Pam R

I also had a couple of chocolate bars that I had picked up a couple of days ago and I shared them with my parents yesterday: I hadn't tried these before. The Coffee Crisp Latte was ok... nothing I would buy again. It's covered in white chocolate - but it seems to have more of a coffee flavour. The Caramel KitKat on the other hand, I'm all for. But I've already made it perfectly clear that I believe you can add caramel to almost anything. I picked up a few of my favorite Passover Chocolate bars that I haven't opened yet and I'll take some pictures to share with you.

Goodmorning! I overslept this morning and should have left for work already. Yesterday I finished almost all of the baking. Let me share a couple of pictures of my favorite recipe. It's not my favorite because I love this cookie above all else.... I just like the way the recipe is written. Nothings/Keichal/Bowties First, you have to beat the eggs for 13 minutes (how did they come up with 13 minutes? what happens if you beat them for 14 minutes??) Then you add the oil and beat another 5 minutes. Then the sugar and another 3 minutes, then the potato starch and cake meal and it's another 5 minutes (it's written on the recipe card until it looks like snot ) Scoop and roll in sugar: Then bake for 30 minutes at the line between 300 and 350. (You may think that this would be 325... but it's not. There's ANOTHER line around 337 that is the perfect temperature... the problem is I am about to lose this oven, so what do I do then??) Then turn the heat off and leave in the oven for 1/2 an hour. And you get:

I forgot one picture! That's my mother cutting up some of my... let's call them 'not so perfect' chiffon cakes And I might as well add this one in at the same time: I dropped another 2 about 4 minutes later.

D'oh. That wasn't even a challenge! How about the admiration of all your fellow eGulleters and the opportunity to answer all the Americans when they ask you who he is?? Yes. Almond bread.... Maybe it's because we make varieties that don't have almonds that we needed another word? I really have no idea where the word komish comes from but it's used here.

What is a shmoo?? This one is missing it's top pecan chiffon layer and whipped topping/ cream. It's always served with a bowl of extra caramel so people can add a nice layer to their slice. This is one of my Chocolate Chip Chiffons: I like to make 2 batches of 5 cakes (that's because my mixer can only handle 48 eggs) - and 1/2 get baked in my deck oven and 1/2 in my convection. The one above was baked in the convection and it gives the tops this weird crack thing... A few of the fragile babies cooling. Always cool them upside down.

Back to work. I started working on komish last week, but still needed to bake another 3 batches today (one with almonds, one without and one doublt chocolate). The ingredients: Raw logs ready for the oven: Slicing into cookies: Ready to go back into the oven to dry: And the bowl of scraps that we snack on and share with friends who tend to stop in to say hi and have some coffee:

Pop Quiz!! This is mostly for the Canadians out there…. But maybe some AMERICAN WOMAN will come up with the answer. GUESS WHO is a co-owner of this chain of Manitoba restaurants?? (Salisbury House) Where I had the Salisbury Steak for dinner. (I'm afraid you're all going to think I eat like this all the time )

hmmm ... I wanted to edit the last post so that it was easier to see .... but it won't let me. I'll try again when I get home.

Soup What's a holiday meal without soup?? (soup is very important to me - see sig.) All last week: Chicken soup, or Jewish Penicillan. This batch produced about 80 L of the golden liquid. (I enjoyed some chicken necks for lunch that day - but lost the picture) The next day was beef borscht: Which I thawed and heated for lunch today at around 3:30 - Then a day off from soup making and on Friday it was one of my favorites, Carrot Dill: Immersion blenders are fantastic:

I'm off to grab some dinner - then back to work and I'll post more when I return.

You are all amazing! My thanks go to everybody helping answer the religion-based questions. I'm trying to answer the questions that have not been answered - only because I'm short of time now. If I miss something that somebody else doesn't get to - please remind me. It also helps because they happen to be able to explain things in a far better manner than I can! Jake thanks. I like that you said with a Jew who was supposed to keep kosher... we all are! But many of us don't. My mother was raised in a completely non-kosher home. My father was raised in a very religious family and his parents kept a strictly kosher home their whole lives. When my parents married - things kind of merged. Our home was (is) kosher, but we always ate treif in restaurants. I wish those parents hadn't done that! Just explaining the issue would have been much better. A Pecan Chiffon (what else?) with homemade caramel sauce and whipping cream / topping. A local favorite. In that area, you could probably do some laundry, watch a little TV, have dinner and still get back on the road before the train is done ← Yep... it's true. I grew up in Garden City, so I always used to say "WHO lives in THAT area?! sheesh!" Now I'm one of them... The Jewish community in Winnipeg used to be almost entirely located in the North End... most of the Jewish business, schools and synagogues were there. Then it was divided between the North and South (Tuxedo, River Heights). Since the Asper Campus was built, much of the Jewish community has moved South and I guess some of us have made it to Lindenwoods, because there's no room left in the other areas Isn't that funny though... mention a train track and a TH, and that's all it takes

I believe i heard on the radio yesterday that they were calling them Champagne Lobsters. I tell you.... it takes a 'Toban to come up with this. I wonder how long it will take before they hit the restaurants...

