Thinking about activities to plan for days when the weather isn’t great? Of course I think about baking.. with or without children…it is so therapeutic and the rewards are fantastic!!!

Years ago, my mother, the late Ruth Janoff (who this blog is a tribute to) used to make a carrot cake from scratch, even grating the carrots. I have been searching for a recipe for years that reminded me of that cake and last weekend at a friend’s Chanukah party, I tasted such a cake. So here is the recipe from my friend Jean from New Milford for an authentic carrot cake with cream cheese icing (it would taste great even without the icing). Happy New Year to all my blog followers…may it be a healthy one with lots of yummy recipes too!!!!

Jean’s Carrot Cake  

(pareve if you eliminate the icing)

4 eggs, well beaten
1 1/4 cups sugar
1 1/2 cups oil (safflower oil)
3 cups flour
1 teaspoon vanilla or almond extract
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
2 cups carrots, chopped (4 small carrots)
1/2 cup walnuts, chopped (optional)
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 cup raisins (optional)

Beat eggs. Add sugar and beat. Add all other ingredients. Mix with a wooden spoon until mixed. Spray pan with baking spray. Pour in a tube pan or a 9 by 12 inch pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 50 minutes. Cool 10 minutes. Turn upside down on rack.

Cream Cheese Icing

(dairy)

4 ounces cream cheese, softened
½ stick butter, softened
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 ½ cups confectioner’s sugar
2 tablespoons milk

Cream the cream cheese and butter. Blend vanilla, sugar, and milk.

From “A Lifetime Burning in Every Moment”

“From the Journals of Alfred Kazin”

“They are all individualists and all intellectuals. They want to talk about everything, they want to discuss everything,
they want to debate everything—and they come to totally different conclusions.”

from the Internet…....

Judges Are Jewish
Juries Are Goyish
 

Taking all the mini hotel shampoos is   Jewish
Using them is Goyish

Ordering family style is Jewish
Ordering a la carte is Goyish

Cruises are Jewish
Walking tours are Goyish

Laugh-In was Jewish
Hee Haw was Goyish

Grabbing lox from the back of the buffet first, is Jewish
Grabbing melon from the front is Goyish

Bunions are Jewish
Flat feet are Goyish

Simon Says is Jewish
The Hokey Pokey is Goyish

“Bewitched” is Jewish
“I Dream of Jeannie” is Goyish

The Limbo is Jewish
Line dancing is Goyish

Taking from your mate’s plate is Jewish
Not wanting even a “little taste” is Goyish

Fruitcake is Goyish
Fruit and cake is Jewish

Reading “how-to” books is Goyish
Writing “how-to” books is Jewish

ESPN is Goyish
PBS is Jewish

Tiffany’s is Goyish
      Your Uncle Ira in the Jewelry District is Jewish

Passing bars is Goyish
Passing the Bar Exam is Jewish

DIY (Do it Yourself) is Goyish
PAG (Pay A Goy who knows what he’s doing) is Jewish

Mary Kay is Goyish
Murray the K is Jewish

The Chia pet infomercial is Goyish
Ronco spray-on hair is Jewish

Morbidly obese is Goyish
Baby fat is Jewish

NASCAR is Goyish. Period.

West Coast is Goyish
East Coast is Jewish

Lunch meat is Goyish;
Deli is Jewish

White bread is Goyish;
Rye bread is Jewish

Sushi is Jewish;
Chopsticks are Goyish

Comforters are Goyish

Suspenders are Jewish;
Overalls are Goyish

Waldbaum’s was Jewish;
A&P was Goyish.
(Now A&P is the parent company of Waldbaum’s!)

Alan Sherman was Jewish;
Weird Al Yankovic, not so much

Laughing at someone else’s troubles is Goyish;
Laughing at your own troubles is Jewish

“Youngsters” are Goyish,
“Kids” are Jewish

  Buttering bread is Goyish;
  Spreading margarine is Jewish

    Waiting quietly to get served is Goyish:
    Standing and waving one’s hands is Jewish

I have just one thing to say about the Heineken can.
Maybe beer is Goyish,
but Freddie Heineken, the founder of the Heineken Brewery in Amsterdam (a very Jewish city) was a Jewish man…just
thought to tell you that…well,
pointing this out is Jewish too ...

