Have you ever tried explaining something to someone only to realize that that something is completely unknown beyond the confines of your childhood hometown?
It's like this earth-shattering moment of shock where you realize your Mitten State suburb is smaller than you think and that a whole chunk of the world has been deprived of one of your favorite birthday party desserts. It's a tragic moment of revelation, but thank god we have a blog to save everyone.
Read MoreAlyssa and I took our relationship to the next level and decided to share a winter CSA. I know, I know - things are getting serious. Lest you think a winter CSA would be filled with nothing but potatoes, some sad apples and more potatoes, it should be known that it is AWESOME. So far we've received varieties of squash, cooking and eating greens, maple syrup, popcorn, happy apples and more. It weighs like, 20 pounds, and getting it home is a fun game to play to test your muscular strength, but it's so worth it.
Our last box contained a surprise - maple cream. "The fuck?" we asked, to no one in particular. Maybe we directed it to the maple cream, but while it was a surprising addition, it wasn't sentient, so it didn't answer back.
Read MoreI am a marzipan FIEND. I am truly obsessed. I'm sure my Eastern European heritage has a lot to do with it, but whatever the case, it is one of my favorite things in the world. Visiting Austria a couple of months ago to meet my partner's family was a dream come true for many reasons - one of which being the opportunity to pull a Julie Andrews and sing on a mountaintop with copious twirling. I didn't end up singing on the apex of an alp, but I did sing loudly at 11:00 PM on a street in Salzburg, and I wasn't wearing a dirndl but I saw like, 15 in a shop so that counts, right?
Read MoreIf you haven't had a chance to swing by our About Us Page, you might not know that Rina and I are high school musical dorks. And, no, that's not High School Musical with capital letters (though I do love me some Getcha Head In The Game), rather, high school musical, as in our high school's musical theater department. That's where our friendship first blossomed. It was my freshman year, her sophomore year, and she was the Marty to my Rizzo in Grease.
Read MoreYou didn't think we would leave you with just one sufganiyah recipe this holiday season, now, did you? Of course not. We feel obligated to make up for all those sad, dried out donuts you might have had in your day school youth. Or for the fact that you were never even blessed with fried Hannukah treats to begin with and perhaps thought that sufganiyah was a type of martial arts. So, here we are - day two of our Hannukah foodie fest, and believe you me, this recipe is not one to be missed.
Read MoreAlyssa and I are dedicated to creating foods and recipes that remind us of our Jewish upbringing and culture, which is why for the next couple of weeks we're making Hannukah recipes exclusively. The defining characteristic of a Hannukah food is whether or not it's fried in oil - the miracle of Hannukah is that after the Jewish Temple was destroyed, there was only enough oil for one night to light the menorah, but it lasted eight nights (which is why Hannukah is eight days). We don't recommend eating fried foods for eight days straight, but you must try homemade sufganiyot or latkes at least one during the holiday.
Read MoreI've always been told that my eating habits are a little weird. I tend to eat small meals throughout the day (more time spent eating is always a plus in my book, anyway), eat little bits of things instead of one big item, like a sandwich or something, and I take really small bites. Like, really small. I can work at a croissant for three hours - I've timed myself, it's a personal record.
Read MoreSometimes, I wonder if Rina and I should write a Gateau | Gato children's book.
Sure, sure, we drop a lot of f-bombs and highly encourage adding alcohol to any and all of our recipes, but the lessons we learn in the kitchen are life lessons. Take this milkshake, for example. Or, as Rina calls it, this extra milkshake (I still don't really understand what extra is either, don't worry). This milkshake started off as a quest to bake an unbelievably delectable homemade bumpy cake, which apparently, is something of a Detroit delicacy, as I've come to learn.
Without naming names, or body parts, somehow the oven knob got turned up way too high and the cake dried out before we could even realize it. Talk about a bummer. Turns out, it was for the best, as the cake was pretty flavorless in and of itself. Lesson 1: Everything happens for a reason.
Read MoreIn all my years of celebrating Halloween, I can't pinpoint a particularly genius costume. I always opted for the Disney princess, the baby in a giant onesie, the store-bought nurse's costume to match the scrubs my college boyfriend found at a thrift store. This was all in an arguably simpler time - a time before Instagram likes crowned the best costume and being meta was all the rage. Despite my simple costume choices, however, I absolutely adore Halloween.
Read MoreI have never trick or treated. Like, ever.
I think I've talked about this before, but growing up my family was pretty observant - we kept strict kosher, observed Shabbat and went to Jewish camps and schools. Since Halloween is not not a historically pagan holiday, at least to a degree, it was a major no-no in the Bergman house. While some families we knew turned off all of their lights and hid in the basement from trick-or-treaters, however, my family always handed out candy to the neighborhood kids (and occasional creepy teenager). Not the typical Halloween tradition, but my family's nonetheless.
Read MoreAh, fall. The changing colors of the leaves, the infamous PSL, the crisp sweater weather, the flannel.
