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News and Views:
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The Foods of Rosh Hashanah
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Rosh Hashanah (or Rosh ha-Shanah, Hebrew for "head of the year"), the Jewish New Year, falls on September 18 this year. As befits its distinction as a holy day, Rosh Hashanah is celebrated with a feast that includes special symbolic foods. Although I am not Jewish, I appreciate the Rosh Hashanah process of penitence and atonement. And to be honest, I’ve always thought of September as a more logical place to start a new year than January 1. Maybe it’s just from years of starting school in the fall (complete with new shoes, new lunchbox, and new books), but there’s an unmistakable aura of freshness about September.
The traditional foods of Rosh Hashanah and their symbolism include apples and honey (for a sweet and fruitful year), dates (because the Hebrew word for them, tamar, is similar to one meaning "sense of awe"), pomegranates (for a year to come as rich with blessings as the pomegranate is rich with seeds), stuffed vegetables and poultry (for a full year filled with prosperity), and others.
For a mouth-watering assortment of traditional Jewish recipes associated with the holiday, go to www.cyber-kitchen.com/rfcj and click on Rosh Hashanah; for links to more recipe sites, click on Kosher FAQ.
The following recipe is similar to one in Jennie Grossinger’s classic 1958 cookbook, Art of Jewish Cooking
. I added apples and dates, and finagled the quantities to fit a bundt pan.
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Harvest Honey Cake
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1 cup honey
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1/3 cup strong coffee
3 eggs
2-1/2 cups flour
1-1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1-1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
3/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups peeled, chopped tart apples
1/2 cup toasted slivered almonds
1/2 cup chopped dates
With an electric mixer, beat honey, oil, and coffee together. Beat in the eggs until smooth. Combine flour, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt and gradually add them to the honey-egg mixture, stirring until well blended. Stir in the apples, almonds, and dates. Pour batter into a greased and floured bundt or tube pan. Bake at 350°F for 35 to 40 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Remove from the oven and cool on a wire rack for 10 minutes; remove from pan and finish cooling on rack. Dust with confectioners sugar and garnish with sliced almonds if desired. Makes 10 to 12 servings.
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Predicting That First Frost
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| No matter how steeped we are in science and technology, Nature always has a few tricks up her sleeve. Take the first killing frost, for instance. One vegetable garden may be wiped out, while a garden just up the road escapes. Or it may be cold enough in the evening that you race out to the garden with old bedsheets and tarps to cover as many plants as you can, only to wake up to a balmy 40°F because clouds moved in overnight.
Like politics, all gardening is local. In fact, your own garden, even the pot of cherry tomatoes on your patio, has a unique micro-climate. Here are a few factors to consider when you ask yourself, Will we have a frost tonight?
• A garden on a south-facing slope may escape a frost if cold air can drain to a lower elevation. Residual heat on a sunny, south-facing site also helps keep the garden warm at night.
• Brick or stone walls, as well as lakes and ponds, hold heat and release it slowly at night, protecting tender plants. Trees on the north side of a garden also offer protection from frost without casting too much shade during the day.
• Deep organic soil and mulch slow evaporation (which is a cooling process).
• Hillside locations often escape early frosts, while valleys trap the heavy cold air.
• If you can, determine the dew point, which is the temperature at which water vapor condenses to form dew. Since condensation produces heat, a dew point of 43°F is a good indication that your garden will escape frost that night.
What to do if one of those dreaded cold-air masses from Canada moves in and destruction seems sure? Just to buy yourself a little time, it’s really worth the trouble to cover as many plants as you can with sheets, newspaper, old bedspreads, straw, plastic tarps, anything that will retain some heat without squashing the plants. Get out there before the sun goes down. Uncover the next morning after it warms up a bit. Knowing your garden is doomed in the end will make those last survivor tomatoes taste extra sweet.
For average dates of frosts in the U.S. and Canada, go to http://www.almanac.com/garden/garden.frostchart.html. But remember, your garden is certainly above average!
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Onion Lore and Laws
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| Cooked or raw, onions have long been considered good luck. Simply dreaming about them is said to bring good fortune. And if you put an onion under your pillow on the eve of St. Thomas’s day (December 21), you will dream about your future spouse.
In the Middle Ages in Europe, it was a good-luck charm to carry an onion in one’s pocket, especially in the left pocket. A string of onions tied across a doorway was believed to protect residents from disease (the onions themselves could never be eaten). If sickness struck, onions were roasted and used as poultices (to treat respiratory diseases); the juice of a roasted onion, dripped into the ear, was the preferred treatment for earache.
Going beyond simple good luck, onions have also been regarded as an aphrodisiac. Maybe that’s why there are so many laws regulating their consumption! (You don’t see a lot of laws and rules about oatmeal, do you?) For instance, in ancient Egypt, priests were not allowed to eat onions at all, lest they be encouraged to break their vows of celibacy. In Nacogdoches, Texas, a 19th-century law specified that unmarried young women could not eat raw onions after 6 p.m. (presumably so they wouldn’t drive the cowboys wild).
All this attention on the humble onion (and its cousins garlic, leeks, shallots, and chives, all members of the Allium family) actually has some basis in science, at least as far as the medicinal properties go. Onions are rich in vitamins and sulfur compounds, and have significant antibacterial properties. And if you eat lots and lots of onions, especially raw, everyone will stay away from you, thus protecting you from germs.
One more thing about onions: check out their skins. Thick or tough skins are said to predict a severe winter.
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