Teenagers and a kosher kitchen

I got a request for more blogging about kashrut (kosher-ness). And since I just came back from the grocery store with kosher beef and a package of frozen shrimp (not to mention some other very not kosher frozen items) now seemed like as good a time as any to do so.

In eleven months, I never really figured out what Sabrina would eat. She was only with me for 4 dinnertimes a week, ate lunch at school, and ate cheerios for breakfast. Plus, she was hungry when I picked her up from school and then when we got home at 6:15 post-snack and I still needed to cook dinner, she was no longer hungry (thanks to the snack).

But I actually need to feed Odessa. Like, multiple times a day. She won't eat school lunch and is with me every day including weekends (this confuses my friends who got used to Sabrina being at her dad's on the weekend--they now think that all foster placements are for weekdays only). And she's old enough to fend for herself.

This last is really the problem.

So I've given over the microwave to her. She can have whatever she wants heated in the microwave, as long as she uses paper plates and plastic silverware. (I'm just hoping that my complete freak-out when she used a real plate in the microwave made her understand the severity of not following that rule.)

Even so, she complained to her social worker that she doesn't like what I cook. She eats what I cook, happily, so that was news to me, but it was more that I don't cook what she wants. I explained to the social worker that yes, there are rules about what can and can't happen in my kitchen and that is why Odessa isn't allowed free rein, but that I let her use the microwave, etc etc. I think that satisfied the social worker.

Well, Friday night Odessa started in on one of her mumble-the-same-thing-over-and-over-until-I-want-to-tell-her-that-if-she-says-she-wants-XX-one-more-time-she'll-never-get-it patterns, this time "I want shrimp." After about the 15th time I apologized that we can't have shrimp in the house. She got pissy, as she does frequently (she IS a teenager, after all!), and I don't want to reward that behavior, but...

I told her I would buy some not at all kosher frozen items for her and while I was in that aisle, I noticed that one of the shrimp things was on sale, so I bought it for her. I can't imagine that microwaved frozen shrimp scampi is any good, but I think that if I can get her to realize that I DO do things for her, she might be more willing to ask me to do things for her, which will make me better able to do things for her.*

*Earlier today she was on the phone with her cousin and said she couldn't go to her cousin's son's birthday party because she didn't have money to get there by public transit. (She was sitting next to her allowance, but setting that aside...) She told her cousin that she wasn't going to ask me for a ride. I was sitting right there to hear the conversation. When she got off the phone, I asked: "You're not going to ask me for a ride?" Odessa: "No." Me: "Is that because if you ask me for a ride and I say yes, then you'll be mad because you can't say that I never do anything for you, and if I say no, you'll be mad because I'm not giving you a ride?" Odessa: "Yes." The conversation then turned to how I need to be psychic. Not gonna happen. So she needs to get more comfortable asking me for things.

Kosher eating primer

Silje (no link because I'm lazy) requested a primer on the details of kashrut (keeping kosher) and Shabbat. Here's a run-down on kashrut:

Basic point #1: no pig products and no shellfish.
Basic point #2: no combining meat products (including poultry but not including fish) with dairy products

Beyond that, there are a lot of complicating factors:

Complicating factor (CF) #1: to really do kashrut "right," your meat products and your dairy products can never touch the same utensils. So I have two sets of dishes, silverware, and pots, one for dairy, one for meat. (I also have some separate things for things that are neither dairy nor meat, like vegetables, eggs, fish... which can use the dairy or the meat utensils but there are sometimes reasons not to.)

CF #2: any processed items that you might buy at the grocery store (cans, boxes, bottles) need to have a special symbol (called a "hechsher") indicating that the component ingredients are all kosher, that all utensils are appropriately separated, and that there is supervision of the factory to confirm these criteria.

CF #3: not all hechshers are created equal. It's a highly political process and kind of a racket. For example, have you ever seen that your toilet bowl cleaner has a U in a circle? Really ridiculous.

CF #4: there are exceptions to #2. Actually, there are exceptions to #1 as well, but they are super nit-picky. Not worth delving into.

CF #5: regarding meat, it isn't enough for the animal to be a kosher animal. There is a special type of slaughter that is necessary for the meat to be kosher. This does not mean that it's any better for the animal; they are kept in just as bad conditions as at non-kosher "farms."

Hm, not sure of what I'm forgetting. Anyone have reminders?

Shopping!

I definitely should not be confessing this to the blogosphere, but as I'm taking pains to be unidentifiable... I'm planning to take a not-really-sick day tomorrow (today, technically) to run some errands and apply for a few jobs. One of the errands is to look for new dinnerware. And here we get, at last, to a connection to the underlying theme of this blog: observant Judaism.

It's an expensive proposition to set up a kitchen, and even more so when your mother insists that you buy high-quality everything (she worked at a high-end kitchen store when I set up my kitchen, got an employee discount, ...), and even more than that when you need to buy two (or three) of everything for kashrut purposes. So when I first needed dinnerware, I bought the least expensive stuff I could find--clear glass plates and bowls that came in a set of 12 each for, I kid you not, only $10. To be honest, I truly hoped that I would meet my husband, he would ask to be my husband, and we would end up with nicer plates that we chose together. That hasn't happened, and it's been nearly eight years. Somehow, I still have 12 dinner plates and 12 dessert plates. They are not all completely intact, however, and I have only eight bowls.

It seems that it is time to replace my dinnerware.

There are so many choices out there; how ever will I make up my mind? Before I moved last June, I spent hours browsing every website imaginable for dinnerware. But I've come up with the criterion that will make my decision easier: the plates must involve the color blue in some way. Because, you see, these are to be my dairy plates. In my effort to make the kitchen user-friendly and kashrut-protected, I am moving towards a completely color-coded system. No, the blender will not get replaced by one that is blue (and a good thing, as I doubt those exist). But it is a lot easier to tell a kiddo to use a blue bowl and a blue spoon for her cereal than it is to explain which bowls are for dairy, and what foods are dairy, and make her connect them.

Off to bed so that I can get a productive day in tomorrow!

Keeping Kosher

Kashrut is one of the first obstacles that I considered when I began trying to reconcile my long-standing desire to be a foster parent with my more recent Jewish observance. Some of the key questions: How to maintain kashrut in the house? Does the foster child eat treif at school? Will I buy treif for the child outside the home?

I can tell you the answers that I have come up with. Are they the only answers? No. But they are what I've decided, in the absence of the real world experience of having a child living with me. I'd love to hear your answers as well.

Maintaining my kitchen's kashrut: I don't even let my kosher-keeping friends in my kitchen. So what am I thinking inviting a child who doesn't have the same commitment to kashrut to live in my house and have open access (at least age-appropriate access) to my kitchen? It's that parenthetical that is the key to my response. I've decided to limit the age of children who I foster to those who shouldn't have unsupervised access to the kitchen--and who hopefully aren't used to having that kind of open access. I've decided that age is 7, maybe a few years older for kids with developmental delays. I'll work on labeling things better, and probably use parve implements less and less. House rule #4 (what are 1-3? not sure yet): blue goes with blue, red goes with red.

School: Any time the child isn't with me, he or she can eat what everyone else is eating. Kashrut isn't a value; it's merely a practical consideration in the home. The child living with me isn't Jewish (if the child is Jewish, that will change things...but the chances of that are infinitesimal in a system where "the vast majority of kids in the system are African-American, and a few are Latino") so there is no reason to separate him or her from his or her peers.

Eating out: In an ideal world, we'll only by kosher food. Will this work in reality? That remains to be seen.