The Long and Winding Road

Moving!

mykidsdad — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 19:37:12 +0000

The Long and Winding Road is moving from worpress.com to goldwasserfamily.org. I realized that I can do a lot more in the future with wordpress on my own server, so I am moving there. Please make a note of this new address:

longandwinding.goldwasserfamily.org

Eleanor Rigby

mykidsdad — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 16:06:02 +0000

Twenty Four years ago today the Beatles began to record one of the more significant songs in their catalog. Eleanor Rigby is significant for a number of reasons. First off, it is a song where you can clearly see the transformation from pop act to a serious experimental studio band. The song is about loneliness with very striking lyrics. Pop bands were not recording songs like this in the 60s. The song was written mostly by McCartney, and unlike much of the other Lennon/McCartney songs, when Paul played this for the group, they all made contributions to the lyric.

The song is the only Beatles song on which none of the Beatles played their instruments. Paul had been introduced to the work of Antonio Vivaldi and fell in love with the music. He came up with the idea of a song with string backgrounds, and together with producer George Martin came up with the octet that can be heard on the recording. Eight studio musicians (four violins, two cellos and two violas) preformed a score composed by Martin.

As was normal with the Beatles songs at the time, both a stereo and a mono mix were recorded. In the stereo mix, McCartney’s vocal was put on the right side while the octet was put to the left. At the Chorus everything was brought to the center. This made for a very distracting recording (IMHO). The mono mix, of course, did not have this problem. The song was also featured in the movie Yellow Submarine but again with the original stereo recording. In 1999, the movie was re-released with digitally re-mastered audio and a cleaned up video (they did not digitally re-master the video). In the process of re-mastering the audio, the decision was made to not only re-master but remix the album, and to date is really the only album of the Beatles to be remixed (in the 80′s Help! and Rubber Soul were remixed but did not sound much different from the original versions). In this remixed version of Eleanor Rigby, the vocals are now centered through the entire recording.

Finally, on the album Anthology 2, take 14 of the strings recording (from April 28^th) was included.

This has always been one of my favorite albums. I am linking three You Tube videos here. The first is the original stereo recording and the second is the soundtrack remix. You can choose what you like better. The third is the strings recording from the anthology album.

Enjoy!

Passover Seder

mykidsdad — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 17:57:53 +0000

Four days and counting! Not a lot of time left, and a ton of things to do. I think we are probably either on schedule or just behind to get everything done. Of course that means more late nights coming up, but we will finish it all. Tuesday night we made the first pot of soup. By pot, of course, I really mean vat, because I think the pot we use is an 18 quart pot, but it could be bigger. Carla is going to make the Matza Balls which is good because we always seem to forget to make them until the last minute. Last night we made a 2^nd vat of soup and I mixed up the Gefilte Fish. I shaped the fish into logs, wrapped them in wax paper and froze them. On Sunday I will make the broth and cook the fish.

We have a couple of big things left and some smaller ones. We make two turkeys, and Carla is making one and we are making the other. Ours will happen on Sunday. Tonight we are making the pot roast. After that, it is basically side dishes left. Here is our full menu, and then I will talk about the roast.

Gefilte Fish
Chicken Soup with Matza Balls
(we serve these before the Seder actually starts so we can start with Kiddush after nightfall)
Sweet and Sour Meatballs
Turkey with Stuffing
Pot Roast with Orange and Dates
Herbed Quinoa with Vegetables
Sweet Potatoes with Marshmallows (first Seder – we cannot get away without making this!)
Traditional sweet Tzimmis (Second Seder)
Cranberry Sauce (from Suzie Fishbein’s Kosher By Design Entertains)
Apple Slaw (my mother-in-law does this and it is amazing. I need to find out where she got the recipe!)
Green Beans Almandine
Cauliflower Popcorn (from one of the Suzie Fishbein cookbooks)
Strawberry ice
Matza Toffee

As I said, tonight we will make the Pot Roast and maybe the Quinoa also. The roast came from Bon Appetit from April 2007. I used to have a subscription to Bon Appetit and I still have quite a few of the magazines in the house. Every year they have what I call the Passover issue (they might refer to it as the Easter issue, but who cares!). They at least have one article about the Seder with a bunch of recipes. Sometimes they even have more than that. In 2007 we saw this recipe and have been making it ever since. One note about roast at the Seder. It has become traditional in Ashkenazi homes not to roast meat for the Seder. This is because roasted lamb was the major part of the Seder in antiquity, and since the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem we can no longer bring the sacrifice, so we refrain from roasting meat. In the Sephardic world customs differ (there are some communities who will specifically eat roasted lamb, and others that do like the Ashkenazim). Some people have taken it as far as to not have meat at all at the Seder, but I disagree with that for sure. I do not see any major problems with roasting meat for the Seder. Since we are so far removed from the sacrificial system (and I do not believe that it will ever be reinstated), it is ok to eat roasted meat at the Seder. Of course, a pot roast is not really roasted but braised, so there is no problem anyway.

