"What can I bring?” I asked our friends that invited us to a Hanukkah candle lighting party. “Whatever you feel like,” they answered, “we trust you to bring something tasty.” This is usually the answer when I ask what to bring, which challenges me every time to find something new and interesting to contribute.
"Try it, at least one time, and if you don’t like it, I’ll make you something else” mom would try to convince me, but I stubbornly refused to even taste. “ I put only things you love: potatoes, carrots…” she said,
Some people call meatballs in tomato sauce kids food. If so, then I am a kid. Meatballs in tomato sauce is one of the dishes I have loved for as long as I can remember. As a matter of fact, there are very few dishes that I still love as I used to. Mom taught me that when making meatballs you must always double the quantity, and even then it might not be enough.
In my childhood home we ate couscous only in one way. Hand made and steamed over a pot of soup. It was almost impossible to enter our small kitchen when mom would make couscous. In one bowl there was the semolina that mom would wet slowly while stirring so that no clumps would form.
There are certain dishes that I relate to specific events or holidays. There are those with an obvious connection like Mufleta ( Moroccan pastry) with the day after Passover or Honey cake for Rosh Hashana. Others go with a few dates like burekas to both Shabbat and the Jewish festival of Shavuot, or sweet Moroccan cigars served at the end of Yom Kippur and on Hanukkah, and then there are the everyday dishes.
