traditions

Friday Food – New Year’s Amusements

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I thought for the first Friday Food of the new year, I’d share two amusing ones. Just below is an Advent Calendar I got just after Advent started. It was half price on clearance. It really is a cute box.

I had no intention of saving it for next year, but I wasn’t sure how to distribute the candy until this week.

We sat at the dining room table after dinner and had my family each choose a number between 1 and 24. We did this twice, and had fun seeing which of the candies we got. We’ll keep doing this until the box is empty and then I’ll save the box for next year and fill it with different candies to surprise us throughout Advent.

Chocolate Advent Calendar.
(c)2025-2026
Chocolate Advent Calendar.
(c)2025-2026
Morton’s Iodized Salt.
(c)2026

This is your average, everyday Morton salt that I believe everyone has in their cupboards. What is so special about this one really illustrates how little salt our family uses. This is only the fourth cannister that I’ve had since I was married more than thirty-one years ago.

My family is tired of hearing this, but I am really amused and fascinated by it. I can’t think of any other food item in our house that has lasted that long and is still good to eat. We really only use salt in baking and in our mashed potatoes!

We do have a microwave that we got for my bridal shower in 1994 that is still working well, but the salt is the only food. For added trivia, this is only the third one that we’ve bought – my mother gave us the first one with a loaf of bread, which is a tradition in Jewish families.

Holiday Traditions

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I often write about holiday traditions, and I lose track of what I’ve shared already. We have several holiday traditions for several different holidays. Usually when asked about holiday traditions, the expected reference is Christmas. We have those, and I’d guess that practically all of them revolve around food, but we also have holiday traditions for Easter, Passover, Cinco de Mayo (despite not being Mexican), St. Patrick’s Day, Thanksgiving, Chanukah, birthdays, and New Year’s, and I’m sure I’m forgetting some.

My birthday this year was meh, and it was barely meh. I was sick for days before, and I wasn’t quite right on my birthday, so everything went downhill. I didn’t want a cake because I couldn’t eat it. I usually spend the day by going to Starbucks for breakfast and a leisurely trip to Target to look at the ornaments and see what other treats I can find for myself.

I did go to Starbucks for my free drink, but I got it with no ice so I could save it for the weekend when I (hopefully) felt better. The rest of this month continues in slow motion. Some Christmas gifts will be late.

Since my son was working all week, I may light the menorah again when he comes for Christmas dinner.

Our usual Christmas morning tradition will be postponed to the afternoon since he will also be working an overnight and staying at work until mid afternoon. We usually have Dunkin’ Donuts and our favorite seasonal drinks and then open our gifts. I know the kids are littles anymore but I’m not sure how they’ll feel about not opening their gifts until the afternoon. Our traditional dinner is based on my husband’s family. His mother is from Belfast, and they always had roast beef for Christmas dinner, which is what we do. Roast beef, roasted onions, gravy, mashed potatoes, carrots, green bean casserole. The one thing we don’t have is her amazing trifle – I was never able to master that. Maybe one day we’ll give it a try. This year’s desserts are two pies – one apple streussel (from Cracker Barrel) and one Very Berry or Triple Berry from a local bakery. We have a nice vintage of whipped cream chilling in the fridge.

On Christmas Eve we get Chinese take-out and the day after Christmas I make a Shepherd’s Pie with the roast and mashed.

Our Christmas cards are hung up as of Monday, but our own cards won’t go out until the new year, and our tree isn’t up yet. It seems to go up later and later each year. We’re hoping for tonight. No Doctor Who this year, but maybe I’ll finally watch Fantastic Four and/or Superman on streaming. I also have half a dozen (or so) books to read, so there is no reason to be bored while waiting for present-time.

One of the traditions that we no longer do is a Christmas Eve gift. When the kids were small, they were given (wrapped) a new pair of pajamas and a book for bedtime. That way I guaranteed that they’d go to bed, and when they woke up, they would look nice for the Christmas morning photos. We do still bake cookies for Santa, and he’s kind and generous enough to bring us stockings with a nice selection of candy and usually a small gift card.

