Happy Groundhog day yesterday! I hear tell that the Ground hog saw it’s shadow, which means six more weeks of Winter. I think. But I can’t remember what the other option is. Is six more weeks a good thing? It doesn’t sound so bad to me. I seem to remember as a child hoping that the Groundhog would see it’s shadow, but maybe that’s just because I think it’s sad when your shadow is missing. Though I do remember making brown construction paper cut-outs of Groundhogs in my kindergarten class to put in the windows in the hopes that we would trick a Groundhog into thinking they were his shadow and then Spring would come sooner. Come to think of it, I’ve always accredited groundhogs with more power than they probably have. Anyway….


So yesterday was the cooking prep day for World on a Plate and man was it intense. Jess, Tama and I spent five hours in the kitchen making latkes. We began with 30 pounds of potatoes to cut and then feed through the food processor, 12 onions, 3 and a half cups of chopped up parsley, 20 eggs, salt and pepper, and we blended it all into two giant bowls (I could probably have sat comfortably in them). Then came the frying. THREE HOURS OF FRYING!!!!!!!! We made probably around four hundred latkes. Within the first twenty minutes I had already burned myself twice and was getting overheated. After about forty-five minutes we had all developed the latke glow. Latke glow is a combination of flushed cheeks and feeling oily from the backsplash of hot oil. It’s the look of the Bubby. About two hours in I started getting latke-pissed. And by the time there were about five more left to fry I was in a state of latke rage. If I don’t see another latke before Chanukah I will be a happy happy woman!

Though I suppose since I’ll be serving them from five until nine tonight I’m going to have to deal with latkes again. Latkes and kugel! I’m getting really excited tonight. We’ve made a bunch of Yiddish word signs to put up around the door along with our banner and a sign talking about how I’m a Jew, Tama’s a half Jew and Jess is a faux-Jew. And we’re all making t-shirts. In fact I just posed for a picture in the Guelph Mercury wearing my “Absolut Jew” shirt (on the back it says “Stop Kvetching”). It’s a spoof on the Jesus Week t-shirts that pissed me off so much last week that say “Absolut Truth”. I’m getting excited!