In the menu above there is a link to the Recipe, but I will put it here as well. We are doubling this recipe.

Pot Roast with Orange and Dates
Bon Appétit, April 2007
by Evan Kleinman

Yield: Makes 8 servings

This recipe calls for two small roasts instead of one big one. They are easier to cook, and make for prettier slices.

2 (2 ½ pound) boneless beef chuck roasts, each about 7x4x2 inches

4 t sugar

3 T olive old, divided

1 lb onions, thinly sliced

6 T red wine vinegar

½ t ground allspice

2 C low-salt chicken broth

1 C orange juice

½ C tomato sauce

2 C pitted dates

½ C chopped fresh Italian parsley

Preheat oven to 350°

1. Sprinkle roasts on each side with salt, pepper and 1 t of sugar.

2. Heat 2 T oil in a heavy wide ovenproof pot over medium-high heat.

3. Add roasts and cook until brown, about 8 minutes per side. Transfer to a plate.

4. Add 1 T oil and onions to the pot and sauté until dark brown, stirring often, about 10 minutes.

5. Mix in vinegar and allspice; boil until reduced to glaze, scraping up brown bits.

6. Add broth, orange juice and tomato sauce; bring to boil.

7. Return roasts and accumulated juices to pot. Scatter dates around roast; sprinkle with parsley.

8. Cover pot; place in oven. Braise roasts for 1 hour, turn roasts over, cover and braise until tender about 1 more hour.

9. Skim fat from top of liquid and let cool uncovered for 1 hour.

10. Transfer roasts to board, scraping sauce into pot. Cut crosswise into ½ inch thick slices; overlap slices in a baking dish.

11. Spoon Sauce over, cover; re-warm about 25 minutes.

The recipe suggests that you can make this up to 2 days in advance and keep in the refrigerator. Since we are doing it 4 days early, we will freeze it and take it out of the freezer Sunday night. If you are going to freeze, I suggest freezing the meat and the sauce separate, and combining when heating.

Enjoy!

Your Mother Should Know

mykidsdad — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 18:18:40 +0000

How to make Gefilte Fish that is! I just had to throw in another Beatles title. If there ever was a dish that was quintessentially Jewish, Gefilte Fish is probably that dish, or at least in a very small list. To understand why we this is true, you need to know a little about the dishes history. Back in Eastern Europe, in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, the Jews were kept poor by the governments and mostly living in little villages we call shtetlah, or simply the shtetal. Despite this, they would try to purchase the best that they could for Shabbat and holidays. That often meant fish as it was less costly than beef for chicken. In poor societies it became common to use as much of the animal as possible when cooking it. Thus Gefilte Fish was born. The women would bone the fish, grind up the fish with eggs, matza, sugar and spices, and shape into balls or patties. Then the ground fish would be stuffed into the fish skin with the head still attached so it looked like a whole fish. This would be cooked in a broth made from the fish bones and onions, carrots and other vegetables. The fish would be cooled slightly and sliced into pieces. This way the entire fish was used. It was called Gefilte, because this is the Yiddish term for stuffed. Depending upon where you came from in Europe, you may have not used the sugar and made a more savory version. The sweet fish was usually found in southeastern Europe and the savory in northeastern.

Today, you don’t often find the fish stuffed into the skin and head, but the basic recipe has remained the same. The main fishes used were usually whitefish, carp and pike as they were the cheapest fish and not often used for other things. As the eastern European Jews moved to America, they brought this recipe with them, and I know many people who remember their grandmother having a carp or two in the bathtub on Friday morning waiting to be made into Gefilte Fish.

I tried to make Gefilte Fish once, but I failed because I tried using a modern recipe that really strayed from the classic recipe. Since then we have always bought the frozen logs that you can get in the grocery store, which you boil in water with vegetables, sugar, salt and pepper. This year I decided to try again, and I am working with a very classic recipe. I got this recipe from our friend Beth Newman who has been working as a personal chef for the past year or so. She tells me that she gets rave reviews from this recipe and I trust her totally. She in turn got the recipe from a website called recipezaar and it was posted there by a woman named Sarah Chana and is called “My Mom’s Legendary Galicianer (Sweet) Gefilte Fish. Galicianer is a term used to describe Jews from Galicia which is the western Ukraine and southeastern Poland where the food tended to be prepared on the sweet side.