WWF is Goyish,
the NBA is Jewish

Tattoos and piercing are Goyish;
Diamonds and pearls are Jewish

Ham sandwiches are Goyish;
Corned beef on rye is Jewish

White sox are Goyish;
No sox are Jewish

Saving Money is Goyish;
Investing money is Jewish

Doing Landscaping is Goyish;
Hiring a Landscaper is Jewish

Beer is Goyish;
Wine is Jewish

Frizzy hair is Jewish;
Stick straight flat hair is Goyish

A party that revolves around the buffet table is Jewish:
A party that revolves around the bar is Goyish

Making lists of what’s Jewish and what’s not .. is VERY Jewish

by Alan Dershowitz - Nov 11, 2011

Imagine your son or daughter is admitted to the University of Chicago, one of the world’s most elite institutions of learning, and tells you that he has been lucky enough to have a course with one of the university’s most prominent professors, John Mearsheimer, the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Then imagine your child tells you that his favorite professor has just recommended that everyone should read a “fascinating and provocative” book that makes the following assertions of fact:

While the Holocaust “was not at all an historical narrative,” the “accusations of Jews making matzo out of young Goyim’s blood,” may be true (page 175, 185).

Jews caused the recent credit crunch, which the author calls “the Zio-punch” (page 22).

The American media “failed to warn the American people of the enemy within” because of money (page 27).

“[M]ore and more Jews are being pulled into an obscure, dangerous and unethical fellowship” (page 21).

If Iran and Israel fight a nuclear war that kills millions of people, “some may be bold enough to argue that ‘Hitler might have been right after all’” (page 179).

The “new Jewish religion…could well be the most sinister religion known to man…” (page 149).

The author of the book containing these statements has told students that he cannot “say whether it’s right or not to burn down a synagogue. I can say that it is a rational act.” He has also apologized to the Nazis for having earlier compared them to Israel:

“Many of us including me tend to equate Israel to Nazi Germany. Rather often I myself join others and argue that Israelis are the Nazis of our time. I want to take this opportunity to amend my statement. Israelis are not the Nazis of our time and the Nazis were not the Israelis of their time. Israel is in fact far worse than Nazi Germany and the above equation is simply meaningless and misleading.”

He has written that we “must begin to take the accusation that the Jewish people are trying to control the world very seriously,” and that “with Fagin and Shylock in mind, Israeli barbarism and organ trafficking seem to be just other events in an endless hellish continuum.”

The scenario described above—a prominent professor endorsing the content of a blatantly anti-Semitic book—is not imaginary. John Mearsheimer has in fact written a glowing endorsement (this “fascinating and provocative” book “should be widely read.”) of a virulently anti-Semitic book by an infamously bigoted author.

The book is titled The Wandering Who? and has just been published by Gilad Atzmon, a British saxophonist and well-known bigot, who acknowledges that many of the “insights” in his book come from a man who “was an anti-Semite” and a hater of “almost everything that fails to be Aryan masculinity” (page 89-90). He declares himself a “proud self-hating Jew” and writes of his “contempt” of “the Jew in me” (page 94). Mearsheimer’s endorsement appears prominently on the first page of the book. He is not merely defending Atzmon’s right to publish this anti-Semitic book; he is endorsing the book’s content.

Mearsheimer was joined in his endorsement of this anti-Semitic book by Richard Falk, the Milibank Professor of International Law Emeritus at Princeton University. Falk’s endorsement, which appears on the cover of The Wandering Who?, calls the book “absorbing,” “moving,” and “transformative.” He says the book has “integrity” and should not only “be read but reflect[ed] upon and discuss[ed] widely.” One wonders precisely which part of the book Falk wants his students to discuss widely: that the Holocaust is “not an historical narrative”? That Jews may be guilty of “making matzo out of young Goyim’sblood”? or the possibility that “Hitler may have been right after all”?

I have certainly seen strong academic endorsements of books that are extreme in their hatred of Israel, but never in my long professional life have I encountered prominent American academics endorsing blatant anti-Semitism. A red line has been crossed for the first time, and this dangerous and unprecedented crossing must be noted and responded to.

Professor Mearsheimer should neither be fired nor censured for his endorsement of the world’s oldest bigotry, because his academic freedom gives him the right to endorse anti-Semitic views and to endorse any book he chooses.

