January 12, 2018: Rices and Beanses and Guac...OY VEY!
While blog creator and Webmaster extraordinaire Abby Browngoehl is off in Spain sharing her ceaseless smiles with the European continent, I, Lauren Finkelstein, and my talented sidekick Jenny Moss, will be taking over the food portion of this blog. Stop by every week to see what Epicurean delicacies you missed out on, or to relive the culinary ne plus ultra that was Shabbat dinner!
We will also be attaching recipes. For this week's menu, click here.
Since I've been at this Meals Chair thing for a year now, I've been picking up on people's food preferences. To give you some sense of the sort of mishegas I'm working with:
~Rae doesn't like sweet potatoes.
~Jonah doesn't like cheese unless it's on pizza. But when I made pizza he asked if there was a cheese-less version. And he eats pesto despite it's parmesan content. Go figure. (He also misses chocolate chip challah and, to my vexation, had the chutzpah to tell me!)
~I don't really know what Josh likes, but I've gotten the sense he doesn't like much of anything. Except cheese. ("I am a simple man," he says.)
~Alex doesn't like feta.
~Jenny is gluten free, but will still try my cookies if they look tasty enough.
~Rabbi Danielle's kids really like fancy challah, but don't like any of their other food to be fancy.
Try as I might to ignore all of this and accept that I can't please everyone when cooking for a crowd, I do suffer from my fair share of Jewish guilt. So, this week I decided to try something customizable: a build-your-own burrito bar!
The spread, along with Sam Zieve-Cohen for scale! He's a good few inches taller than your average Jew, so needless to say, there was a lot of food.
Mmmmmmmmm
With early j-term shpielkes setting in, I also decided to cook up homemade tortillas with the help of Ian Knapp, my trusty sous-chef.
"I need to get it in the air." Wise words from a master tortilla flipper.
While I was busy getting my tortilla flipping skills photo shoot ready, Ian was whipping up some delicious babka challah. The orange zest gave the loaves a very noticeable orangy flavor (even though we forgot to add the orange syrup at the end!) which was my personal favorite part of this recipe.
The meal concluded with maple-glazed brown sugar cookies which taste strikingly similar to pancakes!
And with that, I will leave you with this very pleasing transformation of the spice section in the Hillel kitchen, courtesy of yours truly:
Come to the FIC this Friday for an abbreviated 6:40-7 service (note the unusual time!!!!) followed by Sabai Sabai, a mystery challah flavor courtesy of Jenny, and a special interfaith discussion!
And, if you have any dinner requests, I would be honored to fulfill them. Please email me at lfinkelstein@middlebury.edu.
Kol tuv, dear friends!