(Ripon) wrote in
om:

> "David M. Harris" > wrote in message
> >...
>> Ripon wrote:
>>
>> > "David M. Harris" > wrote in message
>> > >...
>> >
>> >>
>> >>Frankly, I'm astonished that you can get bagels in Bangladesh.
>> >>
>> >
>> > DMH:
>> >
>> > Why are you astonised. In this globalization era- everything is
>> > available in the market. Maybe sometimes it limited or expensive.
>> > here I can get everything I need from US. Did you forget-
>> > www.netgrocer.com LoL.
>> >
>> > Ripon
>>
>> I'm in the U.S., and I can't get good bagels without having them
>> shipped. (Well, technically the U.S. Tennessee.) Maybe I'll go to
>> netgrocer.
>
> Dmh:
>
> About netgrocer- I buy other stuffs not bagles. Bagles always better
> when it is fresh. One company make many different kinds of bagles in
> Bangladesh and few people around here used to with bagles . It is not
> good as "Manhattan bagles" though but good. I remember in
> Memphis,Tennessee I had good bagles. I think best bagles are available
> only around the east coast in US,specially NY. I can be wrong.
>
> Ripon
> (From bangladesh)
>

Ripon,

You are exactly right about bagels. When I grew up, only a few cities in
the US with significant Jewish populations had bagels available. Then
bagels were "discovered". Now they are all over the place.
Unfortunately, a lot of what is being sold as bagels has little
resemblence to what I grew up eating. A lot of bagels these days are
very soft and almost fluffy. Also, bagels are made with strange flavors.
Yesterday I saw spinach bagels in the supermarket. When I grew up there
was no such thing. Bagels were dense and very chewy - good for a baby to
teethe on. They were fresh for a day at most. There was no question of
shipping bagels anywhere. By the next day, they would be rock hard.
Other than pumpernickel bagels (very dark brown, made with the addition
of rye flour and molasses and dark coloring agent), the only flavors were
onion, garlic, poppyseed, sesame, and salt. The flavors were in the form
of things sprinkled on the top of the bagel. There were no cheese
bagels, blueberry bagels, jalapeno bagels, and other flavors like that.
I'm not saying that people shouldn't enjoy those things if they like
them. Rather, I am saying that the only resemblance those things have to
the traditional bagels that I ate growing up in Brooklyn in the 1960s
(too young to notice in the 1950s) is that they are round, have a hole in
the middle, and made out of wheat dough.

When I was young one of my favorite snacks was a very salty salt bagel
(the top was fairly much encrusted in coarse salt) eaten along with a big
glass of very cold milk. There were bagel shops every few blocks along
the main streets of my neighborhood. One of the first errands I would be
assigned was to go to the bagel store. The bagels would always be
freshly baked, still at least a little warm from the oven. Oh the
memories!

Strangely enough, bagels were never taken with tea (in my family,
anyway). But then again, the only tea my parents knew was from big
companies well-known in America and sold in teabags, and my father, who
was very parsimonious, would save and re-use a teabag several times.

The thought of bagels in Bangladesh is very strange to me - I don't think
of Bangladesh as a place where high risen oven-baked breads (as opposed
to griddle-baked flat breads) made of white wheat dough are common, or as
a place where there is a significant Jewish community. Maybe you got
bagels from Bangladeshis who were exposed to them in the US, in which
case your bagels are probably more like new American bagels than the ones
of my childhood. Or maybe they are yet another generation of mutation,
and come in flavors like garam masala, jeera, and hing (warm-flavored
mixed spices, cumin, and asfoetida for folks who don't know what those
are), just as those flavors are added to pappadams. Actually, hing
bagels would be a lot like onion bagels and might be pretty good...

Debbie

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