National Iced Tea Month

June 27, 2018 Sharon Jacobson

This time of year, well anytime of year, I enjoy sipping on a cup of tea. On those cold days, I love sipping on a hot cup of tea and feeling the heat from the cup warm me up inside and out. During the summer, however, I look forward to a tall cup of iced tea. Maybe that is why June was chosen as National Iced Tea Month.

A friend of mine once told me that iced tea was created by accident at the 1904 St Louis World’s Fair. It seems a vendor was trying to sell hot tea on a hot day. People wanted something cool, not hot, so he iced it down and it became a hit. Other food scholars suggest that people were writing about iced tea in cookbooks dating back to 1842. Regardless of how it came to be, it is now something people around the world enjoy drinking on hot summer days.

P is for Patience

February 20, 2014 Sharon Jacobson

My inspiration for patience actually came from thinking about how some foods require patience in making them. My wife, who does not cook, discovered once that it takes patience to make something as simple as a quesadilla. Until she had to make one for herself, she did not realize how I patiently waited for each side to be the perfect level of “doneness” for her. Quesadillas are not the only food that requires patience in its preparation. When I am making my own gravlax, I have to patiently wait for three days while it undergoes it’s transformation in the refrigerator.

Last week, I began thinking about some of the foods we grew up eating. Growing up in a Jewish household, many of the foods people get in Jewish delicatessens today are things I used to make at home with my mother. She would patiently sit with me and teach me how to make foods such as gefilte fish, kugels, kishka, kasha, halvah, rugelach, chicken soup with matzo balls, cabbage rolls, and so much more. However, there was one thing my mother never taught me how to make and I wish she had – pastrami. Instead, every few months we would take the subway to New York City and take a family trip to Katz’s delicatessen. There we would buy pounds of food to bring home. To fuel us up on the way home, my parents would always treat us to corned beef or pastrami sandwiches. Pastrami was always my favorite.

It’s Pickling Time!

September 13, 2013 Sharon Jacobson

Did you know that every day of the year is a national food holiday and that sometimes we are celebrating more then one food at a time? Today is pickle day and the minute I saw that my mouth began to water and my memories floated back to being a young girl and pickling with my mom or going to see the pickle king when she did not have time to pickle. Oh and I loved those visits to the pickle king. I think I was his best marketing tool. I would stand by the big kegs of pickles, pickled tomatoes, pimentos, and sauerkraut and salivate. He would let me “sample” the goods and I would continuously proclaim to customers how good they were. All the while, my mother watched me out of the corner of her eye while she picked up fruits and vegetables by the nearby vendors. She shopped, I ate pickles and pickled tomatoes, and the pickle king sold jars to people who watched me enjoy what I was eating one little bite at a time. I cried the day the pickle king man stopped coming as that was part of what made going to the market with my mother so much fun. With him gone, my mother and I would spend considerable more time pickling. While our pickles and pickled tomatoes were good, it was a different experience then being able to make them swim in their kegs and pick out the perfect pickle.

So you’re a loxsmith?

September 5, 2013 Sharon Jacobson

We were packing up our table at a healing and psychic fair when a couple, Jane and Charles, stopped by. I pulled out information to share with them and that was the beginning of an enjoyable and interesting conversation, which wound up with us talking about bagels, lox, and cream cheese. As those of you who have been reading this blog for a while know, lox and cream cheese, especially TempTee cream cheese holds a place near and dear to my heart. Charles and I were talking about how hard it was to find good lox in Rochester and how it inspired me to learn how to make it. “How do you smoke it?’ he asked. “ I don’t, I brine it for three days.” I replied. “Oh, so you’re a loxsmith,” he responded and the seed was planted as I found myself staring at these beautiful wild Alaskan salmon fillets at the store the other day, but knowing this was not the week where I would have the time to pull out all those pin bones. I could have also gone with the farm-raised salmon, which tend not to have the pin bones, but some things are worth paying a little bit more for. Even paying more for the wild salmon is still considerably less then what I would pay for the pre-packaged lox, so I would be saving money and giving myself a special treat to enjoy for the week to come.

