#kugels

[ukgk]

04/2008

[thinkingimages]

Anaïs Kugel

[gacougnol]

Anaïs Kugel

[edenfenixblogs]

Look what Google just recommended to me!!!!

I already own (and love) Shabbat and Portico.

But I am OBSESSED with the rest and must acquire them immediately.

Top of my list is Love Japan because LOOK AT THIS BEAUITFUL BOWL OF MATZO BALL RAMEN!!!!!

We hear a lot about Jewish people in Europe and MENA, but we do not hear a lot about Jewish culture as it blends with East Asian cultures, and that’s a shame. Not just because it erases the centuries of Jewish populations there, but also because there are plenty of people of mixed decent. People who may not have come directly from Jewish communities in East Asia, but people who have a Japanese Father and a Jewish Mother, for example. Or people in intercultural marriages. These are all real and valuable members of the Jewish community, and we should be celebrating them more. This cookbook focuses on Jewish Japanese American cuisine and I am delighted to learn more as soon as possible. The people who wrote this book run the restaurant Shalom Japan, which is the most adorable name I’ve ever heard. Everything about this book excites and delights me.

And of course, after that, I’m most interested in “Kugels and Collards” (as if you had any doubts about that after the #kugel discourse, if you were following me then).

This is actually written in conjunction with an organization of the same name devoted to preserving the food and culture of Jews in South Carolina!

I’m especially excited to read this one, because I have recently acquired the book Kosher Soul by the fantastic, inimitable Michael J. Twitty, which famously explores faith and food in African American Jewish culture. I’m excited to see how Jewish soul food and traditions in South Carolina specifically compare and contrast with Twitty’s writings.

I’m also excited for all the other books on this list!

A while ago, someone inboxed me privately to ask what I recommended for people to read in order to learn more about Jewish culture. I wrote out a long list of historical resources attempting to cover all the intricate details and historic pressure points that molded Jewish culture into what it is today. After a while I wrote back a second message that was much shorter. I said:

Actually, no. Scratch everything I just said. Read that other stuff if you want to know Jewish history.

But if you want to know Jewish culture? Cookbooks.

Read every Jewish cookbook you can find.

Even if you don’t cook, Jewish cookbooks contain our culture in a tangible form. They often explain not only the physical processes by which we make our meals, but also the culture and conditions that give rise to them. The food is often linked to specific times and places and events in diaspora. Or they explain the biblical root or the meaning behind the holidays associated with a given food.

I cannot speak for all Jews. No one can. But in my personal observation and experience—outside of actual religious tradition—food has often been the primary means of passing Jewish culture and history from generation to generation.

It is a way to commune with our ancestors. I made a recipe for chicken soup or stuffed cabbage and I know that my great grandmother and her own mother in their little Hungarian shtetl. I’ll never know the relatives of theirs who died in the Holocaust and I’ll never meet the cousins I should have had if they were allowed to live. But I can make the same food and know that their mother also made it for them. I have dishes I make that connect me to my lost ancestors in France and Mongolia and Russia and Latvia and Lithuania and, yes, Israel—where my relatives have lived continuously since the Roman occupation even after the expulsions. (They were Levites and Cohens and caretakers of synagogues and tradition and we have a pretty detailed family tree of their presence going back quite a long time. No idea how they managed to stay/hide for so long. That info is lost to history.)

I think there’s a strong tendency—aided by modern recipe bloggers—to view anything besides the actual recipe and procedures as fluff. There is an urge for many people to press “jump to recipe” and just start cooking. And I get that. We are all busy and when we want to make dinner we just want to make dinner.

But if your goal isn’t just to make dinner. If your goal is to actually develop an understanding of and empathy for Jewish people and our culture, then that’s my advice:

Read cookbooks.

[xclowniex]

Just learnt of yerushlami kugel....

Someone needs to unkosher the world's weed because what the fuck were they smoking when they came up with that

[murderballadeer]

tomorrow i will eat vanilla yogurt and half a canned peach for breakfast yayyy

[shalom-iamcominghome]

Shana Tova!

It's officially rosh hashanah for me, yayy!!!!!

May g-d bless you with good fortune, good life, good news, and sweetness that rivals the richest honey

[eyk-hetaart]

world record quickest dadstria turnaround

[mino491]

I have a hc that when Klaus is sober, he's got really shitty hearing because of the constant noise the ghosts make around him. Like he always can hear little whispers or sometimes screams when he's sober so he has trouble hearing things in the real world.

I feel that would make so much sense because the whole reason he falls to substance abuse is because it gives him peace and quiet in a way he just can't have with all the dead folk following him.

I also think that the writers just forgot that Klaus has to live with dead people trying to get his attention ALL THE TIME because after the scene where he gets his Marigold back, shouldn't he be bombarded with all the townspeople that his siblings just murdered?

I would've loved to see more of his character growth because he went from being the loser lookout to being able to make his dead brother corporeal to being able to let his body be possessed by said brother to being able to come back from the dead and travel through dimensions to losing everything he worked so hard to achieve and having to live in fear to whatever the fuck happened in s4 😭

I mean don't even get me started on how unless they made him after he got his powers back, he literally did nothing in the final fight scene and his whole plot with the void was completely forgotten?

[jewish-culture-is]

Jewish culture is asking your Bubbe for her noodle kugel recipe only for her to reveal that she has lied about making it for the past 20 years and it’s actually from a local deli and reheated lmao (I guess I have to ask them for the recipe)

realest thing ever... (when you get the recipe please drop it?? oh my god??)

[gacougnol]

Anaïs Kugel

[edenfenixblogs]

Just a random thing I love about the Jewish community:

Jews talking to antisemites trying to twist our culture into something evil in order to justify eliminating us en masse: I understand your concern but that’s actually a harmful thing to say. Can I interest you in hundreds of sources I took the liberty of citing and fact checking and providing links for and thousands of years of history to back up my statement?

Jews talking to other Jews about opinions on Jewish food: I WILL BURN THIS ENTIRE HOUSE TO THE GROUND IF YOU DO NOT ADMIT THE INCONTROVERTIBLE TRUTH AND WISDOM IN MY STANCE ON KUGEL.

Exhibit A: A Perfect Food. Look at Her. She’s Beautiful!

Exhibit B: You absolute monster. What have you DONE TO HER?!

Is that cinnamon? And raisins??? Where is the crust???? This is somehow a disaster, a tragedy, and a crime all at once.

Unacceptable.

(งಠ_ಠ)ง

[punkbakerchristine]

(kugel — gotta save the Jewish recipes)

[koshercosplay]

[liebelesbe]

mein Vater hat grad erzählt dass früher eine Kugel Eis 20 Pfennig gekostet hat...

GIRL DAS WÄREN. 10 CENT 😭

[coffeenuts]