IN THE HOSPITAL, WE CATER TO YOUR NEEDS
I would tell you that I am in excellent health. In fact, I have recently lost 32 kg, but don’t tell the editor! But, if you’d ask my doctors, you’d be certain that I have one foot in the grave: a pacemaker, diabetes, high blood pressure, s small stroke and other assorted maladies.
You may thus assume that I am familiar with hospital life. You should not be surprised that I had one of my perennial visits to the hospital just last week for a minor procedure.
All went well, thank God, and the cuisine was expectedly miserable. I would have considered it normal were it not for the obnoxious message on my dinner tray, “Our goal is to enhance your dining experience by offering you personalized service and warm hospitality that you deserve and we deliver. We’re here to cater to you.”
That “we cater to you” baloney busted my gut. So, I decided to put them to the test. I simply requested my normal diet: my meals should be vegetarian (in Greenville, kosher is too much to expect), soft and dietetic.
On their first attempt at dinner, the attendant brought mashed potatoes, dietetic pudding and a slice of . . . meatloaf, because “it was soft.” On the second try, she brought fried fish, with ice cream for dessert. The fried fish, she reasoned, was softer than the alternative, fried chicken. The third time, she presented vegetables cooked to mush in a ham-flecked stock.
Obviously, neither Jesus nor his Disciples, who observed kashrut and after whom the hospital was named, were watching over me. Linda finally walked in, and after we stopped laughing over my culinary plight, she ran home for some of her matzo ball soup, potato kugel and gefilte fish.
In the aftermath, I tried to think of even one indigenously Jewish food that was was not “soft.” Kugel? Matzo balls? Gefilte fish? The only “hard” Jewish food that I could recollect was crunchy matzo. Matzo? Didn’t the goyim eat that at the Last Supper? Aha! Something else we stole from them! It’s all part of an international Jewish conspiracy. What will be next? Lox and bagels?
March 27, 2006
March 13, 2006
STARBUCK'S REVENGE
My mother and father did not have a marriage. They had a lifelong love affair. My father’s given name was Simeon. His friends called him “Sim” or “Si.” My mother never called him anything but “my dear Shimondel.” In turn, I never once heard my father call my mother by her birth name, Sophie. She was always, “my darling.”
My mother was far from the world’s greatest cook, so she wisely prepared basic, unadorned meals. To her great fortune, my father was a man of simple tastes whose palate was indifferent to an extraordinary recipe, much less haute cuisine. Were my mother to have made a particularly tasty dinner, my father’s highest accolade was, “Darling, this is a recipe that you can keep.”
Thus, as you can imagine, breakfast was the quintessential picture of simplicity. Each morning for 48 years of their marriage, my mother would align before him glasses of orange juice, milk and water. Before him, too, was a bowl of cornflakes and sliced bananas. He would pour half the milk in the bowl, eat the flakes, drink the remaining milk, the juice, and then the water each day in the same order.
As breakfast would end each morning for 48 years, my mother would make the same offer: “Would you care for a cup of coffee, Shimondel?” And each morning for 48 years, my father would politely respond, “No thank you, my darling.”
Slowly, my father descended into Alzheimer’s. We were finally obliged to place him in a nursing home. One morning, my mother and I arrived just as the attendant was helping him eat breakfast. He heartily ate a plate of eggs and toast. And, as you might have guessed, he concluded the meal with a robust cup of coffee.
“Shimondel,” my mother asked with loving consternation, “After all these years you started drinking coffee with breakfast?”
In his senility, she expected no response at all. Imagine our surprise as he looked up from his cup and softly announced with complete clarity, “Darling, this is a recipe that you could keep!”
My mother and father did not have a marriage. They had a lifelong love affair. My father’s given name was Simeon. His friends called him “Sim” or “Si.” My mother never called him anything but “my dear Shimondel.” In turn, I never once heard my father call my mother by her birth name, Sophie. She was always, “my darling.”
My mother was far from the world’s greatest cook, so she wisely prepared basic, unadorned meals. To her great fortune, my father was a man of simple tastes whose palate was indifferent to an extraordinary recipe, much less haute cuisine. Were my mother to have made a particularly tasty dinner, my father’s highest accolade was, “Darling, this is a recipe that you can keep.”
Thus, as you can imagine, breakfast was the quintessential picture of simplicity. Each morning for 48 years of their marriage, my mother would align before him glasses of orange juice, milk and water. Before him, too, was a bowl of cornflakes and sliced bananas. He would pour half the milk in the bowl, eat the flakes, drink the remaining milk, the juice, and then the water each day in the same order.
