This is a strange
year in which Chanukah begins the night before Thanksgiving. There have been a
lot of cute cartoons and jokes about this. Some people have started to refer to
tomorrow as “Thanksgivakah.” But I think maybe the name should be shortened to
just “Givakah” in recognition of the amount of time we have spent accumulating and
wrapping gifts for our grandchildren! I am the first to admit that it perhaps
spun a bit out of control this year (I can see our daughters and sons-in-law
rolling their eyes as they read this, saying “ya think???”) but we are going to have a few extremely fun next few
days.
The tradition on
Chanukah is to eat foods fried in oil to commemorate a small amount of oil found
in the ruins of the Temple that miraculously lasted 7 days until new oil could
be produced. So I spent much of today making the Chanukah food traditionally eaten
by Jews of European descent, potato latkes.
For the uninitiated, latkes are pancakes
made of shredded potatoes mixed with grated onion, eggs, and flour and fried in
oil. I made two kinds: white potatoes and sweet potatoes (without onion but
with cinnamon and ground cloves). This activity makes a mess of the stove that
takes at least as long to clean up as it does to make the latkes, especially if you are as picky as I am.
We are all gathering
at Simmie and Ronen’s house tonight. We will probably need two trips to get
there, between the gifts and the 3½ dozen white + 2 dozen sweet potato latkes, not to mention the apple sauce
and sour cream. I am reasonably confident that this will satisfy ten hungry
eaters.
Tomorrow, our
children are preparing Thanksgiving dinner. A few years ago, Aaron bought a Char-broil
infrared oil-free turkey cooker (say that three times fast!) so he is in charge of the bird. Simmie usually makes a vegetarian dish, and Dina provides the traditional side dishes. Crank up Arlo Guthrie singing "Alice's Restaurant" and you have Thanksgiving!
For all of you who are celebrating one or both of these holidays, enjoy!
Love,
Rebecca
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