Confessions of a Jewish Bride

Happy Chanukah!

Everyone at JoyofKosher.com joins me in wishing you a Chag Chanukah Sameach! May your holiday be filled with light, happiness and delicious food!

Just for you, here’s a roundup of all our Chanukah treats:

Chanukah Candles, Cooking and Customs

Slick Tips for Cooking with Oil This Chanukah

Eight Nights of Latkes – eight new latke recipes: Cheddar and Potato Latkes, Potato and Parsnip Latkes, Zucchini Latkes, Carrot and Apple Latkes, South of the Border Latkes, Steakhouse Latkes, Samosa Latkes, Baked Sweet Potato Latkes.

Try my traditional Latke recipes: Latkes, Crispy Potato Latkes, and Mashed Potato Pancakes.

Some new recipes for your Chanukah Meals: Smoked Salmon and Goat Cheese Bruschetta, Butternut Squash and Sage Lasagna, Winter Citrus Salad, Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Herb Butter, and Apple Zeppole with Jelly Dipping Sauce.

My labor of love, my 5^th child, my new cookbook has now arrived (thank you G-d in heaven above!), Quick & Kosher: Meals In Minutes, From The Bride Who Knew Nothing (yep, that’s still me!) And, to celebrate my new cookbook, I’m giving one away!

Quick & Kosher: Meals In Minutes, From the Bride Who Knew Nothing is filled with over 100 meals that look and taste like you slaved over them all day.  Only you didn’t. You don’t have time for that!

Some fast facts:

• More than 215 new quick recipes
• A wine recommendation for each meal
• 20, 40 and 60 minute meals from start to finish
• Full-color, full-page picture featured with every meal
• New fast takes on traditional holiday dishes
• Really funny glossary – worth the price of the book!
• Expert interviews about wine and cheese

It’s the PERFECT Chanukah gift!

The cookbook is available to the public the first week of November – but you can win an autographed copy now.

How to Enter:

• Click here to go to a contest sign up page, put in your email address. Refer a friend and double your chances of winning!
• The more friends you refer, the greater your chances of winning!
• One winner will be selected at random and announced on our blog on, Monday, November 1st.

The contest ends on Sunday, October 31^st at 11:59 a.m. This contest is open to U.S. residents only. Good luck!

So we’ve made it through an amazing month of holidays, and it’s time to get back to a normal life schedule. People have asked me how I manage a career, family, cookbooks, and all, so I’ll share my regular daily routine with you. You may take notes, if you wish:

I make it a point to wake up early, exercise, and daven (pray) before the kids get up, so I won’t be distracted. While sipping a latte, I cook them a hot, healthy breakfast and include myself in this terrific-way-to-start-your-day meal. I feel it’s important to be dressed in a nice, well coordinated outfit – just casual enough to be comfortable and just chic enough that I could go to a meeting on the spur of the moment, should the need arise. I dress the children, brush their hair while humming our special Good Morning song, and trot them out to the school bus. Then it’s on to my productive workday, bolstering a career too glamorous for words.

Oh don’t I wish.

Okay – I have to confess that this never really happens. It’s my fantasy morning. In reality, my eyes wrench open to the cries of a baby or the shuffling of toddler feet in the bathroom somewhere in the 5 o’clock (as in am) hour. I pull a pillow over my head and wait, praying they will all go back to sleep.

They never do. After diaper changes, I supervise the older kids’ dressing. (I learned a long time ago that you don’t leave picking out clothes for the morning. It’s gotta be done the night before unless you want the school bus to come and go while they’re all still in their pajamas.) Eventually, they learn to dress themselves, though never soon enough for me. It’s amazing how one of my lovely girls always used to wind up with backward shirts, and shoes on the wrong feet — so consistently that she defied the laws of probability. We made a joke of turning the shirts around and switching the shoes every day.

By the time they’re all dressed, the baby is in major need of a costume change. We’re not just talking a diaper here, people, we are talking the entire outfit.

Next, I play hairdresser: with 4- and 5-year-old girls, that means ponytails and braids and bows and headbands, and it’s a daily struggle to explain why they can’t wear them all at the same time. My almost 3-year-old son still has long hair. It’s a countdown to his upshern (his first, traditional haircut). Lately, Hubby and I have entered into long philosophical discussions as to whether we go with a clip (a black “boyish” one of course) or a pony (also in neutral boyish colors), while our son just wants the pink sparkly headband like his sisters.

