Yesterday, I received a link via DailyGood, a wonderful resource for daily heart warming stories about real people. They featured Avrom and his Bubbe and their podcast called Feed Me Bubbe.  Bubbe (Yiddish for grandmother) teaches us how to make simple meals in our own kitchens. She also shares stories about her life. It is a wonderful intergenerational endeavor and well worth watching.

Thank you Avrom and Bubbe! This is a gem!

Mitzvah for the day: At synagogue I invited someone who was looking around for a seat to come join me.  Anytime we attend a meeting, religious service or another group gathering it is always nice to be greeted by a smiling stranger beckoning us over during our initial moments of pause about where to go. Remember to do that the next time you see a stranger in your midst.

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ARTICLE TITLE: Feed me bubbe will be back
Published by Karyn Zoldan

Everybody’s favorite Jewish grandmother — bubbe at 83 years young - is getting her own PBS show.
Oy vay, imagine that. What’s not to like?  Eat, eat, it will make your strong.
Here’s a preview of what’s in the oven.
To learn more about bubbe and her secret sauce, check this out.
To explore a Jewish cookbook written by other bubbes, click here.

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Alright. Every pound of hamburg mix you will have, about six good size hamburger, alright? I like to make in advance, so when I prepared it on the record, I have them all. Oh yes, and often you can do this before even in the night, putting it in the fridge, and have … Put it on the grill the next day they have all finished. And they are delicious, and the taste is not of this world. Better than the regular hamburger. And here I go. A few more, and then we will …

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Rawsh Hashana
By DON KAPLAN

TRADITION has taken a back seat for a growing community of raw-food vegans who celebrate the Jewish High Holidays with meals more likely to consist of peas on Earth than chicken soup for the soul.
Food and family have always been major components of Rosh Hashanah, the start of the Jewish new year. Recipes are handed down through generations like sweet, cholesterol-infused jewels.
And therein lies the rub. Some of the most delicious Jewish holiday dishes are simply not healthy. Many people descended from Jewish Eastern European immigrants will share the same horrifying tale of mistaking their grandmother’s small pot of congealed chicken fat (used in cooking, well, everything) for vanilla pudding. Or was that just me?
“Part of being a Jew and fulfilling the Ten Commandments is taking care of our bodies,” says raw food chef Chaya-Ryvka Diehl. “It’s one thing to eat kosher, but it’s another thing to eat kosher and healthy at the same time, so a lot of the traditional foods we have are not as healthy as they might have been in the past.”
Diehl is a raw foods chef, instructor and caterer who has a different take on the traditional holiday meal.
Her diet consists of whole foods never cooked above 120 degrees Fahrenheit, the theory being that not cooking food preserves the enzymes in them, therefore making them healthier.
For the Jewish holidays, instead of chicken soup, she offers a low-temperature miso soup and hummus. Instead of brisket or roast chicken, she suggests a sprouted rice pilaf or pesto “pasta,” using shredded root vegetables to replace the pasta. And instead of the traditional Jewish bread challah — which is the foundation of every kosher meal — she suggests a sprouted whole-grain mixture dried for about 24 hours in a dehydrator, a machine that many raw foodists use in place of an oven for “baking.”
“It’s not going be the same as a doughy white challah, with the eggs, sugar and oil,” she says.
“It’ll definitely be a denser, whole-grain bread — but there’s a level of knowledge here; it’s important to know what effect that doughy, white bread will have on our bodies in the short and long terms.”
But traditionalists aren’t down with Diehl’s approach.
You might even say it’s a case of the bubbes versus the beet eaters.
“There are certain tastes and aromas that are associated with the holidays, and it’s hard to find a way to substitute for them,” says 83-year-old Bayla “Bubbe” Sher, the host of the popular online cooking show “Feed Me Bubbe.”
On the show, Sher instructs her grandson on the basics of how to cook traditional Jewish dishes. Since its debut in 2006, the show has developed a huge following online, and Sher has been lauded as a pioneer among Web stars.
“It’s a funny thing, when my kids went off to college, they came back saying they were vegetarians and it hurt me so, because I didn’t know what to do,” says Sher.
“Since then, I’ve worked with the tofu, the miso and all these other items; sure it’s a substitution, but you just can’t get the same cozy, traditional flavors and tastes. I cannot imagine getting the taste of the chicken soup without the chicken!”
Diehl counters, “When I’m making raw foods, my kitchen smells delicious. The process of blending and processing foods, especially in the dehydrator, creates an aroma that fills your house. You have this sense of aliveness in your kitchen — that there’s something going on and that there are all sorts of delicious foods coming that we’ll all get to enjoy.”
Bubbe?
“If they have the right spices, I think that will go a long way towards bringing the flavor back towards tradition and creating the kinds of tastes and
smells that I’m sure they’ll enjoy,” says Sher magnanimously. “For me, the most important thing in my opinion is that they celebrate the holiday and understand its meaning.”

