Baking for Synagogue Committee

Made a batch of Oatmeal Chocolate Chip cookies, 46 of them, for our Kesher Committee to take to the Emmanuel Dining room on our synagogue's behalf. I think our turn, three a year, is on Sunday. Made in the style of Frog/Commissary, of blessed memory, a destination for my wife and me decades ago when we had reason to be in Center City. Many of the pioneering yuppie places that transformed the Philly dining scene in the 1980s to early 1990s are long gone but I still make Fish Market Apple pie and these Commissary cookies from recipes that have been preserved in print. I found that the texture is better when I use half butter/half Crisco instead of all butter. Usually I mix in walnuts, which the cafeteria did as well, but omitted them this time. Not that hard to make. Stand mixer combines everything but the oatmeal and chocolate chips, which are stirred into a rather stiff dough with a wooden spoon. Can only make about a dozen at a time on a tray, twelve minutes followed by five minutes cooling each batch, so it takes a while. Since these are for donation and they fill up two big milchig bowls, I ran out for a foil turkey roaster from the Dollar Store which should hold the entire batch, to be delivered to the head of the project tomorrow. None for me this time.

Since it is a synagogue project, there are some ethical issues. First, can I use Crisco? When it came out in the Depression era, it was advertised as Kosher as a promotion, and since pareve, it became a staple of Jewish baking and frying. However, it was originally made by hydrogenation of liquid oils to create a solid of long shelf life. The hydrogens were in the trans position, which made them among the most atherogenic foods around. The process has been revised to change the trans positions of the hydrogens but keep the shelf life, so less unhealthy.

The other issue is whether one may make what are considered luxury products for a safety net institution. The traditional Jewish view is My Food is Your Food. Sharing is mandatory and I cannot begrudge another person a treat that I take for myself. The people who run the soup kitchens do not always concur with this. They often regard their service as what the people need to sustain themselves. If they are given what they cannot realistically hope to be able to acquire for themselves, they may have been done a disservice. The purpose of places like this is so that the patrons may be able to not need it in the foreseeable future. Interestingly, this is the same view taken by Rambam in his discussion of Tzedakah. But for now, I pitch in my best effort, rugelach last time, top notch cookies this time.