Valentine's Day is not a Jewish holiday. These days it's a secular holiday associated with flowers, candy hearts, and, best of all, chocolate.

I happen to think “Leslie Wunderman” would’ve been a fine stage name, conjuring up images of a sort of Jewish Wonderwoman, but I guess ‘90s pop star Taylor Dayne didn’t agree.

“[Debbie Friedman] emphasized the value of every voice and the power of song to help us express ourselves and become our best selves. As she wrote for JWA's online exhibit Jewish Women and the Feminist Revolution: 'The more our voices are heard in song, the more we become our lyrics, our prayers, and our convictions.' The woman who wrote the song that asks God to 'help us find the courage to make our lives a blessing' herself modeled for us what that looks like.”—Judith Rosenbaum.
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It’s that time of year again when food blogs and websites are filled with recipes for latkes and other fried delicacies for Hanukkah, and kitchens (along with the cooks!) begin to smell of all things deep fried. As my thoughts turned to the latkes I was going to make for Eating Jewish, I knew I wanted to do something different.

I have an affinity for baked goods, both savory and sweet, that runs deep.

Due to the proliferation of food blogs and cooking websites with thousands of recipes at our fingertips, some folks question the need for cookbooks at all. I am not one of them.

As far as underrated vegetables go, cabbage is near the top of the list. People generally don't rhapsodize over cabbage like they do for fresh sweet corn or a juicy red tomato.

For most of us, the break fast meal following Yom Kippur evokes images of bagels and cream cheese, coffee cake, blintzes and noodle kugel.

Even before Rosh Hashanah was over this year, my mind turned to what I should make for Yom Kippur.

Apples are a central component on Rosh Hashanah tables, from the honey dipped apples eaten at the beginning of the evening meal in the hope that they will help bring about a good and sweet new year, to the apple cake eaten at the end of a meal. Thinking about all the apple-eating that happens on this holiday, I couldn’t help but notice that more often than not apples are used in the dishes that grace the dessert table. However, while flipping through Joan Nathan’s latest cookbook Quiches, Kugels, and Couscous (I think this is definitely one of my favorite cookbooks at the moment) my assumptions about apples and desserts were dispelled when I saw the recipe for Rosh Hashanah Chicken with Cinnamon and Apples from Metz. I got extremely excited about this dish and I knew that I had to make it seeing as apples don’t often make it into the savory dishes that I cook.

The first thing you should know about making challah is this: DO NOT BE AFRAID! I find that many people are intimidated by the thought of making their own challah.

Feasting is a central component to the celebrations of many, if not most, of the holidays on the Jewish calendar.

I made my first batch of kreplach, noodle dough containing ground meat usually found in chicken soup, in 1972, with my very Greek friend Mary Mastrogeannes, when I was fourteen.

Not only is it almost the beginning of a new year, but the weather is beginning to change and the tomatoes, zucchini and corn that have been so plentiful over the summer are being replaced by squash, apples, pears, figs and a multitude of other autumn fruits and vegetables. The availability of all this fantastic produce has made the High Holidays one of my favorite times on the Jewish calendar to be cooking. This is especially true for Rosh Hashanah, when the food symbolism of the holiday necessitates the use of seasonal fruits and vegetables.

The idea for this post came as I was reading Jane Ziegelman’s fascinating book 97 Orchard: An Edible History of Five Immigrant Families in One New York Tenement.

I wanted to write an Eating Jewish post about Tisha b’Av, yet as I started looking through my various cookbooks, I noticed that most of them had no mention of the holiday. It was often missing from the index and even recipes containing ingredients that would usually be included in a dish prepared on Tisha b'Av had no mention of it. I did find mention of Tisha b’Av in Gil Marks' Encyclopedia of Jewish Food, which devotes an entry to it (there’s a reason I’m constantly referring to this book) as well as in his cookbook The World of Jewish Food.

When I think of Shabbat dinner, one of the first things that comes to mind is the sweet, dense challah that I love so much. It has become so popular that it can be purchased in bakeries all week long, and like many of the iconic Jewish foods of North America (bagels, knishes, pastrami, and smoked meat, to name a few) it was introduced by members of the European Jewish community.

It was a busy weekend here for me in Montreal.

When you ask people to think of Israeli food, more often than not, images of crispy brown falafel will dance before their eyes. Yet, when speaking of quintessential Israeli dishes, falafel does not stand alone. Another dish that is central to the culinary landscape of Israel is schnitzel.

The way in which people choose to break Passover varies enormously and that first taste of chametz can be the non-traditional, but ever popular sushi, or something more rooted in Jewish culinary history like bagels. However, the Moroccan Jewish community ends Passover with a distinctive celebration known as the Mimouna.

So you've spent a week eating matzah with anything you can think of (I have personally eaten it so far with various nut butters, tuna salad, charoset, and jam).

When Passover rolls around, many people bemoan having to eat matzah with only a minority of people actually professing to liking it.

Gefilte fish, these two words make a lot of people turn their noses up in disgust while it can make others salivate.