Conference taveng::bagels

    Dick,
    
    Mind sending me a copy via internal mail? I'm @VBE/ALGO3
    
    Let me know...

Re: .0

Thanks Dick for pointing this out.  I am now on a low-cholesterol diet and 
frankly wasn't looking forward to Purim without "Oznei Haman" (Hamantashen).
Now what do I do about Pesach when everything is made out of a million eggs??

David

> Now what do I do about Pesach when everything is made out of a million eggs??

Easy.  Let the eggs hatch, remove the skin from the chicken, throw 
away the dark meat, boil or bake and enjoy (maybe with a carrot).

    A summary of what the Glob said about Purim food:
    
    Don't use the egg yolks.  Use just the whites, plus some veggie
    oil, or use egg substitutes.  Choose your fats carefully.
    
    (Well, it's faster than typing in recipes.)

    To tell you the truth, I just ignore other dietary restrictions during
    the week of Pesach, except to not add additional salt (it is the only
    time of year we keep kosher, as most of you know, so the meat tastes very
    salty to us no matter what we do, since we do not usually salt down our
    meat) and of course to avoid stuff I am allergic to (especially oranges,
    sigh - I *LOVE* oranges!).  So we eat zillions of eggs, which we don't
    eat much the rest of the time (egg yolks being not great in big
    quantities, plus I am somewhat allergic to egg whites).  The
    alternative is to eat just meat, matzohs, and safe veggies like
    broccoli and carrots - which we have tried before and which really does
    a job on my digestive tract (we usually eat a lot of grains, like
    barley kugels and stuff - and matzoh kugel isn't worth making, from my
    perspective).  I suppose you could eat mostly fish.  Or move to a
    Sephardic community, and eat rice (and new peas - a traditional part of
    some Sephardic people's seder menu).  I don't know what you do if you
    are allergic to wheat and can't eat matzohs...other than that you
    wouldn't be required to eat them during the seder (you don't *have* to
    eat them any other times, you only have to not eat grains other than as
    matzoh).  I wish that someone would make matzohs out of some other
    grains, such as rice, or oats, or barley (I'm not sure what "spelt"
    even is, so I don't know what it tastes like - I think it is a kind of
    ryegrain).  You can sometimes get whole-wheat matzohs (you have to look
    carefully since most of the usual brands say they are not Pesachdic),
    which are less traumatic to the digestive tract, anyhow.  But you can
    deal with almost any change in diet - it's only for a week, after all,
    and then you can go back to what your body or your doctor prefers.
                              

    _The Kosher Low-Cholesterol Cookbook_ (or it might be _The
    Low-Cholesterol Kosher Cookbook_) by Roberta Leviton has a lot of good
    recipes and everyone I've tried has been tasty.

    re wheat allergies and Pesach:

    Some people *do* make matzos out of other grains, but I don't know
    of any that are commercially available.

    BTW, the problem with whole wheat matzo is that most commercial
    WW matzo is made with apple juice, which makes it lechem ashir
    ("rich bread") rather than lechem oni ("poor bread").  There's
    also a problem with mixing flour with any liquid other than water,
    since halachically speaking this causes instant leavening.
    Shmurah matzo *is* available in whole wheat.

Thanks for the dietary suggestions.

Re: .5

I'm curious as to why you find kosher food "salty".  I grew up eating kosher all
my life and I've never noticed that.

David

>I'm curious as to why you find kosher food "salty".

Kosher meat is salted to remove blood.  Kosher chicken is
definitely salty (some brands more than others) because there's
more surface area per pound than say beef (where a whole quarter
can be salted).

When I do the kashering it sometimes ends up pretty salty  8^{).  Because of
that we try to get any meat that won't be broiled already kashered.  The
Butcherie seems to do a pretty good job of not over-salting during kashering.

