Matzo For Mr. President

This post was first published on The Jew and the Carrot blog at the Forward.

Jewish mothers (and others) have been worried for some time now whether President Obama will have enough to eat while on his first official visit to Israel next week. We’ve known since early February that the president will have to forgo eating chametz when he stays next week at the King David Hotel, which will have already made its kitchens kosher for Passover.

“When U.S. President Barack Obama said yes to a long-overdue visit next week, his first since becoming president in 2008, it’s not clear that he knew what he was getting himself into. Gastronomically, anyway,” suggested Ilene Prusher in Haaretz.

But now we can let out a sigh of relief, knowing definitively that our president will not go hungry in the Land of Milk and Honey.

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© 2013 Renee Ghert-Zand. All rights reserved.

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OU To Certify Kitniyot This Passover

This piece was first published on The Jew and the Carrot blog at the Forward.

The Orthodox Union wants to take the guesswork out of eating kitniyot on Passover. With no kitniyot kosher certification to go by, eaters of legumes and several grains during the holiday—traditionally Sephardi Jews, but now also others—have had to rely on their own judgment that there was no hametz, or leaven, in a food product.

Now, the experts have stepped in to alleviate any possible confusion. For the first time ever, the OU has introduced OU Kitniyot, a new certification symbol that can appear on kosher for Passover products.

“People may assume a food product is kitniyot, but there could actually be hametz hidden it,” warned Rabbi Moshe Elefant, COO of the Orthodox Union’s kashrut division in a phone interview with The Jew and the Carrot. “This new certification is critical because you can’t tell just from the ingredients list whether something is really kitniyot and nothing else.”

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© 2013 Renee Ghert-Zand. All rights reserved.

‘Cupcake Wars’ Goes Kosher This Weekend

This post first appeared on The Jew and the Carrot blog at The Forward.

If you are a fan of the Food Network’s “Cupcake Wars” and are into kosher baking, then there is an event for you. SweetUp, is holding a kosher cupcake bake-off at on February 3 in on Long Island at noted kosher baking supply center Breezy’s as a fundraiser for the Achiezer Five Towns Hurricane Relief Fund.

The contestants, Staten Island’s Cake a Bite, The Bronx’s Lil’ Miss Cakes, Brooklyn’s Cake My Breath Away, and Lakewood, NJ’s Cup of Cake will fire up their ovens this weekend and work to bake the cupcake that will wow kosher food celebrity and head judge Jamie Geller. So what does Geller look for in a cupcake?

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