Canadian Content While this is a Passover-themed blog, I need to point out that I'm also a proud Canadian - so this is my first Canadian installment. I moved recently - to the wrong side of the tracks. So a block from home this morning I got stopped by a train. Along the road where my car was stopped is a Tim Horton's, & if I can just squeeze my truck between the car in front of my and the ditch, I can go through the drive-thru and get back on the road before the train is done. I already had my own coffee so this morning I added 2 chocolate glazed timbits to my breakfast. (see how the sun is shining off the bag? It's a beautiful spring-day in the 'Peg) When I got to work, I took over the kitchen radio. We usually have the CBC on - but I'm so tired that I needed some music and thanks to Power97 I got a dose of Our LAdy Peace and a couple of tunes by the Hip. (go Wheat kings!) I was in a much chipper mood after that. Now we're back to the CBC

Before I post the post I actually got online to post, I just want to say how much I'm enjoying the discussions and comparisons of other cultures. Obviously, I know much about Judaism, and I try to learn what I can about other cultures but I think it's often hard to get into discussions with people about these matters. It's hard not to bring religion into a blog like this, and as long as everybody else is enjoying it I hope we continue on for the rest of the week as we started yesterday. Thanks.

Some do consider gelatin from non-kosher animals kosher. I have my doubts and I won't use any gelatin that's not fish or animal based. Although, honestly we don't use much gelatin now - but it's something I'm planning on experimenting with in the future (new business venture coming up). And you're right... I don't believe any Jew who keeps kosher would eat halal food (unless it's certified both ways).

Oy! I'm going to answer what I can, then post about my morning. OK. I asked the expert here (dad). Rather than give you an actual price list, he let me know that on average, the price of kosher chicken (at least in Winnipeg) is about 150% more than treif. It will cost less in Toronto and other large centers. This year's list of baking is: Chocolate Chip Komish (mandelbroit) (with almonds or without) Double Chocolate 'Biscotti' Nothings (keichal) Almond, Chocolate Chip and Chocolate Meringues Plum Kuchen Brownies Lemon Chiffon (plain) - Filled with Lemon Curd and that YUMMY whipped topping - Baked as a flan base and filled with lemon curd, topped with fresh fruit and glazed - Pavlova's - filled with something, topped with fruit - Individual pavlova's filled with chocolate cream and strawberries - Strawberry Shortcake Chocolate Mousse Log (I'll show you what I do with the cakes that don't work so well) Chocolate Chip Chiffon Cake Shmoo Torte Cream Puffs filled with a Strawberry Cream Pecan, Cranberry and Orange 'Biscotti' - whatever else I can come up with in the next day and a half because we need 1400 pieces for the symphony Passover Rolls Combine: 8 cups matzoh meal 1 T. salt ¼ C. sugar Bring to a boil: 4 C. water 2 C. oil 16 eggs -add boiling mixture into dry ingredients – blend well -beat in 1 egg at a time -shape and bake at 375 for 50 minutes (I use convection oven) This batch makes about 27 LARGE Rolls... obviously you can make a smaller batch - divide it by 4 Sort of adding on to this question, is it significantly more expensive to produce kosher food than non-kosher food? I assume the extra work of having things certified/done in a specific way drives the cost up somewhat. ← Some things are much more expensive. Some things are exactly the same. If you look in your kitchen cupboards, many of the things in it are certified kosher. Flour, sugar, salt, eggs, many spices and soooo many more things are kosher. (If you're in the US even more is kosher than here.) What gets to be expensive is the meats and some dairy products. Thanks so much. This is only my third year doing all the baking (we used to have a baker), and while they've been good in the past, I think I've discovered the secrets. My recipe calls for 12 eggs per cake, but I get 5 cakes out of a quadruple batch. As for things looking too close to real bread - I've often questioned these things myself. We can't use yeast and we have to bake unleavened bread.... but we can have a 6" tall, light cake?? Mine is not to argue... I should have mentioned that eggs (and fish) are considered Pareve (not milk or meat) and poultry falls under the meat banner. Halal too? I suppose the salient differences for a Kosher kitchen to be aware of when preparing halal foods are that gelatin must be from halal animals or any fish, alcohol is haram, enzymes in cheeses must be from halal animals and in Islamic slaughter practices each animal is blessed. Meat and dairy combinations, milk from camels and ritually slaughtered camel meat and shellfish are halal. There's more but I'm trying to keep within the parameters of whats been already mentioned upthread. Am I correct in this? ← Pan answered this better than I can. I was going to say that I think a lot of Muslims (at least here) will eat kosher food (without the alcohol) because the laws of kashrut are similar (if not more stict?). We also cannot use gelatin from any foods other than fish or vegetable (that's why the kosher marshmallows have fish allergy warnings on the packages). Enzymes for cheese is an issue for us, that's why we can only eat kosher cheeses.... the blessing over an animal though - that may cause an issue? I don't know if there is anywhere in the city here where the jail could get halal meals...

