If you are like me you try to do things right.  Have the best intentions, and all that jazz.  Of course, there’s always a bit of the struggle.  Especially when you are a bread lover/aficionado/obsessive-compulsive eater and you are a Jew during Passover.

This presents a challenge.

A tough challenge.

I overcompensate my anxiety over not being able to eat bread during Passover by hyperpurchasing.  Hyperpurchasing means, instead of five boxes of matzo (the unleavened cracker one should replace bread for during the week of Passover) I buy twelve.  Because I figure, if my counter (already cluttered with Lulu (my fabulous, hot red mixer) toaster oven, Magic Bullet, and blender (still waiting on the Vitamix gift, folks!) is crammed with an excessive amount of matzo boxes, then this will, in turn, convince me to make the bread-to-matzo leap for the seven allotted days …Read on

It’s gray and miserable and raining but all I am picturing is my lively outdoor dinner setting programmed for tomorrow night.   I’m not sure how Mother Nature will respond; I, quite frankly, don’t care.  With the bunch I have scheduled to come over for Passover dinner rain will stop, if it’s coming, of that I am sure.  It is an eclectic crowd- the usual suspects who have slowly grown to become must-have attendees at the Martinez-Abbady Seder year after year after year.  Most Jewish celebrations in this household really are all about the food with a sprinkling of Judaism for added decoration dusted on the guests without them even knowing about it.  Pesach is no exception.

Passover in my childhood Venezuela was more or less flip-flopped on this principle:  in a country with Roman Catholicism running steadily through its veins, my …Read on

It’s a fun life being a foodie and a Jew.  Granted, aside from Yom Kippur, when we fast and pray for atonement, every other holiday requires a ridiculous amount of food as an accompaniment.  Sukkot, the holiday currently being celebrated, is no exception.  During Sukkot (which falls five days after the oh so somber Yom Kippur and lasts for 8 days) it is traditional to eat foods that reflect the autumn harvest.  For us Floridians autumn means the humidity is down to an 80% instead of 100% and temperatures dip into the high eighties, if we are lucky. But still, autumn.

Sukkot is downright a festival of the outdoors.  Sukkah’s, or temporary huts, are built and decorated with all sorts of fruits and foliage.  Not only do we celebrate the harvest, but we also commemorate the 40 years of exile that …Read on

The first time I saw my rabbi dressed up as Buzz Lightyear I knew I was in the right place.  Most adults stared uneasily, not sure what to make of this grown man bounding happily in a bright green and white suit, but I felt right at home.  My children were with me at the time and quite naturally declared:  ”Look, there is rabbi Andrew!” just as they would if they’d seen him at Publix, the park, or up on the Bima.  There was no mention of the outfit, I assume because he wore it quite well, quite naturally.  I’d step out on a limb and confess he even seemed more comfortable in it than the stiff grown-up jackets he’d have to, on many occasions, wear.  This was, after all, Purim, the Jewish holiday that, not only allows, but expects …Read on

This is the day that your headache won’t go away, regardless the amounts of Advil you’ve wolfed down with a Tums chaser so you won’t get an ulcer with the water so you’re not left with chalk jammed in your teeth. This is the day you’ll be stuck behind Grandma driving 37 miles per hour on the freeway and you will honk and curse and huff and puff like an idiot in a rush to go nowhere just because it’s that kind of day.

You can’t see her well, Grandma. She’s shriveled down to a solid 4’8” and that’s including the lavender hair but you could swear when the sun hits at an angle just so and you squint and look at her rearview mirror, well, you could swear that that little old lady is smiling at you. …Read on