A reader asked me how she can cook for Shabbat in two hours or less. I referred her to my tips for winter Fridays. Today I’ll describe what I actually do most weeks.
The biggest revelation for me was that I could serve the same thing both on Friday night and Shabbat morning. My kids are all happy with chicken and potatoes, so I make up a tray of cut-up chicken (my husband usually does that chore) for the oven and fill the pressure cooker with potatoes, which I scrub and don’t peel. If sweet potatoes are in season I add some, leaving them whole because they cook faster than white potatoes.
I don’t bake every week. I try to make a double batch of challah early in the week and freeze it. This week I made it on Friday, but I try to avoid that even though the taste is superior. Sometimes I roll out a piece of the challah dough for cake, spreading it with a thin layer of oil, cocoa powder or cinnamon, and sugar. You can add raisins, nuts or fruit, then roll it up like a jelly roll. Challah and/or cake is one convenience that I buy when I am short on time. With a big family, though, those expenses add up. Often one of my teens is happy to make a cake.
I always serve chicken soup on Friday night. If I don’t have a container frozen from a previous week, I use the neck or wings from a whole chicken. Since the family prefers dark meat I started putting the breast in the soup, removing it when it fully cooked and saving it for another recipe. Making soup involves peeling and cutting vegetables so it helps if some can be done in advance.
Appetizer for lunch is always cut melon or grapefruit, depending on the season, and we always have a fresh salad.
For seudah shlishit, the third sabbath meal in the afternoon, I’ll serve the side dishes or make a salad from the leftover potatoes. Otherwise we’ll have tuna, or cottage cheese in the summer.
That’s my basic menu. Time-permitting, or if I have company, I add techina, chumus, bulgur, or another cooked vegetable or salad. It’s a little low on vegetables, so I try to make up for that the rest of the week.
When you are planning don’t forget that washing dishes, cleaning and setting up for Shabbat can be time-consuming, especially if you have kids underfoot. So start early and remember that people get hungry on Fridays too.
If you enjoyed this post you might also like:
Saving Time in the Kitchen
Keep the Heat Out of Your Kitchen This Shabbat (see the update at the end)
Putting Quick Meals Together (CookingManager.Com)
Pressure Cookers for Quick, Tasty and Frugal Meals (CookingManager.Com)
Tweet This Post
Keeping the kitchen cool on Shabbat can be a challenge. Hot food has to be set up before Shabbat and kept warm, in a kitchen that may have seen a lot of cooking that day. And most people like to have warm food for Shabbat lunch too–most rabbis agree that it’s a halachic requirement. Here are some tips for keeping the kitchen cool over Shabbat. As a bonus, keeping the kitchen cool usually means saving on your energy bill.
Cooking:
- Cook early. Give your house a chance to cool off from all of the activity. But keep in mind that food spoils quickly in the heat. Get food into the refrigerator while it is still warm.
- Bake every few weeks, or don’t bake at all. It’s not worth turning on the oven for one cake. Watermelon or grapes make great dessert this time of year, or make cooked fruit, a crisp or pie in the microwave.
- Cook on top of the stove, which heats the kitchen less than the oven.
- Cook meals in a single pot.
- Cook outside if you have the option.
- Skip traditional hot dishes, like chicken soup or cholent. A crockpot may be energy efficient but it does warm the kitchen significantly.
- Avoid cooking while the air conditioner is on, and keep hot food away from drafts.
Warming Up Food
- Take advantage of “early Shabbat” (see below). Heat food as you normally would. Then turn the oven and burners off right before you light candles. Everything should still be quite hot by the time you eat.
- Use a timer. If you do use a hot plate, it doesn’t have to be on all night. Allow no more than an hour before meals to heat up the food.If you used the timer for Friday night, turn it off once you won’t be needing it again. This will prevent it turning on again late Shabbat afternoon. You can’t pull it out of the wall, but you can adjust the timer as long as the status stays the same: i.e. you can have it stay on or off for longer or or good. To turn off my timer for good I move the switch from the timer setting to the “0″ or off setting. Even though the crockpot needs to be on all night, you can still set the timer to turn it off after lunch and then flip the switch as described above.
Note: Not all rabbis permit this. If not, you can get a seven-day timer to accomplish the same thing.
- Insulate. Close pots well. Wrap food in towels or blankets, but beware of proximity to burners or hot plates. Use quilted covers for thermoses, and one of those newfangled decorated quilts made specifically to cover the food on the hot plate. (I want one of those.) For halachot see here.
