Food Jews Love To Eat: Ashkenazi Edition (Article)

Food Jews Love To Eat: Ashkenazi Edition: There is one thing that connects all Jews. Food.



The Way Ashkenazim Love Food (my article for the lovers of Jewish European cuisine- click link above)



Anything called pastrami, Schmaltz, brisket, anything from a deli, Shabbat food eaten all week. Potato in any form. Potato knish, potato perogies, potato kugel, mashed potatoes, French fries...We took potatoes and tried every form of cooking and baking with them, and it all worked. Only potatoes. That is the full menu of Jewish vegetarian cuisine. Anything with potatoes is Jewish vegetarian food. That is all the uniqueness we have to offer non-meat eaters; potato side dishes and matzah ball soup. Everything else is meat, lox or celery in effervescent form.

Rosh Hashanah Resolutions

Rosh Hashanah Resolutions: God, please help me to stop eating chocolate.



Shan Tova Lachem

You should all be blessed with a year of laughter...



To help along, as the machzor doesn't include this...here are ROSH HASHANA RESOLUTIONS YOU WILL MAKE IN SHUL:

I will learn how to lead services. This Chazin is taking too long.

I will give more for the Rabbi’s Yizkur Appeal if his speech is shorter.

I will get a better seat in shul next year. I will save up money and purchase a cushioned seat. I did not realize I would be sitting here for thirty-five hours these High Holidays.

I will devote my life to peace on earth, if we can get out of the services now.

If the guy is able to blow the shofar for more than twenty seconds, I will not get extremely excited and show my watch to everybody.

I will not eat anymore for the whole holiday season. I feel disgusting, having to eat three meals a day, with brisket and kugel in each one.

I will not eat chocolate on Yom Kippur.



New Year' means it's time for resolutions (not vows, as those aren't allowed)...Not eating chocolate is a necessary resolution all must make. What else can you resolute? My article attached is here to help you with more resolutions that you can make while sitting in shul (click the link above)



***To share more laughter and perspective this year, show your love and join David Kilimnick on Facebook

Tips on Planning a Successful Bar/Bat Mitzvah (my article)

Click Here for Link to article- Tips on Planning a Successful Bar/Bat Mitzvah

Based on my extensive research attending Bar and Bat Mitzvahs, I bring you the essentials of what you have to do to run a successful Bar Mitzvah party. It is not a weekend. It is the Bar Mitzvah party month. So be prepared…

Regarding the speech – Mom get ready to write it.

Trip to Israel

Today, you must take the kid to Israel to celebrate his Bar Mitzvah before his Bar Mitzvah. In addition to the party, this ensures that the parents must go broke. This is mandatory.

If you live in Israel, you have to take your boy to the Kotel, to pay for another breakfast for 80 people. This includes the random guy at the Kotel who you got in a fight with over who the Torah holding table belongs to.

Picture Montage

You obviously need a slideshow of your child but more importantly, to show everybody in your community all the vacations you went on, so that your friends understand why you can’t afford to pay full tuition for Jewish Day School.

The slideshow must include all pictures from the child’s life in no specific order. Let Windows do the organizational work. The montage must then be played to some kind of soft rock song from the 1980s. “The Living Years” by Mike and the Mechanics must be in the mix. And then you are must play “Happy” to truly work the emotions of the people who are not watching and don’t care about that vacation with Bubbie.

After a half hour of family, throw in pictures of each of the 300 guests, including your child’s friends so that they can get excited for a minute. If you must, go into the shul archives for community pictures.

Friends Must Do a Presentation

It is important that these kids are extremely disorganized. That is an integral part of the presentation. Make sure that kids from their class sing a song that rhymes “cool” with “school.” Optimal lyrics are, “He is so cool, he does well in school.” This is a big crowd pleaser.

Bat Mitzvah’s Speech

Mom must write it.

Bar Mitzvah’s Speech

Mom must write it. The tradition is to allow the young man to work on it. You are supposed to remind him every day and he is supposed to say that he is working on it, while he is on the PlayStation. A week before the Bar Mitzvah, act surprised and get extremely angry and force him to write the speech that you end up writing.

Tell the Child to Read Louder

Do this in front of everybody. Do not work on this at home. Wait till he is at the party and standing in front of 300 people, including every teacher he has ever had. This way he can also feel like he is being judged for his reading skills.

Speeches

Not everyone is sleeping yet so at this point, speeches must be given by everybody. The parents, grandparents, cousins, and anybody else who is not entertaining.

Topic of the speech that you give as the parent should have something to do with child growing up, who they are named after and how hard the birth was.

Invite your friends

The Bar Mitzvah is really for the parents. A successful Bar Mitzvah is when the boy asks why he is there and why there are only four of his friends present. The questions from the Bar Mitzvah boy should be: “Why am I wearing a suit if this is a party for me?” “Who is this guy? My friends are not balding.”

Give Everybody an Honor

Nobody should feel left out. Each of the 300 guests is important. If that takes calling an extra 40 people to the Torah over Shabbat, then so be it. And each guest called to the Torah reserves the right to say an extra private blessing in front of the whole congregation, mentioning each member of his family for five minutes. If they forget a family member’s name, give them another minute.

Candle Lighting Ceremony

Some people do not deserve to get called to the Torah. Have a candle lighting ceremony so that people you do not believe are important also have a chance to have an honor of lighting a candle.

Be creative and dedicate the candles with meaningful words like, “This candle. The candle of summer is going to be lit by...” That will be meaningful to Cousin Jeremy. The more vague the candle, the more poetic the ceremony.

