Quick & Kosher with Jamie Geller – Rosh Hashanah Cooking Shows

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Quick & Kosher

This is Big—I Mean, Really Big!

Tune in to the Morning Show with Larry Hoff on local TV CW11, Tuesday September 15th, and watch Yours Truly and Kosher.com folks giving out apples and honey from our super duper giant “Koshercart” to commuters at Penn Station.  I’ve done a lot of wild things on TV folks but this is a first! On Wednesday morning, we’re going to steer that cart over to the CBS Early Show, where weatherman Dave Price will be in Rockefeller Plaza doing the weather broadcast.  We’ll be giving out apples, honey, Kosher.com coupons, and Quick & Kosher holiday recipe cards to the crowd.  Talk about wishing everyone a sweet new year on a grand scale! He doesn’t know it yet, but I plan to present Dave with a gorgeous Kosher.com Rosh Hashanah gift basket too.  You’ll flip when you see this basket! The gal who puts the  Kosher.com baskets together is so creative—you’ll want to order your own.

I went a little crazy shopping and cooking and freezing some of my Rosh Hashanah meals last night.  (I knew you’d ask: so far, I’ve cooked Classic Chicken Soup, Un-Stuffed Cabbage Soup and Cocktail Meatballs.)  I was going to make Chocolate Chip Cookies too, but I ran out of steam—not surprising, since this was my kids’ first full week in school.  Let’s just say it’s been a little hectic. Listen, we should all be busy this coming year with all good things.  So whether you catch the TV segment or not, Kosher.com and I wish you and your family the best, sweetest, most incredibly scrumptious new year!

It’s a Sign

Honestly, I’ve been baking challah for close to four years—to rave reviews and almost embarrassing oohs and ahhs at the Shabbos table. But you know me—I love every minute of it.

This time, I don’t know what happened, my challah lacked texture and shape. It was a bumpy, lumpy messy blob; ballooning at astronomical speed, then falling out of shape, falling all over itself and completely breaking apart.  They say that yeast is alive, but this was going beyond, into the unknown. The thing was living, breathing, multiplying—and mad at me.  My heart sank watching it succumb to itself and I was powerless to stop nature.  My eyes brimmed with tears…

I had done everything right.

I measured, added the ingredients in the right order, and prayed for my family, my friends, for world peace and for my challah. It’s not a joke when I tell you I do whisper a little prayer for my food to be delicious, to honor the Shabbos and to bring home its warmth and beauty through all of our senses.

This particular Friday, I got up way too early with my kids, earlier than I care to announce, threw an apron over my pajamas, and started my day—which consisted of nonstop conference calls, emails, writing, spreadsheets and Shabbos cooking. I was literally running in my fuzzy pink slippers back and forth between my home office and home—from the computer to my kitchen—balancing working and cooking, while my kids played and fought, danced and screamed.

When the Challah from Beyond made its bloated appearance, I frantically called my friend Anita. I tearfully moaned that my challah was overflowing, and in a flash, she said, “It’s a siman, a sign! It’s a Rosh Hashanah blessing!”  I said “AMEN!”—and with that, a new siman was born for this new year: May it be G-d’s will that my overflowing challahs represent overflowing health, happiness and prosperity for all of us this coming year!

It’s a good thing I called Anita, because when I told my other friends about it, they just shrugged, “better luck next time,” or “hey, it happens to all of us.” They’re right, of course; it does happen to all of us. But at this time of the year, I’m glad it was me, because it’s a good sign!

How Sweet It Is!

Quick & Kosher

Ever notice the emphasis on honey for Rosh Hashanah?  We slop honey onto apples, honey on challah, bake honey into cookies and cakes.  Everyone will tell you it’s for a “Good Sweet Year.”

Will ingesting tons of honey change my fate in the coming year? (I don’t know, but I’m certainly game to test the theory!) Well, at least it will remind me to be a sweeter person, and maybe that will earn the blessings I need to help me along.  In fact, pulling down that kind of spiritual aid is precisely the purpose of some remarkable little gastric Rosh Hashanah customs.  Funny how even the foods we eat, rivet our attention to our ultimate goals.

There are certain foods called simanim—literally signs or indicators—that are meant to point the way to improved circumstances.  Traditional Jews make it a point to eat these special foods (that include spinach, leeks, gourds, cabbage, carrots, pomegranates and dates), preceded by a heartfelt prayer connected to the character of the food.  There’s even a custom to pray that in the coming year we will be at the head, rather than at the tail end, of good fortune.  Not to gross you out or anything, the siman for this is consuming (or at least nibbling) the cooked head of something: fish and lamb are popular choices.  To my mind, pickled tongue qualifies for this benefit.  Hey, it’s part of the head, isn’t it?  And just a tad more appetizing.

Some of the most fascinating simanim are based on word play.  A generation ago, Jews in the Ukraine fed their children chicken livers on Rosh Hashanah because the Yiddish word for livers, leberlach, is homophonous with leb ehrlich, “live honestly.”  Typically Jewish, isn’t it?  Even a kiddie snack is a lesson in ethics!  And then there is the more contemporary creative “custom” (although I am not sure how widely practiced this is) of combining raisins, lettuce and celery, with the heartfelt wish: “Lettuce have a raisin celery.”

Colorful food customs like these come from every corner of the Diaspora, and below is a recipe for sweet carrot salad (hot link) one dish that includes 3 simanim.  It’s fun to be creative and see how many of these foods you can work into your meal.  I’ve been told by a quasi-serious rabbinic authority that it’s OK to improvise your own simanim, too.  So how about ending your Rosh Hashanah meal with a really light, low-calorie dessert, accompanied by the solemn wish, “May the empty calories we eat this year be null and void; may they be like the dust of the earth, and evaporate like dew in the desert!”

Recipe:

Sweet Carrot Salad (Featuring the Simanim: Carrots, Cabbage and Honey)

Honey: The ultimate sweetener to sweeten up the coming year!  There’s another reason for honey, too.  The numerical equivalent for honey (dvash) is 306, the same as Av Harachamim, a term for G-d, “Father of Mercy.”

Carrots: There are two symbolic meanings for carrots, depending on whether you think in Hebrew or in Yiddish!  The Hebrew word (gezer) is similar to gezerah, decree, as in “may You decree only good decrees for us.”  In Yiddish, the term for carrots (mehren) means, “to increase,” for we are hoping for an abundance of merits and blessings.

Cabbage and Leeks: The Hebrew terms (kruv & kreishah) resemble another word meaning, “decimate.”  The symbolism is, “may those who want to harm us be decimated.”