I’ve never made Shabbos before, but there’s always a first time for everything!
Illustration by Esti Friedman Saposh
When it comes to kitchen duties, my precious wife Denise of nearly 40 years and I are happy with our clearly defined duties. She does the laundry; I help put it on the drying rack and (mostly) do my own ironing. She does the cooking and I wash up. She peels vegetables and throws away the rubbish, overfilling the various recycling bins, which I then take outside.
So apart from frying an egg, shoving a pizza in the oven, or ordering a takeout, I can safely say that the last and only time I prepared a meal for her was 36 years ago, when she was indisposed. Even then my dear mother-in-law prepared nearly all the vegetables and left me precise instructions. So you can imagine my shock when my younger son informed me that he had volunteered me for Man with a Pan! However, nothing ventured, nothing gained, so here we go!
I decided to do as much as possible in advance, as Shabbos would be coming in around 4:15 on parshas Yisro. I wanted to make a fresh salmon appetizer with pesto and freeze it until needed. “No problem,” says Denise.
The salmon is sliced and rinsed and waiting in the pan for the pesto. Open the fridge and… whoops, no pesto. Improvise. We have lime juice and dill, baruch Hashem. Friday night appetizer sorted.
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