The recipe says that is makes 16 servings and calls for two pounds of whitefish fillets. The fist counter will only sell whole fishes to grind, so I asked how much whole fish I need. I was told that for two pounds I need at least four pounds of whole fish, and I believe I ordered between eight and nine pounds and whatever I get I will work with. The recipe also calls for all whitefish, but I ordered a mix of whitefish and carp, since carp is a very traditional fish to use and it is much cheaper.

Gefilte Fish

2 lbs whitefish fillets, ground
3 large onions
6 extra large eggs
2 ½ t salt
3/4 – 1 C sugar
black pepper
2 – 2 ½ C Matza Meal

Broth

2 small onions, sliced
2 carrots, sliced
salt
pepper
sugar
fish bones
water

1. Mix together the fish, onions, eggs, salt, sugar and pepper until well blended.
2. Add Matza Meal slowly, mixing well until it is almost thick enough to hold its shape.
3. Cover bowl and refrigerate for at least one hour, up to overnight.
4. Shape into balls, patties or loaves, which can all be frozen at this point.
5. In a large pot add the broth ingredients, bring to boil and simmer for at least thirty minutes. Broth should be almost golden in color. Taste to adjust seasonings. Broth should be sweet and a little bit salty.
6. Add the loaves, balls or patties to the broth.
7. Bring back to boil and lower to a simmer for about 1 hour 15 minutes. If you put frozen loaves in the water, cook for 90 minutes.

That is what I am going to do, increasing the ingredients based on how much ground fish I have. I will be preparing the fish tomorrow night and then I will form loaves and wrape them with parchment paper. On Sunday I will remove the parchment from the frozen loaves and cook in the broth. The fish will stay find covered until Monday night.

Finally, here are two great Passover youtube videos.

Enjoy!

My kids never tire of this next one!

Passover, the holiday of eating

mykidsdad — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 15:38:50 +0000

It’s a week before Passover and everything is beginning to come together. The house is being cleaned and by tonight our oven (and half of our kitchen) will be kosher for Passover and read for cooking. Tonight’s job is to bring up from the basement all of the Passover cooking supplies and pot and pans, etc. If there is time, maybe even cook something!

When people talk about Passover, the first things that are usually discussed, are how many people were at your Seder, or what did you cook? Passover, over all other holidays in the Jewish calendar is always discussed in terms of food. Although food is a big part of other holidays, you don’t have big conversations about what you cooked for Rosh Hashanah dinner or Shavuot lunch. Why does Passover get such a treatment? My Rabbi gave out a sheet recently that contrasted the different aspects of the holidays. Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are Synagogue and prayer based. This is not to say we don’t go to Synagogue or pray on the other holidays, but the central aspect of these holidays are going to shul and prayer. Sukkot is community based. We construct sukkot outside of our homes and we invite in the community. Shavuot is study based. We spend the whole night of Erev Shavuot studying. Finally, Passover is home based. The main ritual occurs in the home, with the family and close friends. This home/family based holiday speaks to people more than going to Synagogue, more than studying text and more than inviting in your community. It is probably why the Passover Seder is the most “observed” Jewish ritual today. More Jewish people attend some sort of Passover Seder than any other ritual. There are more printed versions of the Haggadah than any other Jewish book, the bible included. This, I believe is all due to the fact that the holiday is a home based one. Plus who would not like a holiday where you sit around the dinner table for a few hours!

When reading my new blogging friend Tori Avey’s blog I realized that in all of my years writing food columns on the web, I have never written about the Haroset recipe that we have used for many years. She posted two recipes for Haroset, one based on a traditional Ashkenazi Haroset and one more Sephardic (of course she has beautiful photos of her food, which I do not). I prefer the more Sephardic style for a few reasons. First off, I love the taste! Haroset has to taste good, and the recipe below has always gotten rave reviews. But more importantly, the Haroset combines the two Talmudic reasons for Haroset. The Mishna tells us that Haroset is on the Seder plate even though it is not a Mitzvah. The Talmud then asks (obviously) what is Haroset and why is it not a Mitzvah. The Talmud tells us that it reminds us of the apple and of the mortar. Rashi comments that the Apple is because when Pharaoh decreed that the men and women should be separated, the women would entice the men to lie with them under the apple trees in the heat of the day when they did not work. This is why the later decree to kill the male babies came about since separating the men and women did not work. The other idea is that the mixture should be made thick to resemble the mortar. Rambam later wrote that the word Haroset comes from Heres, meaning clay. Sephardic Jews, who tend to always follow what Rambam wrote, make their Haroset so that it looks like mortar, which Ashkenazi Jews tend to base it on the apple.

