by dan pine
staff writer
Allison Davis can cook. Really. But like so many moms juggling family and a full-time job, she had grown tired of hearing her two children groan, “Mac and cheese again?”
But no more. The Fremont resident is going cold turkey on, um, cold turkey, signing up for “Kosher in a Snap!” — a new kosher meal preparation program offered at the Contra Costa Jewish Community Center. The program begins Tuesday, Feb. 20. Co-sponsoring is the Jewish Community Federation of the Greater East Bay.
The idea itself is a snap: At each of the program’s sessions, held in the JCC’s communal kitchen, all ingredients and recipes are provided. Participants assemble eight to 12 dinners for four, bag them and then take them home to freeze. Each session includes a brief explanation of kashrut (Jewish dietary laws) presented by Shternie Kagan, rebbetzin at Chabad of Contra Costa, with on-site kashrut supervised by Chabad.
The concept may be basic, but the recipes are strictly gourmet, promises organizer Jamie Hyams. Meals are either parve, fish or meat. For this inaugural series, the recipes include salmon with Hawaiian sauce, chicken Marbella, and vegetarian black bean chili.
“This is for those who go brain dead about ‘What do I cook tonight?’” says Hyams, who is also the Contra Costa JCC’s executive director. “The hook of these programs is saving time.”
“I love to cook and it breaks my heart that I don’t have time,” adds Davis. “It’s also demoralizing to spend hours cooking something and then your kids say ‘yuck.’ Jamie tested these with her own kids.”
Hyams says communal meal preparation classes, which allow time-crunched cooks to assemble meals in advance, have grown increasingly popular in recent years. She had attended several herself, but as far as she knows no one was offering a kosher version. “People who are already kosher are saying, ‘Oh my God, this is so great.’ It’s hard for them to find this.”
Costs for the program run $175 for eight meals, or $225 for 12 meals, plus a $10 signup fee. It sounds steep, but when broken down into cost-per-serving (each meal serves four), it comes out to $5.40 per person, less expensive than a typical dinner entrée at Sizzler. Moreover, Hyams says, everything is provided. “The only thing we ask is that people bring a box and a cooler.”
Davis finds additional benefits to the program besides filling up the freezer. “It’s supporting something in the Jewish community,” says Davis, who is a member of Temple Beth Torah in Fremont. “It’s also a way to socialize. I can envision coming back every few months.”
If all goes well, Hyams will organize future classes. With the current series nearly sold out, she’s confident people will come back for seconds. So far, men and women, Jews and non-Jews have enrolled.
And if more Jews come to a better understanding of kashrut because of the class, than that’s just icing on the sponge cake for Hyams.
“We’re not coming at it from a religious point of view,” she says. “We’re just trying to take the mystery out of something so essential to Jewish life.”
“Kosher in a Snap!” is offered in one of two sessions: 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 20 or Wednesday, Feb. 21, at Contra Costa JCC, 2071 Tice Valley Blvd, Walnut Creek. Space is limited. Information, call Jamie Hyams at (925) 938-7800 ext. 223, or register online at www.ccjcc.org.
CopyrightJ, the Jewish news weekly of Northern California