That's sweet. A couple of weeks ago, I was bringing cupcakes into work and a homeless guy asked me if I had any extra. I did have extra, so I gave him a few and in the process of getting them out clumsily dropped the box, causing the rest of them to get all smooshed. Since everyone I work with constantly gives me crap for being a bleeding-heart liberal, I refused to tell them how the cupcakes ended up that way because I knew I'd never hear the end of it.
A former classmate of mine used brownies in a skit but made more than she could give away to the whole class (which was how she had hoped to get rid of them) so after class she decided to hand them out for free on the stairs leading to the building we had class in. Most people treated her offer with suspicion: the most common response was to ask, "What's in them?"
I'm a little curious as to the ingredients of a vegetarian protein sandwich... recipe?
Does "vegetarian protein" mean TVP?
I'm a little curious as to the ingredients
Soy. All soy.
I keep waiting for the Onion headline that reads "Nation's Vegans Die in Droves In Aftermath of Soy Blight."
I've totally had homeless people turn down my offers of food because they didn't like, say, whitefish salad or something. damn, what kind of fool doesn't like whitefish salad? on poppy-seed bagels, mmmm.
"Since everyone I work with constantly gives me crap for being a bleeding-heart liberal" while scoffing your cupcakes. This communist distributonism is sapping the nation's moral fibre. Or fiber.
I said, "Do you speak-a my language?"
She just smiled and gave me a vegetarian protein sandwich
Standpipe, do you come from a land down under?
A couple months ago a homeless guy in London asked me for money for a cuppa tea. So I offered him the brand new cuppa tea I had just bought. But he didnt want a stranger's cuppa tea in a cardboard cup. Which is not fair. because even if I had drunk some of the tea, I am visibly free of cooties and other badness. This drove me down the slippery slope into believing that all homeless people are really bazillionaires in disguise, so now I ask THEM for money.
About which BTW I was once so abject in my apology for not having spare money for a beggar in Glasgow, he gave me a pound! I invested it and now I'm as rich as Jesus.
And I do come from a land down under.
This blog post describes the sandwich I had. It's pretty good, if a little dry. I prefer the same brand's vegetarian chicken deluxe and their VLT, but variety is the spice of prepackaged health food store sandwiches.
I am so not having THAT url show up in whatever tracker they use here at work.
Tia, you were in a dream I had this weekend, or at least your voice was. You called me on my cell phone, and said that you had my long-lost friend Walker on hold, and that you were going to transfer the call to me. Then, you couldn't figure out how to do it. Then, I woke up.
I think I liked alameida's dream, in which I was a symbol for the truth or love that you discover when you've finally rejected flashier alternatives, than yours, in which I am a bad secretary.
Paging w-lfs-n for little bitch duties
Osner, can't you do your own dirty work?
better than yours
Thanks to 9, there is—at last—a tune in my head competing for dominance with "My Humps".
It's still better than my dream about Ben. Although "interloper leprechaun" has been running through my head ever since. It has such a fanciful rhythm: Interloper leprechaun. Interloper leprechaun. Interloper leprechaun.
Oh man, Tia... I could totally go for some matzo brei right now.
Matzoh brei -- not acceptably vegan.
Hm, well that link did not take -- it was spozed to go to this page: http://www.chowhound.com/writing/matzohbrei.html
OMG how did I fail to notice that SB was indirectly linking to "Bulbous Bouffant" by the awesome Vestibules? Thank you SB, thank you.
I have never heard of this matzoh brei thing before. Is it supposed to be like scrambled eggs with chunks of matzoh tossed in or more like a french toast?
29 -- the former.
30 -- Shindig! Mukluks mukluks mukluks.
26: Veganism does not preclude one from typing the name of a non-vegan dish, especially when it's as snazzy-sounding as matzo brei. Anyway, maybe I was talking about matzo brei made with the eggs of free range chickens and organic matzo. Did you stop to consider that Osner? Did you?
ObTheVestibules: you can buy their excellent album Chest of Drawers 5.0 in electronic format for only $3. Do it, you won't regret it.
the former
Huh. I'm not seeing the attraction of that. I will have to give it a try someday, though, because the response appears to be overwhelmingly positive.
32 -- Wait, can vegans eat eggs from free-range chickens now?
No. But I never claimed to be all the way vegan.
36 -- just kiddin' around. I was quite strictly vegan for about 3 years back in the 90's, and much more loosely for another couple of years after that.
