KG and I are going to the beach for my birthday.  Three glorious days and two cozy nights at a condo at the Delaware beach.  The water is not turquoise, the palm trees non-existent and the waves small, but it the beach I have gone to all my life and I love it.  We are staying in the same condo complex that I have gone to all my life.  I’ve gone for long weekend alone when we had access to a condo for a couple of years, but never with a significant other.  This is something that I have wanted to do my whole life. 

Me being me, I also had the menus planned for our weekends away.  Pate, thin slices of soprasetta and prosciutto, soft runny cheeses washed down with wine.  Lobster for dinner, bacon, and omelets for brunch.  Caviar at least once.  

So, I am rethinking the menu and figuring out what to make instead.  There will still be soft runny cheeses and omelets.  I’m thinking a spinach cheese dip of some sort.  I’ve always wanted to make it from scratch and this seems like a perfect time.  I thought about splurging by ordering some kosher meat and pate but then we would have to deal with waiting between milk and meat.  Edamame seems obvious-I’ll bring one of my salts to jazz it up.  I don’t know what to do about dinner.  I’m going to make sautéed wild mushrooms with smoked mozzarella for my birthday so I need to come up with another dinner.  I have homemade tomato sauce in the freezer so lasagna would be easy and good. 

I am just ready for the two of us to have a weekend alone, away from everything and everyone, to sit, relax, and do nothing in one of my favorite places in the world.  I want KG to feel loved and taken care of and happy and well fed.  I have waited for this weekend for a very long time.  

 All that matters is that I am with a man who I love.

About 10 years ago my oldest and bestest friend E announced she was moving to the middle of nowhere to live and work on an organic farm.  Uh, yeah, right.  E had always been into the environment and stuff, but we were from the nation’s capital and attended one of its snobbiest private schools.  Granted we didn’t really fit in with the snobs, but still, farming?  We didn’t even know anyone whose parents owned a farm. So no one in E’s life new what to make of her new career choice.  Now, more than a decade later she is about to get a masters in horticulture (although I like telling people it’s a masters in dirt because her thesis involved dirt and peppers), E is about to start working for one of my favorite local organic farms.  It’s about an hour and a half away, which is the closest to DC E has been in a long, long time. 

The farm she is going to work for is relatively young; I want to say less than 5 years old.  A rich family started it so it has the best of everything.  A ton of different ponds, enough land to grow whatever you want in “rich people’s dirt” as E called it.  It’s the kind of dirt you just want to roll around in.  At least that’s what E said when she described it.

It’s because of E that I love and support my local farmer’s markets.  And because I think there are too many chemicals running around in the world and my body I am even happier when a farmer is organic.  (Yes, I know, organic is not perfect, look at the spinach scare of last year.  Still, at least it’s a naturally made bad thing and not a man made bad thing.)  Two summers ago it was not uncommon for me to hit 4-5 different markets a week.  I would buy a little here, a little there but rarely use it all.  I just couldn’t help myself-the veggies are just so beautiful.  It also helped that I could fill a whole morning driving around, listening to NPR, and buying veggies. 

 That all being said, I don’t eat a ton of veggies and am definitely not veggie crazy.  Compared to the food friends, I’m a rookie.  Kales and greens don’t excite me much, I don’t know what to do with swiss chard and haven’t a clue of what a cardoon tastes like.  I do shell my fava beans, but come on.  They are fava beans.  They rock.  I couldn’t live solely off of vegetables if I had to.  But there is something about eating an ear of corn that was picked yesterday that keeps me from eating the shrink-wrapped corn Costco is currently selling.  As I continue to learn to eat in kosher land, I think we are going to have to learn more about cooking, seasonally, with more vegetables.  For the most part, I don’t have to worry about veggies being kosher (because KG doesn’t) and for that I am grateful. 

I have wanted to make chili for KG for a while now.  I loved the idea of a pot of chili simmering on the stove on a Sunday, while we spend the day inside reading, watching TV, cuddling, whatever.  I imagined a cold winter day, when we had no incentive to go outside.  Instead, I made it last night.  

It was a Sunday but thanks to global warming it was a beautiful day outside.  We had spent time at the park next to the airport and then went shopping.  We drove around with the windows down and the radio almost blasting.   

KG has a hard time with wasting food.  I am learning to be much better about that thanks to him.  A couple of weeks ago he had to throw away some meat because he hadn’t wrapped it properly before it went into the freezer, so he was feeling nervous about the ground beef we had bought to make over New Year’s.  So we agreed to make the chili, or that I would make the chili. 

Growing up, one of the reasons I loved chili was the sour cream my mom used to thicken it up and the cheddar cheese that would ooze off the spoon.  Sour cream and chili were as important to chili as the chili powder and beans.  Of course, with KG I can’t put in the sour cream and chili.  One of the first rules of kosher is that you cannot cook a calf in its mother’s milk, so no mixing milk and meat.  So no sour cream and cheddar in the chili.  

As we discussed the chili throughout the day all I could think about was the cheese that would be missing from tonight’s dinner with KG.  And how I would have to give that up as we build a life together.  And that if I only ate a little at his house I could take the rest home and use up the cheddar cheese I had in the fridge left over from the nachos I made Christmas Eve (or Monday night as it was known in our house.)  

Which is exactly what I did. 

That isn’t a good compromise.  If we move forward I won’t be able to go home and sneak the chili the way I like it, the unkosher way. 

