Jewish Food Night

[copied from dland]

We are currently in the midst of a weeklong religious holiday, A Really Big One, and one that is unnaturally focused on food, and the preparation and eating thereof. Even so, I do not celebrate or observe the rituals of oranized religion, although I respect and honor the history and meaning of such events.

In other words, Passover is upon us, along with its strict rules about what one can and cannot eat during this time, and although I have never observed those rules in my life, I like the food. So I gathered my wits about me and made and/or ate some Jewish food tonight. Not all of it Kosher for Passover (or any of it Kosher at all), but I cooked, and I ate, and let me tell you ...

It was really good.

The most traditional food I make, and one of the very few things that Grandma Ida made well, is matzo kugel. Kugel means pudding, like a bread pudding (not like chocolate or butterscotch pudding.) But since I'm eating all healthy-like, I actually found a lower fat and other bad stuff recipe, and made that instead of Ida's, and it had the same comfort food effect on me. I also had a couple pieces gefilte fish, but K doesn't care for that, so I also made some latkes. Latkes are not only not Passover food, they are prohibited on Passover, I believe -- they are Chanukah food, potato pancakes -- but since I don't care, that's what we had.

This is the best meal I've had in weeks. Oh, okay, the lobster a week or so back was plenty good. But this was my soul food. And I didn't even go over my points for the day; I'm not sure how that happened.

And that's the story of my day and my food, which is pretty much the Passover thing anyway. It would seem to be all about the food, but it's not. Passover is nothing more than the story of Exodus, the second book of the Bible, and of how God miraculously brought the Hebrew people out of slavery. It's all about the event in history that codified the Jewish religion and solidified the Hebrew people into a single unified group. Which we celebrate with food. Okay, done with that now.

In other news, our weather continues to be atrocious: rainy, cold, damp. Okay, it rains in April, we all know that. The cold has got to go, though. And my feet are getting wet through the vent holes in my crocs.

Had a relatively good day at school, which you know I don't get to say often. It looks like we'll definitely be getting the upgraded library software, which should be lots of fun to play with as well as a real improvement over our current version (which is also pretty good.) Also, it appears that we -- the library -- are finally coming out of the year-long slump that began when we closed down the old library just about a year ago now. We've been very busy lately, often with a class in the computer lab and maybe 20 or 30 kids from various other classes in and out with passes to do this or that. It's as if everyone has finally woken up and remembered that we're there. So this is very nice. We still have a lot of bugs to work out, especially in getting people to tell us things that are going on. We found out today quite by accident that research papers are now mandatory in the 10th and 11th grade, as well as the 9th, with which we have always worked closely. Well, we're delighted, but it would be nice if we had known. I don't even know if there's enough time left in the school year to get all those classes in for research. But I guess it'll be fun to try.

Don't know how I'll be able to stay up for Lost tonight. It's almost 8.00 now, and I'm going to get my jammies on.

WATCHING RAYMOND :: ENTRY #1421