baleboosta
n.— «She was, in the truest sense, a baleboosta, a Yiddish term meaning a remarkable cook and “boss of the kitchen.” My father tells stories of her legendary cooking: Rolling out enough dough to cover the kitchen table to make homemade soup noodles, roasting a chicken to perfection, making matzo balls as light as feathers.» —“Grandma’s Rosh Hashana cake was a honey” by Andrea Abel Star Tribune (Minneapolis, Minnesota) SEpt. 13, 2006. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
A Kentucky listener says her father often prefaced statements with the phrase I tell you what’s the truth. This regionalism appears in the Dictionary of Southern Appalachian English (Bookshop|Amazon). A shorter version is I’ll tell you...
In the 15th century, the word respair meant “to have hope again.” Although this word fell out of use, it’s among dozens collected in a new book of soothing vocabulary for troubled times. Plus, baseball slang: If a batter...