"passover" news and stories

• Beautiful Latvian Easter eggs are created by reusing ingredients you already have in your kitchen.
• Passover's a week away! Hint: Don't focus on what you can't eat; focus on all the foods you can.
• Whether the holiday is Passover or Easter, a nice piece of fish might be just the ticket.
• What, it needs a a bit more flavor? Try a little vinegar.
• Springtime calls out for weekend brunches. Here are five hot spots to try.

'Love and Knishes: An Irrepressible Guide to Jewish Cooking'
Recipes by Sara Kasdan
Illustrations by Louis Slobodkin
The Vanguard Press, 1956
Buy it at Amazon

Dedicated "To the Wonderful Women Who Never Cooked from a Book," Sara Kasdan's Love and Knishes (1956) is both a very traditional Jewish cookbook (with recipes for knaidlech and kugel) and a fascinating, funny historical document of mid-century attitudes about cooking, ethnicity, and health. Kasdan wrote her book at a time when, as she writes witheringly in a chapter titled You Can Be Normal, Too, Why Not? "Nowadays, everything is psychology...everybody has complexes." Interspersed with her recipes for tzimmes and kasha varnitchkes is a caustic sense of humor that makes the tome compulsively readable. Kasdan's audience is a generation of women whose instincts and traditions were about to get run off the road by everything from Julia Child and processed foods to cookbooks purporting to teach them what they already knew.

Takeaway Tips: Look for the double entendres: Kasdan's one-page chapter about salads is called "Papa Called it Grass." She suffers none of the pretensions or guilt of modern cookbook writer, and the book is a festival of schmaltz, sour cream and refined carbohydrates. A helpful glossary defines foods like lox ("A partner to bagels") and kreplach ("Chinese definition: Won Ton; Italian definition: ravioli.") And all of the chapters come with lengthy anecdotes about everything from picky husbands to Rosh Hashana strudel.

Quality of Illustrations: Crude but hilarious.

Religious Festivals Edition

... Wherein we learn that Peeps sometimes are created and not just born ... and sometimes they're ready for their closeup. Do you hear that Mr. DeMille?

If you're not a Peep, uh, person, then we have four other homemade Easter treats you can tackle this weekend: peanut-butter chocolate eggs, lemon truffles, handcrafted chocolates and "Easter Candy." And if you want a real peeper, check out Three Chicks a Day. There's been lots of egg talk too, what with the poaching and the hard-boiling.

We celebrated the joys -- yes, joys -- of gefilte fish, pondered seder quizzes and matzo balls, and learned more about Passover celebrations north of the border.

In secular food news, while it may be Miller time all the time in Milwaukee, the home of the Brewers still makes room for beers like Goose Island. It's also baseball season and we wonder, will you be buying a $9 brewski at the stadium?

The Hungry Bride solicited advice on what pots and pans to choose for her new home. Hungry editors, meanwhile, who have been singing "Gimme That Fish" for days now, went off on annoying food advertisements.

Do you have true grits? How bout trying this shrimp-and-grits recipe in honor of the National Grits Festival. Or do you hanker for the 1970s and Aunt Evie's chicken stroganoff recipe?

Can't get enough "Top Chef"? Wait till June when Neil Patrick Harris -- yes that Neil Patrick -- and some "Lost" writers join celeb chefs like Hubert Keller and Wylie Dufresne for "Top Chef Masters."

Oh, and we tried and failed to beat a volcano. A bacon-filled volcano.

Just as April showers bring May flowers, so do the hard-boiled eggs that arrive via Passover seder or an Easter egg hunt bring us, well, a lot of hard-boiled eggs. What to do with them all?

Many of those who celebrate Easter open a lunch box the first Monday thereafter to be confronted with a big scoop of egg salad. And while that's always an option -- as is the Cobb Salad that centers many an April luncheon -- there are recipes out there beyond the standards. So hide your eggs and eat them too.

First, though, safety is critical. According to the USDA, Easter eggs are safe to eat after the hunt provided you follow a few basic guidelines: Use food-safe coloring to dye the eggs and refrigerate them within two hours of boiling them. Boiling an egg removes a protective coating that occurs naturally on the shell, which leaves the shell vulnerable to bacteria. After the hunt, discard any eggs whose shells have cracked or that nestled in a bacteria-friendly environment such as dirt, hay or anywhere accessible to pets. Don't keep hard-boiled eggs away from the fridge for longer than two hours and use them within seven days of boiling them.

Beyond the jump is a delicious recipe for using those safely-handled eggs. (Hint: It's a salad, but it's not egg salad).

• Wyatt McSpadden, author of the recently published "Texas BBQ," leads readers on a tour of the seedy under (pork) belly of Austin's barbecue joints.

• Viva cheap eats! Taco Journalism's Armando Rayo shows a reporter how to negotiate Austin's extensive taco truck demimonde, exploring the good, the bad and the incredibly delicious.

• Andrea Abel considers the many variations of the classic matzo ball soup, with tips on how to personalize a Passover favorite.
  

• Addie Broyles explores the history of Easter eggs and gives tips for natural dyeing.
  

• Charleston Chef Kevin Johnson talks about his favorite methods for going whole hog with snout-to-tail-to-trotter pig preparation.