It’s that time again! According to USA.gov, the most popular New Year’s resolution is (drum roll please)… lose weight! What a surprise. If, like me, you make this same resolution every year, three books may turn things around, and then maybe next year we can all resolve to reduce carbon emissions and promote world peace.

I’m bored. Maybe it’s the 40-year itch, but I’ve been making the same Hanukkah potato latkes for decades. (Not that there’s anything wrong with them. Several years ago, in reviewing my first cookbook “Melting Pot Memories,” Food Editor Cathy Thomas of The Orange County Register called them “crispy-brown snowflakes” and “lacy, almost-crunchy wonders”…but I don’t

When Madison Avenue talks, the world listens…and buys! Years ago two ad campaigns did much to help bring kosher food into the mainstream. Remember the one for rye bread, “You don’t have to be Jewish to love Levy’s”? And then there was “We answer to a higher authority” from Hebrew National. Once the province of

They were once recommended for removing freckles and curing snakebites. Native American Indians cut them into strips, dried them and wove them into mats. Seeds of related plants have been discovered in Mexico dating back thousands of years ago. The Colonists coming to North America enthusiastically adopted the pumpkin grown by the Native Americans. Harvested

Not one of the eight women in my book club knew all the others when we began to meet. Yet we have become a sisterhood, part of a growing national phenomenon – thanks, Oprah! – sharing ideas as we break bread together, nourishing our souls as well as our bodies. In the nine years we

Photo by Nick Koon We have a wonderful tradition at Rosh Hashanah of eating new fruits of the season. What did you choose? Pomegranate? Apple? And what will be suspended from the roof of your sukkah? Same old, same old? Sukkot or “Feast of Ingathering” was agricultural in origin. Why not celebrate this thanksgiving of

I can tell when the High Holidays are approaching, because I start getting those phone calls – from my family, my friends, my mother’s friends…even strangers! “Can I make the brisket ahead and freeze it?” “How about the kugel?” “What can I do with my burnt honey cake?” (Yes and yes to the first two

It has been revered since Biblical times as a symbol of fertility, good health and immortality. Celebrated by King Solomon in the Song of Songs, this tangy, many-seeded fruit with its crimson-hued, leathery shell was abundant in the Garden of Eden and is even thought by some scholars to have been the real “apple” that

The model before us is a photographer’s dream. She can hold a pose for hours without complaint, she doesn’t mind being poked and prodded until the shot is just right, and best of all, she projects an attitude without actually having one. No, she’s not some high-priced, anorexic supermodel in a flowing Balenciaga – “she”

Like its nightshade relatives, the eggplant and potato, it was once thought to be poisonous. The French named it pomme d’amour (love apple) and considered it an aphrodisiac. Really a fruit, it’s called a vegetable. Call the tomato what you want. I call it delicious. According to John Cooper in “Eat and Be Satisfied,” tomatoes