As breakfast would end each morning for 48 years, my mother would make the same offer: “Would you care for a cup of coffee, Shimondel?” And each morning for 48 years, my father would politely respond, “No thank you, my darling.”
Slowly, my father descended into Alzheimer’s. We were finally obliged to place him in a nursing home. One morning, my mother and I arrived just as the attendant was helping him eat breakfast. He heartily ate a plate of eggs and toast. And, as you might have guessed, he concluded the meal with a robust cup of coffee.
“Shimondel,” my mother asked with loving consternation, “After all these years you started drinking coffee with breakfast?”
In his senility, she expected no response at all. Imagine our surprise as he looked up from his cup and softly announced with complete clarity, “Darling, this is a recipe that you could keep!”
March 06, 2006
SLICE IT RARE FOR THE SAKE OF THE POOR
Contrary to my usual perception as rabbi in our little village, I was recently asked to prepare a buffet for a local charity ball. The greatest irony, to be sure, was that 200 gentiles unwittingly dined on haute cuisine prepared in a meticulously kosher kitchen.
Now on to the strictly kosher menu: First, my jambalaya, a dish that originated with French-Canadians who immigrated to Louisiana. Jambalaya is highly seasoned rice containing chicken, sausage, vegetables and shrimp, or so they thought. For Yehudim who do mix fish with meat, halibut is a delicious substitute for the mud-groveling crustacean, and the goyim were none the wiser.
Then, I brought forth a tureen of Caribbean ceviche, which one might call “sushi for cowards”: raw tuna, tomatoes, onions, peppers, all pickled together for a few hours in lime juice. As the local aristocrats bathed in it, all I could think was that it would be wonderful to serve at a bris.
The piece de resistance, however, posed a deep dilemma. In the course of gathering contributions, I had unthinkingly schnorred a monstrous chunk of treife roast beef from a local hotel. The hotel would roast it in its oven.
Ah, but who would carve it? By now, you should know that the only schlemiel who knew how to wield a knife was . . . the rabbi! For three hours, I sliced roast beef for 200. “Would you like yours rare? Well done? Another slice? Some sauce for that?
They loved every morsel. And whom do you think they assumed roasted it? I tried not to burst their balloon: “Wherever did you get that roast?” From a friend. “How did you roast it?” In a friend’s oven. “What seasonings did you use?” That’s a secret. “How long did you marinate it?” Hours and hours.
When I arrived home, I kashered my hands and tongue with a blowtorch. I made these solemn vows: to teach someone else how to carve a roast, to never get so drunk on Purim that I blurt out this episode, and to warn my grandchildren to be careful what they schnorr.
Contrary to my usual perception as rabbi in our little village, I was recently asked to prepare a buffet for a local charity ball. The greatest irony, to be sure, was that 200 gentiles unwittingly dined on haute cuisine prepared in a meticulously kosher kitchen.
Now on to the strictly kosher menu: First, my jambalaya, a dish that originated with French-Canadians who immigrated to Louisiana. Jambalaya is highly seasoned rice containing chicken, sausage, vegetables and shrimp, or so they thought. For Yehudim who do mix fish with meat, halibut is a delicious substitute for the mud-groveling crustacean, and the goyim were none the wiser.
Then, I brought forth a tureen of Caribbean ceviche, which one might call “sushi for cowards”: raw tuna, tomatoes, onions, peppers, all pickled together for a few hours in lime juice. As the local aristocrats bathed in it, all I could think was that it would be wonderful to serve at a bris.
The piece de resistance, however, posed a deep dilemma. In the course of gathering contributions, I had unthinkingly schnorred a monstrous chunk of treife roast beef from a local hotel. The hotel would roast it in its oven.
Ah, but who would carve it? By now, you should know that the only schlemiel who knew how to wield a knife was . . . the rabbi! For three hours, I sliced roast beef for 200. “Would you like yours rare? Well done? Another slice? Some sauce for that?
They loved every morsel. And whom do you think they assumed roasted it? I tried not to burst their balloon: “Wherever did you get that roast?” From a friend. “How did you roast it?” In a friend’s oven. “What seasonings did you use?” That’s a secret. “How long did you marinate it?” Hours and hours.
When I arrived home, I kashered my hands and tongue with a blowtorch. I made these solemn vows: to teach someone else how to carve a roast, to never get so drunk on Purim that I blurt out this episode, and to warn my grandchildren to be careful what they schnorr.
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