Happy New Year!

Actually that was back over a week ago, but like I have said before, I am a little behind on my posts, so now I am up to Rosh Hashanah, which is the Jewish New Year.  There is no synagogue on the island for me to attend services, so I just went to class on those nights.  Class was only a week, and I would have been excused for religious reasons, but I was only going to sit at home and I was paying good money for the course.  I decided since I was going to be in class and it was a religious holiday, I would teach my Christian and Mormon friends about the holiday and treat them to some Jewish foods.

I decided to make some matzo ball soup and a noodle kugel.  A kugel is just like a casserole. 

 

Since I was buying noodles for the kugel, I decided to get some extra and make my matzo ball soup a little fancier than usual, since it was made from the box mix and not from scratch.  Not that my classmates had anything to compare this too, but I wanted them to really enjoy a nice soup, not just some funny floating ball in broth.

 

I found a raisin kugel recipe online and prayed it would come out similar to my grandmothers.

 

For this recipe you start with come cooked egg noodles.

 

Then it is really easy.  You just add 4 eggs, 1 stick of butter, 16 oz sour cream, and 16 oz cottage cheese.

 

Then you mix it all up, and add 1 cup or so raisins.

 

I know this looks so weird and probably like an awful mess, but trust me, it will turn into a kugel.

 

This is a dairy kugel, and it is a sweet kugel, so the top has cinnamon, sugar and nutmeg.

 

While I was waiting for the soup and kugel to cook, I got my apples and honey ready.  This is traditional for the holiday.  We eat apples and honey and wish each other a sweet new year.  This holiday marks the ending of reading the torah, and then starting over again from the beginning, so we can read it in services over again.  It also gives us a fresh start, which brings us to the next holiday just over a week later where we will repent for our sins and all of that good stuff.  Both Rosh Hashanah and then Yom Kippur (a fasting day) are big Jewish holidays.  Like I said, this year I could not attend a service anywhere.

 

Morgan from Live, Love, Eat and Pray did a fantastic job explaining both Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

My matzo balls were almost ready.

 

Then I added some carrots and some noodles.  It was delicious, so I think from now on I will add the noodles and carrots instead of just leaving it plain.

 

Here is my finished product with the kugel.

Surprisingly, it was almost like my grandmother’s.  It is very high in fat, but it was my first kugel so I had no intentions of messing with the recipe.  I may in the future give it a makeover, if possible.  Who knows, maybe it does need the butter and full fat sour cream.

 

QUESTIONS:  Have you ever had a kugel before?  What is your favorite holiday?