This erev Rosh haShana as every year I find myself in the kitchen listening to Selichot at the Kotel making my babushka’s Lekach (honey cake) thinking about her life hoping to become one day as good a cook as she was.My grandmother’s life was not easy at all. She had to run from pogroms from…
Category: Family
Miracle of Miracles
The older I become the more I think about the meaning of life. Not an original thought, I know. How do we treat life in the course of it? I know I am guilty of mistreating it. Long ago time meant forever, every day was long, many of those to be forgotten or remembered in…
Everything is for the Best – הכל לטובה
So all the stress, all the packing, all the store hopping for my next kitchen has been in vain. Not every time things work out as you think they should. Sometimes, the Universe (Gd?) thinks otherwise and then it pushes you to look at the situation from all kinds of perspectives. So, today my perspectives…
In the Midst of Heat, should we Think about Stews and Soups?
As you, my readers, already know I am in love with cookbooks and recipes regardless of where they are coming from. I am also in love with history both general and food related. So, naturally, when I saw this article in The journal of Biblical archeology, I had to share it with you. It seems…
Thinking of You
According to the Jewish calendar, today is my father’s fifth yortzeit. Fittingly, the Parshah that we are going to read tomorrow is Acharei Mot – אַֽחֲרֵ֣י מ֔וֹת – After the Death. It is really strange to live by the two ways to count time. All of us have two birthdays, two ways to commemorate many…
Gratitude
“Life is too ironic to fully understand. It takes sadness to know what happiness is. Noise to appreciate silence & absence to value presence.” Most of my life I’ve been battling with feelings of sadness, depression, and uselessness despite things that some note as great achievements. I’ve had better and worse days, and tried to…
Thoughts of the Day
What a strange day! 31 of December. A day that does not really have any significance for me anymore, and yet, I keep going back in my years to that day in the snowy, cold, and crisp native city of mine, where my sister, z’l and I would be waiting for the night that promised…
Old and New
It’s been a while since I have written here about food. Life, surprisingly the pleasant part of it, gets in the way and we are almost in the middle of winter with the cold penetrating my body and wind hauling outside my window. This is not the weather I like. I feel frozen inside and…
Happy Birthday to a Special Person!
Today is the birthday of one woman whom I am blessed to call family, even though she is not a blood relation. I’ve met my (then future) sister-in-law almost 35 years ago, and since then through good times and bad, every day I realize more and more what an exceptional human being she is. She…
Another Day, Another Year
So here we are, again, Ready (?) to stand in front of HaShem begging for mercy. אבינו מלךנו – our father, our king – we cry asking for a better year that the one passed. Somehow, the liturgy of the High Holidays always brings me to inner tears. I don’t think I am able to…
Parshat ha Shavuah Verses Deuteronomy / דְּבָרִים
This past Shabbat we have said “Be Strong, Be Strong, Let Us Be Strengthened – חזק, חזק,להתחזק for the Book of בְּמִדְבַּר – Numbers. This week, we are starting to read the last cycle of the year – the book of Deuteronomy – דְּבָרִים. For me, this is a momentous Shabbat. My younger daughter is leaving to…
Coconut Cheesecake
My daughter’s birthday is tomorrow. And this daughter is, already, a better baker than me. Much better in fact. She bakes all the time. For the family, for her friends, for her colleagues. Every time something new. It’s hard to make a cake for her that would be good enough, even though, I know she’ll…
Noshing Across the Nation 