The Zookeeper's Wife and That's Not All!

 What an amazing book!  And, yes a true story, based on diaries and historical sources, The Zookeeper's Wife, by Diane Ackerman.  It's an unusual combination of horrendous war crimes, and humor with all the fascinating human and animal characters.  I was absolutely mesmerized, saddened and amused alternately.  

From the Publishers:

"A true story in which the keepers of the Warsaw Zoo saved hundreds of people from Nazi hands.

Jan and Antonina Zabinski were Polish Christian zookeepers horrified by Nazi racism, who managed to save over three hundred people. Yet their story has fallen between the seams of history. Drawing on Antonina’s diary and other historical sources, best-selling naturalist Diane Ackerman vividly re-creates Antonina’s life as “the zookeeper’s wife,” responsible for her own family, the zoo animals, and their “Guests”―Resistance activists and refugee Jews, many of whom Jan had smuggled from the Warsaw Ghetto. Ironically, the empty zoo cages helped to hide scores of doomed people, who were code-named after the animals whose names they occupied. Others hid in the nooks and crannies of the house itself.

Jan led a cell of saboteurs, and the Zabinskis’ young son risked his life carrying food to the Guests, while also tending an eccentric array of creatures in the house. With hidden people having animal names, and pet animals having human names, it’s small wonder the zoo’s codename became “The House Under a Crazy Star.”

Yet there is more to this story than a colorful cast. With her exquisite sensitivity to the natural world, Diane Ackerman explores the role of nature in both kindness and savagery, and she unravels the fascinating and disturbing obsession at the core of Nazism: both a worship of nature and its violation, as humans sought to control the genome of the entire planet."

There were various food mentions, among which was Piernik, a gingerbread/honey spice cake (p.21), that sounded lovely, and which came up in a discussion of the love of Poles for their bees, and that Jan kept a few hives at the far edge of the zoo.  I looked it up, but then got hijacked into making Nigella Lawson’s Sticky Toffee Pudding! It was just so tempting, and had many of the Piernik gingerbread's ingredients.  The original claims to be “easy to make, moist and with a delicious warm spice flavor.” Which you could also say about Nigella’s cake!  Especially as I did add ginger and some allspice:). All credit to Nigella Lawson!  I highly recommend her book, At My Table, where I found this recipe.  With the fabulous extra sauce on the side.

It goes in my precious, wonderful desert file!  We all absolutely loved this cake, and the extra sauce!  I had my ladies over for our monthly Operation Christmas Child Prayer meeting and luckily for Bob there was some extra!

My post will be shared with Heather, hostess of the Foodies Read Challenge for October, and to Deb Nance for the current Sunday Salon.