The secret to really good cookies, I mean the really good kind - the kind that has you polishing off a plate single-handedly - is butter.
That’s it.
To the kosher baker, the ones who never use butter, in order to keep their baking utensils parve, I’m sorry to be the barer of bad news, but it is the truth. Only the simplest of ingredients mixed together will give you the best cookies. Use lower grade fat, like margarine or vegetable shortening, and even though your cookies will look like the real thing, they won’t taste it. If your flour is stale, or your flavoring dull, so too, your cookies. When using such a short list of ingredients, it is paramount that you use the cleanest, purest and best. That is the only way the magic really happens.
This may be a stretch, but charity work is the same. If you come into it with anything less than the purest of intentions, the project may look the part but give it a nudge, a prod, and it will fall apart. On the other hand, a charity based on the best of intentions, with clear thinking leaders and attainable objectives has all it takes in order to succeed. All that is needed is a great “baker” at its helm.
Table to Table is just such an organization. Our friend, Joseph Gitler, having been inspired by the American organization Second Harvest (now called Feeding America), knew that the idea was ripe for Israel. So, five years ago, he put his food were his mouth is, and started Israel’s most successful food rescue charity, today rescuing food from catering halls, corporate functions, manufacturers and growers and feeding over 10,000 families a week.
The world economy, in my mind, looks like a dollar sign with a sad face plummeting to the depths of a deep ravine, the type where you can’t see the bottom. And just as the dollar sign, wiping it proverbial brow finds a tiny little ledge on which to perch itself, it looses its footing and keeps tumbling downwards, shock and surprise etched in its now super-extended eyebrows. The downwards spiral and the use of inferior ingredients has never been more apparent than in this week’s news of the scandal surrounding Bernie Madoff. The number of charities affected by the latest of dishonesties is going to test our philanthropic activities in the months to come.
What I can tell you is what I tell my friends who want to know about baking with butter. I know that as Kashrut-observant Jews, we can not eat the butter cookies after a meat meal but, for the good cookies, isn’t worth waiting a few hours? So, too, with charity. Perhaps we can’t give everyone to the extent we were giving before, but let’s keep on giving even if it isn’t with cash alone. Volunteering of you time and energy is charity within itself. Either way, baking and charity will make you feel better about that poor ever-dwindling dollar sign, spiraling out of control.
That’s it.
To the kosher baker, the ones who never use butter, in order to keep their baking utensils parve, I’m sorry to be the barer of bad news, but it is the truth. Only the simplest of ingredients mixed together will give you the best cookies. Use lower grade fat, like margarine or vegetable shortening, and even though your cookies will look like the real thing, they won’t taste it. If your flour is stale, or your flavoring dull, so too, your cookies. When using such a short list of ingredients, it is paramount that you use the cleanest, purest and best. That is the only way the magic really happens.
This may be a stretch, but charity work is the same. If you come into it with anything less than the purest of intentions, the project may look the part but give it a nudge, a prod, and it will fall apart. On the other hand, a charity based on the best of intentions, with clear thinking leaders and attainable objectives has all it takes in order to succeed. All that is needed is a great “baker” at its helm.
Table to Table is just such an organization. Our friend, Joseph Gitler, having been inspired by the American organization Second Harvest (now called Feeding America), knew that the idea was ripe for Israel. So, five years ago, he put his food were his mouth is, and started Israel’s most successful food rescue charity, today rescuing food from catering halls, corporate functions, manufacturers and growers and feeding over 10,000 families a week.The world economy, in my mind, looks like a dollar sign with a sad face plummeting to the depths of a deep ravine, the type where you can’t see the bottom. And just as the dollar sign, wiping it proverbial brow finds a tiny little ledge on which to perch itself, it looses its footing and keeps tumbling downwards, shock and surprise etched in its now super-extended eyebrows. The downwards spiral and the use of inferior ingredients has never been more apparent than in this week’s news of the scandal surrounding Bernie Madoff. The number of charities affected by the latest of dishonesties is going to test our philanthropic activities in the months to come.
What I can tell you is what I tell my friends who want to know about baking with butter. I know that as Kashrut-observant Jews, we can not eat the butter cookies after a meat meal but, for the good cookies, isn’t worth waiting a few hours? So, too, with charity. Perhaps we can’t give everyone to the extent we were giving before, but let’s keep on giving even if it isn’t with cash alone. Volunteering of you time and energy is charity within itself. Either way, baking and charity will make you feel better about that poor ever-dwindling dollar sign, spiraling out of control.
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