Writing in Slate, Jewish food maven Joan Nathan ponders the bagel, that thick steering wheel of boiled dough that's such a cultural touchstone for American Jews. Now, a new book, The Bagel: A Cultural History delves into the subject, sussing out the bagel's ancient roots and exposing amusing details of the bagel's role in 20th century life.

Apparently, breads with holes have been around for centuries. Italians had hard crackers called taralli, Romans had something called buccellatum and the Chinese something called girde. Egyptians, Nathan adds, had their own - you can see the doughnut-shaped rolls in hieroglyphic displays at the Louvre. Polish Jews may have invented the modern bagel, when the Polish king first allowed Jews to begin commercial baking (they had previously been banned) and a baker made a round bread in his honor. Bagels found their way to the Lower East Side by the 19th century, and they burst into the non-Jewish American consciousness in the 1950s, when Lender's frozen bagels were invented. Today you can get them in Dunkin' Donuts stores from Albuquerque to Bangor.

This year's Boston Marathon falls in the middle of the Jewish holiday of Passover, where observant Jews remember their ancestor's flight from enslavement in Egypt by not eating leavened foods. "Leavened" food products include bread, pasta, cookies, etc. - runners' favorite carb-loading meals. Can you really run 26.2 miles fueled with nothing but matzoh?

MSNBC has an interesting story about observant Jewish runners and their personal decisions about whether or not to keep kosher during the marathon. One Boston-area rabbi, who describes running as a "spiritual quest," plans to fuel up on potatoes and matzoh. Another runner plans to Passover rules with dry oatmeal on the morning of the race,

Dry oatmeal? I'd rather have matzoh brei, a childhood Passover specialty of eggy fried matzoh, which can be served savory with cheese and veggies, or sweet (my favorite) with maple syrup.

Hanukkah is known as the "festival of lights" and is a holiday in which oil has a special meaning. To put it very, very briefly, Hanukkah celebrates a miraculous occurrence where one night's worth of oil burned for eight. There is a lot of oil used in foods that are served for this holiday and much of it is used for frying. The two most well-know Hanukkah staples are sufganiyah (jelly-filled donuts) and latkes, or potato pancakes. As good as these two foods are, health-conscious holiday revelers don't always want to completely blow their diet with a meal of entirely fried foods, nor do they want to restrict themselves to only a few bites of this holiday favorite. Recognizing the health conscious, many people who host Hanukkah parties plan to serve baked latkes, as well as fried.

Baked latkes are often undercooked and not nearly as crispy as fried ones, but this recipe makes an excellent stand-in that is better than most. A minimal amount of oil is still used to grease the baking sheets, and the latkes turn out to be very crispy and very satisfying - with far less fat than ordinary latkes. They have a good potato flavor and, because they are thin, are not undercooked in the center.

Challah is a popular type of bread, lighter than brioche but still soft and very rich, so it is excellent on its own, when toasted or in a variety of dishes, such as french toast or bread pudding. It is a traditionally Jewish bread, though it has wide-ranging popularity now, and is a main feature of many Jewish dinners, especially around the holidays. The bread is usually made with lots of eggs and vegetable oil, rather than butter, because of the kosher laws against mixing meat and dairy. This Chocolate & Apricot Challah, made by Ariela of Baking and Books, uses eggs and oil, but is definitely not the ideal challah for serving with dinner. The bread is generously dotted with pieces of chopped up dried apricot and chunks of semisweet chocolate. She recommends serving it with tea or coffee as part of breakfast or a mid-morning snack, but with the delicious add-ins already in place, a chopped up loaf of this bread would probably make a wonderful bread pudding.

The start of Hanukah is just under two weeks away and there are a lot of food traditions associated with it, as there are with most Jewish holidays. Any holiday that has a food tradition is worth taking note of as far as we're concerned, whether it is one you usually celebrate or not, if for no other reason than to expose yourself to some new food. In the case of A Treasury of Jewish Holiday Baking, the foods probably aren't all that "new" to most of us, but that only makes learning the history behind the recipes more interesting. The author discusses dietary laws, the symbolism of particular foods and how Jewish cooking has been influenced by other cultures. The recipes include NY Style Water Bagels, Traditional Friday Night Challah, Frozen Cheesecake and My Trademark, Most Requested, Absolutely Magnificent Caramel Matzoh Crunch. The instructions, even for the most complex breads and pastries, are easy enough for the the "baking challenged" to follow without problems

Kosher food is a new trend in stadium food. Over the past couple of years, exclusively kosher stands have been sprouting up at more sports venues, offering food that even very strict Jewish people, those who follow the dietary laws of kashrut, can eat. The glatt kosher hot dogs and other meat products are held to a different standard from ordinary ones and, of course, do not involve pork products. They are proving popular in New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington, despite that fact that the stands are not typically open on the two busiest times of the sporting week: Friday nights and Saturdays. One other risk of selling the kosher food is that it is typically more expensive than the nonkosher offerings at stadiums and since stadium food is not inexpensive to begin with, this can mean that consumers might be paying as much as 25% more for kosher products. That being said, the slow and steady success of such vendors indicates that there is a market for kosher products in these settings, from both those who keep kosher and those who, like some fans, "like the taste better [and] assume the quality is better."

It's tradition for Syrian/Sephardic Jewish families to come together and cook - a lot - during the celebration of Sukkot at the beginning of October. Many dishes are passed from mother to daughter and have been for years, perhaps centuries. "You want to make it perfect, just like your grandmother did."

