Chanukah

 Last night we lit the first candles of Chanukah.

We were joined by our dear friends Alfie and Judy. My husband met them during his college years. I am new to the game since we have only been friends since 1982.

I made latkes, lots of them. I took the opportunity to use last night as a dry run for the latke dinner with our kids later in the week. Our kids are eaters. My my original plan was to make the latkes in the air  fryer but I realized that it would take too long to do the many small batches needed.

Instead I baked the latkes in a hot oven with lots of oil on my baking sheets.

I made potato latkes.

As a kindness to my husband I did the blasphemy of leaving out the onions. I did add shredded carrots for texture and lots of smoked paprika and black pepper for flavor.

I made carrot, apple and dill latkes.

I also made summer squash latkes with amba powder and sumac. Unfortunately I had baked them at 350 and not 400 which I discovered is the sweet spot for crispy oven baked latkes.

The star of the evening was batata latkes made with apple and carrot and spiced with coffee hawaj and a hefty dollop of Mexican vanilla

 

This is the entire table. Judy made the salad. I also made cranberry sauce and apple sauce and a loaf of bread. 

I had thought that perhaps I had made an insane amount of latkes. I had not. Nearly all of them got eaten. I now know that I need to make lots more for the family dinner.

And now a bit of a pivot. We all know the Chanukah story of how the tiny bit of oil lasted eight days. You can also think of that in terms of being zero waste.

Several of my sewing friend tare part of the Zero waste movement. That is, when they cut a garment every inch of fabric is used. If you use a commercially produced garment pattern, say a Butterick or a Simplicity pattern there will be a huge amount of wasted fabric. this is often true in the garment industry. I do my best to be careful when I cut fabric.

The ornate menorah you see here uses oil.  Most years I have purchased a package of wicks. What I have learned over the years is that fine wicks take a long long time to burn. I had noticed that I had forgotten to purchase wicks this year. I know that I have some linen yarn and as I was digging through my yarn stash to locate it, a line from a book I read ages ago floated into my head. I don't even remember the book. I don't remember if it was a line in a novel or in an article about the lives of the poor in the 19th century.

What I did remember was a scene of the poor twining bits of threads from their garments to make wicks. I pulled a bit of an old cotton sheet from the rag bag. Other parts of this sheet---or perhaps even this part had found a second life as boxer shorts.

I  pulled out weft threads and twined them.

I now have enough wicks to last me for most of the holiday. If you choose to do this as well the easiest way to twine the weft threads is to rub the threads on the palm of your hand.

I love how this potential bit of waste has been transformed to help us fulfill a mitzvah.

An appropriate song for this particular Chanukah of war.

My husband watched this video with me. The composer of the poem Elchanan Indelman was my husband's Hebrew high school principal. The poem was written in 1935.

Shabbat Shalom! Chag sameach!