One of the things I struggle with is why do I have to give up things I love, like cheddar cheese in chili, because I also love him?  It’s not fair.  Why did this happen to me?  KG arrived at a time in my life when I needed him the most.  (More on that later.)  And my shrink had prepared me for years for the fact that my prince would not be perfect, because no one’s ever is.  But why does loving my prince mean no more cheddar in my chili? 

This theme will occur again and again.  I will whine about it.  A lot.  (I’m a bit of a whiner anyway.)  One of my hopes with this blog is that a) I will get tired of whining about it and move on and/or b) someone out there, who is going through the same thing, will tell me how they get through this change. 

All I ever wanted was a Good Jewish Boy as a boyfriend.  There were a couple of guys in the past, one I even met at a JCC camp, but none were ever Jewish.  I was your typical Jewish girl: short, brown eyes, brown hair with blond highlights, good job helping the community, close with her family, etc.  All I wanted was a typical Jewish guy to compliment me.  He probably wouldn’t be that tall, around my age, not any more religious than I was but wanted a Jewish home, loved to eat or would let me teach him how, close with his family, his mother would love me and I would love her.  The idea that he would be religious, or even, gasp, Kosher, never even crossed my mind.  We would have a life similar to my parents and grandparents: strong, supportive marriage, reformed Jewish household, two kids, etc.         

Ha! 

Instead, I found me a good Jewish guy who was a foot taller, Seven Years Younger, went to synagogue every week (sometimes twice a week!), and was, wait for it, Kosher.   We met 361 days ago, on Shabbat no less (Friday night Sabbath).  

It was a 30th birthday party for a mutual friend.  He was there because he is a social being who enjoyed going out, even after Friday night services.  I was there because my best friend and I made a New Year’s pact to go to any social event where there would be Jewish men.  Kosher Guy (KG from now on) showed up a few drinks into the evening.  I noticed him right away, his dark hair, dark eyes, constant smile.  We introduced ourselves over buttery nipples ordered on behalf of the birthday boy.  From that point on in the evening he did things that other guys never did: talked with other girls but paid attention to me, made me get up and dance when I didn’t want to, didn’t get freaked out by the chaos that was my life (more on that later), and drank girly drinks.  I loved that he drank girly drinks.  At some point during the first bar I got it into my head that he was 33.   I was about to turn 32 so that was perfect.   

 Four or so hours later, back at a friend’s house as the evening was winding down and we had spent the night laughing, talking, holding hands, exchanging cell numbers, someone joked that the youngest and the oldest people in the room got together.  I looked around, expecting to see another new twosome that I had missed while falling for KG.  That’s when someone pointed out that I was almost 32, and KG was 24.  Ummmm, excuse me?  I thought he was 33.  

That was the first of a few things I had to get used to about my Good Jewish Guy.  

It is important to note, sooner rather than later, that Food is my hobby.  At that point I helped run a food/restaurant based message board, put together tasting dinners for 100, regularly fixated on my next meal and thought nothing of having someone spend $100 each on a meal.  (I would have happily spent that amount on myself but as someone who worked in special education, that wasn’t really a possibility.)  I was the person you come to when you needed to know what great restaurant you should go to, what the latest food trend was and whether or not you should try it.  I love food.  I have always loved food, all kinds of food, and with the exception of a few years in my late teens and early 20’s when I felt it necessary to be a vegetarian, loved almost anything put in front of me. Birthdays were celebrated with lobsters dipped in butter and happy hours were spent at the raw bar.  Pork was a major food group and proscuitto with good cheese was even better. 

 I didn’t learn of KG’s kosherness until the 4th time I met him. He had invited me over to his house to watch W’s second to last State of the Union and play a SOTU drinking game a friend of his invented in college. Somehow, jumping into the role of hostess felt right so I helped get things set up as his other friends arrived.    

I noticed his sink had three different color sponges and a note up on the back splash reminding those who needed to know that blue=dairy, red=meat and green=parve.  ”So you’re kosher, huh?” I asked.  ”Yep,” was all he replied.

 As I got to know, and fall for Kosher guy, I learned that he would eat in regular restaurants, but only fish or vegetarian dishes, would eat anything in those categories I cooked at my house without worrying about plates or silverware, but everything, from cheese to meat to olive oil to ice cream to canned beans to wine had to be kosher at his house.  And of course, there would be no eating cheese and meat at the same meal.  Or no ice cream after a meat dinner. 

    I soon learned I was relatively lucky, all things considered.  He had grown up in a vegetarian kosher household where they rarely ate anything that wasn’t kosher.  At least he ate meat, would order in pizza (if we ate off paper plates), and would dine in any restaurant as long as he didn’t have to eat meat (including chicken).  We could still go out for dinner, he could still eat at my or my friend’s house. I soon found myself checking every label at the grocery store for that gilded U inside an O, or K, or Hebrew letter for K.   

 A year later we have lasted longer than anyone bet we would.  I am learning to rethink recipes (no more butter rubbed on the Shabbat chicken) and mashed potatoes with olive oil and roasted garlic instead of melted butter, soy whipped cream when needed.  He has learned more about vegetables, eating locally and then organically, and the difference between average sushi and great toro. 

 So I have decided to put this out there for the world to read.      As everyone else who is starting out writing a blog, I hope Someone reads this, finds it useful, can relate.  If that’s you, let me know.     

 In the mean time, I warn you ahead of time that my spelling sucks, my punctuation isn’t that great, and I have a tendency to write in long sentences. I hope to write about how we further combine my food lovin ways with his kosher beliefs and fall further in love, with some of my life drama thrown in.