More tips:
- Move food outside for warming. If you have an accessible outdoor space, keep your hot plate or your crockpot out there.
- Close the kitchen door, if you have one, to keep heat from the rest of the house.
- (Updated) Keep out the light . Light adds heat, so set timers carefully and adjust regularly as the seasons change. Switch to cooler fluorescent bulbs, and draw shades during the sunny part of the day.
How do you change your cooking style in the summer? Please share in the comments section.
Note: An early Shabbat means accepting the Sabbath before sunset on Friday usually about an hour before regular candlelighting time. Candles cannot be lit that early, though, and the wife usually lights them shortly before the rest of the family comes home from the synagogue.
For details about “early Shabbat” check out the Torah Tidbits primer.
Tweet This Post
This Shabbat meme comes from the Homeshuling blog. A meme is a set of questions answered by a variety of bloggers.
1. Challah – home baked or bought?
Usually home-baked.
2. Favorite shabbat meal:
Chicken soup, chicken with lemon and garlic, potatoes, salad, roast vegetables, fresh techina or chumus. Bulgur with onions, sometimes. Cake for dessert. Serious deviations are met with protest.
3. Any creative shabbat rituals?
Studying a passage from the Mishnah after two of the meals. We are currently in the tractate of Yevamot about the complex rules of levirate marriage, where a man married his brother’s childless widow so that the family line could be continued. The first half of the tractate lists various scenarios, then rules on whether the brother has to marry the widow in each case. My seven-year-old Y complained, “Someone gets married, someone dies, someone is born. It’s always the same thing.”
So we were surprised when Y brought up the topic on Shavuot. He was reading the book of Ruth with my husband and came across Naomi’s question, “Do I have sons in my stomach?” My husband explained that Naomi was asking her daughters-in-law if they were hanging around with her hoping for replacements for their dead husbands.
After we cleared up the stomach issue, Y pointed out that Naomi’s baby “lo hayah be-olamo.” Even if Naomi would have a baby who grew up to marry one of her widowed daughters-in-law, the marriage wouldn’t count as a levirate marriage. Yevamot teaches that the surviving brother must be “in [the dead brother's] world,” i.e. alive at the time of the first brother’s death.
4. Shul? With or without the kids?
I usually go on the late side with my 5 and 7-year-olds.
5. Traditionally shomer shabbat? If not, what’s your definition/style?
Strictly shomer shabbat. No driving, no refrigerator lights, phones or computers, etc., from Friday before sunset until after dark on Saturday.
6. Favorite shabbat story/book
Well, my kids like to read the parsha sheets put out by the different organizations. No special Shabbat books.
7. No seventh question – time to rest.
All bloggers are invited to participate. Just leave a comment with the link at Homeshuling’s post.
Related:
The Day is Short and the Work is Long: Efficient Shabbat Preparations
Tzniut Meme: Modesty in Women’s Dress
Tweet This Post
This is Part III of a series on pashkevilim, the anti-establishment wall posters hung in large haredi neighborhoods. The series is based on a talk by Tzuriel Rashi of Michlelet Lifshitz and Bar Ilan University.
See Part I and Part II.
Pashkevil forbidding the use of Zionist banknotes. Credit: Ben Chorin
A major concern for the haredi community in recent years has been cell phones. When chassidim who worked with troubled youth realized how easily a cell phone could be connected to the outside world, they alerted their leaders and an emergency meeting took place between the leaders of the various haredi communities. Even Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the Sephardic chief rabbi, was invited. As a first step the haredim demanded that the cellphone companies stop selling phones with internet to the haredi public. The companies refused to give up such a lucrative source of cash.
The next step was to issue a set of draconian rules, published in newspapers and on pashkevilim, that included the immediate expulsion from school of any student found with an internet cell phone. A boycott was called and the haredi newspapers refused to advertise cellphone companies, taking a large financial loss.
Eventually the companies agreed to market an inexpensive phone for the haredi market without text messages, video, or internet. A secular columnist wrote about his wife trying to buy one when she learned how cheap it was. However, only 30% of haredim own one. One haredi told Rashi that many keep two types of cellphones: “Echad lemaan yishme’u ve-echad lemaan yirau:” One so that they may hear, and one so that they will be afraid. (The source is a combination of two biblical verses).
