Food Friday- Food Processor Edition

I often like doing things the old fashioned way, I don’t use a bread machine, I knead my bread by hand. I hand knead and hand roll noodles. Most of my cooking is of the slow variety.

There are times, and the short winter Fridays are a prime example of those times when a bit of cooking technology is a life saver.

Tonight's dinner has been brought to my family through both a food processor and a microwave oven. Yes, my challah was made exactly the same way it might have 75 years ago. ( Read the passive voice here as me doing the making there were only dishwashing elves today)

I made my older sons one of his favorite dishes, caramelized onions. This soup bowl, that is only half full is one full bag of onions. Slicing them in the food processor made the job much easier, but I must admit that I was weeping from the onion fumes.

I also pureed two more onions, thee parsnips and three large carrots and a box of mushrooms that went into tonight’s two pounds of chopped meat. After chopping up the vegetables they went into the microwave for 8 minutes to cook. The volume of cooked vegetables is larger than the volume of meat. When I re heat the meat balls I will make a smoky-sweet sauce to pour over them. My youngest will then eat his meat and vegetable balls.

I’m also making a cabbage salad. The salad is essentially cold sesame noodles with cabbage standing in for the noodles. Again, both the microwave and the food processor will make this salad a quick job.

I do realize that my knife skills are less wonderful than they were in my pre- food processor days. I suppose if I end up having to live off the grid or if I end up doing most of my cooking without power I will regain those skills again in not too much time. Meanwhile these tools mean that I can prepare Shabbat dinner on a winter Friday and so a bit of other work as well.

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מְחַיֵּה הַמֵּתִים

וְנֶאֱמָן אַתָּה לְהַחֲיוֹת מֵתִים: בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְהֹוָה מְחַיֵּה הַמֵּתִים You are faithful to restore the dead to life. Blessed are You, Adonoy, Resurrector of the dead. That particular line is recited at every single prayer service every day three times a day, unless you use a Reform or Reconstructionist prayer book . In those liturgies instead of praising God for resurrecting the dead God is praised for giving life to all. I am enough of a modern woman, a modern thinker, to not actually believe in the actual resurrection of the dead. I don't actually expect all of the residents of the Workmen's Circle section of Mount Hebron cemetery in Queens to get up and get back to work at their sewing machines. I don't expect the young children buried here or the babies buried here to one day get up and frolic. Yet, every single time I get up to lead services I say those words about the reanimating of the dead with every fiber of my being. Yesterday, I e...

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sarah in nyc

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