Tag Archives: food

The Usual Suspects of… The Recipe Groups

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This time of year is one holiday after another for us Jews, and as such, it’s also one meal after another. When a festival runs into Shabbat, we get a three day whammy, which gives us at least 6 meals to prepare for, and for some over-eager beavers, 9+.

The holidays are a time for family, so it isn’t unusual to have crowds of 20 or more around your festive table, and unlike the stories I’ve heard told of Xmas dinner, there is no set menu of Turkey and Cranberry sauce to keep to, so the opportunities are endless.

If there is one place to people-watch this time of year, it has to be the Kosher recipe groups on Facebook, where if you’re lucky, and very very quiet, you might catch sight of these rare breeds in their natural habitat.

1. The Substitutor

This poster pops up on most dessert threads, mainly to make you feel really bad about yourself. Questions include: ‘Have you ever made those brownies with apple sauce instead of sugar?’ (No, I’m not insane) and ‘What do you substitute the margarine for in that kugel?’ (More margarine. it’s a margarine kugel. Go away. )

Sometimes they just pop in to lie to you, with such classics as ‘I made that omelette without eggs and it tasted completely identical’ as well as ‘My kids said they loved the beetroot and courgette muffins more than the chocolate chip ones.’ Fool me once, shame on you.

2. Mrs What’s Missing?

Just when you’ve made the executive decision that everyone is going to have cereal and milk for Friday night (and like it) here comes Chaya from Brooklyn with her “menu”. It’s not a restaurant, Chaya.

Guys I really need help!! So far, I have Challa and home-made dips, chicken soup with all the trimmings, BBQ schnitzel, honey roasted chicken, salt beef, broccoli and potato kugels, sweet and sour rice, popcorn cauliflower, 3 salads, and then for dessert it’s ice cream, salted caramel brownies and a pavlova. I feel like I’m missing something, what am I missing? Oh ps: it’s just me and my hubby thanks.

Chaya? Chaya! Pick me! I know what you’re missing! It’s about seventeen more humans, and a nap.

3. The Amnesiac Shopper

Now I know I went to the grocery store this morning, and I know that I picked up a whole lot of food, but for the life of me, I’m not sure what any of it actually is. Does anyone recognise this odd looking vegetable? Or know what I can do with it that will feed 7 adults and 4 kids including a 13yo who doesn’t eat vegetables?

What about this cut of meat? I think it’s called number 5. Or maybe it was 9. I’m pretty sure the Butcher said it was pickled. or maybe he said it should be pickled. Did I remember to buy pickles? Does anyone know where I left my car?

4. The Amateur Masterchef

Some of the photos I see on the recipe groups are pretty impressive, from Challot that look bakery-bought but probably taste better, to chocolate babkas that are practically food porn, as well as incredibly fiddly pastry and meat concoctions that I would never be able to achieve.

But sometimes, no matter how much you call it herb encrusted salmon with an assiette of wilted tender stem garden produce, it’s still gonna be fish and green veg. And whatever joy describing your lightly browned beef on a bed of puréed chickpeas gives you, it’s still the mincemeat and hummus that takes five minutes to make and you discovered at your mother in laws house. #sorrynotsorry

5. Harbinger of Doom

With love to all the over achievers out there, I still have to give a shout out to my people. You know who you are. (Hint: you put jacket potatoes in the slow cooker for one of your Rosh Hashana meals, but forgot to heat the baked beans. Yeah, there you are.) You probably head to the recipe groups out of sheer voyeuristic pleasure, or maybe to ask whether that turkey roll you forgot about at the back of the fridge is still good to eat. If you’ve done the latter, you’ve probably met the Harbinger of Doom before.

“I made chicken soup 3 days ago, can I still eat it?”
“Absolutely not, bin it.”

“Oh. What about this potato kugel, it was defrosted about a week ago?”
“Are you kidding? Definitely not. Throw it away.”

“How about this yoghurt? The best before was just yesterday..”
“Do you want to make your kid sick? Why risk it?”

“I opened this cheese earlier on, but I left it on the counter for half an hour and-“
“Throw it away. Use gloves. Can’t be too careful with bacteria.”

