Food Friday

 We seem to be transitioning from Zoom dinners to having people actually eat at our table. Several of our usual Friday night gang are off enjoying the holiday weekend. Each week, I remember that our buddy Mike can't join us because he is no longer alive. Every Friday I expect his call just before dinner is to start asking me to resend the Zoom link. We won't be getting those calls anymore.

Two of our usual gang are joining us in person. I am so happy. Yesterday during a long chat with a friend she mentioned that she felt that her circle of friends has shrunk during the pandemic. I completely understand what she meant. The social restrictions of the pandemic mean that the lovely encounters one usually has with your wider circle of friends are just gone. You can't visit for a few minutes at kiddush over a plate full of food and catch up with the person whose child was in Hebrew School with yours ten years ago or chat with the sweet elementary school kids who used to sit on my lap and let me braid their hair when they were tiny. Our social universe has contracted.

So we are really delighted to have our friends join us tonight.

We are eating chicken made with this array of spices. If you need identification beyond the pretty colors, it is a mixture of hot paprika, smoked paprika, turmeric, sumac, and ginger. Combine the spices with a spoon

and massage into the chicken.

Squeeze the juice of one lemon over the chicken and bake until it looks like this.

It is a good idea to flip the chickens about halfway through the cooking to redistribute the juices.

It was a challah baking week. My friend Alan and I used to compare challah baking notes in shul. Now we compare baking experiences on Facebook.

Today Alan mentioned baking a five-stranded loaf. So-- in a virtual challah baking conversation with Alan...

 I made a two-stranded loaf

a four-stranded loaf,

a five-stranded loaf

and a six-stranded one.

To be honest, by the time they are baked they don't look very different from one another.

My husband gave me a wonderful nudnicky book about the mitzvah of taking challah as a birthday gift. It is the husband's job to bug his wife to be sure that she took challah. This morning I bugged my husband to bug me.

Yes, I did do the mitzvah of removing an olive-sized chunk from my dough before the loaves were separated and burning that chunk of dough. The nudnicky book tries to anticipate every possible possibility during the process of taking challah. The book says that the chunk of challah taken has to be completely burned. My chunk of dough is not completely burned but it has passed the point of edibility-- so I count this as the mitzvah fulfilled.

Like many of you, I grew up making English muffin pizza following the directions from the English muffin bag. You took a split English muffin and topped each half with ketchup and then a slice of cheese and heated in your oven or toaster oven until the cheese was bubbly. In those days you probably used a slice of Munster cheese. 

In memory of those bygone days, this was my lunch today. A chunk of homemade focaccia made with lots of coarse cornmeal so the crust kind of shatters in your mouth in a really nice way.

I topped it with half of a sliced tomato

some mozzarella cheese, black pepper, and basil and nuked for a few minutes. It probably would have been tastier if baked in an actual oven. Nevertheless, it was a satisfying lunch filled with memories of childhood, only better.

Shabbat Shalom!