Food Friday

One of the lovely things about Shabbat is the parallelism between the ceremonies we use to use to usher them in and out.  Both kiddush and havdalah have wine and candlelight. Another central element of havdalah is the smell of sweet spices.

I think about that parallelism as I bake my challah. My challot are fragrant. What looks like a bowl of yuck is the start of today's challot.

In addition to the water and the yeast you see a tablespoon of flour (to feed the yeast) and freshly ground up cinnamon, cardamon, coriander, allspice and ginger. There is also a healthy splash of vanilla in there.

My goal is that after people take their first bite of challah after the blessing, that their mouths become filled with fragrance. Usually after people take that first bite I can see them just relax into the knowledge that it is now Shabbat. Usually we all silently chew for a couple of moments and transform into our Shabbat selves.


The rest of our meal is either heating up of cooling in preparation for dinner.

If you are wondering what is under wraps...

We have red chicken ( Sumac, smoked paprika, sweet paprika, hot, paprika and turmeric)



Potatoes roasted in last week's meat juices.

I also serving gazpacho

and a deconstructed salad that will include

arbes, chickpeas that dance with black pepper. This is what we used to eat before hummus was ubiquitous. I also assume that hummus was so easily adopted by Ashkenzi Jews is because hummus is just mashed up arbes spiced slightly differently.

There are other additions to the salad. We are looking forward to sharing this meal with our guests.

Shabbat Shalom!