29, 31 -- I thought there were two styles -- the scrambled-eggsy type and a more french-toasty type. But my direct experience of matzo-brei is nil. I think I'm working off memories of Nora Ephron's Heartburn.
I was quite strictly vegan for about 3 years back in the 90's
A-and we didn't have any fancy vegetable protein sandwiches back then, lemme tell you! We bought our texturized vegetable protein from the health-food coop and reconstituted it with warm water to make a scrambled-eggsy substance, and we considered ourselves lucky! Lucky I tell you! We thanked God we could broil tempeh and get something that looked vaguely like chicken!
I've never been a vegetarian, but lived with a bunch in college, and was really pretty impressed with TVP in spaghetti sauce, chili, etc. It's not beef, but it's a step up from ground turkey.
Hey, I've been vegan or mostly since 1995. You know what they call that? It starts with an O, ends in an L and has a ld schoo in the middle.
My wife makes a fantastic version of matzo brei, thick as kiche, with powdered sugar. More like LB's second type. The first type is ok, and sometimes the only feasible alternative to chicken salad with matzo if you're trying to observe passover while eating out, at least in my neck of the woods.
I wonder if the Atkins diet (and restaurants' familiarity with it) has made the world easier for Passover observers.
My mother is allergic to corn so she always looks forward to Passover. She stocks up on high fructose corn syrup-free foodstuffs for the rest of the year.
You know, if you just count the time during the day when one is not consuming animal products as being a vegan, so that, for instance, I've been a vegan since about 1:00, aren't we all mostly vegans?
And, while I'm not a big soda drinker, kosher Coke is sooo much better than the usual stuff.
44: Yes, up to a certain level of observance. If you're really serious you can't eat in non-Kosher restaurants at all. (If you're really serious about Passover you can't eat in non-certified restaurants during Passover, for fear that they got bread on your food somehow.) Also beneficial to someone with my lax standards: hard cider in 12-ounce bottles.
Note also that I can't spell. And that said, Becks, I think the word you want is "pesedich" (ordinary Coke is I think Kosher but not Kosher-for-Passover).
My gay HIV positive Southern Baptist friend who converted to Judaism once wigged us all out by saying he was going on Atkins (he's awfully skinny to begin with) and then relieved us: "Relax, that's what I call Pesach."
Tingley, you can get matzo brei in restaurants in your neck of the woods?
Are there really two kinds of matzo brei? I'm only familiar with the french-toast type (which is quite possibly the best food ever).
I'm only familiar with the scrambled-egg type, so nyah.
Anyone with a recipe for the french-toast type, feel free to post it.
I'm curious about the divide between the two types of matzo brei. Is it based on region? Ethnicity? Religious sect? Very curious.
And I think we need a bake-off.
#50
Sometimes not under that name, and not the good stuff, but yes, I've gotten it at ordinary restaurants at lunch. I've gotten it at Max's Deli in Highland Park, Ill.(I used to work in Deerfield) but at other restaurants too. I don't order it more than once a year, and I observe 7 days, but places calling themselves delis will sometimes make it for you even if it's not on the menu and the whole staff is Greek and Mexican. It's a welcome change from harosis in tupperware and matzo in a ziplock, which spreads crumbs all over creation.
I am only familiar with a French Toast-like matzoh brei.
Some people don't make it, because the matzoh (shudder) expands when it's soaked.
It sounds like Ben might have a recipe for it!
It's still better than my dream about Ben.
Nothing could be better than a dream about me.
Joan Nathan has a recipe in the Jewish Holiday Kitchen. But my wife knows how and I don't. About an inch thick when done, hers fills the dish when done and she slices it like pie or kiche.
I'm just surprised that we've gone this far without any of the nice Jewish boys on this thread offering to make us matzo brei for breakfast, IYKWIM.
My memory of how my mom has made it is to soak the matzo, first having been broken up, for a bit in hot water, mix it up with a bit of beaten egg, and maybe a bit of milk?, and then cook it up like that, maybe with some butter or some such. Good!
Why do people soak it in water first? Wouldn't it make more sense to soak it a flavorful liquid, like milk? Or is there some chemistry thing I'm not thinking of?
I guess hot milk would work. But then you couldn't enjoy any meat with your breakfast. I guess if you used butter when you cooked it that would be true anyway.
The recipe my mom uses is basically the same as Ben's, although I don't think there's any milk. The water softens the matzah and makes it expand so it can soak up the egg; I guess milk would do the same, but I doubt you could taste any difference.
