Erev Shabbat Jewish Blogging
Feb. 17th, 2006 02:59 pmThis week: Traveling kosher
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mabfan and I are off to Boskone this weekend. Traveling to a convention, no matter how close to a Jewish community it is, is always a challenge for us. Because we keep kosher, we have to make sure to bring the food we're going to need for the duration of the convention, or, at least, for the 3 (4 if you're counting both breakfast and shalosh seudot) during-Shabbat meals. So, right after I log out of LJ, I will be packing our cooler, gathering the nonperishables and the paper/plastic goods, and hoping I didn't forget anything vital that is food related.
But this is an issue not just when we're going to conventions. Most of the cities we travel to have sufficiently large Jewish communities that finding kosher food is not a big problem. And now it is relatively easy to go into a grocery store just about anywhere in the US and find sufficient national-brand foods that have kosher certification that, while one may not be able to eat anything particularly fancy, one would be able to find sufficient food that one would not go hungry.
One of the items on my Perpetual Packing Procedure is "All necessary food." This is because even when we're traveling from one Jewish community to another Jewish community, there will likely be a time that we will want food that we won't necessarily be able to easily find anything kosher. Rest stops along the highway sometimes have kosher items available for purchase but not always. And if we travel by train or by bus, the majority of snacks available for purchase (or, with the LimoLiner, provided by the transportation service) are not kosher.
I remember a conversation with an observant Jew who had, for business reasons, spent a year in China. "What did you do about food?" he was asked. "You know those pop-top cans of tuna fish you can buy in most US grocery stores?" he replied. "I brought a suitcase full of them."
Shabbat shalom!
mabfan and I are off to Boskone this weekend. Traveling to a convention, no matter how close to a Jewish community it is, is always a challenge for us. Because we keep kosher, we have to make sure to bring the food we're going to need for the duration of the convention, or, at least, for the 3 (4 if you're counting both breakfast and shalosh seudot) during-Shabbat meals. So, right after I log out of LJ, I will be packing our cooler, gathering the nonperishables and the paper/plastic goods, and hoping I didn't forget anything vital that is food related.But this is an issue not just when we're going to conventions. Most of the cities we travel to have sufficiently large Jewish communities that finding kosher food is not a big problem. And now it is relatively easy to go into a grocery store just about anywhere in the US and find sufficient national-brand foods that have kosher certification that, while one may not be able to eat anything particularly fancy, one would be able to find sufficient food that one would not go hungry.
One of the items on my Perpetual Packing Procedure is "All necessary food." This is because even when we're traveling from one Jewish community to another Jewish community, there will likely be a time that we will want food that we won't necessarily be able to easily find anything kosher. Rest stops along the highway sometimes have kosher items available for purchase but not always. And if we travel by train or by bus, the majority of snacks available for purchase (or, with the LimoLiner, provided by the transportation service) are not kosher.
I remember a conversation with an observant Jew who had, for business reasons, spent a year in China. "What did you do about food?" he was asked. "You know those pop-top cans of tuna fish you can buy in most US grocery stores?" he replied. "I brought a suitcase full of them."
Shabbat shalom!
