Michael Brown is a real cool cat. He lives with two other cats on a Florentin rooftop where he cooks, fuses glass, and plays the mandolin badly. Michael started cooking in self-defense from the fried bologna and hamburger helper favored by his otherwise-lovely flatmates. He blogs about food, art, and whatever takes his fancy at http://accidentalrecipe.blogspot.com. Michael will be blogging on Food, Recipes and anything else that comes to his unusual mind.

Business first: the next Florentin Pancake Brunch will be Friday, December 30th from 11 am to 1 pm. More info here. Pictures from the previous brunch here.

One of the blogs where I cross-post recently asked for permission to alter a recipe because it called for bacon and they were – reasonably – uncomfortable about even seeming to advocate basar lavan on an Israel-themed blog. But that got me thinking (always a dangerous condition).

When I lived in the US, I kept a kosher household for over ten years, despite the relative difficulty and expense of getting kosher meat and other items (I didn’t live in a major Jewish population center). I had a number of reasons, though being an apatheist none of them were “because G-d says so”. It was mostly a personal-is-political type of decision and, since moving to Israel I’ve seen how the same factors lead many to the opposite decision.

In the USA, keeping kosher is an affirmative act; one does it to be/show/proclaim one’s membership in the small community set apart from the nominal but pervasive Xtianity; one (or at least I) spent a lot of time on such issues as the moral implications and interplay between kashrut and animal cruelty, etc. When the whole mess with the Postville packing plant blew up I went to a fair amount of trouble to get my meat from another source, and I was disappointed (though not surprised) that none of the major hechshers yanked their certifications.