It’s Friday afternoon, I’m at work and thinking about Shabbat dinner tonight.
D has expressed interest in having a barbecue, pretty much his favorite thing in the world. I already have steaks in the freezer - beef for him, tuna for me. (I sort of lied in my first entry when I said I was a vegetarian - I’m actually a pescetarian.)
I got D a grill for his birthday in July, and the night of, I got all the fixings for a birthday barbecue, including a big, bloody, non-kosher steak. We cooked it on the grill with my veggie burgers, and I didn’t have a problem with it - per se. But, you know, the more I thought about it, the more it kind of bugged me.
Most people (who don’t keep kosher, that is) would probably think I’m being ridiculous. After all, my food doesn’t mix with his steaks, and we clean the grill with Easy-Off after every use. Surely a good dose of Easy-Off is enough to make our grill reasonably kosher again?
No rationalizations could help here - it just bothered me. I know I’ll probably never have a totally kosher home like the one I grew up in - D likes buffalo wings too much for that (oh, Empire could make a fortune in buffalo wings!). I’m not going to quibble too much, because I know it’s difficult (if not impossible) to find kosher versions of the meat products he likes - and I love him far too much to tell him never to eat wings again. For this reason, we have separate dishes for when he eats non-kosher.
(As a side note, many, if not most of the non-Orthodox Jews I know don’t keep kosher anyway. I’m definitely the exception, not the rule! Case in point: I’m the resident “kosher expert” at the Jewish newspaper I work for, since I’m the only one who keeps kosher there.)
But I can keep the grill kosher. Our local Trader Joe’s sells kosher chicken and beef, and as long as they do, I can barbecue in the right. Right now our freezer is stocked with kosher chicken, steak and ground beef. Even though I won’t eat any of it, it makes me smile a little every time I open the door.
The last time we barbecued, D had the kosher steak, which he announced was one of the best steaks he’d ever had. I doubt he knows how happy (and, okay, secretly proud) that made me.
I applaud your grill solution, Rachel!
My husband & I are functionally pescetarian most of the time, but the times we eat kosher meat the most are when we’re cooked for by our carnivorous parents–who don’t themselves keep kosher (my mom’s the only Jewish one among them). In the interest of everyone sharing the same dinner, even if only 2 of us care about the kashrut of the meat (and would be happy to have fish or veggies), they’ll fix kosher meat for everyone.
As D’s praise for the steak attests, it’s not just Jews who appreciate a nice piece of kosher meat–it can be an unanticipated gastronomic bonus for those cooking for/with observant Jews. My Catholic father-in-law doesn’t need to know that the pot roast is kosher–just that it’s delicious!
How pathetic.
Since there is no Jewish prohibition on the eating of treif by a Gentile why would it matter what your husband ate?
Religiously observant? Try religiously ignorant