I think it's funny that Wisconsin has such a large German, Polish, eastern European contingent that one of the first things they taught us how to cook in Home Ec was latkes. You must know how to make these if you're going to be a good housewife!

The idea of baked latkes is ridiculous. The entire point of latkes is that they're fried in oil!

Word.

Huh. [link]

Overwhelmingly, the consensus was this: Jewish kids of my generation were permitted to watch one or all of: How the Grinch Stole Christmas, A Charlie Brown Christmas, and The Year Without Santa Claus. Therefore, their children are also allowed to watch them. But ask them why these movies pass muster and prepare for whomping exhibitions of illogic as only the People of the Book can practice it.

...

A fair point, perhaps, but why do Jewish parents want to be pushing this peculiarly self-loathing vision of the bitter old Jewish man on their kids? Do we drag our kids to see The Merchant of Venice? If anything, the weird Grinch-as-old-Jew notion would seem to suggest that of all things Jewish kids should not be watching at Christmastime, the Seussian classic tops the list. But perhaps my colleague Emily Bazelon is right, and Jewish kids like the Grinch because "Without the ending, the movie is the ultimate fantasy for a Jewish kid with a case of Santa/tree/carols envy—Christmas, canceled."

Interesting.

We always watched A Charlie Brown Christmas, White Christmas, and Miracle on 34th Street. Frosty was grudgingly accepted; Rudolf was allowed, but with a definite disclaimer of "You know that we don't believe in that stuff." It's A Wonderful Life was definitely not something we watched.

Willow's line about having to go to Xander's house to watch Charlie Brown Christmas never made sense to me -- most of the Jewish kids I knew were allowed to watch that one. The ones that got more scrutiny were the ones about Santa and presents and reindeer and stuff like that.

I think it's funny that Wisconsin has such a large German, Polish, eastern European contingent that one of the first things they taught us how to cook in Home Ec was latkes.

Huh. I don't think I ever had latkes until I moved to Chicago. (And I grew up in a very German part of Wisconsin.)

I suspect it's a product of the times I grew up in, tommyrot. Between junior high and high school (early 70s), Home Ec became one of those classes that was no longer mandatory for girls and was now open to boys. But when it was still mandatory, they had very strict expectations of what they felt girls should be learning to cook/sew. In seventh grade, it was skirts, because, heaven forbid, a female might want to wear pants! (And, too, skirts are much simpler to sew. Although, when I took it, I was allowed to sew pants, because I was the only student with previous sewing experience. I'd already won a pair of scissors in a sewing contest. Hee.) So the food choices and clothing requirements were based very much on "traditional" foods, etc. I think, except for the Original Pancake House, potato pancakes have gone out of style years ago.

Huh. I never got the Grinch = bitter old Jewish man connection before. Pro'lly because as a kid I had almost no exposure to Jewish culture.

I did get the Klingon = Soviet Union connection, though.

Now I want to go to Podhalanka (the Polish restaurant tommyrot, shrift, and MFNLaw and I went to last winter) for those kickass potato pancakes. They were seriously great--crispy on the outside, fluffy potato on the inside.

Who else is at work today?

Me!! I drove through the four inches of new-fallen snow to find just about no one here. Oh, well, I'm only here for a half-day, so I'll be gone by 1:30.

Oh. My. God.

Happy War On Xmas Eve, Wookies!

The horror.... The horror....

That xkcd comic reminded me of a video my 12-y.o. nephew made, of Lego Batman and Robin battling an alliance of Lego stormtroopers and rebels. Very clever with the stop-motion animation!

Speaking of regional food, I've started a recipe blog of my family's recipes. Today's entry is baking as I type this.