My mother began making this Haroset many years ago and has never stopped. My parents ALWAYS bring the Haroset to our Seder, and we still need to make more for the second Seder because no matter how much is brought it is all eaten! The recipe originally came from a Mizrahi Women cookbook. The Mizrahi Women’s Organization of America (now known as AMIT) was founded in 1925 to promote and support religious Zionist education and social services for Israel’s children and youth. At some point my mother bought a cookbook which was done as a fundraiser for a local chapter. The book has numerous Haroset recipes, but this one seems to have been the winner with us.

This recipe says it make 8 portions, but that is way off, we make 4 or even 8 times the recipe at a time. Below is the original recipe as it appears in the cookbook, and after that I will explain what we do different and some possible variations (which are not in the cookbook, but should be yummy nonetheless.

Haroset

2 apples
½ C pitted dates
½ C raisins
¼ C shelled walnuts
¼ C shelled almonds
1/3 C sweet wine
1 t ginger
1 t cinnamon

1. Peel, core and quarter the apple.
2. Grind apples, dates, raisins and nuts.
3. Add ginger, cinnamon and wine
4. Mix well

Pretty easy right! Well, being the post modern era, we used a food processor for the entire recipe. I put the dates in the bowl first and try to get them processed a bit as they are the hardest to do in the machine. Then I will add the apples and the raisins. After I process that for a few pulses, I will add the nuts. Today we can easily get chopped or even ground nuts for Passover. I will usually use ground nuts because we will often have other recipes calling for them. Often we but the nuts chopped and I will grind them myself in the processor first before I do any of the cooking. I still use the same amounts, even though ground nuts will probably have more in a measure than chopped. Finally I add the spices and the wine. Process it all for one or two pulses and then you are done. It stays a few days find in the fridge. I don’t really know how long it will keep, as we never have any left after a few days beyond the Seder!

In terms of variations, you can put in almost any fruit or nut. Try prunes or dried apricots or even fresh pears! Hazelnuts will work nicely in this Haroset. There is also a tradition of using all of the fruits and spices mentioned in Shir HasShirim (Song of Songs). These are apples, figs, pomegranates, grapes (the wine), dates, walnuts, saffron and cinnamon. You could easily add all or any of these to the Haroset to make your own recipe. I also found a reference on Wikipedia about a mixture called halegh, and is used by some Middle Eastern Jews instead of Haroset. Here is a link to that “recipe” which uses forty ingredients!

Enjoy!

The Long and Winding Road

mykidsdad — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 18:45:22 +0000

Some of my longer time readers may remember what was going on in my family’s life last year around Passover. Avi had become so unstable, that we moved him to a partial hospital program which then transferred him to an inpatient facility called Summit Oaks. Avi was an inpatient there for almost a month, which included all of Passover. It was a very hard month for us because not only was our son in crisis, but our family was split apart for what is perhaps the most family based Jewish holiday. You can go back and read some of my posts from March and April of last year. This year I can report that things are much better. Avi is in a better place than he was and we are learning as a family how to cope with his autism and navigate that long and winding road that is our life.

One of the biggest problems we are now facing is that since Avi have been out of Schechter for two years, his Jewish education is next to nothing. He is very aware of this, and will sometimes say things like “I am not Jewish” or “I hate Jewish things.” Of course two minutes later he may talk about things he likes about being Jewish. I have been looking into some computer programs that we can use to try to work on his Hebrew. I would like to get him reading Hebrew well by next Passover. Avi also likes doing art projects so I am hoping to do a couple of Passover art projects with him that he can display at the seders.

So all in all, things are getting better all the time. I had not updated about Avi in a long time and I wanted to let people know how things are going. Next week I plan to post about our Passover plans, including some great recipes! Stay tuned!

As a treat, here is a photo of the three kids. We actually got them all to stand together for a photo at the photo studio we have been using. The photographer could only snap two photos, so thank God one was good!

Enjoy!