But unless Mearsheimer publicly withdraws his endorsement, he should be shunned by his colleagues and his students for collaborating with evil. Mearsheimermay not be an anti-Semite himself, but he has given aid and comfort to anti-Semitism by urging his students to take seriously the content of The Wandering Who?

The sad reality is that Mearsheimer is not being shunned. He is being supported by his colleague, Brian Leiter, the Llewellyn Professor of Jurisprudence at the University of Chicago Law School, who says that the criticism of Mearsheimer is “hysterical” because Atzmon’s“positions [do not mark him] as an anti-Semite [but rather as] cosmopolitan.” Mearsheimer is also being supported by my Harvard colleague, Professor Stephen Walt and several other American academics.

Therein lies the shame—and the danger.

Alan Dershowitz is the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard Law School.

Hope all my loyal readers have been cutting out the recipes from the last two weeks of The Jewish Standard. There were some fabulous ones. In my review, I promised a few more recipes from “Temptations,” a new cookbook by members of Cong. Keter Torah in Teaneck www.ketertorah.org/cookbook as well as from “Fresh & Easy Kosher Cooking” (Artscroll) by Leah Schapira. I am also including a donut recipe (thinking sufganiot) from a beautiful new book “Rose Petal Jam — Recipes & Stories From a Summer in Poland” (Tabula Books). Although not a kosher cookbook, there are many adaptable recipes, and the photos and stories from Poland (so many of us have ancestors from there) are just breathtaking and wonderful. Author Beata Zatorska (with Simon Target) recall childhood in Poland, mixing stories of youth with her grandmother’s handwritten recipes.

Thinking about a good main dish to serve with the latkes — from “Temptations” is an easy recipe for sweet and sour spareribs.. from “Fresh & Easy Kosher Cooking” is a good one for honey mustard chicken. Enjoy!

Sweet and sour spareribs

8 ounces puréed (can use baby food)
1/2 cup chili sauce
3 cloves garlic, crushed
3 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon teriyaki sauce
¼ cup brown sugar
1/4 cup lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon dry mustard
4 pounds beef spareribs (flanken)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Combine peaches, chili sauce, crushed garlic, soy sauce, teriyaki sauce, brown sugar, lemon juice, and dry mustard in a saucepan. Place spareribs in a roasting pan and pour chili sauce mixture over meat. Bake the spareribs, covered, for 2 1/2 hours. Lower heat to 325 degrees, uncover spareribs, and bake for an additional 30 minutes.

Yield 6 to 8 servings. The recipe is easily doubled.

Honey-mustard chicken

1 1/2 pounds chicken cutlets
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon pepper
3-4 tablespoons oil
2 large onions, diced
(optional vegetables—suggestions.. red or yellow bell peppers, sugar-snap peas, baby corn, water chestnuts, carrots, mushrooms)
3 tablespoons honey
3 tablespoons soy sauce
3 tablespoons mustard

Cut chicken cutlets into 2-inch strips. Season with salt and pepper. Heat the oil in a large frying pan over medium heat. Add onion and cook for 10-15 minutes or until golden brown. Add chicken strips and cook for 5 minutes. Add vegetables, if using. Add honey, mustard, and soy sauce. Cook for 10-15 minutes—stirring occasionally, or until sauce reduces. Serve over orzo or rice. (Beth’s note..or with latkes!)

Yield 3 to 4 servings.

Donuts (Pczki) with Rose Petal Jam

From “Rose Petal Jam – Recipes and Stories from a Summer in Poland” by Beata Zatorska and Simon Target, target='_blank'> http://www.tabulabooks.com.

My Polish grandmother filled these yeasty buns with jam made from the rose petals I gathered as a child, then left them to puff up under towels on tables and chairs, sofas and sideboards. Visitors, attracted by the smell of her baking, had to be careful where they sat. She simply crushed the rose petals with sugar to make a thick, paste-like jam, my favorite filling for these traditional Polish donuts. You can use store bought rose petal jelly – or substitute orange marmalade, apricot, or plum jam, even chocolate.

