Count Your Blessings – Quinoa Pomegranate Salad

The Holiday of Sukkos is called Zman Simchoseinu – The Time of Rejoicing.  We are commanded to rejoice for eight days, and to do it outside, open to elements. For the duration of this holiday, eight days, we dwell in the sukkah – a booth, or tent, erected outside. Some people actually sleep in the sukkah, but we only eat there. During this…

My Grandmother’s Recipes: Part 8, Quinoa Pomegranate Salad.

This post takes us to the last two of the four holidays: Sukkot (Sukkos) and Simchat Torah (Simhas Torah). It also concludes my story with the celebration of Simhas Torah in Moscow Synagogue. *20. Leader of All Peoples – one of the multitude of epithets Stalin constructed to refer to himself. *21. The Big Brother of All Workers – see *20. *22. Expert of All…

My Grandmother’s Recipes: Part 8, Quinoa Pomegranate Salad.

This post takes us to the last two of the four holidays: Sukkot (Sukkos) and Simchat Torah (Simhas Torah). It also concludes my story with the celebration of Simhas Torah in Moscow Synagogue. *20. Leader of All Peoples – one of the multitude of epithets Stalin constructed to refer to himself. *21. The Big Brother…

Growing Super Soup

Generations of kids grew up hearing about the super-power of spinach. Of course! They were told by the most reliable authority: A can of spinach – and Popeye The Sailor Man was ready to defeat all the wrongdoers of the world! Without a doubt, spinach has powerful properties, essential for our health, but so do…

Count Your Blessings – Quinoa Pomegranate Salad

The Holiday of Sukkos is called Zman Simchoseinu – The Time of Rejoicing.  We are commanded to rejoice for eight days, and to do it outside, open to elements. For the duration of this holiday, eight days, we dwell in the sukkah – a booth, or tent, erected outside. Some people actually sleep in the sukkah,…

The Inevitability of Change: Sambar.

This story starts with a song so well known around the world that even Cynthia Lennon, John Lennon’s first wife, made a recording of it. Very few people know, however, that it was written in 1926 for a famous Russian emigre artist Alexander Vertinsky, “the Black Pierrot,” as his stage persona was known, a melancholy…

Count Your Blessings – Quinoa Pomegranate Salad

The Holiday of Sukkos is called Zman Simchoseinu – The Time of Rejoicing.  We are commanded to rejoice for eight days, and to do it outside, open to elements. For the duration of this holiday, eight days, we dwell in the sukkah – a booth, or tent, erected outside. Some people actually sleep in the sukkah,…

Colorful Lentil Soup

Since the age of bugging adults with an incessant stream of questions, I was preoccupied by figuring out what exactly was “this red stuff” that Yaakov was cooking on that fateful day. Eisav, the outdoors-man, runs in from the fields totally exhausted and demands, “Gimme red, this red!” We learn that his other name, Edom,…