A friend of mine is coming over on Thursday. I’m a Reform Jew who doesn’t keep kosher. The friend is kosher and vegetarian. I know all fruits and vegetables are kosher. I’m thinking kosher cheeses, crackers and lots of fruit and veggies plus a kosher Entenmann’s cake and some pastries from a nearby kosher bakery. All served on paper plates with plastic utensils. I assume tomatoes and basil from my garden will be fine.
Thoughts?
I know next to nothing about Kosher. The food choice I leave to you.
But is there something wrong with regular plates and silverware?
Kosher food is not supposed to come into contact with non-kosher food. We eat a lot of treif in my house. My husband is not Jewish. He loves pork in all forms.
Broadly speaking, you can never go wrong with dairy. When I eat a kosher meal, it tends to be something along the line of meatless Italian, but cheese, crackers and fruit will work, too.
ExTank–Yeah, there can be a problem with the regular silverware and plates, since they haven’t been purified.
It might be worthwhile to ask your friend whether they’d be comfortable with your dinnerware and cookware, or whether it would be best to have everything done with disposable or cheap glass stuff. If your friend is OK with your kitchen things, you have a much wider range of options available. Vegetarian lasagne works really well for kosher veggie meals. Stick with milchik, and you can’t go wrong.
For those of you to whom the laws of kashrut are completely foreign–here’s a basic guide to the dietary laws. For info on silverware and eating surfaces, scroll down to “The Separation of Milk and Meat,” and “Utensils.”
LavenderBlue–your menu sounds pretty good. I assume that if your friend were really super frum (very traditionally observant), they wouldn’t be going over to your place and expect to eat, anyway.
Is this just for a snack, or are you having your friend over for dinner? What you’re planning to serve sounds great for chatting over coffee, but it might be a little light for a full meal.
So, a run through the dish washer with the appropriate amount of dish washing detergent just don’t cut it?
That’s a good point about the silverware. I will have to ask her. I just assumed she would want separate dishes. She moved to Israel from her original home in America. We went to Hebrew school together so that’s how I know her. She’s observant but not too observant. She was wearing pants when we met last year. She comes back to the NYC region each year so her parents can have time with her kids.
I was thinking about leaving options open for her. We could go to a kosher restaurant but she has young children and I don’t know if they’re up for a sit down meal. I also have a baby so again the sit down meal is probably not ideal. At the very least I’d like to have something she can eat around here. Last time I went over to her family’s house she had a lot of Trader Joe’s items for us.
You really need separate dishes for milk and meat if you keep kosher according to most authorities. The dishes also need to adhere to certain rules. I don’t adhere to those rules so that’s why I thought paper items would be best.
ExTank–Actually, you could kasher (purify) your dishes in a dishwasher, if you have a super-hot cycle with boiling water. My folks and I did this every Passover. (Passover has its own dietary rules, and you either need to re-kasher your whole kitchen and either change over or re-kasher all of your kitchen things.)
Immersing otherwise dishes or utensils in clean boiling water is how dishes get kashered. (Well, you could do it with a blowtorch, but I’ve never known anyone to do that.) Where that boiling water is–inside a pot or a dishwasher–doesn’t matter.
The thing is, if the kitchen itself isn’t kashered, just kashering your plates might not be enough for some people. Technically, as soon as a kashered plate or piece of silverware touches a non-kosher surface, the item is treyf (non-kosher.) Some people will care about that. Many won’t.
Consider some mediterranian snacks to make the meal a bit heartier, like hummus, baba ghanoush, tabbouleh or olives. Many can be purchased at the grocery store and are kosher friendly. Sabra is my favorite store-bought brand. It is a cinch to make (and tastier homemade) if you wind up being able to use your kitchen.
I didn’t know you could use boiling water. I did know you could bury the dishes and whatnot for a period of time, one year I think.
I’d never heard of burying dishes. Where did you learn about that?
I know that torah scrolls, tefillin (phylacteries), and some other ritual articles (prayerbooks, for instance) get buried if they’re in unusable condition or have been desecrated. But you can’t dig them up and use them again later on.
Do you know that your friend eats cheese? That is not always on a vegetarian’s list of ok foods.
Thank you so much for being so considerate! That said, talk to your friend. I will tell you that I personally would not eat hot food on your dishes, no matter how many times you ran them through your dishwasher or buried them, and neither would any other Orthodox person I know. (According to Orthodox law, there is no way to make china or earthenware dishes kosher once hot non-kosher food has been placed on them; this has absolutely nothing to do with the laws of ritual purity, which have very little relevance in an era without a Temple. Silverware can be kashered, but please just use paper/plastic and don’t go through all the trouble. The idea that burying utensils can make them kosher is a myth.) Additionally, hard cheeses are one of the more difficult items to find kosher, and generally need to be bought from a store that specializes in kosher food. That said, people vary in their personal observances, and you need to know what her standards are.
ETA: If she keeps kosher at all strictly, she won’t have any expectation whatsoever that you’ll provide a meal for her, and will be extremely tickled that you went to the effort of finding out that Entenmann’s and fruit would be fine. Tomato and basil from your garden are also OK, as is any extra-virgin olive oil. I’m happy to answer questions here if you’d like; if you’d prefer a wider base of input, head over to the Kosher board at Chowhound, and you can get advice from a whole bunch of kosher-keeping folk, me included.
Thanks for all the advice. I know she eats cheese because she ate cheese the last time I saw her. I’d rather go out to a kosher restaurant but we both have small children so I don’t think that’s particularly doable. We eat Sabra products all the time so that sounds like a great idea.
She’s Modern Israeli Orthodox, GilaB. We went to an orthodox yeshiva together. She’s just a nice person and I want to do what I can to welcome her to my house for the first time.
I think your original idea sounds fine, assuming you don’t want to shlep both broods over to Mama’s Vegetarian. (Excellent falafel, no ambiance whatsoever, but it’s in center city Philadelphia.) Hummus, crackers, and nuts might help make things more substantial.