Conference taveng::bagels

    RE:  The Globe's recipes.  
    
    I rushed down to the library and took a photocopy.  If anyone wants a
    copy, please send Email and include your interoffice mailing address.
    
    RE:  Passover school lunches.  
    
    Ima and Abba!  I discovered a nifty way to make grilled cheese
    sandwiches with matzah, thanks to hi tech!
    
    Break matzah into 2 pieces each the size of the cheese slice.  (You CAN
    piece it together for the top matzah - the melted cheese will keep it
    together.)  Spread one side of each matzah with margarine or butter. 
    Buttered side goes next to the cheese.  Build sandwich inside a plastic
    sandwich bag.  Leave the bag loosely open.  Place in microwave.  
    
    Cook for 10-20 seconds, depending on your oven strength and how many
    sandwiches you make at once.  Better to cook less and add as you go,
    otherwise the cheese gets tough.  You should end up with slightly
    melted cheese gluing the whole thing together.  Smells good too!
    
    Place the bag with the sandwich in it in the refrigerator to cool for a
    few minutes while you finish packing lunch.  Leave bag open so any
    moisture will not condense on the matzah.
    
    Add a bag of cut fruit and little peanut butter sandwiches with those
    miniature matzah crackers and you're all set!
    
    Laura

    re: .1
    
    You probably need to forgo the peanut butter.  For those of Eastern
    European (Ashkinazic) pursuasion peanuts and other legumes are
    considered "Kitnios" and are not Kosher for Passover. Check with your
    local rabbi.
    
    ___Av

    Some years you can get cashew butter for the holiday - which is very
    tasty stuff, if you like cashews.  I didn't see it this year, but it
    wouldn't be hard to make (assuming you have a pesachdig blender bowl,
    which I don't) since you can get the cashews.
    
    /Charlotte

    RE:  peanut butter
    
    Given my great depth of knowledge <not> and frumkeit as regards kashrut
    <not> I hope no Jews take dietary advice from ME.  :-) :-)
    
    sign me
    Jill of all trades, rav of none,
    Laura

    My non-Jewish boss, whose wife is Jewish, says that the only way he
    wiwll eat matzoh is as a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.  He's much
    fonder of some of the other goodies I bring in here on occasion, but I
    brought a bunch of extra matzot today because our new Cantonese
    coworker didn't know what it was, let alone ever having eaten ay - he
    didn't care for it, either, oh well!
    
    /Charlotte

    
    about Peanut Butter... I can buy that but there is one thing that 
    confuses me. (well ... more then on, but...)
    
    The Oil that I bought that had Kosher for Passover on it is Peanut
    Oil.  Why would that be kosher for passover? it is obviously made 
    from peanuts, duh hey...  Anyway, why?
    
    Amy
    

For Sephardim legumes are permitted on Passover.  Thus the prohibition on
peanuts doesn't apply to them.  In order to indicate that the peanut oil is
certified to contain no chametz (only kitniot) the oil is marked pesadik.

Gav

    Also peanut oil has none of the attributes of peanuts (look, shape,
    etc.) ...there is also a tradition among some Ashkenasic communities (I
    think the Hungarians?) to use peanut oil.  Corn oil has no such
    tradition.

    re -2 and -1, I thought the issue wasn't that peanuts or corn CONTAINED
    chametz but rather that traditionally the method of storing things that
    resembled grain led to confusion and possible inadvertent
    transgressions.
    
    Please clarify this for me, anyone who can, because my husband and I
    have been having this discussion for three years now.  The first year
    we were married we just did things the way his family had done them. 
    Then when I started to become more confident about my own understanding
    of the holiday, I decided that I didn't have a problem with corn and
    corn products, since we don't store grain and purchase everything from
    the store and thus there was little chance of error.
    
    My husband says he has no problem with me keeping rice or ketchup
    (which contains corn syrup) in the house, but he doesn't feel right
    eating them because his family never did.  His attitude makes sense to
    me, and I offered to forgo peas and corn and nuts and such but he said
    that it wasn't necessary.  Still I don't know why other people make the
    distinctions they do (not that tradition isn't reason enough, but
    traditions had to start somewhere).
    
    Thanks in advance for any insight anyone more knowledgeable than I (and
    that leaves it pretty wide open) can provide...

re:.9
Here's my rather non-Orthodox understanding, fwiw.

There is NO halachic basis to any of the "kitniyot" restrictions; by
definition, they are just "minchag" (customary).  By Orthodox reckoning,
a custom should be treated as halachic if it's your family tradition.
But the custom is only defined by usage.

Kitniyot began to be eschewed in Poland maybe 900 years ago, when it
meant "legumes" and things like pea flour.  Corn and I think peanuts
are new world plants, so they are a recent extension of the custom
by some communities who have chosen to extend the minhag.  Likewise,
processed things like oils are fuzzy.  Most Orthodox heckshers for K-P
are written to the toughest standards, which accounts for the use of
semitoxic "foods" like cottonseed oil in the Passover department.

No authority says you must remove or sell kitniyot as if it were
chametz, just to not eat it.

    I didn't even see cottonseed oil this year - just as well, since I
    don't like the taste of it, and wonder whether it might have pesticide
    residues in it since cotton is not normally a food crop anyhow.  Except
    for the cottonseed oil margarine (which is pretty vile stuff,
    especially the unsalted kind we use) it didn't seem to be
    available.  I've been using good-quality olive oil and a little bit of
    peanut oil this year - at least it tastes good; I don't usually buy
    extra-virgin olive oil since it is rather costly!  A woman I ran into
    in the pre-Pesach shopping mob in Brookline said that some super-strict
    rabbis had banned cottonseed products this year because ground cotton
    seeds are now used as an 'extender' in diet breads (ugh).
    
    /Charlotte (wishing she had the vacation time to take today off!)

    Does anyone have a recipe for TSIMMES [or is it TSIMMIS]?  We're having
    brisket next week for seder and my husband decided it'd be nice to have
    this.
     i probably have one somewhere with my passover recipes but thought
    maybe this'd be faster...
    
    thanks.
    
    sandy

    1.5 lbs. carrots                  6 tbls brown sugar
    3 tbls. butter                    .5 tsp cinnamon
    .5 tsp salt                       .25 tsp cloves
    1 cup water                       1 tbls lemon juice
    .5 cups raisins                   grated orange peel
    1 cup pitted prunes               2 tbls honey
    
    1. Peel & slice the carrot into 1/8" slices.  Melt butter in a medium-
       large saucepan and saute the carrots for 5 minutes.
    2. Add the sugar & water and bring to a boil.  Stir in the remaining
       ingredients and simmer, covered for 2 hours.
    3. After 2 hours, remove the cover and cook 20 minutes more.  The
       tzimmes should be moist but not too soupy.
    
    Serves 8 as a side dish.
    
    regards,
    Mike

    Thanks!  will add prunes to next week's shopping list.
    
    sandy