If you would like to jump straight to the culinary history – click on ‘A History of Leftovers’ , a bit about Tupperware or Recipes Inspired by Leftovers, or go straight to This Week’s Shabbat Menu. For more about the main story, read on below.
Have you ever used the phrase “I shouldn’t complain, but…”? I use it all the time. Daniel and I are in the process of a big move, and to say I’m finding it overwhelming is an understatement. But as my kids say, that is a “me problem.” It’s only overwhelming because there is so much to do, not because it’s not doable. There is a timeline to pin down, with a lot of people helping us to do the pinning, with tearful goodbyes on one end and warm hellos waiting for us on the other. So being overwhelmed by tasks is small potatoes in the larger scheme of things. I knew this, but it hit home yesterday in such a forceful way that not only was I embarrassed by my own internal conversation, but I was motivated to start packing.
Yesterday, 642 days after October 7th, a group of mothers who have suffered unimaginable tragedy came to spend some time with us in shul.
One mother has her son still alive in Gaza.
Another one has a son who was killed on the 7th, whose corpse has not been returned for burial.
And the third — I am crying while I type this — her mother and two of her children were murdered. They were killed on the 7th of October in their homes on Kibbutz Be’eri.
Tami, above, who lost two children and her mother on the seventh of October, found it difficult to speak at all. She stuttered through our entire conversation and hardly spoke about her murdered family. She chose instead to focus on her kibbutz, which was home to 1,400 people on the morning of October 7th, 2023, and today is home to fewer than 70. She said that as she walks down the streets of what was once a busy and vibrant kibbutz, today it is a ghost town in the real sense of the word, as in she can see the ghosts of her family, her friends, and her neighbors who were murdered on the 7th.
Galia, whose son is still being held hostage, spoke to the reporters from ITV and BBC who came to join us, but kept to herself the rest of the time. And how can anyone blame her? A rail thin woman who, rather than eat lunch, chose to stand outside the shul and chain smoke until she was needed for pictures or formal interviews.
But when we opened the ark holding our Sifrei Torah, the mothers, along with their companions, all chose to come close, kiss the Torahs, and when Daniel said a prayer for the return of the hostages, each woman said the name of her loved one, whether dead or alive.
For these families, there is no timeline. There is only uncertainty. There were no goodbyes, and the welcome home banners in some cases will be funerals. For others, their lives will never be the same again. So I focused on these women and not on myself, and it was Meirav, standing next to the ark and crying softly, who moved me.
Meirav, whose son Oz, a 19-year-old soldier, was killed on the seventh and whose body has not been returned, told us that not one of the bodies of the soldiers has been returned. She is desperate that, after a year and ten months, his body be returned to the ground.
She also told us that he is a twin.
His sister’s name is Hadar. When they were born, she named them Oz and Hadar after the beautiful verse in Proverbs, the one I incidentally wear as a pendant around my neck. These mothers, these women of valour, personify that verse. “Strength – Oz, and beauty – Hadar, she wears”. My prayer for them is that they have the strength and Hashem’s help to live the second part of the verse: “and she laughs at the end of days” (Proverbs 31:25). This laughter is not one of humour. It is one of belief in God and His plan. I can wish nothing more for them than that they reach the natural end of their days and know laughter and joy once more.
A History of Leftovers
I constantly forget when writing to you that this is a blog about food. So with that in mind, I want to share with you a bit of the history of leftovers. Who knew that the stuff that sits in Tupperware containers in the back of the fridge and eventually gets thrown out actually has a history? But it does.
Let’s start with ancient times and end with my mother’s obsession with miniature Tupperware.
In the past, without refrigeration, preservation was the only way to make food last. Surplus milk was turned into curds that lasted longer than milk itself. Meat and fish that were butchered and not eaten immediately were salted, smoked, pickled, or all three. Fruits were preserved with sugar and vegetables with salt. These methods became crucial, especially in the winter months, when people could not rely on a ready supply of food from the land. Bread was baked into cakes with a little bit of water. Consider matzah as a prime example.
Waxed cloth, earthenware amphoras, crocks and jugs, and stomachs of animals were used as storage containers.
Once eaten, any leftover bones were used to make broth. Leftover or stale bread would have been used as stuffing or dumplings. This is, in fact, the origin of matzah balls and kugels. Kugel started as a way to use up leftover bread. All leftovers were repurposed into what became known as “hash,” the word coming from the Old French hacher, meaning chopped or minced, primarily in reference to meat and herbs. It made its first appearance in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1662, and by the 18th century it was firmly established in American and British kitchens as an economical food. During the World Wars, when there were meat shortages, diners in America started serving Corned Beef Hash, often topped with a fried egg. In our day and age, we hear the saying “I made a hash of things,” meaning I messed it up — or better yet, I chopped it or minced it up. I love that, as when I do make a hash of things, it usually has to do with either cooking or speaking. It does feel like I chopped up my words and threw them on a messy plate, and even a fried egg cannot cover up the mess.