I think for the next few weeks, I’ll choose a holiday and write a small thing about how we celebrate and what our traditions are. I’ll probably start with New Year’s next week. What would you like to see after that?

Despite these last twelve months, I am trying to remain optimistic and positive and hoping that things can be better in the coming year.

Have a Happy Christmas, Happy Holidays, Joyous Greetings of the Season, a Blessed New Year, and longer light-filled days.

My Jewish History, Part Two

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Before I had kids, things seemed so simple. My husband and I combined what we were already doing religiously. On the High Holidays and Passover, he usually went to work, so there was no conflict. At work, he ate what he wanted, and at home, we continued to eat matzo. It was the same when the kids were born. That is, until he began working from home, but we continued to make it work as we blended our two religions with our children.

Our wedding was an interfaith ceremony as well. We were married under a chuppah or canopy. We had a Rabbi and a Priest. We (my spouse) broke the glass, which represents the remembering of the destruction of the temples in Jerusalem. We celebrated Christmas and Easter with my in-laws, and the Jewish holidays and Thanksgiving with my family. This continued after our kids were born.

After we were married, we continued to celebrate the Jewish holidays with my family. We also celebrated Thanksgiving with my family and then went to my husband’s family for Christmas and Easter. Thanksgiving somehow felt Jewish to me. It wasn’t overly religious, especially if your family didn’t go to church. I also felt that it was inclusive of all traditions. No one was left out. Now, I realize today that when I thought that I wasn’t thinking about the Indigenous people who we peripherally celebrate on that day as well, but to me as a Jewish person, it was the one holiday that I wasn’t left out of things. It became a bigger holiday for me, and for my kids.

When my kids were born, I knew that they would be raised in both faiths and celebrating both sets of holidays – Jewish on my side and Catholic on my husband’s side. Even though he and his family weren’t religious, they still celebrated Christmas and Easter in his family, and we continued that with our kids.

We would travel from our home in upstate New York to our families: mine for Thanksgiving, which my in-laws would attend, and his for Christmas. We would still see my parents during that time, but the primary celebration was spending Christmas Eve at my in-laws and spending the night. We didn’t begin to stay at our own home on the holidays until we had a house and wanted the kids to wake up there on Christmas morning.

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~ Christmas Eve ~

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The first Christmas Eve Mass I attended was memorable for several, distinct reasons. I had been attending the daily masses pretty regularly since March and the regular pastor had returned in May from his sabbatical and the very first mass I attended with him presiding was one that I had intentions said for my friend’s death one year prior. His homily resonated with me in so many ways that from that moment on, he was my pastor, whether he knew it or not. This Christmas Eve, I was continuing to attend mass and yet had no intention of conversion. My attendance was in complement to my Jewish traditions. It was important to me. I didn’t kneel or cross myself, but the readings and the homilies spoke to me in a way that I was needing at that time.

Not knowing how holiday masses worked, I didn’t realize the amount of people who would be attending, especially the early mass when the kids were in abundance. The kids weren’t any problem, but the seating was at a premium as was the parking. I arrived at what I thought was on time, but which was late if I wanted a parking space conducive to my wobbly knee and a seat. I arrived and Father Jerry greeted me. He was happy to see me, and I him. He looked around to see if there was a seat (there wasn’t) and I said that I was fine to stand. He knew that this was not true as we had spoken about my knee in previous months. He asked a family in the last row if they could squeeze me in, and the grandfather mind you, stood so I could sit with his family, and he stood behind the pew.

This was not my first experience of the hospitality of my parish to be.

