I made a lovely dinner of roast chicken and potatoes today. I came away not only totally satisfied but with a sense of having connected with a greater (folk) culinary tradition in this country and many others. How simple and wonderful is a roasted chicken? I can’t even begin to describe.
But the point of this post revolves around the second half of dinner. The tarte tatin that I had planned to make. The tarte is almost a non-entity since the apples burned soon after the sugar started caramelizing, bringing my cast iron pan and my hopes of a good tarte for dinner. All of this occurred, though AFTER I’d made the crust dough, which contained 10 tbsp of very cold butter.
Thanks to a kitchen calamity, I was spared actually eating the dairy-based dessert with our meat dinner.
I’ve been putting a lot of thought and attention into keeping kosher, trying to figure out just how far I need to take it to achieve a meaningful level, while also considering what is practical in the life of a new Jew by Choice who is married to a born but Atheist Jew.
For example, I don’t really care that I put butter into the Cuisinart container, beIt’cause no meat has been or ever will be, in all likelihood, in my Cuisinart. What sense would it make? With that said, though, do I care that I should ever use anything that comes out of my dairy Cuisinart in a meal containing meat? Yes – this is a serious problem; it’s hard to keep track of and it affords the risk of driving me completely batshit insane.
It’s a little sticky. On one hand, I want to be an observant Jew – not Orthodox, but making my Judaism an active and meaningful part of my life. I find that the laws of kashrut, in particular, tend to make me mindful of things that I like paying attention to, or that I think it is good to pay attention to, anyway. I like to know what’s in my food, that it’s organic or fair trade or free range, and so forth. Checking the kosher status, and whether a product contains meat vs dairy is another angle to that but which helps me to be mindful of the basic principle that food is a privilege when it takes the life of another creature in order to sustain mine.
I wonder if on some level that is what many of the mitzvot (commandments) are designed to do – raise awareness of the rote habits we go through every day of our lives, and determine what their meaning and value are. In any case, I find kashrut particularly meaningful, though other laws as well.
On the other hand, I could literally go crazy worrying about whether I should ever eat bread from my bread machine with meat ever in the future because I used a pat of butter in there in one loaf once, or which pans I’ve used dairy in so that I can decide whether it can be used for elements of a meat meal (if not for meat itself.)
It sounds crazy (hence the quandary) but since I have determined that this system of self governance has meaning for me, now I need to decide to what extent I should take it. I cannot afford to have entirely separate fleichig and milchig cookware, dishes and dishes/flatware. I think that to be constantly, or even occasionally, kashering all of my kitchen equipment is wasteful of water and energy, not to mention my time (though my time is more abundant than many people’s.) I can’t even begin to imagine how I’d keep track of what all my pans are or have been used for.
To take the discussion to an even further level still…. The Torah’s milk/meat prohibition says that we should not boil a kid in its mother’s milk. Literally, that is all that is said. I can appreciate, then, not eating milk products with beef, or goat milk products with goat, etc. I can even appreciate not eating any form of meat, poultry, etc with milk as a symbolic avoidance of taking a life and consuming it in a sauce concocted from the very liquid intended to sustain new life. But where this all breaks down for me is why I can’t use the same pans. What is the likelihood of microscopic drops of milk sticking to my stainless steel through cooking, scouring, hot water, soap, and rinsing to make it through a second heating of the pan?
I don’t mean to deride the Talmudic applications of kashrut, and clearly I’m torn on whether I am able or willing to get to this level of observance. But how do we know that a hundred or a thousand years from now, Talmud II won’t have been compiled with a new set of writings, teachings and conclusions? Someone who knows more about why Talmudic law came down so strict about the milk and meat issue, I would love to have a comment from you.
Here’s what I have determined, though. In our house, each meal will be kosher in preparation. I will not bring non-kosher foods into our house to be prepared, nor combine milk and meat in any meal cooked at home.
Also, I’ve negotiated with Ben that specifially the kitchen will be the kosher area. He was not OK with the idea that I might tell him he can’t bring his cheeseburger home, and since living together means compromise, I’ve just asked him to promise not to bring it into the kitchen, if such an event were ever to occur.
While what I’ve concluded probably sounds tidy and manageable, it doesn’t resolve the feeling that I’m not doing my absolute best here. I feel as though I am half-assing something that actually reflects my native values, the ones that don’t depend on religion – they come with this body. How do I balance kashrut against my personal sanity? Again, I would love to have comments from people who have achieved some kind of comfort zone in their struggle to keep kosher while also keeping happy and sane.
The silver lining is that I can use my tarte crust tomorrow, and then it will be kosher.
