Apples & Honey: Rosh Hashana and local festival are occasions to celebrate a 'good and sweet' combination
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Semolina Cake with Honey and Pistachio -
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For Jewish New Year, or Rosh Hashana, it is traditional to eat slices of apple dipped in honey, which are symbolic of a sweet year.
On Sunday, just before Rosh Hashana begins at sundown on Wednesday, several groups of the Jewish Federation of Pittsburgh are holding the first Family Apples and Honey Fall Festival at Squaw Valley Park in O'Hara. The event, which runs from 1 to 4 p.m., will feature experts on honey (kosher honey, no less) and apples. There'll also be apple sack races, beeswax candle making and other art activities, holiday-themed games -- even a workshop on making shofars, the "ram's horn" horns blown on Jewish holidays.
One of the organizers is Kira Sunshine, a chef whose kosher catering company is called Apples and Honey (applesandhoney.com). She brought the name with her from Washington, D.C., where it was her personal chef service to more than 30 clients.
She liked the name because it subtly said "kosher" and because, frankly, an "a" name puts you first in the phone book and on other lists.
But she agrees that apples and honey have a wide appeal, especially this time of year when the apples are coming in, and welcomes people, Jewish or not, to the free festival. "Certainly anyone's welcome to come and enjoy it," she says. "Something like this is just a wonderful way to kick off the new year."
As Gil Marks notes in his "Encyclopedia of Jewish Food (Wiley, 2010)," Rosh Hashana translates as "Head of the Year" and lasts for two days of joy and feasting. Eating apples grew out of the ancient custom of eating a new fruit, one not yet sampled that season. Among Ashkenazi (from Eastern Europe) Jews, he writes, "At the beginning of the evening meal, apple slices are dipped in honey and this phrase is recited: 'May it be Your will to renew on us a good and sweet year.' "
The Hurried Beekeeper's Standby Dinner for Friends: Chicken and Apples in Honey Mustard Sauce
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This charmingly named recipe is one of just three in the forthcoming book, "Honey: Nature's Golden Healer," by Gloria Havenhand, a teacher/lecturer turned beekeeper and bee products producer in Derbyshire, England. She's all about the beneficial properties of honey and other bee products (pollen, royal jelly, wax), which she calls "the universal panacea." But the book is overflowing with interesting facts, and it's gorgeously photographed, often from a honeybee's perspective, by Christian Bennett. This is a book that should generate some buzz.
First Published September 22, 2011 12:00 am