Traditional Jewish cooking doesn't use much milk as a general rule, because it really limits what you can serve with a dish.
But then you couldn't enjoy any meat with your breakfast.
Are there any non-pig-based meats commonly eaten for breakfast? (Oh, I suppose there are pigless sausages, but generally, I'd think making breakfast dairy would not be all that restricting.)
Are there any non-pig-based meats commonly eaten for breakfast?
Steak and eggs, duh. Are you not from Texas or something?
Admittedly that has limited application to traditional Jewish cooking.
I think it's more that cooking with milk just doesn't occur to Jews the way it does to gentiles. I had never even thought of it before Becks mentioned it.
Steak and eggs, duh.
I am humbled and unTexan. I'll apologize to my cactus when I get home.
I thought Moses invented the hamburger. After he dropped commandments 11-15.
Those french toastie things sound lovely.. with bacon!
Oh, and Becks (and Cala!), I'll make you matzo brei whenever you want, just as soon as I learn how to make it. Luckily there's still six weeks until Passover.
Thoughtlet: does any traditional Mediterranean/Middle Eastern cooking rely heavily on dairy? Religious dietary restrictions surely are part of it, but I'm thinking it may just be too damn hot for milk.
There's plenty of cheese and yogurt in Greek cooking.
Middle Eastern cuisine makes extensive use of yoghurt-based sauces. And then there's feta, as well as the many Italian cheeses.
Also, note that the type of cooking we're describing here originated in Eastern Europe. Excessive heat was probably not a big problem.
Joan Nathan sez: "A simple dish, matzah brei cannot be made with milk. With milk, it is like pastrami on white bread or chicken livers with mayonnaise. How could Eastern European Jews, with only goose fat available for frying, include milk in matzah brei?"
At supper just now, my wife informed me that her matzah brei is almost entirely the invention of her mother, who was asked by my wife's father to make the fried matzah, which is the alternative name, he grew up with. Her version has much more egg and more resembles a fritata. My late father-in-law liked it much better.
65 -- a diner in Newark that I like serves some breakfast meat they call "beef bacon" which is very nice. I've never seen it anywhere else but Google is giving back thousands of hits so it's not something that restaurant just made up.
Where was your father-in-law's family from, John? It would be interesting to see if there's a regional distribution of the different types.
#77
Both sides of my wife's family were Berliners, although from different social classes. My father-in-law's background would have been more recently arrived from "ost" and more "schwartz," although they had shed that rapidly in the generation before 1933.
Interesting. My family is Litvak (well, my great-grandmother was and she did the cooking), so there could be an Ost/West or Urban/Rural divide there. I think we need more data points; Weiner? w-lfs-n?
My maternal grandfather was a Galizianer, my paternal grandfather was from around Belarus, my paternal grandmother's family was part Litvak I think, my paternal grandmother's family was a little bit from Hungary and I forget the rest of it. Mom puts applesauce on latkes, Dad sour cream. I don't know who passed down the matzo brei recipe.
Now I want pierogi.
We put sour cream on latkes, but my family is neither Jewish nor Eastern European.
The mention of latkes reminds me that there are two ways of making them, too. We do the thin, crispy kind that's mostly potato, and set out both applesauce and sour cream (I prefer applesauce).
Latkes, hard enough to make with a food processor, what with potato starch all over the place, are incredibly hard to make without. We did it once in the eighties; I have a memory of stinging hands rubbed raw. Them bubbies was tough. My wife says the blood from your knuckles was what gave the traditional latkes their irreplaceable flavor.
That story is current in my family as well.
Dammit, now I'm hungry. I really should eat dinner.
I realize at times like this that I have no traditional favorite foods or recipes from ye old homeland, except maybe porridge. My mom is a great cook, but only became so after jettisoning all of our own ancestral influences. An old neighbor of ours, from Greece, got her started on the whole cooking with actual flavor thing.
I do like potatoes rather a lot, but not the way my grandmother made them.
Teofilo, since you're about this thread--
Tonight, as I was preparing a rare comment to Aqoul, I almost gave a link to Liz's "Synthesis" post about the difficulties of a US firm pursuing a paper trail. Smart people meeting smart people, right?
I dreamed a few nights ago that somehow Collounsbury found LizardBreath's posts on DPW and laid waste to everyone around. Protectionism in action, baby.