Time and time again, Prof. Brian Wansink has proved that people have very little concept of how much they're actually eating. He uses experiments that test whether people use outside cues, as opposed to a feeling of fullness, to determine how much to eat. He works with food companies (unpaid) to help them reduce their portion sizes and promote healthier snacking in more reasonable amounts.

Clinton seems to be set on his mission to help kids eat healthier.

Yuzu can really brighten up fish and other dishes. Try it instead of lime if you find it at your local market.

Julia Moskin eats at NoLIta and gives it 1 star.

It started out as a joke. Jeremy Cowan and his friends thought it would be funny for Jews to have their own beer. They created He'Brew, "the Chosen Beer," but ten years and 2 million bottles later, Cowan and his friends' joke is serious business.

Their first beer ten years ago was Genesis Ale, a "crisp, smooth and perfectly balanced between a west coast style pale and amber ale, with a supple malt sweetness and a pronounced hop flourish." To celebrate their ten year anniversary, He'brew has launched a few new beers: Genesis 10:10 (for the ten years), and Bittersweet Lenny's R.I.P.A., a tribute to Lenny Bruce.

I'm not a beer drinker, so I have no idea if this is good stuff, but it seems that the company does take brewing quality seriously. Besides, how can you go wrong with a company that's celebrating ten years of "Delicious Schtick?"

Dr. Brown's makes the best cream soda in the world, as far as I'm concerned. Ok - that's an overstatement, since I haven't had every cream soda there is, but they do make an outstanding soda. It is creamy, with a strong vanilla flavor and just the right amount of carbonation. I don't buy it often, but I'll always order it when I see it on the menu at a restaurant or deli. I recently picked up a bottle of Diet Dr. Brown's cream soda, for comparison with the original. Sure, I will admit that it had a faint taste of artificial sweetener in with the deliciously smooth vanilla, but it was close. Very close. I'll save the regular Dr. Brown's for when I eat out and keep a pack of the diet at home.

[Photo by Nicole Weston]

Looking for a tasty treat to make during Passover? Look no further than David Lebovitz's blog. The blogosphere's favorite chocolatier has posted an easy and delicious-looking recipe for Caramelized Matzoh Crunch topped with - what else - chocolate. Even if you don't normally celebrate Passover, you have surely noticed the influx of crispy matzoh in your local grocery store. It makes an excellent crispy base for these treats, which are topped with a simple toffee layer and coated in melted chocolate and slivered almonds. David offers several potential variations with his recipe, if dark chocolate and almonds aren't your favorite. White chocolate and pistachios, anyone?

Our siblings over at the Life Sciences blogs have posted some resources for those of us who will be preparing foods that are kosher for Passover and work for the special dietary needs of diabetics. The Passover holiday restricts unleavened breads as well as grains like wheat, oats, rye and barley, but for diabetics, it's important to find recipes for foods that will help maintain a stable blood sugar level.

One source is the website for the Jewish Diabetes Organization, www.jewishdiabetes.org. The site offers a guide in PDF format with recipes. Cinnamon Hearts, at www.cinnamonhearts.com, is a recipe goldmine for Jewish diabetics, with not only Passover recipes and a menu for a Seder dinner, but many foods for diabetics in general.

Let's talk about Passover.

First off, technically, I'm not Jewish. However, you might as well call me Sarah J. Gimstein. I spent much of my childhood in a suburb that had a fairly big Jewish population, so most of my friends were Jewish. While my own mother never made matzo ball soup for me at home, I certainly got my fair share of matzo (oh, how I loved matzo smeared with butter) and latkes at friends' houses after school and on the weekends. And holidays? I knew all about the holidays when I would enviously wonder what my Jewish friends were doing on "their" holidays, absent from school. Lucky!

This recipe is taken from the New Jewish Holiday Cookbook by Gloria Kaufer Greene. You don't have to be Jewish to appreciate the delicious recipes in this book. It's a wonderful addition to my cookbook collection.

Green says one of the best things about this recipce is that "it makes a lot of servings in a minimum of space." It can also be prepared ahead of time and refrigerated or frozen. It is one of Greene's favorite Seder dishes.

Orange-Glazed Chicken Breasts

Greene's note: Orange marmalade is generally available kosher.

1 1/2 cups matzah meal
3 tablespoons finely chopped fresh parsley
1 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger
3/4 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
3 to 4 extra-large egg whiles or 2 large eggs or 1/2 cup pareve egg substitute
3-4 pounds boned and skinned chicken breast halves (about 12)
1 12 ounce jar orange marmalade
1 cup white table wine (the type is your choice)
3 tablespoons canola or safflower oil

There are 120 McDonalds restaurants in Israel and all of them purchase only kosher ingredients. Only 19 of the restaurants are entirely kosher, or kashrut. This means that they do not sell any dairy products whatsoever, making them no-risk restaurant destinations for those diners who keep kosher. There was concern from some rabbis that diners might be confused at the difference between the two types of McDonalds, thinking that none of them serve dairy products. To alleviate fears, McDonalds has offered a redesigned logo for the 19 restaurants. The famous red and gold will be replaced by blue and white, and the McDonalds logo will be printed only in Hebrew, with the word "kosher" appearing in English on the menu.

So Hanukkah ended yesterday. So I'm a little late with the latkes. So sue me. (Actually, since celebration always starts the night before, the last night of Hanukkah was actually the evening of January 1st.)

I fried the latkes on time, I just didn't post anything about them right away. Nicole already pointed us to another blog with some beautiful latkes, so I won't go into all the delicious details today about grating vs. shredding potatoes, keeping or tossing the onion juice from grating,and whether one should use matzo meal or flour or nothing at all. I will say that I made the accompanying applesauce.