After fighting over which breakfast barstool they sit on, which color plastic cereal bowl they get, and who should be served first my kiddies down their breakfast of yogurt, fruit, cereal, OJ, chocolate milk, or some combination thereof, not without spilling some of it on themselves, their neighbor or the floor first. And the baby actually gets some of it in his mouth. They get a treat if they went to bed nicely the night before, or behaved really well that morning: I am not above bribery. Grabbing each school bag, I add snacks to lunches, “mitzvah notes” extolling each child’s good deeds to their teachers, and pennies for the class tzedakah (charity) box.

I tell them to brush their teeth, help them brush their teeth, or supervise them brushing their teeth — all of which takes inordinately long, considering the number of teeth in their tiny mouths.
My oldest is 5, and we do her one page of homework in the morning. I found that when she gets home from school, wired from her long day, is not the time to make her sit down and concentrate. We tried that and it was painful for both of us. So we do it in the morning, when she’s sharp-minded and excited.

By now, the baby is fussing on the floor, and I put on music to drown out his wails while I steer each child to the bathroom before the carpool or the bus shows up. I run to my closet and choose whatever can be put on in the least amount of time: buttons trump hooks and snaps; zippers trump buttons.

Hubby comes home from Shacharis (morning prayers) and can’t begin to fathom what we’ve all been doing for the last 2 hours – and why there is so much left to do in the next 20 minutes before rushing out for the bus.

It’s almost 9:00 am and I realize I’ve had nothing to eat or drink, (there is no latte in my near future) my nerves are frazzled… and it’s time for work!
Just because I have a dream of the perfect morning, a dream which differs so greatly from my reality doesn’t mean I am not committed to taking steps, ok baby steps to get there. My new motto, smile more at my kids at the break of dawn and remember, come 9am this too shall pass so let’s be in it to win it and enjoy the time together.

And just to leave you all with a quick tip for alleviating breakfast boredom. Make extra fresh pancakes or French toast on a Sunday morning, store leftovers in a Tupperware and nuke quickly for a warm weekday morning breakfast treat. (Use this is for when the kids are especially well behaved or when you are especially well behaved given the strenuous circumstances).

I’d love to know how you start your day or how you’d like to start your day. Leave a comment and share your morning secrets to success with me. In the chance your morning is similar to mine, I want to know too (it’s nice to know you’re not alone in this world).

I can speak to an audience of 200 people, no problem. (Okay, in truth, I’m backed up by my entire family praying for me at the exact moment I’m to start my speech. But I can do it.) In fact, many of you know me through my speaking tours when my first Quick & Kosher cookbook was published. Now that I’m about to publish my second book, Quick & Kosher –Meals in Minutes, I hope to see you in the audience once again.

But I digress. Back to the hop and why I need your help. In a moment of total madness, I decided to be Mom of the Year and volunteered our family sukkah as the first stop on a 3-part Sukkah Hop for kids aged 3-5. I have to feed and entertain them for 10 long minutes.

Don’t laugh. You can’t imagine how nervous I am about this. So the first dilemma is what to serve: can’t be too junky or mommies get mad; can’t be too healthy because my own kids will be irreparably humiliated. They’ll say something like, “Do you think my friends came here because they’ve never seen a cucumber?” Yes, sarcasm from a four year old. It chills the soul.

And then I have to come up with an activity. “Just read a sukkah story,” I was told, but what will captivate 15 restless little kiddies? I want to make my children proud. I want them to feel special to have the hop hosted in our sukkah. But what to do?

This blog is usually full of advice, but now I’m turning the tables. If you have a fun activity or sukkah nosh idea for me – bring it on. Please!

I featured Sharon’s Sorbet in my June Quick & Kosher Bites, but it may shock you to hear that their coconut sorbet once gave me one of the great scares of my life. It happened while I was recipe testing for my first book, Quick & Kosher  - Recipes From The Bride Who Knew Nothing. I was cooking up a storm, trying new ideas, and developing recipes. By the end of a day, I would have six or seven chicken dishes prepared, far more than Hubby and I could eat by ourselves. So I started handing out chicken and salads and desserts to my entire neighborhood – and it was great because I got tons of feedback. Now the scary part.

