RULES OF THE KOSHER KITCHEN

In case you have been wondering where I've been (as if) over the last few weeks, I've been upsetting people and having to take down posts. I've been feeling a bit beleaguered.

My most recent effort was my comment on My Kosher Kitchen Rules (MKKR), a program based on the TV show My Kitchen Rules (duh), which I have never watched, but I do believe that it is quite popular. I've never watched Masterchef either but I get the gist of it.

(As an aside, we are entirely too interested in food. I mean, I am very interested on a personal level, and I think we need to get back to basics and stop eating crap because we are all too fat and more so are kids. I have never seen so many obese children in my life; just look at a school letting out at hometime. Back in the day, I was The Fat Kid in my class for most of my school life. OK, small school, but still, maybe 2% of the kids were fat. Now 20%-30% are properly fat, not talking about so-called 'puppy fat'. And my mother was fat and my brother was fat, and clearly there was some tendency there. Now I see, not only fat kids with fat parents, but even with slim parents. The culprits are convenience foods and snacks and excessive screen time as well as parental paranoia about letting children walk to school, and it's a toxic mix. And let me tell you, it's all very habit-forming, the non-hungry eating of energy-dense foods, and the unwillingness to get up and move your fat butt. It takes huge effort to change these habits once a child has learned this sort of behaviour. (Believe me, I know from bitter personal experience.) And you have to be very delicate about it because, along with skyrocketing obesity, we see the flip-side; eating disorders, aka anorexia and bulimia and all sorts of shades of disordered eating. Anyway, now pizza has inserted itself into our culture, not as a special treat but as a legitimate meal on a weekday. If you're going to give your kid pizza for dinner, for G-d's sake, at least put out a range of cut-up fresh veggies on a platter, with some hummus or tahini dip or something if you have to, and also learn how to make your own pizza, which is NOT a big deal.
This post is turning into something else entirely. The whole thing is a digression.
What I really wanted to say was that the cultural obsession with food and sport makes me think of the decline of the Roman Empire, bread and circuses and all that.)

OK, back to MKKR. I can't comment on what my post was because people will get upset all over again, and then I'll have to take it down again yada yada. I will say, I think there was an over-reaction to my spoiler, and I won't apologise because nobody actually contacted me to complain, they merely threatened another person who was involved. Guys, if you have something to say to me, please just say it to me, OK? Then we can talk. I will also say the old maxim: ANY PUBLICITY IS GOOD PUBLICITY. More than one person has told me that they looked at the MKKR website only because of my blog post, by the way. So I hope you all unknotted your knickers. Because now, I will critique.

I have watched the You-Tube programs - intro, Episodes 1,2&3- and I'm happy to say I think that it's very well done. It's lots of fun to watch. The production values are good. The characters are all entertaining. I would like to hear more of David Trakhtman because clearly he really knows what he is talking about (and I am in 100% agreement that bok choy and strawberries do NOT go together!). And YES, back to basics, we need to know how to minimise our use of processed food, how to cook fresh from simple, natural ingredients. For the sake of our health and our families' health.

MKKR is a fun program and it's for a good cause and you should have a look at it.

What, were you expecting some sort of vitriol from Doctor Booba? Sorry to disappoint. That's not the Booba's style. Enjoy! That's the main rule of the kosher kitchen. Which rules. Just enjoy.