Bubbe’s Chicken Soup● Boiling water (to make sure chicken is clean) ● 3 to 4 chicken leg quarters ● 6 cups water (cold) ● 2 stalks celery, with leaves cut into thirds ● 1 medium onion, cut in half ● 1 carrot cut in thirds ● 1 small parsnip (optional) ● 5 pieces of dill and/or parsley ● 1 chicken cube or salt for taste
Remove excess fat from chicken quarters, but leave the skin on. Rinse chicken with cold water, place in a large bowl and pour boiling water over chicken. Rinse with cold water and place chicken in soup pot. Add six cups of cold water into pot and bring to a boil. Remove scum that forms on top with spoon and then lower the burner to the low setting and continue cooking. Let simmer for one hour. Add vegetable ingredients to the pot. Bring to a boil again and then back to low. Let simmer for an additional 30 minutes to an hour.
With fork, check to see if chicken is soft and if the carrot is cooked. Remove chicken from the pot and, using a strainer, strain the soup into large bowl. Keep the carrots and throw away the other vegetables, as they will be overcooked. Carrots can be cut into cubes and added into the soup. Place chicken pieces on the side on plate. When soup is cooled, cover the bowl with plastic wrap and place in a refrigerator. The fat will rise to the top when it is cold enough. Remove fat with spoon. To serve, heat soup and serve with cooked fine noodles, white rice and/or matzo balls.
Chaya-Ryvka’s Fresh Celery Fennel Soup ● 4½ cups celery, chunked ● 1 cup zucchini, chunked ● 1 medium head fennel, chopped ● ½ a lemon, juiced ● ¼ cup olive oil, optional ● 1 clove garlic ● Raw sea salt and pepper to taste
Place all ingredients into a high-speed blender and blend until smooth and creamy. Serve drizzled with olive oil and decorate with fennel greens. Store refrigerated for up to four days.

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Feed Me Bubbe

I wanted to use the Yiddish term Bubbe yesterday– when I googled it, this was the number one page-ranked result– an actual guy’s Bubbe, giving lessons in kosher cuisine on You Tube. (Teh You Tubes for you younger kids.) I haven’t watched it all the way through, but it just kills me in all the best ways to know this lady has a You Tube Channel.

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Bubbe’s Meatballs

Earlier last week, I spent a few hours in the kitchen cooking and baking up food to store in my fridge and freezer, in order to have some home cooked meals to eat while I spend another week in my nearly empty house. This recipe for Sweet & Sour Meatballs caught my eye not only because it was easy and called for very few ingredients (a plus when you are cleaning out your cupboards), but also because unlike many sweet & sour recipes, this version does not contain any ketchup and also does not call for pineapple. Instead, mild chili sauce is mixed with grape jelly to produce the sauce. I know this sounds a bit offbeat, but it really was quite good, if a bit sweet. I think you could likely try other combinations of jelly flavors, such as red pepper jelly. These were really easy and quite tasty, and they do indeed freeze and reheat beautifully.

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Strawberry Apple Fruit Squares aka “Jelly Jammies”

As I mentioned in my previous post, I tried out a few of the recipes presented in the cooking video demos at Feed Me Bubbe’s site. For dessert, I made these tasty little fruit squares – like little fruit brownies, with a layer of flaky pastry on the top and bottom, with a center layer of jam, nuts, and apple. These were incredibly easy to make, and an excellent way for me to use up nearly all of my remaining strawberry jam before I move. I think any jam you like would work well in these, and you could leave out the nuts or use a different nut if you like something else better. Personally, I loved the combination of the strawberries with the walnuts.

And thank you Bubbe for teaching me a great new trick in your video! Crushing the walnuts by placing them inside a zip-top baggie and then rolling a heavy can over them worked much better than I ever would have expected. I will never have to drag out my food processor again just to chop a few nuts. The can method gently ground up the nuts in a few seconds, without any concerns about having them blitzed into dust or mushed into paste, as can sometimes happen with an overzealous food processor.

You can find the recipe here for the Jelly Jammies. I made them exactly as described and highly recommend them.

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Credit Crunch: Bubbe’s Burgers

I recently starting watching a series of online cooking videos called Feed Me Bubbe, with recipes prepared by a charismatic and sweet Jewish Grandmother. I have tried three recipes from her show so far: her delicious burgers (recipe here), her meatballs, and her Jelly Jammies, little strawberry jam filled fruit squares. I will blog about the others later, but first.. the burgers.

These were really good! Quite easy to prepare, economical and no complicated ingredients. I think the hardest part was tearing up the fresh bread to make the soft bread crumbs. The burgers came out juicy and quite flavorful. Bubbe doesn’t add any salt, but I did add a few shakes of Jane’s Krazy Mixed up Salt (a coarse ground seasoned salt blend).

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