Potato Pancakes All Around: A Hanukkah Tale

This 29-page story tells the story of Samuel, a peddler who walked down the road to a village on the afternoon before the first night of Hanukkah. When he reached the village, it was almost dark, and he knocked on the door of a house. Mama opened the door and smiled. "A guest is always welcome," she said, and welcomed him in as they lit the first candle.Samuel looked forward to making potato latkes, but immediately, Grandma Yetta and Grandma Sophie began to argue about whose recipe they would use. "Who needs recipes," he told them. "I'll show you how to make potato pancakes from a crust of bread. Some say for potato pancakes a pickle, a fish or a cabbage is good, but I say a crust of bread is best."Of course, Samuel did not really use a crust of bread to make latkes, but in this variation on Stone Soup, he managed to get everyone in the large family to work together on the cooking.He saw a chicken on the window ledge and wondered aloud what it was trying to tell him. "I know," said Rachel. "The chicken is telling you to add eggs." He agreed and added six eggs, while the Grandma Sophie and Grandma Yetta clucked about his taking advice from chickens.And so the story goes, with many more twists and turns in the recipe--and several other disputes amicably resolved by the clever peddler. The family ended the first night of Hanukkah predictably with a delightful Potato Latke feast. The next morning everyone begged Samuel to stay for the entire eight nights of Hanukkah. But he was off to show other families how to make pancakes from a crust of bread. Alyssa A. Lappen