One Erev Shabbos, I gave my Tea Biscuit and Sorbet Tower, made with Sharon’s Coconut Sorbet, to a neighbor.

Of course, I kept some it for us too. At dessert time, I tasted it and went nuts. It was so good and so creamy that I was sure that the sorbet must have been dairy. I started freaking out, thinking that I had fed my neighbors a dairy dessert after a meat meal! I ran to the garbage to check the containers, but they were no longer there. So I ran over to my neighbors’ house to warn them, stop them, hoping they weren’t eating dessert yet. But I was too late – and with tears in my eyes, I explained that I had assumed that the sorbet must be pareve, but clearly, it must be dairy because… because… I mean, just taste it…. My neighbor calmed me down instantly. “Don’t worry,” she said, laughing, “Sharon’s Sorbet is always pareve.”

So go ahead – try them all and let me know your favorite flavor. And if you have any great sorbet recipes, please share them with me. It’s the perfect no-cook dessert – and it’s definitely pareve!

What’s your most embarrassing food moment?

Here’s mine, and I blush to tell it.

Last week, our product manager gave me a bunch of Smart Fries so I could try out the flavors in advance of my August Quick & Kosher Bites roundup. So I grab the bags, hop in the car, and begin my two-hour commute home. Now I never do this, but it was hot day and I decided that I’d feel cooler in a beret or a snood instead of the sheitel I was wearing. So I popped into a local store and bought something that was airy and comfortable, except that the way it hung down around my ears made me look like a medieval serf. The kind of thing I’d never wear in public, but hey, I’m just driving home.

Did I mention I hadn’t eaten lunch or dinner? So I rip open a bag of Smart Fries like a hungry animal, thinking I’ll try one, two, maybe three fries just to tide me over. Whoa! What a surprise. I thought they would taste like kid food, but I loved them. First, I tried Vinegar Splash. They were light, crisp, and salty. After salty, I needed sweet, so I tried Honey Mustard & Onion and it totally hit the mark. At the next red light, I rummaged around in the bag and found that I had Honey BBQ. Well, I just had to try those.

So I have three bags open and I’m pounding the Smart Fries with wild abandon. About 45 minutes into my trip, I hear an insistent series of beeps. I turn my head and see the CEO of Kosher.com coming up on my left. I’ve got a mouthful of fries, crumbs on my face, and an ugly shmatta on my head! I try to duck and hide my red face as he sails past, waving jovially.

I drove 20 miles an hour the rest of the trip home, careful not to catch up with him — so I could finish off those Smart Fries in peace.

What’s your most embarrassing food moment? You don’t have to use your real name here! Leave a comment and let’s get the discussion going. Please, don’t leave me all alone in this!

As Holocaust survivors who thought in other languages, my grandparents sometimes had trouble expressing themselves to me in words, but they knew how to show their love with food.

My grandparents were skilled chefs who were always in the kitchen.  They cooked out of small spaces with old appliances and no special gadgets, yet they delivered the most luscious, unforgettable meals to their tables. The food they served filled everyone with love and warmth like a great big hug.

My mom’s parents were expert bakers, too.  They were famous for their Hungarian Dobos Torte (pronounced dobosh) – a 12 layer cake filled with homemade chocolate cream and topped with caramelized brown sugar.  They made this cake for birthdays and if there was any left over they would slice and freeze it.  To find a frozen slice of Dobos Torte was like finding treasure – we never waited for it to defrost before eating it.

Although he was an accomplished restaurant chef, aside from Dobos Torte, my grandmother never let my grandfather into her kitchen. It was only when she passed away that my grandfather, then in his mid 70s, officially took over the reins as family cook and host – having all of his extended family plus guests over for Rosh Hashanah or Thanksgiving or Shabbos or whenever.  He always had something fresh cooking on the stove.

My dad’s father was also a skilled professional cook whose nickname, “Chefu,” literally means chef in Romanian. He had the most incredible potato kugel – 6 inches high, crusty on the outside and light as a feather on the inside – authentic, how-it-was-meant-to-be-made chicken soup – and a few specialties like potato sour cream soup.  He and grandma cooked and baked and showed their love to us with every morsel.

Now that all my grandparents have all passed, I honor their memory each time I cook one of their recipes or welcome friends and family with food. This was a generation that could have withdrawn and been closed to the world. Instead they decided to engage; to show their love in a way that went beyond the words that sometimes escaped them.

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!