Jesus lady, how about this sealed packed of biscuits? Is it okay if I eat these while I try to recover from my new food phobia?

But don’t worry dear reader, you aren’t alone. Check the comments for dozens of hardy women who are on your side, and are guaranteed to have shared their war stories to make you feel better.

I regularly drink milk that’s spoiled and I’m still here to tell the tale!

I once ate a schnitzel that I found behind the couch, and I’m FINE.

I don’t even bother cooking the meat and my kids haven’t complained yet! Granted, they are kind of quiet.. Chavi, you ok honey?

5. The Shameless Brag

A relative of the humble bragger from the online mums forums post, when this person moves over to the recipe groups, she has no need to be coy. Posting photos of the oddest brags, from a fully set Seder table a fortnight before Pesach, to six dozen chocolate cakes “all ready for the freezer!” She must live in the Ice Bar, she has so much space to cook ahead of time, and she will absolutely post the recipes for all of these “delish treats” as soon as she has a spare minute. Which is good, because the F’s on her post are getting a bit out of hand, and the natives are getting restless.

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Have I missed any of your favourite recipe group regulars?

5 Ingredients to Tempt the Pickiest Toddlers

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Somewhere between the ages of 1 and 2, you may begin to notice a startling and unexpected developmental stage appearing in your baby. An opinion. While they used to allow you to shovel in any old food all whizzed up in a blender or mashed up with a fork, suddenly they are pressing their lips tightly shut, shaking their heads firmly and throwing entire bowls of spag bol face down on your beige carpet faster than you can say ‘Here comes the aeroplane!”
Never fear, after extensive research into babies entering toddlerdom everywhere, here is the definitive list of the 5 ingredients a toddler will never turn his nose up at.

  1. Dirt.
    We’ve all been there. You’ve lovingly prepared a plate of chicken and rice but your baby won’t even take the first bite. Don’t take it personally. They probably don’t realise you spent 2 hours roasting vegetables to make your own stock for this recipe which you found by googling ‘simple baby food recipes’. We have the answer. Have you considered dropping it on the floor? No, not there by the high chair where you just vaccumed. Try on the pavement outside your house where that dog from next door usually does his business. If that doesn’t work, wedge it down the side of the car seat and give it a couple of weeks, there’s nothing babies like more than the taste of slow aged fowl.
  2. Danger.
    Babies don’t like boring food. You know the rules, you musn’t season with salt, but apart from that feel free to go wild. If tumeric, paprika and cumin don’t work, have you considered letting your baby choose their own ‘toppings’ from the bathroom cabinet? Drain cleaner, Cillit Bang, washing powder, these are just a few of my own kids favourites. If yours prefers a slightly different texture, try wrapping the food in live wires, or poking it into a plug socket as finger food. Be creative! We’ve had some great success placing meals onto turned on hair straighteners- BBQ style, as well as mixing in those tiny pieces of lego all babies love for some extra crunch. Nom nom nom.
  3. Competition.
    Y’know what tastes awful? Scrambled eggs. Y’know what tastes delicious? A sibling’s scrambled eggs. Bonus here is that the older the sibling is the more bribeable they will be, and the better their acting skills can be honed too. Get them on board with the plan by offering a small bribe like an episode of Peppa Pig or yknow, a five pound note, if they can ‘unwillingly share’ the meal they also wouldn’t usually touch with a barge pole with said younger sibling.
  4. Timing.
    This one works just as well for older kids, and it relies on a simple rule. What tastes like arsenic during the day time, is progressively more delicious the further past seven the hands of the clock go. While the cheese sandwich you offered at 4.30pm was the most offensive thing you could ever dare to do as a parent, the 9.45pm meal of quinoa salad and stuffed aubergine with lentils may as well be a bag of chocolate buttons in its inevitable appeal. In short, when your little darlings are shouting “I’m huuuuungry” mournfully from their beds like they’re prisoners of war, this is the ideal time to offer broccoli.
  5. Privacy.
    If all else fails, wait until they are distracted by something else, such as wiping snot on your freshly folded washing or climbing a bookshelf, and quietly prepare the food out of their line of sight. Tiptoe to your own bedroom and hide in a corner with the bowl hidden completely from view. If you’re not sure what I mean, imagine it’s the last chocolate digestive biscuit and nap time is too far away to fairly expect you to wait for. Toddlers find that kind of silent behaviour just as suspicious as we do in return. They’ll show up, indignant and open mouthed in no time. Finish off the theatre with a stern “No, this is Mummy’s food” before giving in. Fair Warning: This will probably only fool them for one bite, so make it a big one.  

