It started with 10 miles of Saran Wrap.
I was at my sister’s wedding in 1984, newly engaged to a religious man (Seth), and had just become religiously observant. I was now kosher.
I did not grow up kosher. I ate a lot of cheeseburgers, bacon, ham, lobster, crab, and shrimp both as a child and an adult. But I was now kosher. My sister’s wedding was not kosher.
The waiter tapped me on the shoulder and served me a tray wrapped in Saran Wrap. By the time I’d unwrapped it, I’d burned 200 calories.
On the foil tray were a chicken leg and some peas in tomato sauce, and one limp strand of parsley that looked as if it had been asphyxiated by plastic wrap. Next to me, my big sister was eating juicy prime rib.
I’d had a few cocktails, grabbed the prime rib, and ate it like a cannibal.
Kosher food can be delicious
Thus began my adventures in kosher dining. I adapted over the years. I learned that kosher food could be delicious. Living near Jerusalem now, I have no problem finding tasty kosher food.
But traveling is a different question. Traveling turns my husband and me into petty criminals because we have a habit of wrecking appliances.
You may be familiar with this routine of trying to find a kosher option in your friends’ and relatives’ non-kosher kitchens.
The microwave is usually a good option.
This summer, we were in East Hampton visiting my sister and her new husband. She got married for the first time at the age of 74 and is deliriously happy. We wanted to get to know her husband. We wanted to be good guests, so we found kosher options.
We had just bought many ears of fresh corn at a farmstand.
Kaput. Silence. Out of order
After my husband cleaned my sister’s microwave, he put a bowl of water in there to boil the treif away. And afterwards, we put the corn in, and the motor made a very strange howling noise for several minutes, sounding like a jackal.
And then, kaput. Silence. Out of order.
We tried the fuse. We tried the microwave again. I told my sister we would pay for a new microwave. Her new husband looked up the price: $500, because it is a large model that goes over the stove like a range.
I was willing to foot that bill, but I didn’t want to. And I didn’t know if it was my responsibility.
I imagined a dialogue in the Talmud: if the microwave is ancient and if it is cleaned, and then a bowl of boiling water and four ears of corn in their husks cause it to lose its power, who is responsible for paying?
Thank the Lord, my new brother-in-law said not to worry about it.
Wine helps when dealing with kosher food on vacation
A SIMILAR incident occurred a few years ago when our family vacationed at an Airbnb in Greece. We koshered the microwave to cook potatoes for Shabbat, and the microwave went bang dead. We had to inform our host that his microwave no longer worked.
As you can imagine, I find wine helps when dealing with kosher food on vacation.
After we ruined the microwave at my sister’s house, we went looking for kosher wine.
The clerk said, “Do you want it kosher for Passover?” Mind you, it was the summer.
There’s a gap in knowledge of the kosher thing in most places.
Of course, there is the silverware we ruin by throwing it into a boiling pot of water.
I suggested to my sister that I only needed a pot and a rock and I could make one of her pots kosher. She said no.
There were no nearby stores where to buy a pot. We had a kosher pan that eventually sufficed.
I know that I am not alone. Many of you also have to improvise. Vacation brings out ingenious kosher solutions that often fail, as happened to my student Frieda, who drove from Toronto to Florida with her family.
She is one of those women who loves to be in the kitchen and who enjoys preparing meals for the family and freezing them.
She broiled and baked $500 worth of meat – maybe even a thousand dollars since kosher food can be pricey – for her husband and three boys, and even bought a special cooler with a thermostat control.
They drove for 24 hours. She was feeling happy in the front seat because she had pot roast, brisket, chicken, and other roasts ready to serve her family. She had solved all her kosher-eating problems for the trip.
But as Frieda felt so satisfied, the devil appeared – she didn’t realize it, but somehow the temperature monitor of the expensive cooler had flipped its switch and turned off.
When they finally arrived in Florida – after over 24 hours of driving – and got to the hotel, she unpacked the freezer and found everything soggy, melted, disgusting, dripping, drooping, and ruined.
She went berserk and yelled so hard and went so crazy that other guests called the manager of the hotel because they were afraid of manslaughter.
Mind you, Frieda is usually a mild- mannered person, the former principal of a high school.
The hotel manager knocked on the door. “What’s going on?” he asked.
“Oh, I’m sorry. The kosher food went bad,” she said. “I lost my cool. So did my food.” She smiled contritely.
“Don’t let it happen again,” he said. “And by the way, was it kosher for Passover?”■
The writer is the co-founder of the Koby Mandell Foundation. Her newest book, From Mac and Cheese to Matbucha: A Memoir With Recipes, can be pre-ordered from Amazon or Gefen Publishing.