Cooking my way towards repentance

It has been hot and muggy out. Yet as I have begun my High Holiday season cooking I am not choosing to cook light hot weather friendly food. I am going with old fashioned Eastern European foods created to warm your bones.

Perhaps because we didn't choose to send our kids to day school (This is actually an oversimplification of the long and complicated educational history of three kids.) It has been really important to me that my children love and anticipate the Jewish holidays in a deep and visceral way.

Just as hearing this Kaddish gets one ready for the emotions and hard work of the season, so do the aromas and flavors of the foods I serve for this season of t'shuvah.

So my youngest and I worked together Wednesday night

I decided to cook this vast pot of cabbage on low heat all night. It reminded me about how in Eastern Europe households would send pots of food to slow bake in the town bakery oven.

Last night my son made tsimmis with me. My son-in-law is allergic to potatoes. One of the neighborhood supermarkets has a large selection of tubers that are eaten in Hispanic homes. Yesterday a kind man who spoke nearly no English but clearly knew his roots vegetables showed me how to select good yucca and batata.

If I were taking a photo for a department store ad for pots I would use this photo of uncooked tsimmis.

This morning the tsimmis was less photogenic but far more delicious. My son packed away the tsimmis and it is in the freezer awaiting the holiday.

I had cooked a couple of briskets and an eyeroast earlier in the evening.

I woke up in the middle of the night and our apartment smelled like we were living inside of a giant steak.

Every Jewish service has a description of the sacrifices that would have been offered at the temple in Jerusalem on that occasion had the temple not been destroyed . Each service had its own line up of sheep or goat's,oxen or grain. Many of these lists include the words ריח ניחח, a great aroma. The great smell is part of the sacrificial service.

My challot are waiting for my oven to preheat. I just pulled a German Rosh Ha Shana plum tart out of the oven.

I made it because it brings back memories of my dear and feisty friend Herta. I even made it with a muerbe teig dough. It is unpleasant to work but is both delicious and the only correct pie crust for this plum tart.

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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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