OK. I'm going to grab another bottle of my caramel iced coffee, and apple (probably a fuji today) and some nuts and get to work. I'll be back later! Any questions?

I think I mentioned somewhere that a large part of our business is reselling poultry and other kosher products. Well, over the last few weeks we've brought in almost 20,000 lbs. of poultry. My father has been running around like a chicken with his head cut off delivering to the synagogues and hotels and there has been a constant line of people in the store to buy stuff. All of you fans of fiddler on the roof must know what L'Chaim means right? Well here's some of our poultry: About 1/3 of the boxes from a delivery last week. A close up of a label: (notice it says kosher for passover on the left - the poultry is KFP all year round) And these arethe turkeys that were put in the cooler yesterday that we will roast on Thursday: So back to the Fiddler and L'Chaim. Am I the only one who thinks it's odd that a slaughterhouse is named Chai which means life in hebrew?

Good morning! Of course I need to post before leaving for work, even though I should be leaving in about 5 minutes. (That's not going to happen) Let me explain some of the mechanics of Passover. About one month ago, my parents and I sat down to come up with the list of what we're offering. (Does anybody want to know the complete list... even if I personally am not making the items?) We always say that there will be no additions or special orders and there always are. The official cut-off day for people to order their food was on Friday. The problem is that we start cooking almost a week before we have all of the orders - so we use the numbers from the year before to get a basic idea of what to make. Of course things change. For 20 years somebody orders everything for their seders from us - then they or a spouses passes away, the children take over the seders and they only order a couple of things. Or the reverse, a new generation gets the seders and they order everything from us. So while we have basic ideas of how much we need to make, we often end up with extra of one thing ... or like this year, I've had to make batches and batches of komish because the orders kept coming. Now I said cut-off day was Friday. So this weekend I did a count of everything we needed. Then my father (and his sister who's helping answer phones and help customers this week) kept taking orders on Monday and Tuesday. For most things that's ok. But we now have no idea what our numbers are - and this morning both my mother and I will be going through the sheets and recounting. I put everything into a spreadsheet, but things have become so comlicated I don't think I can make the changes on it. The most interesting order we had yesterday?? Well the jail of course! It's not the first time they've ordered from us... but not for a holiday. We actually used to sell stuff to the jail often - for either those who observe kashrut or halal... but it's been a couple of years. Now we're all wondering who needs this food... The other issue we're having with food prep this year is that we're providing baking for the Winnipeg Symphony next week. They are having a special Holocaust program next week and I thought they needed bakign for 300 ... yesterday I was informed that it was 450. (We're providing baking for them that's kosher for PAssover on Tuesday for 450 and not for PAssover on Friday and Sat. - which I won't even think about until next week)

Maybe they were matzoh meal rolls! ← Did they look anything like mine? This year I only had to make about 350 large ones and 150 mini-rolls. Last year our restaurant was open so on top of all of our orders, I had to bake enough for dinner rolls, hot dog and hamburger buns.

Goodnight. I'm about to crash. See you tomorrow!