There you have it. No more excuses for kids who won’t eat their veggies. Just make sure the meal is a week old and sprinkled with shards of glass, in a secret location where their sibling is chowing down after 10pm. Simples.

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Tell a friend they’re fat day? Hell yes.

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Steve Miller has suggested something which sounds cruel, preposterous and unnecessary. He claims that on Wednesday January 7th 2015, we should all find a chubby friend and let them know they are a heifer. Tell a friend they’re fat day would be an annual event, and would kick start people’s weight loss in what he hopes would lead to better all round health, as well as raising awareness of the obesity epidemic worldwide.

And then the internet broke. Twitter filled with indignation as people argued right left and centre that this was a nasty scheme by a man who had no right to dictate to people on weight and health, and plus size advocates everywhere took to their blogs to let us all know how dangerous this kind of attitude can be for anyone with an eating disorder or any kind of weight issues. That it is the same as bullying, that it is nothing more than ‘fat-shaming.’

And three years ago, I would have agreed with them. But then again, three years ago, at 5”1, I was also nearly 200lbs.

I’ve never found weight particularly easy. And by this I don’t mean that I was always fat, as I don’t think that’s true. Photos of me as a kid are pretty standard, and even as a teen, although I distinctly remember feeling bigger than my friends, I wore size 10 (UK) jeans at 16, so I suppose that wasn’t the case either. I mean I have never had a good understanding of what I look like. The scales never seemed to ring true to me, and even when I saw them go higher than my peers, I tended to excuse it as my shape or my curves. Maybe I was right. I was 160 lbs at my wedding, and felt slim and beautiful, even while knowing I had been 20lbs less than that two years previously. I’ve recently had someone look at a wedding photo of me and express surprise by how much larger I was.

Even after I had my son I was sure I had ‘dropped the baby weight’ right away, and yet a year later, I was standing on the scales for the first time in 2 years, shocked that I weighed in at 198 lbs. Wasn’t I still a size 12/14? Yeah, I had bought that size 22 dress, but wasn’t that just so it fit over my bust? I know I got that denim skirt which was a 20, but I’m wearing it low, and some shops just have ridiculous sizing…. don’t they?

Somehow, I had become obese, and even at that point, I didn’t believe it. No one had ever told me. I had definitely said things to test the waters, to compare myself to other people and see what my friends thought, and no one had ever told me I wasn’t just your average curvy girl. I suppose people were embarrassed to point it out to me, they didn’t have the tools or the language to be sure of not upsetting me, they just didn’t know what to say.

I started my weight loss journey, which is still ongoing, but involved losing around 60 lbs over around 18 months. I worked on portion control, food groups, my eating habits-including time of day and self control, exercise, and most importantly, the underlying emotional issues which most overweight people carry around on their person just as often as they might carry a KitKat. No part of me regrets stepping on those scales and being woken up to the reality of what I was doing to myself and my family, and the future I was building for us by letting myself be morbidly overweight. Can someone that is a size 10 be as unhealthy as a size 24? Of course they can, but then you have an obligation to tell them that too. Steve Miller has made a day that perhaps should be called “Tell a friend they’re unhealthy day” but as massive an issue as obesity is in this generation (no pun intended) I can see why he has zeroed in on one clear issue.

So do I think you should randomly walk around on January 7th pointing at everyone with a double chin and yelling out “fatso”?! No, I most certainly don’t. People are more complex than you could imagine, and it takes knowing someone truly well to be able to approach them about such a multi-faceted issue as weight. So maybe the flippant sounding title of the day should be addressed. But if you have a friend who is more than just your average curvy girl, who doesn’t have an underlying physical or emotional disorder, and who has never told you that they know they are fat, who never mentions starting a diet, and describes people far smaller than themselves as larger…. and you care about them enough to worry about their health, is it really so cruel, preposterous or unnecessary to have a quiet and sensitive word?