Gavriel

    We eat a lot of chicken, and during Passover I buy it already kashered
    too, and it is lot saltier than non-kosher chicken and is very
    noticeable to us (since we do not cook with salt at all).  We don't eat
    much beef anyhow.  You wouldn't notice it if you always eat kosher
    meat, or salt on your meat.

re: .9

I know very well about salting meat, my father was a kosher butcher and my
in-laws are in the same business (probably why I have to watch my 
cholesterol :-).  I don't know it never tasted salty to me.

re: .11

Funny, I've found kosher chicken to taste much better than non-kosher chicken.

David

>re: .9
>
>I know very well about salting meat, my father was a kosher butcher and my
>in-laws are in the same business (probably why I have to watch my 
>cholesterol :-).  I don't know it never tasted salty to me.
>
>re: .11
>
>Funny, I've found kosher chicken to taste much better than non-kosher chicken.

You are so used to the salt that you don't taste it anymore. In fact, for you
food doesn't taste good unless it is salty. My father was brought up Orthodox
but lived non-observant. When he had to give up salt for his blood pressure
he really suffered because all his food tasted flat. I decided not to wait for
high-blood pressure and gave up adding salt. For a long while unsalted foods
just tasted flat. Now I can really taste the salt in food. Some foods,
especially soups, are very salty.

As a matter of interest, how does an Orthodox person handle a salt-free diet?

Dave

>As a matter of interest, how does an Orthodox person handle a salt-free diet?

    If meat is broiled over a flame, it doesn't have to be salted.  This
    is the only kosher way to prepare liver since it's impossible to
    soak/salt the blood out.

    Also, I would suspect that you can get most of the salt out of meat
    by soaking repeatedly.  

    re. salt free diet:
    
    There is a powder extract made from celery (sp?), which tastes salty
    (now, isn't that used in Bloody Marys?). If your father can eat celery
    branches, he could use this salt replacement, as well. He should check
    with his doctor.
    
    Chris

I used the past tense with respect to my father. I am sorry to say that he died
about 10 years ago of complications of his high blood pressure (heart attack).
Decent salt substitutes came too late for him.

I understand that almost any law in Halacha can be set aside to save a life.
If a doctor were to advise a person to eat unsalted meat (either because the
iron in the blood was essential for life or because the sodium was too
dangerous) and no substitute was available, I am sure an Orthodox person
could comply. The heart valve case must fall in the same category. So would
fighting a war on Shabbos.

Was it in Bagels or elsewhere that I read the story about the Jew whose
doctors decided he must eat some pork product or else risk his life? The rabbis
selected an animal and ritually slaughtered it. When the lungs were inspected
a lesion was found and the carcass was declared treif. Somehow it all makes
sense.

Dave

    RE: some remarks about Pesach digestive problems in preceding replies.
    
    The first year I kept all of Pesach was when I was working in Israel
    and living in a hotel.  Around day four I was quite sick, but continued
    working anyway.  People said I didn't have to keep Pesach, but I
    toughed it out.  The next year I used Metamucil every morning in
    juice -- it's Kosher l'Pesach as long as you use a new jar.  It
    works wonders to maintain normal digestive activity in the face
    of matzoh by the pound.  Also, brocolli and related members of the
    cabbage family like cauliflower do cause problems.  Try parsnips
    for a change -- raw or cooked and mashed or in a stew or sliced
    thinly and sauted.  They have fewer calories than carrots.

I have been following the weekly Torah portions lately. For 2 weeks we have been
reading from the beginning of Leviticus where it talks about the procedures for
sacrifices and I noticed several references to unleavened bread. The priests
were apparantly expected to eat unleavened bread at all times of the year, not
just during Passover. A supply of unleavened bread was to be kept near the
altar. Did the priests have iron digestive systems or were they merely required
to eat token ammounts of the stuff?

Dave

The Kohanim must have eaten not just vast quantities of matza of various
kinds (baked, pan fried, deep fried, etc.), but also large amounts of meat.
It's interesting to speculate about the general health (cardiac as well
as digestive) of the Kohanim.  Of course, since the food they were eating
was holy, it might have had miraculous properties.