DJ

Need a DJ. No bands. Kids don’t want bands nowadays. Just a guy with a computer. No records. No instruments. A guy who brought a playlist that he found on YouTube. That is the talent. Be ready to spend $2,000 on this guy’s ability to download.

Jewish Dancing Time

Must be done in a circle. A requisite fifteen minutes of Jewish dancing, with at least one hora. This is done before the DJ presses the hip hop button on his computer and all the kids start making everybody uncomfortable with their new dances.

Make a Party Bag

The hundred and twenty dollars you are putting down on the meal for each person is not enough. The kids need the bags. In the bag should be a piece of chocolate and jellybeans, just in case the eight-thousand-dollar dessert table does not satisfy the needs of the young ones.

Have A Camera Man

This way people will smile for a minute. Without the camera man, nobody will be smiling. Remember, you sat them at the table with the people they don’t like.

People at the party should not want to be there. This is why you have the speeches and the slideshow. To make it less enjoyable, you can also turn off the air-conditioning.

Huge Party

Party must be expensive and huge. Those are the only true rules.

Pick a Theme

You have a choice to run the same party that everybody else in his class ran, with the kippahs, DJ, speeches, slideshow, candle lighting ceremony, or you can be unique and have a basketball theme. Remember nothing says welcome to the observance of mitzvot like a cardboard cutout of Lebron James.

Mazal tov!

Passover Food You Need to Buy (as seen in Jewlarious)

Passover Food You Need to Buy (click for link): Buy lots of eggs. Because other than brisket, everything should taste like scrambled eggs.

Passover Food You Need to Buy

by David Kilimnick

Making Pesach, like everything Jewish, is about the food. You will have to get new dishes, pots and don’t forget – bedding - for the people who are coming to stay with you for Pesach because they love you and don’t want to make Pesach for you in their home. Don’t let them down. Break out the Pesach delicacies the traditional way, with good food. Here’s what you will need for your Pesach kitchen:

Raw Ingredients

Anything you have in your cabinet. Buy it again. It is Passover.

Different Kosher for Pesach Mixes

You need matzah balls and other items that are not matzah, such as cake. Your goal is to try to make everything that you make during the year, without the necessary ingredients. That is where Manischewitz and Rokeach come in.

There is nothing like a cake without flour. Literally, nothing like a cake without flour. There is also nothing like pizza without dough. That is what makes Pesach so special. You get to enjoy the awesome food that nobody would ever make during the rest of the year.

Pesach Noodles

Make Pesach feel like any other day during the year, yet special. Cook up the non-Chametz noodles and you’ll have a great dish of noodles that join together into one. It will taste just like farina.

Eggs

Everything on Pesach, other than brisket, should taste like scrambled eggs. Throw in enough eggs and you will love it. Matzah Brei with enough eggs doesn’t even taste like matzah. And yet, it is Pesach in your mouth.

30 Boxes of Matzah

You always want to make sure that you have a good ten to twenty boxes left over, after Pesach.

Pesach is the perfect chance for the Matzah Cleanse Diet, where you put on twelve pounds. Thank you, matzah.

Brisket

It’s a Jewish holiday.

Try Going Gluten Free

This is your chance, and nobody will hate you for it. Please be advised: you will lose no weight (see: Matzah Cleanse Diet above).

Butter & Salt

You need salt on the butter for the matzah to taste decent. That is the recipe.

Temp Tee Cream Cheese

That is tradition right here. It still amazes me that we don’t use this during the year. It took Philadelphia years to figure out that in order to spread cream cheese it is necessary to whip it. Even if it were kosher for Passover I would advise you not to buy the old-style Philadelphia block. You would be left with matzah crumbs. And a gerbil looking thing of matzah on the knife, with the cream cheese you can’t get off. That old-style Philadelphia stuff even rips bread. I am still trying to figure out what it can be used for, other than breaking plastic knives.

Grape Juice

There is only so much sugary wine one person can handle, am I right? One cup, maybe two cups, you can be strong. But by the fourth cup – let’s just say you better have some grape juice on standby.

Coke

Now is the time to get it. Non-Jewish people also like coke with sugar.

Jello, Coffee Cake…

Check what they are eating in the senior citizens home. That is what you get on Passover. Borscht, schav and herring all work. When it comes to Pesach, they knew what they were doing in Eastern Europe.

Older people are always ready for Pesach. They are devout. That is why gefilte fish becomes a staple when you age. It is kosher for Pesach.

The older you get, the more you try to avoid hard stuff. Cleaning for Pesach can be a very tedious task. Therefore, they make sure that their cuisine is always kosher for Pesach.

Dr. Brown’s

This is the drink company you must buy from.

Do not purchase regular drinks. Make sure your Pesach drink is something that no child has heard of, or is willing to taste. Cel-Ray is perfect. If it sounds like a vegetable, the kids will stay away from it, along with the matzah and all the other Pesach food.

Kosher Symbol for Passover

Buy it. If you are living outside of Israel and New York City, buy anything with a kosher for Passover symbol as soon as you can because it will be gone. Three months in advance, that is the time to pick it up. The Jews get to that stuff real quick. Especially because all Pesach food has a fifteen-year expiration on it. Right now might be too late for this year, but you can definitely find stuff for Pesach 2020.

Anything with a Kosher symbol for Pesach is what you buy. It makes no difference. Don’t take chances. When you are starving and can’t find a kosher for Pesach bag of chips, at least you have the sardines.

Happy Kosher for Passover to all of you – especially the ones who have family coming who aren’t chipping in for the food!