Taming the Great Outdoors
Posted: April 5, 2013

If you're like me, you are brisketed and chickened out. Trapped indoors for the month of March, I take Wednesday as a personal day. I can't focus on my backlog of event proposals, let alone tackle the invoicing and general bookkeeping. I'm outta here! Tony, my chef and ex-landscaper, is more than willing to pickup some hours after the erratic schedule during Passover. Apartment dweller that I am, all I need is an overgrown yard to tackle. Fresh air and exercise; I know just the place.

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"GoyofKosher.com"
Posted: November 27, 2012

It's been a scramble since returning from Kosherfest. So many ideas; so many events to cater! Last week, with 450 meals to prepare for a Bat Mitzvah weekend of events, Thanksgiving throws a wrench into my production schedule. Reminiscent of the old bakery days, this secular Thursday holiday is usurped by more pressing obligations. Sending my kids off to family, I drown my sorrows in pumpkin pie; yep ~ 2 of them. I ate 2 pumpkin pies in 5 days.

Alone in the kitchen with the airplane droning sound of the range hood, the intermittent cycling of the refrigeration motors, the periodic ice falling in the ice machine and with Edgar Allan Poe heart trobbing and mental anguish as I watch the clock consume Thursday, I hear my Blackberry ping ~ I've got mail.

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Vote!
Posted: October 31, 2012

Post-yontif catering throws us into a tail-spin for a couple of weeks. 8 hours of sleep in 4 days catering a marathon is followed by a bar mitzvah party and UW reception. Cleo and I go to our respective couches and drop. Last Shabbos, I'm 18 hours under the blankets; TGIS! Coming out of Shabbos hibernation, I hear of a storm swirling off the east coast. Doing event planning for 3 days, I'm distracted by the devastation.

I've been catering through 2 wars, Katrina, Joplin and now this. While I'm safely calculating tablecloths and creating menus, my events large and small are specks on the global stage. I like to keep a perspective that is mindful of the times; minimize the urge toward more than necessary. Tasteful, elegant but not over-the-top. The majority of my customers fall into this mindset. Watching the destruction on TV, homes washing away and burning to the ground, it is challenging to at times to imagine a beautiful wedding and put the details to paper.

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Back in the Kitchen
Posted: July 30, 2012

The "Three Weeks" and "Nine Days" are over. I'm guilty of conflicting feelings; on one hand, the period of mourning should be just that and a time of reflection. That said, as a very busy caterer, I look forward to the down time. Parties are incongruous with the solemnity commemorating the destruction of The Temple. Kids are off to camps. I can catch up on paperwork....and, sleep.

People wonder how I do "it", party after party, simcha after simcha. Shabbat is necessary and I love, love that a power greater than myself gives me permission to do nothing one day a week. I need that; boy do I ever. And, once a year, I need the "Three Weeks" and this year more than ever. It's been crazy busy, thank G-d. With Aviva in Israel for a month and the Fourth of July behind me, I relish a few weeks without events....and, a few weeks to play in the new video kitchen.

Working on new videos

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Life Cycles
Posted: May 9, 2012

Yesterday, being the first bona fide work-is-optional day since well before Passover, allows me to attend the funeral of a young 40-something mother in the community. Alternating catering funerals and brisses over the past weeks, I'd felt small relief that births outnumbered deaths. My unofficial statistic offers little comfort when confronted with the life-is-optional reason for joining the community in burying one of our own.

My work doesn't often offer time for being on the rejoicing end of a simcha. The back of the house is where my energies are spent. I consider it an honor to assist and suport a seamless celebration of a Jewish lifecycle event. I miss countless weddings, bat mitzvahs, bar mitzvahs, shul dinners and school auctions. I try to never miss a funeral in my immediate community. As a convert, I find the art and functionality of the Jewish burial intensely real and quietly intimate. As friends and family shovel, the sound of metal on rock, gravel on wood fills the hollow of uncertainty within my soul. I don't know what lies beyond. We release the dead and comfort the living. Funerals are important and a community matters.

The Rabbi spoke with eloquent familiarity having been a mentor and friend of the deceased and her family. Speaking with authority, offering insight, wisdom and consolation, his words are heartfelt. He ends his eulogy with encouraging words that in the face of ultimate loss and grief, choose to love more not less and choose to give more, not less. Let us say, Amen.

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