A few years ago the haredi community had a dispute with Bank Leumi because it wanted to build a hotel in Tiberias on top of what turned out to be a Jewish cemetery. Soon a pashkevil went up, pictured above, warning about the pictures of women and Zionists that even the most zealous haredim carry in their wallet—in the form of Israeli banknotes. After all, banknotes contain photographs of Golda Meir, Ben Gurion, and others. The only acceptable one is the NIS 1000 note with a picture of the Rambam, the medieval sage Maimonides. The pashkevil suggested a solution—reverting to a barter system. The secular press wrote about this pashkevil without realizing that it was intended as a spoof.
Another tongue-in-cheek pashkevil went up in advance of the annual kiddush on the Shabbat after the holiday of Simchat Torah and warned against the dangers of the traditional Jerusalem kugel. Five reasons were listed for banning the sweet and spicy noodle pudding:
- The long stringy noodles resemble worms, which are clearly forbidden.
- The hot kugel is served with cold pickles, which may inadvertently lead to cooking on the Sabbath, a prohibited activity.
- The kugel is often cut into triangles and resembles the foreign, suspicious food known as pizza.
- The noodles are made of flour, which is known to have kashruth issues such as insect infestation.
- The smell of the kugel in the synagogue on Shabbat morning distracts the worshipper from his prayers.
You can find a collection of fake pashkevillim at Ben-Chorin’s blog. Next week I hope to have a guest post by a blogger involved in a couple of those spoofs.
Part I and Part II.
Tweet This Post
The holiday of Shavuot begins Thursday evening. Known in English as Pentecost because it takes place fifty days after Passover, Shavuot commemorates the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai. The two main customs associated with the holiday are serving dairy foods and staying up all night to study Torah. Staying up all night only became popular once coffee became readily available in Europe.
This year the one-day holiday of Shavuot leads right into Shabbat. Cooking is permitted, but only for the holiday itself. This creates a problem with heating or cooking food for the Sabbath, when all cooking is forbidden. To get around this we put aside some cooked food on Thursday, before the holiday begins, make a blessing and designate it for one of the Shabbat meals. It’s as if we begin cooking officially for Shabbat before the holiday actually started. This food is known as an Eruv Tavshilin.
In Israel all yamim tovim—the holidays with this restriction—are observed for only one day with the exception of Rosh Hashanah. Outside of Israel every yom tov is two days long. Judging by the crowds, it seems that many Israelis panic at the thought of stores closing for two days in a row. A one-day observance also means that making an Eruv Tavshilin is rare. Here the only holidays that can fall on Fridays are Shavuot, the second day of Rosh Hashanah, and the last day of Passover, and that doesn’t happen even every year.
Readers still looking for holidays recipes can check out Gillian of Food Past’s Kosher Cooking Carnival, with added efficiency ratings. You can try my Sourdough Chocolate Cake or Seven-Minute Microwave Cheesecake. Israeli Kitchen has a luscious looking cheesecake and Shimshonit provides both dairy and pareve menus.
Last but not least, funny man Benji hosts Haveil Havalim.
Have a chag sameach and Shabbat shalom.
Tweet This Post
Glossary below.
Two holidays are so special that the preceding Shabbat has special significance: The Shabbat before Pesach is known as Shabbat Hagadol, and the Shabbat before Yom Kippur is called Shabbat Shuvah. The rabbi always gives a special shiur on the other two special sabbaths. Tomorrow he will be speaking on the approach to Torah study of Rabbi Schneuer Zalman of Liady, author of the Tanya.
The rabbi wrote that the Shabbat before Shavuot was known in ancient times as Shabbat Kallah. The giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai, celebrated on Shavuot, is a symbolic marriage between God, the groom, and the Jewish people, the bride. The Torah is also considered the bride of the Jewish people.
In the book of Jeremiah, the nation of Jewish idol worshippers is compared to an unfaithful wife. (The women in our study group, which began studying Jeremiah several months ago, don’t like this analogy at all.)
Shabbat: Sabbath. Pesach: Passover. Shabbat Hagadol and Shabbat Shuvah are named after the haftarah (prophetic reading) read in synagogue on those days and mean, respectively, the great Sabbath and the Sabbath of repentance. Shiur: Lecture on Jewish texts. Shabbat Kallah: Sabbath of the bride. Shavuot: Pentecost.
Tweet This Post