I wish someone had had one with me.

obese me

August 2011

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April 2014

Bah Humbug

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It’s that time of year again, and while I love Chanukah as much as the next Jew, it’s impossible to get away from the Xmas spirit. Winter sales, goodwill to all, and chestnuts available at every corner shop, what’s not to love?

Well, a few things actually. And maybe you’re all too close to see it, but with all the respect in the world, let me give you a run-down of the things I would change if my household kept Christmas.

1. The menu.

I think it’s fair to say that the whole of Xmas day centres around the big festive meal. For thousands of years people have been gathering around the dinner table and breaking bread together to celebrate this pinnacle in the Christian calendar. But who came up with the ideas for the grub? On what other day in the year would anyone choose Turkey, the arguable worst meat of choice to be the centrepiece of the meal? Beef, Lamb, Duck, even Chicken is preferable to Turkey any other day of the year. Let’s call a spade a spade here, Turkey is dry and hasn’t got much flavour, hence why you’re spending 2 to 3 hours preparing stuffing and sauces to accompany it. To top it off, although no one’s arguing with roast potatoes, does anyone eat Brussel Sprouts at any other meal the entire year? Let alone the weird tradition of Cranberry sauce, a foodstuff that just doesn’t exist whatsoever outside of December 25th.
Lastly, every meal should be complimented by the grand finale of dessert. And dessert will never ever mean fruit cake. I don’t care what you call it, or how much alcohol you add to it (although it probably helps), a Xmas Pudding is not dessert. Give me chocolate cake, give me ice cream, even something citrus-y would round off the meal well. But why are we pretending that Xmas pud is in any way appetising? In my house, it would be Haagen Daaz and sticky toffee pudding, maybe with a pavlova on the side. Extra points for the fact that none of those options takes months of my life to prepare. If I wanted to spend 2-3 months feeding something in small increments daily, I would buy a hamster.

2. The decor.

Love the Christmas lights, in fact I think we should add that to Judaism, a festival where we decorate the outside of our homes with ostentatious flashing lights and various plastic accompaniments. I can just see my home now, with a rendition of the 10 plagues of Egypt on my front lawn, and a replica of Mount Sinai on the roof. Fab.
This brings me to Christmas trees. Excellent idea I would even up the ante. Let’s bring all of the outside in, creating an indoor Xmas garden, complete with flowers and grass (astro-turf if need be) and why not woodland creatures, so cold at this time of year and in need of some Xmas spirit just as much as you.
Yes, I’m joking. But it is kind of weird that you bring a tree into your living rooms. Doesn’t it make a crazy mess of needles and twigs? Doesn’t it brings in bugs and the like? Do you have to buy a special spray for that? So many questions.

3. The list of demands.

This one is actually pretty serious, as I’ve read that the average household will spend £868 on Christmas this year. Nearly a thousand pounds on one day of the year, that just can’t be affordable for 95% of the UK. And meanwhile your kids are sitting at home writing a letter for Santa? A magical being that flies in, drops off their hearts desire and leaves again without so much as a thanks for him or his hard working elves [AKA unpaid midget workforce]. (Seriously, does anyone’s kids write thank you notes to Santa?) Doesn’t the whole thing seem a bit entitled? From the outside looking in at least, it seems like the last way I want my children to consider the presents we work hard to provide for them. Maybe it’s a little Scrooge of me, but I like to think that I would use the opportunity to talk to my kids about wants and needs, earning and spending, and ask them to think of one or two things they really want, which Santa won’t be bringing, but their hard-working parents will be.

4. The Xmas season

This is a tough one, because we all enjoy some of the elongated Xmas perks, such as Starbucks red cups which appear Nov 1st, or Xmas songs on the radio from what feels like mid-summer. But when I try to get an email response at work on December 3rd, and get told that the company are “winding down for Christmas”, it can really make me feel peeved. Similarly, spending the whole of December attending various Xmas lunches and functions with the people I anyway see and speak to every single week can be a little grating. Cmon boss, just give us the afternoon off if you’re trying to make us feel festive. It would probably cost you less.

Any other holiday traditions that you would scrap?

santa