During the 17th and 18th centuries, aristocratic households started a tradition called second table, where their leftovers were handed out to the poor. Today, “Second Table” is an organisation repurposing leftover food. In Israel, our friend Joseph Gitler started a wonderfully successful organisation called Leket. It started out by taking the leftovers from weddings and bar mitzvahs all across Israel and redistributing them to soup kitchens and other organisations that distribute food to the poor. Today their efforts have expanded to picking fruit and vegetable surplus directly from the field and collecting food surplus directly from manufacturers and redistributing to organizations and schools across Israel.
* Follow this link to donate to Leket Israel and support the incredible work they do.
In Jewish law, the ideal of bal tashchit is something we are taught from a young age. “Do not waste”. The best way to explain this is both as a negative commandment and a positive one. It is negative in the sense of avoiding waste, and it is positive in the sense of doing something constructive with what might otherwise be discarded. The best expression of this is the World War II phrase, “Waste not, want not.”
Tupperware a Small History
Speaking of World War II, this is when leftovers became a cultural concept. Earl Tupper, a scientist working at DuPont, took home polyethylene pellets from his work and created an airtight sealing container. The first Tupperware was officially invented in 1946. This coincided with refrigerators slowly making their way into the average middle-class home. Tupper, the inventor of Tupperware, initially tried selling his invention in stores.
Now you and I don’t need Tupperware, or anything like it, explained to us. But for people who until then had been using glass jars, aluminium containers, or cardboard boxes to store food, they really had no idea what they were looking at. Considering most people were just getting used to the idea of refrigeration, this was a big leap.
Then came Brownie Wise. With a name like that, how could you not love her? A single mother and the daughter of a single mother, Brownie left school at fourteen and had been working ever since. She saw Tupperware in a shop and immediately understood its potential. She started the Tupperware party, realising that the product needed to be demonstrated in order for people to understand how it could fit into their lives. It was Brownie who really put Tupperware on the map. Ironically, after being hugely successful, Brownie was fired in 1957 after she used her Tupperware one too many times as a food bowl for her dog. A year later, Tupper sold the company, divorced his wife, and moved to Costa Rica.
Jews, especially those observant of the laws of kashrut, really took to Tupperware. The ability to buy different colours for storing meat and milk, along with the prohibition against waste, made Tupperware the answer to a myriad of Jewish kitchen challenges.
Aside from kugels, which are a catch-all for leftover carbs and vegetables that, with enough oil and eggs, became the staple of the Ashkenazi Shabbat table, Sephardi Jews developed their own ways of using leftovers. Ejeh, a vegetable omelette, and marcoude, a type of frittata, are essentially the same idea. Use any vegetable you have, add eggs, fry it, and you have created a whole new dish. Come to think of it, that is exactly what kugel is too.
My wonderful mother was born in Israel at the start of what became known as the tzena. Between 1949 and 1959, the fledgling state experienced extreme austerity. A cookbook of my grandmother’s from that period contains recipes that include powdered eggs and lentils, with no recipes for meat and only two for chicken. Considering how much chicken is eaten in Israel today, that is astonishing. My mother’s family, because of the economic situation, had no choice but to emigrate to America. There, my mother experienced butter for the first time, which is amazing considering she is the daughter and granddaughter of professional bakers. And she discovered Tupperware. The ability to keep leftovers for a number of days in the fridge and not waste anything was not lost on her. To this day, any time one of us kids or her grandchildren sees a mini Tupperware container, we think of her. Hurrah for the mini Tupperware, and long live the leftover!
Recipes Inspired by Leftovers
With that in mind, here is my recipe for Potato Kugel. And in all fairness, I do not know if it is better or worse than anyone else’s. I just know it is a good thing that this recipe makes about two (or four) kugels, because one is usually devoured straight from the oven, the second may just make it to the shabbat table
Ejeh is my Savta’s classic dish. Like in most Sephardi homes, it started out as a vegetable omelette. It then became a Rosh Hashanah specialty because it uses Swiss chard, which is one of the symbolic foods we eat on the first night of Rosh Hashanah. Later in our family, because we all loved it so much, my grandmother would make it for Shabbat most weeks. Today I still make ejeh a couple of times a month. It keeps in the fridge, can be eaten hot or cold, and like all the best leftovers, is actually something you still want to eat a day or two after it is made.
The last dish is marcoude. Interestingly, because we really love potatoes, we rarely have any leftover. So even though marcoude, a potato and egg frittata, is the most delicious way to deal with leftover potatoes, the problem is we never actually have leftover potatoes. I have to make them just for this dish. That said, it is totally worth it.
Daniel and I are home alone this shabbat. After four weeks of non-stop entertaining, we will still be in shul on Shabbat, but it will be just us for meals. So it will be as simple as can be.
- Wine and Challah
- Chicken Soup and noodles
- Meatball and Rice Casserole (this is without question one of the most comforting foods I make)
- Garlic Green beans
- Israeli salad
- Marble cake (another one of those super comforting and nostalgic recipes)
If its just us for shabbat lunch, we usually just have left overs from dinner, but I will add some homemade schnitzel to the mix.
What I want to discuss is the meal after shabbat, Melaveh Malka, and I will get into this more at a later post. but for now I love toasting leftover challah and using whatever I have to hand to top it with, there is something delicious, indulgent and yet virtuous about using leftover challah for a post shabbat meal!