I don’t have an Aunt Lillian. My one and only aunt is called Ava . She sings, plays piano and tap dances but she doesn’t bake apple cakes.I love her anyway and I’m sure she’d love Aunt Lillian’s cake even as neither Aunt Ava or I have a clue as to who Aunt Lillian is .Well she’s someone’s Aunt and … Continue reading
Like nearly everyone else in this country, my kids got the barbeque bug last night. Me, I was dog tired after standing on a nearly endless line at Osher Ad (remember endless bliss) supermarket… The truth is that the wait wasn’t really so bad. I struck up a conversation with a lovely woman from Samara, not Samarkand … Continue reading
Yes, it is time to bake a challah in the shape of a key . This is the way I did it-play doh style but remember this is an Ashkenazi minhag, a custom, not a halacha so you have more wiggle room. Any key will do- a skeleton key, a house key, a safe deposit … Continue reading
I never baked for Pesach. Frankly, the entire subject led me to despair. What can you possibly bake with matzo meal and/or potato starch that justifies the ingestion of hundreds of empty calories?Because of that, my standard Pesach desserts were strawberry fluff(two egg whites, one cup sugar, one bag frozen strawberries, process together and then … Continue reading
Believe it or not, the Talmud says that that garlic is an aphrodisiac. Yes, that is a fact. Here’s a quote from the Babylonian Talmud (from Gil Marks‘s Encyclopedia of Jewish Food) “Five things were said of garlic. It satiates, it warms the body, it brightens one’s face, it increases semen and it kills intestinal … Continue reading
When I discovered that my formerly lovely red delicious apples were growing soft brown patches on their sides I knew it was time to perform cosmetic surgery. No I didn’t botox the fruit, I pared off the ugly patches, shredded the healthy flesh and gave my apples a new lease on life as apple muffins. My salvage operation … Continue reading
I suspect that the custom of eating turkey on Purim to commemorate King Ahashverosh’s reign (Mi Hodu Ve’ad Kush) as well as his limited intelligence (a turkey brain) is based on a mistaken word play. In modern Hebrew the bird is called a Tarnegol Hodu, literally an Indian chicken referring to the now outmoded name for the … Continue reading
Lamed is for Lukshen When I was a kid I loved to peer longingly into the window of the now defunct Meal Mart kosher takeaway store on Broadway and 77th Street. There were all kinds of intriguing things: roasted chickens, potato kugels, chopped liver but what caught my eye was the savory salt and pepper … Continue reading
For the past few weeks, my youngest son has had a tummy ache of the mysterious kind. Knee jerk psychologists: this ailment is not psychosomatic. I know this kid. He isn’t being bullied or abused. This is physiological but as of today, medical science hasn’t reached the root of the trouble. The standard tests turned up nothing … Continue reading
Being a born and bred Ashkenazi, I’d never heard of svinge, but then my daughter told me that was the Hanuka treat her Morrocan born mother in law was raised on. That naturally picqued my curiosity and when I saw a recipe for Svinge in the Modia kids section. I had to try it. Svinge … Continue reading