Passover Conundrum

mykidsdad — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 15:37:48 +0000

Alright, maybe not a real conundrum, but after a post about the more well known (and controversial ) topic of Kitniyot, I wanted to talk about something a little less well known outside of Orthodox circles.

But first, I want to make mention of a great new blog that I started reading yesterday called (believe it or not) A Shiksa in the Kitchen! Before anyone starts getting up in my face about the use of the word Shiksa, although I rarely use it, I think that in this case it is sort of ok. Read her blog (and website) and you might agree. Anyway, Tori Avey describes herself as an author, blogger, journalist, screenwriter, her family’s resident chef and a Shiksa (despite becoming a Jew by Choice recently – welcome to the Mishpaha!) Her blog is mainly about Jewish cooking and gives a wonderful mix of Ashkenazi and Sephardi cooking and other interesting Jewish entries. She is blessed with some wonderful friends of different Jewish backgrounds who guide her through learning traditional cooking. I recommend reading her blog, joining her fan page on Facebook (The Shiksa) or following her on Twitter (@theshiksa) or all three! She also makes mention often of a great Jewish organization called the Jewish Outreach Institute which is run by my friend Rabbi Kerry Olitzky and I also recommend visiting their website.

So now back to today’s main topic. To Shiur or not to Shiur, that is the question. At the Passover seder we have four main Mitzvot (perhaps another time I will write about the amazing appearance of the number four throughout the seder). The first is of course to tell the story of the Exodus from Egypt. The other three are all food related, maybe that is why we love this holiday so much! We are told to drink four cups of wine, eat Matza and eat Marror. The problem is, like many Mitzvot that come from the Torah, we know we need to drink four cups of wine, but we don’t know what that exactly means. How much is one cup of wine? I’m sure it won’t surprise anyone that the Rabbis of the Talmud and beyond did discuss these issues and came up with what we call Shiurim.

Most people might recognize the word שיור Shiur as the word for lesson. Often when people give a lecture on Jewish topics it is called a shiur. But Shiur can also mean measure, size, scale or proportion, which is how we are using it here. Each of these food based Mitzvot have a shiur assigned to it. So for the four cups, the Rabbis determined that one cup of wine is 3.3 fluid ounces. To fulfill the Mitzva, one needs to drink the majority of this measure, which was also determined to be 2/3. Sooooo, one should fill their cup with 3.3 ounces and drink at least 2.2 for each of the four cups. On Shabbat the amount was determined to me a little more, so when Passover coincides with Shabbat, the first of the four cups needs to be 4.4 ounces.

I am not advocating whether one should follow these rules or not, but the wine shiur is actually pretty easy to follow. The Rabbis did not want people falling asleep or getting drunk at the seder, so the amount was not set very high. Plus you can use low alcohol wine or even grape juice if you want. The real problem comes from the shiurim for Matza and Marror. Without going into some major Halakhic sources, the basic understanding is that the amount of Matza is that of k’zayit, or the size of an olive. This means that if you crushed up the matza the amount you need to eat would pack together to the size of a large olive. This is generally understood to be about ½ of a large round hand matza or 2/3 of a machine matza. There is also the opinion that you need to eat two times this when you say hamotzei because one for that blessing and one for the blessing “on eating the matza”! Now that is a lot of Matza! Again, I am not advocating any position here, but I will tell you that I generally do not eat that much Matza at the correct time.

Marror also has the shiur of k’zayit. If you use ground horseradish this has been defined as just less than 2 tablespoons. If you use lettuce leaves you should eat a quantity that covers an area of 8×6. Again, it is quite a lot!

We also eat the Korekh, which also has that pesky k’zayit shiur of both Matza and Marror! BTW, I use lettuce for the eating of Marror (since it is easier to dip) and use grated horseradish for the Korekh (easier to put between two pieces of Matza).

Finally we also need to eat a k’zayit of matza for the afikoman!

Again, I am not a Rabbi and do not suggest anything here. I am just reporting. However, if you do want to use the shiurim, you can find this nifty card at most Judaica shops

A friend from when I was at JTS, Rabbi Brad Hirshfield (now President of Klal) suggested at a study session on Shabbat that you make a mini seder plate for each guest and on it should be the proper shiurim for each item. This way when the blessings are said, the leader can pass a small amount from the main matza and marror and the guest can then eat the proper amount, having it in front of him or her.

Now for something completely different! We also have the custom of reclining to our left when we eat the items at the seder. Here is a great you tube video about this. It is in Hebrew but you will get the idea (I will post a basic translation in a comment to the blog post).

