Crepes for Lunch!

very morning, I am confronted by the same old problem: what to prepare for lunch, which in Israel, is our big meal of the day. There's nothing earthshaking about this. It's a universal problem. Picky kids with palates that get bored at the blink of an eye. Moms that get stuck in a food prep rut. Nope. Not new at all.

I wracked my brains and came up with...Nada. Couldn't think of a single dish that piqued my interest enough to make me want to bother to buy the associated ingredients and cook them for my kids. Feh. Lunch. Again. Blah.

What I did was force myself out the door. I thought that if I went to the local mom and pop store, maybe I'd see something there that would get the wheels of my brain turning in a "luncherly" direction.Which, in retrospect, was a very good idea.

About halfway to the store, the fog lifted from my brain. Maybe it was the cold fresh air. But BINGO! Inspiration from out of nowhere: I would make them crepes with a variety of toppings. A fun lunch.

I had most of what I needed at home: eggs, milk, flour, sweet butter. I'd just buy some chocolate bars to grate for topping, and anything else that looked like it might be good as a sweet topping for crepes. I bought some Nutella, brown sugar, and sour cream. I had good apricot preserves at home. The funny thing is that I knew they would only use the grated chocolate, and MAYBE the Nutella. I was right.

I had never ever made them crepes during the week for a lunch. I made it for us to break the Yom Kippur fast when it was just Dov and I. But as the kids grew up, they wanted to have crepes with us after the fast. It got to the point where I had to stand on my feet for four hours straight to make enough crepes to feed 12 kids plus two adults after the long 25 hour fast.

I put my foot down. We're doing bagels and lox. No more crepes. But my kids cried bitter tears and one of them, my daughter Michal said, "Wait! Make the batter and show me how to cook them and I will cook them!!"

And that is what we did for many years.

But Michal got married and then nobody was brave enough to take on the task of standing and cooking all those crepes. I persuaded them that bagels and lox was the only way to go. This has become our standard post-fast meal.

Today, it hit me: I have only four kids left at home. Why not make crepes for lunch? It may not be the healthiest lunch choice, but I knew it would give the kids joy.

Did they appreciate my efforts? You bet your sweet bippy! 16 year-old Moshe came home and when he found out there were crepes for lunch, he burst out with an unrestrained, impassioned recitation of his love for me. "I LOVE you," he said. 

Verbal expressions of love for mom from a 16 year-old?? Wowee. I should make crepes for lunch more often.

Nu Testament

Until I was around 4 years old, I thought that everyone was Jewish. Judaism, to me, seemed monolithic, the whole point, the only thing there was. So, it must have been December circa 1965 that I approached my childhood friend and neighbor, Susie McElvaney and asked her, "What did you get for Chanuka?"

Susie responded, "We don't have Chanuka, we have Christmas."

"What's that?" asked I, clueless.

"Well, Jews have Chanuka, and Christians have Christmas."

"What is 'Christian?'"

"It's a religion. Like being Jewish is a religion. You're Jewish, I'm Christian."

"Wait. You mean you're not Jewish??"

I was crestfallen. To me this indicated some kind of blemish in my favorite playmate and seemed to be something that was irrevocable. I remember feeling very sad and disturbed that there was a sudden gap between me and Susie, between her family and my own. I found it difficult to grapple with this concept and felt depressed.

Within days, I had come to terms with the idea that not everyone is the same or has the same beliefs, but I found myself very curious about Christianity. I picked up bits and pieces about the religion from my reading, and from my friends, but I think what brought home the whole issue to me in its entirety was the musical, Jesus Christ Superstar.

Once I figured out the gist of Christianity, I was stymied—how on earth could anyone believe such a wild story, I wondered? I mean, did people really believe a guy could be God, subsequently die, but they think he's going to come back and rule over the world as a reincarnation? How could God die? I mean, if he's God, he can't die—isn't that the point?

So, my little ten year old mind had passed judgment, nay dismissed concepts that great minds had wrestled with for 19 plus centuries. Of course, big mouth that I was, I couldn't keep this discovery to myself. I had to share the joke. At home among family members, I was thought of as quite the comedian. I could always bring down the house with my antics. Why not try out my act on the schoolyard, thought I?

The next day, I heard the kids singing the title song from the musical. I was ready. I lifted my arms out at my sides and called out in an authoritative, hopefully Godly voice, "I am the reincarnation of Jesus Christ Superstar, come to rule over the earth!"

I waited for the guffaws to roll in. Curiously, they did not. Or rather, the kids laughed all right, but not because they thought I was funny—they thought I was wacked up in the head.

From then on, whenever kids would see me, they'd call out, "Hey, look! It's the reincarnation of Jesus Christ Superstar," and they'd expect me to go into my Varda on the Cross imitation. It was horrible. They were ridiculing me. But I couldn't think how to gracefully change my situation.

For years, this went on even after I switched schools. My former classmates and others from that school would see me on the street and call out, "There she is, "Jesus' reincarnation," and they'd laugh and point to me and I'd dutifully hold my arms out at my sides and wink divinely.

It boggles my mind today, as a mother of children, just how permanent that whole episode became; how that one little bit of playacting colored my entire childhood and made me miserable and unpopular for years. In fact, I kind of suppressed this memory until a short time ago when I met up with old friends from that school on Facebook.

I told my husband what had happened and he just couldn't believe I had started such a dumb routine going. He was embarrassed for me. I'm still not sure I should have told him about this whole business. But in the interest of full disclosure, as they say, I guess it was important for him to know about this (gulp) formative experience. Just hope my kids never find out…