Makes 20 donuts

2 whole eggs
2 pounds, 3 ounces all-purpose flour
17 ounces warm whole milk
6 ounces fresh yeast (or 3 ounces dry powdered yeast)
4 egg yolks
7 ounces caster or superfine sugar
rind and juice of 1 lemon
1 tablespoon Polish spiritus* (or brandy or rum)
4 ounces butter, melted
14 ounces rose petal jelly (or marmalade)
4 pints vegetable oil for deep frying
5 ounces powdered sugar

For the glaze

2 tablespoons powdered sugar
1 - 2 teaspoons water or freshly squeezed lemon juice
2 drops almond essence (or almond extract)

Place the eggs, 4 ounces of the flour, and 8 ounces of the milk with the yeast in a small bowl and work it together with your hands. This is your starter pastry that is going to grow and form the basis of your donut mix. Leave it under a clean cloth in a warm place for an hour to expand. Beat the egg yolks and sugar together. Add the remaining flour and milk and your expanded starter pastry mix. Also add the lemon juice and rind, the spiritus (or brandy), and the melted butter. Work it all together into a big ball of dough. Leave it for another hour to expand; it should double in size. Take the dough, a handful at a time, and roll it out on a floured wooden board to a thickness of 1/2 inch. Cut out 3-inch discs of pastry with an inverted tumbler. Put a teaspoon of rose petal jam (or jelly) in the middle of each disc, then pull the outside edges together, and pinch the dough to seal the donut so the jam is trapped inside. Roll the ball in your hand into an even sphere. Place completed donuts on a flat surface under a clean towel and leave them to grow for another half hour or so. Heat the oil. To test when the oil is hot enough, drop a marble-sized ball of pastry in and see if it fizzes. If so, drop a donut in – it should float in the oil. When the submerged underside is golden, roll it over so the top gets cooked too. Remove after a couple of minutes and allow to drain on a paper towel. Once cool, dust the donuts with powdered sugar. If you prefer to glaze them, make a thin icing by mixing 2 tablespoons of powdered sugar with a 1- 2 teaspoons of water or freshly squeezed lemon juice, adding 2 drops of almond essence.

* Polish Spiritus – a form of rectified alcohol repeatedly distilled until it is very strong – up to 95% is obtainable in Polish delis. (It is not a good idea to try drinking this undiluted). Substitute a tablespoon of brandy or rum if you can’t find it.

Rose Petal Jam

This fragrant jam is my favorite filling for Polish donuts (paczki). It is best made with fresh petals from the wild rose.

Gather the wild rose petals in the morning, before they have been in the sun too long and released their fragrance. Place them in a stone mortar or makutra. Slowly pour in the sugar and use the pestle to crush the petals together with the sugar. The juice in the petals will gradually blend with the sugar into a deep red, thick paste. No further cooking is needed. The jam can be preserved in sterilized glass jars for up to two years.

Newt Gingrich’s citing, during the Republican candidates’ debate Saturday, facts regarding Palestinians’ history and the problem of hate education in the Palestinian territories have grabbed headlines. It seems Gingrich understands the propaganda war being waged against Israel and feels obliged to speak the truth about it. He is also shrewd. His choice to come out strong on the issue at this juncture was probably strategic.

After Gingrich made politically incorrect statements and refused to back down during the debate, even the normally unflappable Romney appeared blindsided, and flummoxed.

Gingrich understands the mountain of propaganda that’s been heaped on Israel for the past several decades. He also understands the incitement and dehumanization of Israelis and others that goes on in Palestinian schools and mosques, as well as in official Palestinian media, that the U.S., preposterously, helps fund “through our aid money,” as Gingrich said. He did the right thing to speak up about it. But why did he choose this moment?

As a shrewd politician, Newt saw an opportunity to break from the Republican pack and “out-Israel-support” the rest of the candidates in advance of the Iowa caucuses. Rather than doing so in a predictable way (by spouting pledges and platitudes), he spoke truths that many American Jews and other pro-Israel Americans, and even some Israelis themselves, today shy away from saying. As Gingrich said, “This is a propaganda war in which our side refuses to engage and we refuse to tell the truth when the other side lies.”

Gingrich demonstrated not only that he grasps certain politically incorrect realities, but also that he has courage; he demonstrated he is able to endure condemnation from many corners for questioning the status quo. His words, in that sense, were not just words. Because they could and almost certainly will have some negative consequence for him--if only incurring the wrath of those who benefit from the status quo--they constituted an action.

The ability to act with courage, more than anything, is what voters who care about a strong America and a strong Israel want to see. Never has that been more true than now, when Israel faces a potential existential threat from Iran.