This wasn’t the first time that I knew I belonged here, whether I converted or not. Again, I wasn’t in the market for a new church or religion, but we often will get what we need when we need it rather than what we want or are looking for. This season was definitely one of those times. My conversion came before my baptism by more than a year. In my mind, while receiving the sacraments are an important part of the faith journey, for me it was something of a formality. In my heart, I was already Catholic. However, on this Christmas Eve, I wasn’t there yet.

All families have holiday traditions, whether they be in their nuclear family, their extended, their chosen family, traveling for the holiday, or staying home. One of ours from my husband’s side was Christmas Eve Chinese take out for dinner as well as a newer tradition of the Doctor Who Christmas special. My family was delayed for both by my choice to attend Christmas Eve Mass. I had already decided not to attend the Christmas Day Mass, not knowing that attending the Vigil Mass was the same in regard to the “obligation” to attend the next day’s mass. Of course, I was not under any obligation, but it still made a difference to me in knowing the distinction.

Tonight’s Christmas Eve Mass will be different from previous years. I won’t know how until I get there. We belong to a family of three parishes, and so in my church there will be only one Eve mass. We have a new pastor who I like very much but he is different, and that’s okay. The anticipation is both exciting and anxiety inducing. Instead of the last row, I’ll sit in one of the first rows with my friend in her usual seat. My family will pick up the Chinese food and I’ll meet them at home after. We have Napoleons for dessert as well as some leftover cookies once we make them for Santa. Our youngest is sixteen, almost seventeen (two more weeks), but Santa still expects his cookies. There is eggnog chilling in the fridge. Tomorrow’s dinner is planned as is the next day’s lunch with my oldest son who is working today.

Christmas Eve is preparatory, getting the church ready, getting the tree ready, getting the food ready, but also reliving a child’s birth in a manger in a cave halfway around the world, which resonates around the world. It is also preparing for the birth of a new year, looking ahead while also glancing behind, bringing forward the good, leaving the not so good. While some churches have already decorated, the inside of ours won’t be ready until we arrive tonight with wreaths and trees, wound with white lights, dim lighting makes way for brighter tomorrow, tonight the skylights are dark with the night sky. Garland and plants and flowers and of course, the empty manger that will be filled before the end of the night.

Happy Christmas Eve. May your night be peaceful and your tomorrow glorious.

O Chanukah, O Chanukah

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Light the Menorah….

Today is the first night of Chanukah. It is also the fourth Sunday of Advent and the eighteenth year since my Mother died. I always say that she died intentionally on this day – 25th of Kislev. On the Julian calendar she died on December 8th, which was the 25th of Kislev. Her yartzeit will always be on the first night of Chanukah. I know she did this on purpose; there is no excuse to forget her candle. I’ve seen others with anniversaries on other important days have mixed feelings on the sharing of a sad day with a happy one, and I do feel the sadness from eighteen years ago, but I also think fondly and lovingly on this day, remembering my mother and her ways. I see her in myself especially as I get older. I said something to my daughter tonight, and I had to pause because I sounded exactly like my mother. I think when I was younger this would have bothered me, but today, it made me feel not only closer to her, but closer to my daughter. We used my childhood menorah tonight, which will feel like putting my hand in a fiery piece of the sun by the end of the holiday; it radiates heat when all nine candles are blazing brightly.

My husband managed to find some gelt. It’s nearly impossible in this area, and I did order a small batch online, but it won’t be here until later in the week. I really like to give the kids their dreidls and gelt on the first night, and we were able to. I even found colored (blue and clear) plastic dreidls (at Target) that I could fill with the chocolate coins and one Maccabee chocolate soldier each. I’d never seen those before (from Bed, Bath, and Beyond).

I also made the best latkes I think I’ve ever made in my life. They truly were perfect and that never happens. I eat them with applesauce and sour cream, both. Why should I choose between them?! I also fried up some chicken cutlets, which were also excellent. The whole house smells of oil: olive for the chicken; vegetable for the latkes.

Here’s to the light of the season, no matter where it’s coming from or what holiday you’re celebrating this month.

(c)2022

Friday Food. December.