Spiritual Grilling Lessons

June 12, 2013 Sharon Jacobson

A friend of mine laughs at me and says I can find spiritual lessons in just about everything. So when I offered to help a friend learn how to grill, it also got me thinking about the qualities that are important when making food on the grill.

One of the things I began thinking about is that the quality of what comes off the grill often depends on what is done before the food ever goes on the grill. This past Memorial Day, like every other holiday, we had our potluck barbecue. A friend called me the day before to let me know she was bringing some marinated chicken and pork chops. By the time she arrived, the meats had been sitting in their marinades for more then 24 hours. The marinades had soaked through the meats and you know that every bite you took would be incredibly flavorful. Conversely, another friend brought some chicken to cook, which was not seasoned or marinated at all. She brushed some sauce on while it was cooking. While it looked flavorful and tasty, it was dry and flavorless. The one that had been marinating all night was moist and juicy and made you want to keep going back for more; it was that good.

Old Schools

May 9, 2013 Sharon Jacobson

Alex defines Old School as “anything or things that refer to a previous generation of a subject/idea/object/etc. typically, they are highly regarded and sometimes the very things that started it all.”[1] What makes this book old school is that it tells the story of how things got started within her and continue to exist in her cooking to this day. It is the common thread, which runs across her life and her cooking, which tells the story of how she came to where she is in her culinary journey.

Quesadillas: A Lesson in Patience

February 22, 2013 Sharon Jacobson

My wife loves quesadillas, not the fancy ones, just a plain cheese quesadilla. For the last 11 years, I have always been the one who has made them for her. Most of the time she tells me I have once again achieved the perfect state of crunchiness on both sides. Once sliced in half and sometimes served with sides of sour cream and salsa, she begins the experience of eating and savoring them, commenting on the crunch factor and the type of cheese used (cheddar is always better.

Herbal Essence: No, not the shampoo!

May 31, 2012 Sharon Jacobson

A former professor once told that the way to entice people to read your blog or peak their interest in your sermon was to come up with a catchy title. So if you are reading this, then hopefully that means my title worked. I was playing with the tile “parsley, sage, rosemary, and time”, but decided I liked Herbal Essence better because it really got at the essence of what I have been thinking about this week: herbal essence. There was a time (not thyme), when I never used fresh herbs and spent my entire cooking life using dried herbs and spices. Then I expanded my repertoire and began using fresh herbs. However, as a scripture says, “for everything there is a purpose under heaven.” This is true of herbs as well. There is a time for dry and a time for fresh. There is a thyme for every seasoning under heaven. (Hope you do not mind my humor). However, the essence of my herbal humor is true.

Making a way out of no way.

January 27, 2012 Sharon Jacobson

I had started writing this reflection a few days ago, but something kept me from posting it to my website. Perhaps, it was because I needed to go to Zoë’s last chemotherapy session first. A conversation with one of the husband’s there touched my heart. His wife was going through her third bout with cancer, this time in her throat. It was hard to get her to eat because nothing tasted good. He was beating himself up because he could not find a way to make food taste good to her. When you are on chemotherapy it affects your taste buds in ways you cannot describe to anyone else. For those preparing the food, it is a constant guessing game because what tasted good on Monday does not taste good on Tuesday. It can take the Zen out of cooking even for those who experience Zen while cooking. Learning how to make things taste good for Zoe has challenged me to really listen to why something does not taste good, so I can think about what will make it taste good. This is what I had asked this gentleman. What are her complaints?

Trying not to get chopped!

November 25, 2011 Sharon Jacobson

If you have read my blog, you know that I am a chopped fanatic. Just about every episode I learn something new and exciting about food. I also learn a spiritual lesson in the process. The last few weeks have been a challenge in our kitchen and in my own way, I feel as if I have been on the chemo-care version of Chopped. I have no been given a basket of mystery ingredients from which I have to create an appetizer, entrée, and desert. Rather, Zoë’s taste buds are on a temporary vacation. It started a few weeks ago when most things started tasting like cardboard, and then I discovered the amazing ability of salt to take things from cardboard to palatable. I though I had it all worked out and could figure out how to create things that would make her enjoy eating again and not want to send the food back to the kitchen because it tastes like cardboard.

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