And if you're in the Jewish community, a fuck ton of holidays.
Read MoreBack in college, most members of the Michigan Jewish community committed themselves to the boxed Duncan Hines brownie mix. For one thing, it didn't have any dairy ingredients (suspicious, I know), so if you kept kosher, you could get away with having both your Shabbat dinner chicken and your sweet tooth. But, I'm pretty sure those boxed mixes were laced with something kind of addictive artificial chemicals because we made our way through a tin brownies in the matter of a few hours, especially if said brownies were undercooked. It was a dangerous addiction I knew I had to put an end to.
College is never a time of food connoisseurship for anyone, naturally. I think most people spend their college years shuffling in and out of the kitchen, trying not to burn their popcorn and avoiding the dishes piling up in the sink. After three years of the above, I finally discovered my love for baking senior year. Once I realized a boxed brownie mix wouldn't cut it, I started experimenting with other non-dairy dessert options for my more religious friends. But the truth was, there was nothing like a real, dairy-filled dessert - especially one swirled with stuff.
Read MoreThis recipe is whole-heartedly dedicated to my favorite dairy free/gluten free lady, my cousin, Miki. She spent 17 days of her 3 month adventure in South East Asia with me exploring northern Vietnam, Laos and Chiang Mai, Thailand. Easily, one of my favorite parts of the world, I was doubly as excited about Southeast Asia because Miki could eat practically everything there. Rice noodles, coconut milk - these dairy and gluten alternatives were perfect! We ate so many bowls of pho I lost count, and guzzled what can only be considered the world's best smoothies, but the treat that really took the cake (coconut cake, that is) was the Khao Nom Kok.
Read MoreAs I write this post, I am in the midst of some serious Monday blues. Most of the time I enjoy working at my full time job, but there are definitely times, especially on Mondays, when things feel slow and hard to wade through. It almost feels like a heavy blanket - everything feels that much harder to do because of the extra weight and pressure.
This isn't a foreign feeling to me, and I'm sure it isn't to many of you either.
Read MoreOh, whoopie pies. What an unfortunate name for something so delicious.
If you don't know what this absurd treat is, I highly recommend reading this article - super interesting, especially if you are a food history nerd like me.
In the cake v. frosting debate, I fall heavily on the frosting side. I firmly believe that most cakes are vehicles for frosting, and I tend to make way too much frosting when I'm baking. There are worse problems to have.
Read MoreWhen I was a kid, I loved anything and everything rainbow. I lived for Superman ice cream, rainbow Popsicles in the summer, friendship bracelets and Lisa Frank school supplies. Though I've grown out of my love for Superman ice cream (my brothers have not), a little bit of color goes a long way to brighten up even the grayest of adult days. In continuing with the Shabbat cookie trifecta we started a few weeks ago, Rina and I decided to whip up the the most popular cookie at the post bar-mitzvah kiddish luncheon - the rainbow chocolate drop cookie.
Read More*sigh* adulting is hard.
That's what my good friend Rebecca texted me the other day. She's about to start 5-year PhD program, and I was complaining about sitting at a desk all day. And you know what, adulting IS hard. I know, I know hindsight is 20/20, but being a kid was so nice. Even though school was, well, school, you were around your friends every day, you got to spend after school doing fun activities like sports or singing, and, if all else failed, you had your imagination and your ignorance.
But while being a kid was lovely, sometimes you need to remind yourself that being an adult rocks. You can watch TV for as long as you want, stay out way past your bedtime, and eat cake for breakfast. Sometimes, you just need to make bad choices.
Read MoreGoing to Jewish day school for most of our lives means Rina and I spent a fair share of our preteen years attending bar mitzvah synagogue services. If there was one thing I looked forward to on these Saturday mornings, it was the post-service Kiddush, or Jewish mini-brunch. They served an array of fishes of both the pickled and canned varieties, greasy potato chips and an assortment of dry, brittle, depressing cookies.
One such cookie, the abhorrent kichel, was truly a hot mess. This is the cookie that couldn't even pull itself together to look nice, let alone taste good. It tasted like sandpaper and looked like a wonton. It was all kinds of confused.
Read MoreI am obsessed with Alice in Wonderland.
I'm not exaggerating - I am a woman possessed. I've read both Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass multiple times over; I read The Annotated Alice cover to cover, including every last annotation - I really am that nerdy; and one of my favorite art books is a giant pop-up book of Alice from the MoMA. I don't know exactly what it is about the story that causes me to lose myself, but I keep coming back to it.
Read MoreMy mom makes the best banana bread ever.
Growing up, it was one of her two dessert staples, her other being chocolate chip cookies (sometimes baked in the form of a cookie-cake) followed verbatim from the back of a bag of Nestle Tollhouse chocolate chips. Even still, her back-of-the-bag cookies were so divine they never lasted more than a couple of days (especially when my brother’s friends came over). But her banana bread is something else.
Read More