Here is another fun one for Passover

Enjoy!

Passover Controversies

mykidsdad — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 21:19:31 +0000

After well over a year, I have decided to stop with the Beatle song titles for each of my blog posts. It was just kind of a joke for me to see if I could do it, and I think with over a year of posting, I can say that I succeeded! For the time being I am going to back to descriptive titles and if something comes to mind, I might come up with another theme.

It’s hard to believe but we are now just over two weeks away from Passover! Passover begins Monday night, March 29^th. Last year I posted about our menus and some of what we are doing for the holiday. Much of what we are doing this year is similar, so you can click here some previous posts about Passover. Last year, Avi was not with us for Seder as he was in a psychiatric hospital. Thank God he is with us this year and has made so much progress from where he was last year!

March 30, 2009

April 7, 2009

March 31, 2008

Passover is very early in the secular calendar this year and it is too bad that we now change our clocks the second Sunday in March. Had we still been doing so on the first Sunday in April, the Seders would have been before we change the clocks and it would have been better with the start times for the Seders. Each Seder is supposed to start with candle lighting. On the first night this year, that would be at 7:03 pm. This of course means that we would not get to the meal until close to 8 pm, which is a bit late for the kids. The second night is even worse, when candle lighting has to be after the first day ended (about 42 minutes past sundown) which would be just after 8 pm (with the meal not coming until 9!). Our solution to this is that once everyone is seated we serve the first two courses of our meal (fish and soup). This allows people to have some food in them (but not Matza!) and pushes the start time of the actual Seder.

None of that is really controversial of course (I know a number of people who do that). Over the next few posts I want to write about some Passover practices that, while maybe not controversial, get a lot of discussion. Today, I want to talk about the granddaddy of all of these discussions, Kitniyot. Some of my friends know that I have done a lot of research on Kitniyot over the past few years, and I would like to share some of my thoughts here. First off we need to define the word. In Israel today, the word Kitniyot is used for legume. The problem with this definition in terms of Passover is that most of the list of items that Ashkenazi Jews refrain from eating on Passover (Jews of Sephardic descent do not have this custom) does not contain legumes. There are even legumes that are permissible for Passover. Alfalfa leaves, which can be used in salads, are permissible, and alfalfa IS a legume. So for Passover purposes, I need to find another definition. The word kitniyot comes from the root קטן which of course means small. Kitniyot are the small things that we don’t eat on Passover.

I could go into the Halakhic discussions here as to where this list comes from and who agrees with it and who does not. Rather than doing that, here is a link to an article that covers all of that in nice detail. I will say that there are many reasons that can be discovered as to why we do not eat Kitniyot on Passover. Often, when the Halakhic literature brings some many different reasons it is quite likely that no one really does know the reason why we do this. My biggest problem with Kitniyot is not the concept (although I would be happy to do away with the prohibition) but the fact that the list of items that are considered Kitniyot seems to grow year after year. One of the earliest modern examples is corn. Corn was unknown in the time of the sages. Korn is a Yiddish word for rye, and perhaps that is how it got mixed up? Wild rice is on the list, but it is neither wild nor rice (it is a grass) so why can’t we have wild rice pilaf? While Quinoa is allowed by some sources (and we do have Quinoa at our Seder) I have found that the OU suggest against eating Quinoa on Passover because there could be other grains that came in contact with the Quinoa!

Bottom line, of course is that I am not a Rabbi and I am not looking to make a Halakhic decision. We still refrain from eating Kitniyot in our house on Passover and probably will always do that. A friend has taken a novel approach. He went to the earliest list he could find and does not eat what is on that list. Anything that was called Kitniyot after that, he does eat in his house. I am waiting to hear back from him for that list, and as soon as I have it, I will edit the post and add the list. I think that sounds like a great compromise to this issue.

Enjoy!

Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite! (part 2)

mykidsdad — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 18:31:45 +0000

As promised here are photos of the kids in their Purim costumes.

Shayna, as always went as a princess. This year she chose Snow White.

Here is Avi as Darth Vador doing battle with Luke Skywalker (family friend who is also named Avi)

Noam was a bit more difficult, but I got this great candid shot of my little Harry Potter next to his friend Noah.

Now we can turn our full attention to that other “P” holiday!

Enjoy!

While My Guitar Gently Weeps

mykidsdad — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 15:40:20 +0000

George Harrison would have been 67 years old today.

Here is this amazing song from the Concert for Bangladesh.

Enjoy!