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December is full of different types of food to fill the days of the different types of holidays we celebrate throughout the month of December. Recently, I went to a Festival Of Learning and had Latkes with applesauce (personally I love applesauce AND sour cream with my latkes) for Chanukah and Mexican Hot Chocolate with Molasses cookies for La Posada, and tonight (if it doesn’t snow) it will be something wonderful to celebrate Kwanzaa.

Our family Christmas traditions revolve around food and my husband’s traditions. Christmas Eve is Chinese take-out for dinner and Christmas morning breakfast is Dunkin’ Donuts. For dinner, it’s his mother’s tradition of a proper British carve up: roast beef, mashed potatoes with gravy, carrots & peas, plus a few of our own favorites. One year I made Yorkshire pudding which is both intimidating and easier than you think it is. She always made Trifle, which I have not even attempted.

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Friday Food. December.

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Tis the Season.

December is a time that many foods return. The first photo is my favorite at this time. It is usually my birthday treat.

Very Berry Hibiscus Refresher with my substitutions and a Cranberry Bliss Bar, both from Starbucks. (c)2021

This second photo (below) was an impromptu family day I organized for us. It was the last night of Chanukah and the first night of Advent, we had just put up the tree, and it still needed the lights. In addition to offering sugar cookies with sprinkles, I made hot chocolate with marshmallows. We then proceeded to watch Fiddler on the Roof, something I haven’t seen since childhood, and something that my kids have never seen. Overall, the day was a success!

Sugar cookies with sprinkles, hot chocolat with marshmallows. (c)2021

Easter Out!

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​Since my mother-in-law passed away, except for Thanksgiving which we spend with my sister-in-law’s family, we spend every holiday at home. We eventually get the dining room table cleaned off. We add a pretty table runner. No one drinks out of a can. Phones get confiscated, kind of. Each meal has its own traditions: Rosh Hashanah is roast chicken, challah bread, yams, apples. Halloween is pizza. Christmas is roast beef, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, caramelized onions, peas & carrots, dinner rolls, one year we had Yorkshire pudding. New Year’s are appetizers as is the Super Bowl. St. Patrick’s Day is corned beef and cabbage, mashed potatoes and carrots and of course, Irish soda bread. Passover is chicken, potato pancakes, carrots, matzo ball soup, matzo and butter, sometimes gefilte fish and/or chopped liver. Easter is roast turkey or chicken, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, carrots, and dinner rolls. We seem to eat a lot of carrots, don’t we?

Our oven hasn’t worked consistently for over six months. We got very lucky for Christmas that it did indeed work and we were able to eek out a delicious Christmas dinner as well as our yearly birthday cheesecake for my son. A few weeks ago we tried to bake cornbread as a side dish to something that I can’t quite remember. After the apportioned hour, it was still gooey. The oven, which had been set for 350 was only about 200 degrees warm, which was not enough to cook it. I scoured Facebook for directions on how long to microwave the cornbread and dinner was saved, but not before realizing we were going to have a problem.

From then on, we have been using our crock pot. Lasagna, meatloaf, roast (not quite roast but fully cooked and tasty) chicken. I intend to try bread in it, but I don’t have the energy quite yet, and either way, it’s Passover for the rest of the week.

On the Monday after Palm Sunday, I told my husband that it was decision time, so what would it be – fix the oven before Good Friday or eat out on Easter? He would fix the oven. He did his research online, found the part he thought was the problem, and went to order it. He thought it was twelve dollars; it turned out it was fifty. We already know we’re going to need to replace this oven in the near future. We’re waiting on a tax refund to see if it’s doable or if we need to go another year on crock pot/stove top meals (which have been working out okay to be honest, if a little more time consuming). We decided to eat out.

My oldest son would come home in the early morning from work before he went to sleep and then back to his next shift for our annual Easter egg hunt. I know they’re old, but they all play along and they get some candy, and I get some pictures and everyone has a fun time and some sugar high donuts and hot chocolate for breakfast. Then we’d nap and have dinner much later.