In noting that Gingrich was probably being strategic, I don’t suggest he’s not sincere. The way he attempted to explain the nature of the propaganda war against Israel suggests to me he grasps the situation perfectly and cares about it, as well as about the truth.

That he also chose to voice these truths at this moment should not be held against him. One can be simultaneously strategic and sincere.

On Wednesday I was fortunate to attend the Republican Jewish Coalition’s candidates’ forum in Washington D.C. and to meet several of the candidates, including Newt Gingrich, Michele Bachmann, and Rick Santorum. More to come, but I want first to get down the essence of Romney’s comments.

Romney drew a clear contrast between his vision for America and that of President Barack Obama, stressing that “[Obama] is seeking to make a merit-based society into an entitlement society.”

Romney laid into President Obama’s foreign policy, stressing, “[Obama] has been timid and weak in face of the existential threat … from Iran.” He sketched a vision of the future in which he would lead the country, saying, “Every time the sophists try to draw you toward weakness and appeasement” you should remember what can be accomplished by a “person of strength,” citing the renewal and empowerment of a city under the leadership of Rudy Giuliani, who he mentioned would be his choice for attorney general should he be elected President.

I’ve heard Romney speak several times and have been impressed with his clarity, sharpness, and cogency. But today he inspired. He spoke of his great love for the U.S. and its people, and of his vision for America as leader in a way that was Reagan-esque. The man is clearly a winner who, in the words of Sam Fox, immediate past chairman of the RJC, who introduced him, has been “successful at everything he has touched.”

Romney said, “We are a people from all parts of world, from all walks of life, strengthened by founding principles … It is not an accident the U.S. became the greatest county in the world…Today as we face new threats, I have no doubt the American people will rise to occasion.

“One of those principles [is the] fact that we are a merit-based society. Hard work, education, risk-taking, and sometimes a little luck” make for success, he said, and a “merit-based, opportunity society gathers and creates a society of pioneers. As they take risks, they lift the rest of us. American prosperity is fully dependent on having an opportunity society. I don’t think President Obama understands this. I don’t think he understands America.”

“I’ve spent 25 years in business. I’ve signed the front — and the back — of a paycheck.”

He added, “Entitlement societies are praised in academic circles where they are far removed from the reality of a competitive world.”

On foreign policy, Romney said, “Internationally, President Obama has embraced appeasement; has been more generous toward enemies than friends…that is the natural tendency of someone unsure of his own strength.

“The course of appeasement has long been the course of the weak and the timid — a path a nation chooses at its own peril.”

He said that on his watch, “Iran’s ayatollahs will not be permitted to obtain nuclear weapons…a nuclear Iran is not only a threat to Israel, it’s a threat to the entire world.”

Near conclusion he cited his desire to appoint Rudy Giuliani attorney general should he be elected.

Also addressing the RJC today were Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum, and John Huntsman. I’ll blog a bit more about them tomorrow, but for now wanted to mention that every one of these individuals stressed strong alliance with Israel and had strong criticism for the President for what they characterized as appeasement foreign policy. They all strike me as devoted to the principles of fiscal responsibility and smaller government. They each, except for Huntsman, pledged with absolute definitive statements that on his/her watch, Iran would not get a nuclear weapon (Regarding Iran’s quest for nuclear capability, Huntsman only said, “For me, all options are on the table.”)

I think that, perhaps other than Huntsman (who was not strong enough, in my judgment, about this) all were equally strong on stopping Iran, this most vital matter of our time. But Romney stands out as the most eloquent, inspiring, and frankly presidential.

There’s a reason Bill Clinton recently sang the praises of his one-time nemesis, Newt Gingrich. No doubt he would like to see the Republicans nominate the tone deaf Newt, who today at the RJC resuscitated his ill-advised discussion of child labor with a downright zany-sounding idea about putting children to work replacing janitors in the public schools in order to “learn to work.” (Giving him the benefit of the doubt, he may be envisioning something voluntary and creative and he is, after all, the man who helped implement successful welfare reform. But putting children to work as janitors? Can anyone say Oliver Twist?)

Gingrich may be book smart, but his appeal is almost exclusive to hard core conservatives.

Smart is as smart does. In an age when independent voters decide almost every election, Republicans would be wise to select a candidate with mass appeal, media savvy, and common sense, who can unify, not divide.

If they want to win, Republicans better pick a winner.

That would be Romney.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeGYAfh9A1k