Get Your Game on With Chocolate Halva Balls

In honor of the World Cup – and for those of you, Beautiful People, who call it soccer, it’s FOOTBALL! – with all its surprising results and insane scores, we made chocolate halva balls at our Lasting Joy Club get-together – watch the videos here. Actually, according to http://www.sportsaspire.com, the word itself came from an abbreviation assoc. (Association of Football),…

Placinda – Flaky Pumpkin Pie

A prominent Rabbi picks up an apple, pronounces the appropriate blessing, and bites into it. One of his students also picks up an apple, mutters a blessing, and takes a bite. Then he stops and asks: “Rabbi, what is the difference between you and me eating an apple? We both say the same blessing, yet…

Sweet Rose of Thanks

This beautiful rose and a beautiful sentiment by Paolo Coelho are for all of you, Beautiful People, with all my love and best wishes for Thanksgiving! I also have a delicious sweet potato rose to grace your table with love and heartfelt promises. I have been asked to post “something new to do with sweet…

Something Wild About That Turkey

Of all the silly infantile jokes, this one takes the cake (or a pumpkin pie, in this case): What did the turkey say when he saw a computer? “Google, google, google!” I guess that was a wild turkey who had never been introduced to a Publix freezer. But then, if we believe the story about…

Falstaff on a Diet: Chunky Soup for a Chunky Knight

Once again, our gracious host Renard has published my guest post. Yes, Beautiful People, I am happy to report that I am out of the wheelchair, I am walking around the house (with a walker), and I am cooking. Here is my humble contribution to Renard’s wonderfully informative blog:

MONSTER ChoCo Squares

We don’t do Halloween, but we have our own monsters. One of them is world famous. You see his heavy footprints throughout the world literature and arts, from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to The X- Files.  You hear his eerie voice in Karel Capek’s R.U.R., where the word “robot” comes from, in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, recognizable as Gollum, and in Isaac Bashevis Singer’s The…

Strong and Sweet: Poached Pears

Holidays are over, yet there is one more recipe for dessert that I usually serve on Shabbos Chol-ha-Moed (in the middle) of Sukkos. “For never was a story of more woeThan this of Juliet and her Romeo.” Do I really have to cite a source for this one? I’d rather have you enjoy the beginning…

Silver Chair, Polygamy, and Mount Sinai

Rabbi Gershom ben Yehuda, widely known as Rabbeinu (our teacher) Gershom, lived in 10th century. He can’t really be called a Renaissance man, since he pre-dated Renaissance by a couple of centuries, so let’s call him a pre-Renaissance man. Like some other medieval Jewish scholars, he was also a scientist, a mathematician, a physician, and as a…

Stuffed Peppers – Where Is the Beef?

You think veganism is a recent trend? Think again! You think feminism was invented in the twentieth century? Missed it by about 2400 years! Meet Orpheus, mythical Ancient Greek poet and musician, a hero of one of the best-known love stories of all times (if you are wondering about the black hole behind his lire,…

Tofu Can Bite, Too!

When Avrohom (Abraham) Our Father was traveling in the desert, he would make sure to position his tent at the crossroads and make entrances on all four sides, open to travelers coming from every direction. He would then treat them to a sumptuous feast, making sure every guest was offered food of his preference. After…

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…

Mushroom Barley Soup

We are not done with holidays yet, Beautiful People! On Sunday, we start Sukkos (Sukkot), the Holiday of Booths, that lasts for eight days and concludes the High Holidays. Throughout next week, I will be repeating some of my Sukkos recipes. Traditional Jewish comfort food, with history more ancient and undoubtedly more venerable than the…