It felt weird from the moment we decided it. Would any place even be open? I know that Dunkin’ Donuts is open, and several places do a we’ll make the meal, you heat it, but we ignored the situation for a day or so more.Then I got two emails – Applebee’s was open as was Texas Roadhouse for Easter dinner. Hmm…not exactly what we were looking for, but who knows?

We finally settled on Cracker Barrel. We thought that would be the closest to eating at home. We’d allow everyone to get dessert if they liked to make it a little more special than a regular dinner out. I even got a salad. I also mandated no phones at the table. That worked for the most part. Not perfect, but what dinner ever is?

It was a lovely change of pace. I enjoyed it, and I’d consider doing it again, but I don’t know that I’d want to make it a tradition, but it worked out for everyone, and I was actually surprised how busy they were. I thought brunch time wold be busy, but we were there just before traditional dinner time, at around four in the afternoon, and it was busy. No one was waiting but it was crowded and the waitresses were constantly on the move. On our drive there, I was alos surprised at how many other restaurants were open and their parking lots relatively full: Friendly’s, TGIFriday’s, Panera Bread. Starbucks drive-theough was still buzzing, although the supermarket was closed and its parking lot was empty.

All in all, a grateful Easter celebration with most of the family.

It was actually kind of relaxing.

Happy Easter!

A Melting Pot

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​When I was a kid, I would occasionally say that I was Canadian. My father would not have it. He told me I was an American, not Canadian. I tried to argue. But Grandpa was born in Canada. His family still lives there. Why aren’t we Canadian? We’re American he would say. And that was the end of the discussion.

It wasn’t a diss against Canada or our Canadian relatives, but to him it was more than important; it was pride, it was honor, it was a patriotic act.

When my kids have done their genealogy or ancestry in school or for class projects, they’ve asked, and we’ve told them where their families have come from. We’re Jewish so for us it wasn’t that we came from Eastern Europe, but that we were Russian, German, Polish, but always prefaced by being Jewish. It was our ethnicity more than our religion despite being both.

My kids are all of those things, but their families also come from Canada, Russia, Germany, Poland, and Ireland. We eat foods and follow traditions from all of those family histories.

I’m an American. And some of my family is Canadian. The two aren’t mutually exclusive, and neither takes away from the other.

When I heard the first time someone referred contemptuously to Elizabeth Warren’s nod to her Native American ancestry, I had to shake my head at their myopia. She wasn’t saying she was Native. She wasn’t saying she was Indigenous. She wasn’t asking for a government benefit or acknowledgment. She was simply relaying a family story that she’d heard her whole life about her heritage, about the traditions in her own family.

It was the President who made a political issue out of it, and then the racists jumped onboard with their laughter and their name-calling. The President continued with his name-calling just this week.

Even Democrats criticized her for bringing it up now, a distraction from the important midterms, although I would remind them that the President is the one who brought it up, and Senator Warren simply responded. I know what it’s like to have that continual gnawing inside when someone says something about you or your family. They say it, and it’s forgotten, but not by you, not by the aggrieved. The hurt remains and festers and dogs in to all those places that have been hurt before.

I think she also knew the President wouldn’t follow through with his promise of a charitable contribution; he has never kept his word, and he’s not about to start now, but still…

Was she supposed to ignore his taunts? Is she supposed to take it because the timing isn’t right for the election campaign cycle according to some pundits? Is she just supposed to sit down and be quiet little lady?

As someone who lives in a melting pot, I understand where Warren was initially coming from, and the more air we give to the nonsense that this President does and says, the more air he sucks out of the room, and the rest of us, the rest of us are suffocating.

So good for Elizabeth Warren.

One day my kids will be telling someone about their Canadian or Irish ancestry, and they will be mocked because they don’t have the proof; just a handful of family stories they cherish, and I hope they don’t back down either.