Jewish Cooking....Sundays with Marlena

Our first meeting...on a Sunday. We missed you Eileen. Breakfast at Market Club Cafe in Sacramento was quite good. (photo by Rajesh Easwaran)

I had this idea to learn about my heritage...the one that was a big secret. When I was about 16, I saw my mom packing/or unpacking some books. There were several Hebrew and Yiddish books. I said, "what's with the Jewish books?" She replies, "my mother was Jewish." I said, "no shit?" I was raised in the Baptist Church so this came as quite the revelation to me.

Turns out, my ancestors migrated from Poland into southwest Russia, where my grandmother was born. She immigrated to Canada with her folks in 1902 from Romania..and finally slipped down into North Dakota as a "german russian"...bible by the bookstand and everything!

Anyhoo...mom had this Jewish Cookbook. A few years back, I began buying other Jewish cookbooks..and one was by Marlena. Such a lucky, lucky day for me. I grew up eating most of the recipes....and I love em all! [well, not the cherry soup so much..but then I don't like cherries]. So, when Shankari heard about the project she wanted to help..and then so did Eileen.

On Sunday, November 8th, myself and two area food bloggers will begin a project to cook and blog our way through Marlena Spieler’s Jewish Cooking cookbook. *Three bloggers, three recipes every Sunday until we are finished.


We met and decided who was cooking what..at least beginning with appetizers/starters. Eileen couldn’t be at the first meeting as she had some lame excuse about having to be in San Diego for the birth of her grandchild. So, Shankari and I met, along with our contributing husbands. Rajesh will be doing the photography from time to time (feasts) and Dave has been very helpful in establishing a data base of all the recipes. I admit right here and now that I am quite jealous that Shankari is married to such a great photographer...her food always looks so delish...and is!


Yes, we know Julie Powell already did Julia Child’s book and got famous over it. We are hoping the exact same thing happens to us. In reality, we’ll probably be hired to wash dishes and laundry at a Kibbutz in the Golan Heights or something. Oy vey! Also, there won’t be as many expletives in our food journals…unless they’re in Yiddish, of course.


Please join us on our journey every Sunday beginning November 8th, 2009. We will link each other up so you can see what is happening on each other’s blogs. On Sunday’s…our blogs will be called Cooking with Marlena. It will be fun to ride along as a Hindu, a Buddhist, and a shoulda-been Jew take on this glorious challenge. From so much pleasure, one could plotz!


[By the way…we are not being paid to do this.... like I had to tell you that. Feel free to send money though. Cabbage and matzo meal is not cheap!]


*Just the Two of Us by Eileen Thornton

*Stream of Consciousness by Shankari Easwaran and Rajesh Easwaran