[Avodah] Hot Cheese for Shabbat Lunch

[Jonathan Baker]

Akiva Miller:

> I have absolutely no problem with a family who decides for themselves
> that this is the sort of Shabbos that they like to have. But let's not
> fall into the trap which Adam and Chava fell into, of confusing the
> actual law and the personal choice. In the case at hand, let's make
> sure we understand what is the actual law, and what is the personal
> choice. As far as I know, the Kavod Shabbos does demand that our food
> and clothing be better than during the week, but there is no objective
> definition of this -- it all depends on the circumstances. A t-shirt
> could be very Shabbosdik for a person who normally wears a totally
> sleeveless undershirt. I see nothing about a piece of boiled chicken
> which makes it intrinsically more Shabbosdik than some blintzes or (on
> Yom Tov) a fresh matza brei.

Let me point out that mac-and-cheese for us is not some simple thing
that we make all the time (we're actually fleishig or pareve most of
the time at dinner).  It takes 3 pots, and a lot of scrubbing after-
wards (make the cheese sauce, boil the pasta, bake the resulting thing,
often with string beans or tuna fish added, in a glass pan, and then I
have a lot of scrubbing to do).  It's not "open a box, toss into pot,
add water, cook".

So if effort is a measure of kovod Shabbos, there's a lot of kovod 
Shabbos going on.  I was really just asking about the technical issue
of whether the cheese is davar gush or davar lach.  Seems we have a
fair rationale for considering the whole thing a davar gush, hence 
reheatable.

> I know a family where they have the exact same food every single
> shabbos. The same recipe for the soup. The same style of chicken.
> The same side dishes every week for decades. It's not my style, but
> it is what *they* like to do, and for *them* it is VERY Shabbosdik.
> Sort of like a security blanket, perhaps. Once you've been doing
> something long enough, it feels un-Shabbosdik to change it. Perhaps
> this is what RTK meant by saying that she prefers dairy, but insists
> on meat for Shabbos. If an individual wants to define Kavod Shabbos
> that way for him/herself, that is fine. But don't confuse subjective
> preferences with objective definitions.

Huh, that's what my wife grew up with.  They may not have been kosher,
or shomer shabbos, but every Friday night they had the same chicken
dish, skinless breaded chicken.  She made it for us for the first time
last week.  It's nice, and a nice change from the way we've been doing
the shabbos chicken for the past few years (since the gout debacle - she
found it's nice to put different combinations of spices under the skin
and then roast it), but we like variety, so the same thing every week
doesn't wash for us today.

As for lunch, we almost never make cholent.  Neither of us grew up
on it, so we don't particularly like it, and it's never any good
made in small quantities (tends to dry up), and we don't want to
waste a large quantity.  So we reheat, to show we're not Tzedukim.
We also have hatmanized coffee (concentrate, from a thermos, with
some hot water added to thin it out).
 
> > We were once guests of people who served milchigs for a yom tov
> > lunch (not Shavuos) -- much to our surprise.  I would have been
> > much too shy to say anything, but my husband asked the hostess
> > if she had a piece of cold chicken in the fridge or something
> > else fleishig he could eat. Ever since then when we get invited
> > out for a meal, my husband always tells me to make sure they're
> > serving fleishigs.
 
> The exact opposite happened to us. We went to friends for a three-day
> yom tov (Shabbos, Sunday, Monday), and were going crazy with the
> monotony of the same meat over and over. So for lunch on the last
> day, despite Mr. Host's preference for meat yet again, my wife and
> Mrs. Host insisted on preparing a very nice dairy meal. And ever
> since then, she checks with the hostess before we go away for yom
> tov. (At home, we usually have milchig for the second night of yom
> tov, except at the seder of course, when we move it to lunch.)

Debbie's reaction to Toby's story above: She can imagine the hostess
yelling "What!  You want to trafe up my whole nice dairy kitchen and
dining room?  You can go eat in the corner over there!  Inconsiderate
so-and-so!"

We tend to have one dairy lunch each two-day Yom Tov, just because meat
after meat after meat just gets too heavy.  It's something nice, but
relatively light, e.g. cheese omelette.  And no, that's not something
we cook every day either, our breakfast tends to be cold cereal and milk
and fruit.
 
RnTK:
> It is interesting to me how the milchig - vs - fleishig Shabbos meal is  
> another one of those sociological things that fall along a LW-RW Orthodox  divide. 
>       ...    for RW Orthodoxy to be more formal, LW more  informal.

Huh.  I don't think of it as an Orthdoxy thing.  Maybe that's part of it:
that style is, for the RW, driven by their perception of Orthodoxy, while
for the LW, it's driven by the individual, as long as it fits within
halachic parameters.   With the implicit notion that the RW give their
personal style the imprimatur of Orthodoxy, thereby claiming  greater 
authenticity for it, regardless of whether Orthodoxy or family tradition
or personal preference is the real motivating factor.  Just as I may not
be a "typical" LW Orthodox person, I don't see Toby as a "typical" RW
Orthodox person, neither in background, nor in attitudes.

RnTK:

> A couple of people wrote me off list to ask why it was OK to embarrass  our 
> hosts or to say that asking the hostess for something not on the menu is rude.

Aha, so it wasn't just Debbie's reaction.
 
--
        name: jon baker              web: http://www.panix.com/~jjbaker
     address: jjbaker at panix.com     blog: http://thanbook.blogspot.com