xiphias: (Default)
[personal profile] xiphias
+ I made sufganyot today. I've never had them before, so I don't know what they're supposed to be like, but the things I made were pretty good. See, Internet + Cooking + Me is kind of bad -- I look up a recipe, find six or twelve, look at them, notice the commonalities, and then make up my own version. I know that you're supposed to follow a recipe the first time you make something, especially if you've never even seen the item you're making, but I had descriptions of them, and they sounded good, and the things I made kind of fit the description, and were good.

- I failed to make some sort of baked good or something for Lis's work potluck tomorrow. Because I was making sufganyot instead.

+ The oil lamp we made works. And it's stable enough that Lis said I could leave it unattended for fifteen minutes at a time. And it was fine.

+ I relatively competently dealt with a financial issue (paperwork stuff, phoning someone, getting copies of forms kind of thing)

- I forgot to make an appointment to get the car's oil changed.

+ I bought some of the stuff that Lis needed at the store.

- I forgot some of the stuff that Lis wanted at the store.

{} Anna's funeral is tomorrow.

Sufganyot are a jelly-filled fried thingy. They're a traditional Hannukah dish, where "traditional" is defined as "made up and popularized within the last century or so by people who wanted to make a statement that they were TOTALLY DIFFERENT from their parents and grandparents."

And they're yummy. See, "things fried in oil" are a traditional thing to eat on Hannukah, because a) miracle of the oil thingy b) baby, it's cold outside, and so we should eat lots of calories c) our arteries are failing to clog fast enough. And the main "thing fried in oil" tradition of the Ashkenazic Jews was, and is, latkes. And so, when the Zionists were settling Israel, one of the messages they wanted to send is that "we're totally different from the kinds of Jews from whom we're descended, so we won't speak Yiddish, we'll pronounce Hebrew differently, and we'll have different holiday traditions." But you can't dump latkes without replacing them with something else, and preferably something better.

I'm not going to say that sufganyot are better than latkes, but they're certainly good. Or at least, the things I made that are sufganyot-like are good.

(no subject)

Date: 2006-12-22 07:36 am (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
Thought you might like my Israeli aunt's reply (sent a link to her):
Sufganiyot are jelly-filled doughnuts - they don't have a hole, just round fried doughnuts that afterwards are injected with jelly, or some other filling of your choice. I don't buy the story that they developed as an antithesis to latkes (we still have latkes AND sufganiyot!), but they are popular - mostly store-bought these days - and wildly unhealthy!!

Wednesday I had latkes at work (the cook made them for the staff), then made them at home that night (plain potato, potato/sweet potato and potato/apple) and last night had some more at a friends... I don't particularly like the sufganiyot (American-style doughnuts are also catching on here, glazed, etc.) but have to have one for "tradition!!"

Have a good rest of Chanukah,

Love, Trudy
-- Val

November 2018

S M T W T F S
     123
45678910
11121314151617
18192021222324
252627282930 

Most Popular Tags

Page Summary

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags