Ok I have another Greek recipe, tastes great room temp and can be made a day or two in advance. I would recommend heating up morning of or maybe just pulling out of fridge till it reaches room temp before serving. This recipe I got from greek.food.com and I actually just made it two weeks ago for company. I made a few changes - parsley instead of cilantro, and I used zucchini plus eggplant. I also used two fresh tomatoes and one large can of san marzano whole peeled tomatoes. This was for about double the recipe below. The key to this is just making sure you cook it long enough. Other than that you can add as many veggies as you like in whatever combination you want. Just make sure you add enough seasoning and tomato to cover any extra veggies you add. This is for 6 servings - I doubled for about 12 ppl as a side and had maybe 2-3 servings leftover. 5 large zucchini, washed and scrubbed and cut crosswise into 1/4 inch thick slices 4 large potatoes, peeled and cut crosswise into 1/4 inch thick slices (I used red and russet both came out well) 3 -4 garlic cloves, sliced thin 1 large onion, peeled, cut in half, each half cut into thirds, large wedges (Spanish or Bermuda) 2 large tomatoes, peeled and quartered 1/4 lb hard cheese, cut into large chunks (I use 'kefalograviera or 'myzithra' which you may not have, something like Parmesan would be excellent) I have also made it with out any cheese, tastes just as good. 1/2 cup olive oil 1/4 cup water 1 tablespoon oregano 2 tablespoons fresh spearmint, minced (or 1 tsp dry) (Can be omitted) 2 tablespoons cut cilantro (optional) (I use Parsley) Salt and Pepper Preheat oven to 420 Mix all ingredients in a large roasting pan. Cook for approx 2 1/2 hours stirring about every 30 minutes or so. You really want everything to be kind of melted together. Melissa

Ann, try saving it to your Clippings. Look to the right of your last post (just above this). You will see the word Clippings in green letters. Under that it will say Clip This Post. For each recipe or comment you want to save, click on Clip This Post. Another way to do it is to highlight the entire thread, or the parts you want, right click with your mouse and then click on Copy. Start a new document in Word and paste the thread into that document, then save it to your computer. If you want me to do that for you and then email it to you, let me know.

Chicken Tortilla Soup -- Crockpot 15 minutes preparation, 8 hours cooking 2 boneless skinless chicken breast halves 2 (15oz.) cans black beans 2 (15 oz.) cans Rotel tomatoes with chilies . 1 (14.5 oz.) can tomato sauce 1 (4 oz.) can chopped green chilies . 1 cup salsa, your preference as to strength (I use medium) 1 can Niblets corn Rinse chicken and set aside. Without draining, place beans, tomatoes, tomato sauce, chilies and salsa in crockpot and stir until mixed. Submerge chicken in the mixture. Cook on low for 8 hours. Remove chicken from crockpot and shred with two forks. Return chicken to pot and stir in corn. Heat 10 -15 minutes, or just long enough to get corn and chicken hot. Serve topped with crushed tortilla chips, shredded cheese, and a dollop of sour cream. Using the Rotel tomatoes with chilies will produce a slightly spicy soup  for a less spicy soup, use regular diced tomatoes and mild salsa. This recipe freezes well  itÂs like money in the bank! Enjoy! :o).

