Gefilte Fish
One of the great things about this career is that I get to rediscover things that I once thought that were a tad . . . how shall we say . . . blech. Like gefilte fish.
Having grown up in the Danish modern '60s, I thought a lot of things came from cans and jars. Like gefilte fish. (Someday, I'll tell you my Vienna Sausage story. Or as they say where I'm from: "Vie-EE-nuh SAW-suhj.")
Last night, as every year, Bruce made the real thing for our seder. Yes, gefilte fish is a bit of a saga to make. Don't forget these things were "invented" to "save work" on the Sabbath--in this case, to save the work of separating the fish from its bones. Someone could thus make an inexpensive fish dish in advance. Of course, the work-saver turned out to be laborious. My guess is it's because the people who made the rules weren't the ones who had to implement said rules.
Which brings me back to real food. It's always easier to go the jarred route. But nothing beats the original. And if you're going to celebrate the redemption of an entire race, I think you should go the whole route. (I originally wrote "go whole hog" here but thought maybe it wasn't quite right for Passover.)
So here's what Bruce did:
Jewish, comfort food, fish, gefilte fish, passover, pesach