Foolish latke persons! You will not prevail.
(N.B. Post-linkal downscrolling leads to apostrotits and other delights.)
ac:
I married into good cooking.
Here is the Canadian intellectual Hugh MacLennan on the Scottish inheritance: "If they boil their salmon and halibut till no taste remains, if they bake out of their haddock the last drop of moisture, if they serve these ruined fish with a dry, grey potato and (for variation) boiled turnips and sprouts, if they offer for dessert soggy rice pudding with bloated raisins bulging out of it, if they equate a distaste for haggis with disloyalty to Scotland herself--let nobody pity them or wonder why they eat as they do. They prefer this diet because it gives them the pleasure of being miserable."
Many years ago, when I first read that, I realized with a shock that I had eaten that very meal countless times.
My wife says the blood from your knuckles was what gave the traditional latkes their irreplaceable flavor.
She's right. It's not latkes without knuckle-blood. And they aren't that hard to make anyway.
As to origins: My maternal grandfather is German, of unknown-to-me origin (though I think he was a Berliner?); my other grandparents are Ukrainian through and through.
It's said that four rabbis officiated at my great-great-great-grandmother's wedding (+/- a great or so), because of her direct descent from the Baal Shem Tov. (Why not previous generations, or later? I didn't originate this story.)
JM-
That would have been some meeting of the minds. I do hope Lounsbury recovers; he's irreplaceable.
Hmmm... my great-grandfather was Ukrainian; could the matzo brei have come from his family? I can't imagine him cooking or telling his wife what to cook, though.
It doesn't need to have come down through the family. In American cities, Jews from all over eastern and central Europe lived close, intermarried, and tended to homogenize into a common style. Recipes, emulation, I'll-have-what-he's-having all account for it.
91 - I think her insticts were right. I'd love to see Col and dsquared start arguing about something though.
93 - True, and that's probably what's going on here; there doesn't seem to be any clear regional pattern. Also, many families are like Weiner's, with Jews from many different areas marrying each other to form one family where the source of any given custom isn't clear.
In my case, though, I'm pretty sure all the customs that my (nuclear) family observe come from my great-grandmother (since my grandfather and mother both intermarried), although I suppose she could have picked up some recipes from neighbors or friends.
94 - I doubt Col would like it here, although he does read Kevin Drum (for reasons I can't fathom). An argument between him and dsquared would be a sight to see.
#95
I was putting some spin on "intermarried;" I meant Jews from Galicia intermarried with those from Lithuania. I think you were using it straight.
I knew what you meant, and I agree; but yes, I was using it straight.
Maternal grandfather was from Fischach (Germany), maternal grandmother Neustadt (Germany), paternal grandparents some mix of Russian, Germany, and Polish. Oh, and what this conversation really has me hungry for is matzoh charlotte.
But how do you make your matzo brei, w/d?
Ben's recipe looks right to me, but I'm not speaking with too much certainty.
A cascade of links set off by 88 led me to this, the awesomeness of which can never, ever be disputed.
I like how this post eventually got a lot of comments. I remember thinking it deserved more.
102: Indeed, but is it more awesome than this?
Last Passover, I tried to invent a new form of matzo brei by more or less following my favorite french toast recipe, and replacing the bread with matzah. Do not try this at home.
We eventually regrouped and soaked in water first, like we were taught, and then served it with bacon. Pesadiche bacon.
It's kosher if the rabbi blesses the pig!
86 - ac, you could always see if anything on Diane Duane's list of Irish recipes sounds appealing. Must say though I never realised you could have one, not to mind two, dessert recipes involving potatoes...
There are some very tasty traditional Irish recipes -- colcannon, which is mashed potatoes combined with minced steamed kale with lots of butter and cream, is delicious. But Irish-American cooks (at least those I'm related to) do tend to be awful unless they have, like ac's mother and mine, entirely abandoned their culinary roots.
My wife always makes colcannon with cabbage rather than kale, but I think she picked it up from a Woman's Day cookbook, so it's not like it's an authentic recipe. Anyhoo, delish.
Kale, cabbage... the flavor difference is minimal. I'd try it with kale, though, because the bright bright green you get mixing it with the potatoes is pretty.
Plus Kale falls into the "Leafy Green Vegetable" category, more than cabbage does. I'll let her know. (We have to divide up recipes at my house, else there might be contests and hurt feelings--e.g. she's in charge of waffles, I take care of crepes.)
