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KEELEY’S MAY 31-DAY CHALLENGE
The Best Recipe for Gift Giving is Straight From Your Home
And I should know.
Day Twenty-two prompt: What’s the best meal you’ve ever eaten?
What makes a meal our best? Is it the food, the company, or the cooks? In my case, all of it mattered.
Almost thirty years ago, after giving birth to my third child, a trio gave my family a wonderful Friday night dinner to celebrate the Jewish Sabbath. It was my homecoming day from the hospital, and they knew I wouldn’t have time to prepare dinner, let alone a meal with such significance. I wasn’t a religious woman, but becoming a family of five and bringing in tradition from our baby’s start was meaningful.
And so were the gift givers.
The trio were two cousins and the Rabbi’s wife from their synagogue; the latter was a woman I’d never met. As the women toiled to make our home-cooked meal with all the fixings, I felt an overwhelming sense of love from three ladies who had their own list of things to do. Each wife had their family to cook for before nightfall when bringing in Shabbat meant bonding with family and eating together.
When Friday arrived, if memory serves me, the meal contained freshly baked Challah (Egg bread), chicken soup, roasted…