Dcarch, two out of three. Simplified: Fish have to have scales and can't be bottom feeders (no to catfish). Shellfish are not kosher, ever. I figure if I were meant to keep kosher I wouldn't have been made allergic to swimmy fish. To the best of my knowledge, all healthy beef on the hoof is potentially kosher (literally, fit to eat). It's the butchering that makes it kosher. Some of the highlights: A highly trained and certified kosher butcher says the proper blessings acknowledging taking a life and kills the beast with a special extremely sharp blade in one clean cut. I think it's to the jugular. In ancient times this was the most humane way they had. There has been some recent controversy about whether this is the most humane way now, and what it would take to change it. There are other conditions as well, such as the calf may not be slaughtered in front of it mother. If it's not a single clean cut, it's not a kosher death and the carcass cannot be made fit to eat by Jews. It can be sold to other people, however, rather than wasted. First they inspect the lungs for disease. If are no marks or scars at all, if the lungs are completely smooth, the meat can be sold as "glatt kosher" (Ashkenazi "smooth kosher"), which is prized by some. It's not any more kosher than the ones with minor blemishes that are not signs of disease. It's just a more special special super duper, if it costs more (scarcer) it must be better. The blood must also be drained. Then the carcass has to be cut up correctly, if the rear half is to be used, rather than sold off, the sciatic nerve (I think that's the one) has to be removed in a certain way. Few kosher butchers even learn how to do this. It's a mess and ends up with the meat so cut up it's not very attractive. With neighbors valuing the rear half, it doesn't make economic sense to bother. Then the meat has to be salted to draw out the rest of the blood. Housewives used to do this. Nowadays, the packers do it for value added. "Kosher Salt" is a misnomer as it is the salt used to draw the blood from the meat. Rightly, it should be called "kashering salt". All clean, unadulterated, pure salt is kosher by nature and doesn't require a rabbinic imprimature. When you see one, it's usually to say that the processing plant and packaging equipment were clean and appropriate. Salt, the mineral, is kosher by nature. So kosher salt is kosher, but so is all pure salt. In most things Jewish, the practice of an entire community over time has sway. The birds that are kosher (and also have to be correctly slaughtered and prepped) are the ones that a community has been eating from way back. I read that a couple of graduate students in Jerusalem went around to the different communities from around the world and compiled lists. The rules for meat and fish are more standardized, but there will always be different rulings in different places about minutiae. Before halal meat was widely available, muslims would buy from the kosher butchers. That's true. As I heard it, they also require blessings to be said on the taking of a life, and these are similar enough to be acceptable where their own people are not available. I don't know where the differences are in how the animal is handled after that, but muslims are more likely to accept kosher than Jews are to accept halal. If there's no other food, one is allowed to eat whatever one can find and do the best one can to keep it as kosher as possible. So, in that case, I'd think the halal butcher would be a better bet than the ConAgra case at the discount food store, but I don't know what the rabbis would say other than you have to eat to sustain yourself. I also don't know how the halal rules work for other meats and vegetables (yes, while by nature vegetables are fit to eat, you do have to inspect them for certain bugs, and have a care about "hot" veg and questionable cutlery). I do think they have similar fish rules. Way back when, in post-revolution Iran, sturgeons were out. They're smooth skinned. But there were the embargoes, and things were tough. The ayatollahs met and discussed the caviar trade which was so lucrative but forbidden. They inspected the sturgeons. Carefully. And found a sufficient number of scales that it would be okay for them to trade in caviar. (I don't know if they also ate the fish, sold the fish, or whatever.) I seem to remember that they had to have at least seven scales. Re the number of Jews who keep kosher, most Jews are not practicing, period. Like your average American who identifies as "Christian", but whose practice is a Christmas tree and an Easter egg hunt, with the occasional church event for a rite of passage. Among those are are actively engaged in Jewish religious participation, a much higher percentage keep kosher. A lot of it depends on location. There is a tradition, still practiced by some, of only accepting milk and dairy products that have been overseen by Jews the whole way. This is so they don't get adulterated, like the Chinese milk scandal where people were putting melamine in the milk because it would register when tested as having more protein. Even very strictly practicing American Jews believe that the USDA does a good enough job, along with American cultural values, to create confidence that the milk supply is unadulterated. Some still prefer to pay more for "Jewish milk". Similarly, for all the public scandals about this or that outbreak, the American food supply is reliably fine. It's not necessary to keep kosher to be sure of food that won't kill you. So American Jews keep kosher, or have abbreviated practices of kosher origin (e.g., don't combine meat and milk, but don't worry about the provenance of either), as a matter of religious conscience, solidarity with their heritage, or habit, rather than a belief that it's important for temporal reasons. This is all very condensed and simplified. Thousands of years old ritual and practice creates thousands and thousands of pages of discussion and ruling and codification and reinterpretation. If someone wants to learn to keep kosher, the rabbis send them to learn from a friend who keeps kosher, because learning it from the Law would take a lifetime of study.