Cooking for Passover, 1478

I've read several reviews of a display of a hand-illustrated Haggadah from 1478 on display now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Today's New York Times included several illustrations -- this one of two women cooking for the Seder seems especially relevant to my thoughts on holiday cooking of difficult recipes as a way to preserve tradition and allow women to work together.

Cooking for Passover, 1478

I've read several reviews of a display of a hand-illustrated Haggadah from 1478 on display now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Today's New York Times included several illustrations -- this one of two women cooking for the Seder seems especially relevant to my thoughts on holiday cooking of difficult recipes as a way to preserve tradition and allow women to work together.

Cooking for Passover, 1478

I've read several reviews of a display of a hand-illustrated Haggadah from 1478 on display now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Today's New York Times included several illustrations -- this one of two women cooking for the Seder seems especially relevant to my thoughts on holiday cooking of difficult recipes as a way to preserve tradition and allow women to work together.

Travel Photo of the Day: Mather Point, Grand Canyon, Arizona, USA

Our trip in November 2009 was my second visit to the Grand Canyon and Luis's first. As you might have gathered by now, Luis is a bit of a photo addict and can literally snap hundreds of pictures a day in the most mundane of places, but in the magnificent Grand Canyon, he kicked into overdrive. I don't think that there's a rock or tree in the entire canyon that he missed. By photographing what seem like tiny spectators on the top of the rock towers of Mather Point, he really captured the beauty, scale and the colorful vistas of the area.

The Grand Canyon, part of the U.S. National Parks Service system, runs 277 miles long, 18 miles wide at its widest point and is over a mile deep, making it one of the largest canyons in the world. Geologists estimate its age at at least 17 million years. The Grand Canyon National Park hosts approximately 5 million visitors a year, not just to view the canyon, but to camp, hike, white-water raft, take helicopter sightseeing tours, run marathons, ride to the bottom of the canyon in mule and horse trains, or visit the Hualapai Tribe's new glass-bottomed Grand Canyon Skywalk, which sits 4,000 feet directly above the Colorado River. Although the canyon is spectacular and there are many exciting activities, it is not to be taken lightly; over 600 accidental deaths have occurred since tourists starting visiting in the 1870s. Causes include falls, drowning, lightning strikes, heatstroke, heart attacks, plane crashes, homicides, suicides and environmental causes.     

Travel Photo of the Day: Mather Point, Grand Canyon, Arizona, USA

Our trip in November 2009 was my second visit to the Grand Canyon and Luis's first. As you might have gathered by now, Luis is a bit of a photo addict and can literally snap hundreds of pictures a day in the most mundane of places, but in the magnificent Grand Canyon, he kicked into overdrive. I don't think that there's a rock or tree in the entire canyon that he missed. By photographing what seem like tiny spectators on the top of the rock towers of Mather Point, he really captured the beauty, scale and the colorful vistas of the area.

The Grand Canyon, part of the U.S. National Parks Service system, runs 277 miles long, 18 miles wide at its widest point and is over a mile deep, making it one of the largest canyons in the world. Geologists estimate its age at at least 17 million years. The Grand Canyon National Park hosts approximately 5 million visitors a year, not just to view the canyon, but to camp, hike, white-water raft, take helicopter sightseeing tours, run marathons, ride to the bottom of the canyon in mule and horse trains, or visit the Hualapai Tribe's new glass-bottomed Grand Canyon Skywalk, which sits 4,000 feet directly above the Colorado River. Although the canyon is spectacular and there are many exciting activities, it is not to be taken lightly; over 600 accidental deaths have occurred since tourists starting visiting in the 1870s. Causes include falls, drowning, lightning strikes, heatstroke, heart attacks, plane crashes, homicides, suicides and environmental causes.     

Passover

I've written about Passover and other Jewish holiday food many times. One thought on the subject: there are so many traditional foods for which I use my food processor grating attachment. Grating potatoes for latkes or apples and nuts for charoset is very labor intensive if you don't have an automated device; I wonder how they became traditional. Carol suggested that the women in an extended family would gather to make these foods, thus sharing the labor and also ensuring continuity of the traditions.

Also, grating or chopping allows one to effectively share scarce ingredients. Latkes use grated potato -- the abundant ingredient -- to extend the scarcer eggs. Passover is early in the spring, so any fruit our ancestors had would have been saved from the previous year. Besides resembling the mortar for the pyramids, charoset allowed many people to share a few apples, raisins, and nuts. Tsimmis used root vegetables to allow sharing a small amount of meat and dried fruit, if you had it.

In ancient Israel, Passover was not quite as much a time of scarcity: the spring lambs would already be the right size to be sacrificed in the Temple. Later Passover became a time to give up one food: bread. So I don't think it's outside the holiday tradition to remember how lucky we are to have abundant food, as well as remembering the other messages of the holiday.

Happy Passover!

Passover

I've written about Passover and other Jewish holiday food many times. One thought on the subject: there are so many traditional foods for which I use my food processor grating attachment. Grating potatoes for latkes or apples and nuts for charoset is very labor intensive if you don't have an automated device; I wonder how they became traditional. Carol suggested that the women in an extended family would gather to make these foods, thus sharing the labor and also ensuring continuity of the traditions.

Also, grating or chopping allows one to effectively share scarce ingredients. Latkes use grated potato -- the abundant ingredient -- to extend the scarcer eggs. Passover is early in the spring, so any fruit our ancestors had would have been saved from the previous year. Besides resembling the mortar for the pyramids, charoset allowed many people to share a few apples, raisins, and nuts. Tsimmis used root vegetables to allow sharing a small amount of meat and dried fruit, if you had it.

In ancient Israel, Passover was not quite as much a time of scarcity: the spring lambs would already be the right size to be sacrificed in the Temple. Later Passover became a time to give up one food: bread. So I don't think it's outside the holiday tradition to remember how lucky we are to have abundant food, as well as remembering the other messages of the holiday.

Happy Passover!