.
Well, yes, maybe you need a little lemon, but I don’t think so.
This is unbelievable. This is cabbage soup.
Cabbage Soup
beef (marrow, short ribs, or flanken) or turkey (wings, drumsticks, or necks)
a cabbage, grated
an onion, grated
a few carrots
an apple
salt
sugar
an onion, whole
28-oz. can of tomato sauce
6–8 prunes, cut in half
raisins
optional: lemon juice
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