I read this in another thread. Why is it not available? Lack of demand seems like an obvious answer given the time constraints of Passover baking. Could you order it through a company that makes Matzoh? Also is Kosher salt itself Kosher in some way or is it called Kosher salt because it's used for Kashering? I grew up with a lot of Jewish friends who were barely Kosher or just acted Kosher when they were around their grandparents or for holidays. I'm not entirely unfamiliar with the 'culture' so to speak, but Passover Kosher is just blowing me away. ← I think lack of demand is probable. Most of us don't know how to handle it to ensure that all of the laws are upheld and it's easier to just buy it. Honestly, until somebody asked on the other thread I'd never even considered buying it - and I'm assuming most people are the same. It's sort of just known that you don't use flour for Passover unless making matzoh. Somebody else might be able to give us a little more insight though. Almost all salt is kosher. (I have heard of one specific type of salt that is not, but what type it is escapes me now). It is called kosher salt because it was, and is, used in the kashering process. Something about the shape/size/very essense of kosher salt helps draw out more blood - and that's the goal. My work kosher-level and my home-kosher level and my restaurant kosher-level are all different. Some people consider this somewhat hypocritical, but I say whatever works for you. At work we maintain the highest level we can. All of our ingredients are either labelled as kosher or are considered to be kosher by the local standards. At home, I do mostly what is considered 'ingredients' kosher. Read all the ingredients on a package and assuming I know what they all are make the decision. Most of my friends and family do the same. In some large cities, as a business owner you cannot get kashrut supervision unless you are a religious person who follows all of the Jewish laws. In smaller communities the rules are more flexible because there just are not that many religious people and it's better to do what you can than to do nothing at all. That's how it is where I am. (although as I said before, we're no longer under supervision, so this doesn't apply to us)

Nothing to forgive. Isn't this what the blogs are for? To share these things with each other? Usually, most oils that are plant based are kosher as long as they are processed in a factory that is supervised. So olive, soy, canola, vegetable, corn, sunflower, safflower, cottonseed, nuts and peanut oils can all be kosher. During Passover, whatever is forbidden, is forbidden in any form. The oils have to be designated kosher for Passover on the label (as most things do), but you can find kosher olive, cottonseed, safflower and sunflower oils for Passover. (Though sunflower (and for some safflower) are considered kitniyot - which means that only some people will use it) Not at all off topic, and this is how: I don't know much about Easter actually... but I'm pretty sure that it generally follows the lunar calander (which most Christian holidays do not). All of the Jewish holidays follow this calender, so it makes sense that the two holidays often coincide. (Please excuse my ignorance here - but the painting the Last Supper is actually said by some to be a Passover Dinner... I'm just not sure how exactly the painting is related to Easter ) This year though is a leap year in the Jewish calender. And we don't do things half-way. So instead of adding an extra day or two, we added an extra month and actually had the month of Adar 1 and Adar 2. This threw off all the holidays - everything is late and I think it's been about 20 years since it has been so late. Don't be sorry! I appreciate the questions, and I'm happy to answer whatever I can. Thanks for asking them

Ok, Im a bit confused. I'm Jewish too and even though I dont keep kosher and I hardly even recognize the holidays( Im more culturally Jewish than anything) I thought Passover starts on April 23rd. Do you mean it starts for you because of your preparation? ← Yep. Sorry, that's exactly what I meant. BUT, if you want to know the truth - Canadian Living Magazine had 7 of my recipes in their magazine for Passover this April - and I had to get them the recipes by December. So my friends and family enjoyed a Seder in December. Then I was testing recipes for several newspapers for the last 2 months - so I'm almost Passovered out! But officially Passover begins on Saturday, April 23rd and ends on Sunday May 1. (I should have mentioned that earlier)

If anybody has looked at this threadyou would have seen that we can't use flour during Passover. Many of the things we eat (matzoh, kugels, matzoh balls, etc.) contain flour but there are so many rules about flour use, that home cooks just don't use it. First of all you have to use special flour that I have never seen for sale. Then,. once you mix your flour with any liquid, it must be prepared and baked within 18 minutes to avoid any rising. So what happens is that in matzoh plants, they have machinery (although some places make it by hand) that produces matzot, basically large crackers, within the alloted amount of time. These big crackers are then ground up and that is what I use to bake with (along with potato starch). On the left we have potato starch, cake meal in the middle (matzoh ground as close to flour as possible) and on the right is matzoh meal (ground about the size of breadcrumbs and used for things like kugels, passover rolls). Because these things have already been baked, they don't have the same properties as flour. That's why we use cases and cases of eggs to try to get some lightness into out baking. Whatever you do, Passover baking does not taste like any other baking. This holiday, btw, should come with a cholesterol warning. I was going to try to keep a running total of the eggs I used in the two weeks. I lost count at 16 cases (15 dozen large eggs per case). And that's just me. Everybody else in the kitchen is using 'em too.