Bubbie's Kitchen

If you're one of the people who reads this blog with any sort of regularity, there's a good chance you're also one of those people who doesn't hear from me as often as you should.

I've always been bad about keeping in touch. With everybody (sometimes even myself, but that's a whole other discussion, which we shan't have now).

I visited my parents briefly at the end of June last year, and promised my grandparents I would take some time at the end of July or beginning of August to come see them and spend a day or two.

What I didn't know – and no one else in my family knew – at the end of June was that my grandmother (we call her Bubbie, which is Yiddish) had stomach cancer. She was diagnosed in late July, I saw her on Wednesday, August 1, and she died Monday night, August 6.

It turns out I still can't keep my composure while I write that.

When you went to see Bubbie, everything revolved around food. If you lined up all the blueberry muffins I ate from a dish in her kitchen, you'd have a blueberry muffin bridge from New York to Paris. My sister probably has eaten enough chopped herring to have entirely depopulated Lake Superior of that particular fish, forever.

Sitting around with the Rabbi before the funeral, we realized all of our stories included over the Red Sox or food, and the Red Sox definitely got some short shrift.

And so we're starting a new project to preserve her recipes. Please visit Bubbie's Kitchen, prepare and enjoy. There's not much up yet, but I'm working on collecting more.

How ignorant do you have to be?

Biblically speaking, there are two major differences between Jews and Christians. Jesus, obviously, is the big one. The other is food – some items are kosher based on what they are and how they die (and how they're prepared), some items are kosher for Passover, some mixtures are not kosher, and some things just aren't kosher at all.

Horses, you might not have known, are not kosher. They do not have cloven hooves.

Pigs on the other hand, I think even the most secular, religion-proof Westerner knows are not kosher. Like you'd really really have to not pay attention to anything to not know that.

So why an upscale New York – yes, New York, home to an awful lot of Jews – decided pushing ham for Chanukah was a good idea, is absolutely beyond me.

Maybe someone didn't know ham comes from a pig....