Hanukkah

My husband is on active duty in the US Army, and for our first holiday season together we were living in a little town called Sierra Vista, Arizona, which is adjacent to Fort Huachuca, where he was stationed.  Since we had only been married since the previous January and we were just starting our life together, we couldn’t afford to go home to our beloved California and our families for the holidays, so we were toughing it out in Sierra Vista alone. 

Being Jewish, no holiday season was complete for me without my mom’s fabulous potato latkes, and by Christmas Day (which also happened to be the last night of Hanukkah), I was feeling pretty down at the prospect of the holiday season passing without them.  My husband, wanting to make me happy, suggested that we make them for Christmas dinner.  Since he is Christian and had never had potato latkes before, I thought this would be a wonderful way to introduce him to a delicious new food and also to merge our holiday customs and traditions together, setting a precedent for the years of holidays to come.  I enthusiastically agreed.

I don’t make a lot of kugels.  I don’t make them because my kids don’t really eat them and as much as I want to eat the whole tray, it would take me a month to work off the calories.  My grandma used to make them all the time.  What I loved most about her kugels were the left overs.  

The following day, for breakfast, she would cut off a slice, put some butter in a saute pan and literally pan fry the slice of kugel.  Like the kugel really  needs anymore butter than it already has.  Yet, it is a childhood memory that is rests comfortably on my tastes buds.

My sister-in-law, Tammy is the official kugel creator in our family.  She makes them all time and her 3 kids devour it.  Tonight, my kids experienced kugel for one of the first times (in the past, they  have turned their noses up at it).  They are kugel converts. This kugel would make anyone a convert!

I am guilty of eating seconds.  It is that good!

From the LA Times

As a child in Hebrew school, I was taught the story of the Hanukkah miracle: When the Jews in the land of Israel defeated the foreigners, the priests seeking to rekindle the temple's eternal light found enough ritually pure oil for only one day. Miraculously that oil lasted for eight days.

Since then, Jews have been celebrating Hanukkah every year by lighting candles every day for eight days. Children in Israel play with dreidels inscribed with the first Hebrew letters of the phrase "a big miracle happened here"; in Washington, D.C., my birthplace, our dreidels had the first letters of "a big miracle happened there."

Until I lived in Israel, I associated the holiday with latkes, or potato pancakes. But when I moved there I discovered that for many Israelis, sufganiyot, or jelly doughnuts, are the favorite Hanukkah treat. I also realized that the connection of such foods to Hanukkah is the oil in which they are fried.

What we hadn't learned in Hebrew school was that the oil of the Hanukkah miracle was olive oil. In ancient Israel, olive oil was used for lighting lamps, for religious rituals and for cooking. Based on archaeological evidence, the land of Israel was an olive oil production center.

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The first thing I ever stole was a piece of Bazooka Bubble Gum. I lifted the small, red, white and blue rectangle out of the glass canister on the counter, wrapped my fist around it and shoved it in my pocket. My heart pounded against my chest with fear and excitement as I glanced around the store making sure no one had seen me. It was a rush. Taking it. Not getting caught. Pulling something off. Putting something over.