Canadian Bacon

I love bacon. There...I've said it. I LOVE BACON! And sausage. And ham. It's one of those personal preferences that I've learned to supress. Growing up, boy, there was nothing better than Sunday morning at Mina's house. Eggs, bacon, a little ham steak, pork roll... However, since the summer of 2001 - when my better half and I moved in together - I've tamped down my taste for breakfast meats. It wasn't a request on her part - I offered to do it out of respect for the kosher home she wanted to create, and the lifestyle she wanted to lead for ourselves and eventually our kids. After all, she was far more important to me than a Taylor ham, egg and cheese on an onion bagel with salt, pepper and ketchup (http://www.jerseyboybagels.com/).

But this past weekend, I fell off the wagon big time. I spent four glorious days in Niagara Falls (the Canadian side), with seven of "the guys." Forget that I imbibed like I was doing a New York Times review of the Complete Home Bartender's Guide (http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Complete-Home-Bartenders-Guide/Salvatore-Calabrese/e/9780806985114). Six hours in the Hard Rock sports book? Bush league! Two hours of sleep a night? Ha! Nope - where I really went off the deep end was with the pork products. I BURIED myself in "the other white meat" at every meal. I didn't set out to. In fact, it never even crossed my mind. But there I was, Saturday morning, seated around a table with my mates at a Perkins across the street from the Hard Rock, assessing my options. Veggie omelette? French toast? Silver dollar pancakes? Nope - the kid is going for the big dog - three eggs, side of bacon, side of ham, extra grease. And it went from there - jambalaya at lunch; prosciutto at dinner, etc, etc, ending with a solid sausage souffle Monday morning in Grand Island, NY before heading to the airport. I actually started to get the sweats (some suggested it was due to the gin and tonics, but I'm not buying it.)

I'm not really sure what happened - it was all such a blur. But I'm certain that as soon as I stepped in the house Monday evening with my pores oozing with pork, she knew. (My better half has an incredible inate anti-kosher olfactory sense - she can smell surf and turf on my a mile away.) If she knew, she didn't say anything, just kinda shrugged it off. She's cool like that though, and I think that for all my faults, she appreciates the effort I make to do the right thing - but at the same time, she kinda gets it that when the boys go north of the border, as a wife, you gotta give 'em a pass.

Triple-A Holiday

Holidays are big for Jews - and I mean volume-wise. It seems that every other week is a holiday of some sort. Tonight, the family and I hopped on over to our synagogue for Simchat Torah. Now I consulted my trusty "Jewish Book of Why" (a must-have reference guide for anyone needing quick info -- http://www.amazon.com/Jewish-Book-Why-Alfred-Kolatch/dp/0824602560) to get the lowdown. Overall, good stuff, until of course my kids melted down faster than the carmel covering on the candied apples they got their hands on after the service. If Jewish holidays were baseball, Simchat Torah seems like its the Toledo Mudhens - by that I mean a really good time, but not quite the same level of significance as the Yankees (read: Passover, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur). The one thing Jews have over Gentiles is holidays - boy, when I was growing up, you had to wait months - Winter was Christmas, then you had to wait four months for Easter, then...well...you had to wait eight months for Christmas again (unless you count things like Lent which would be the Tidewater Tides of Christian holidays, but promosing not to touch the $2.50 beers). But these past few weeks have had an average of a holiday and a quarter per week, so it's been a virtual smorgasbord of celebrations; but that's one thing I admire about Judaism - it doesn't seem like you much to get a little party going...

Welcome

Welcome to my blog. First things first: some background. I was given an "assignment" to start my own blog. I thought for days about what I would be interested in blogging about. I ultimately landed on the topic of being in an interfaith marriage, not because I have this grand egocentric vision that my insight could help others who've found themselves at a similar intersection between their faith and their heart. Nope - I simply think it would be kinda humorous. I don't know how I ended up here - but here I am, each day trying to understand how Judaism works. And in spite of my best efforts, and having lived in a kosher home for well over six years, I still use the wrong dishes at the wrong times, still miss the dates for holidays, still don't understand a word anyone says when I go to Synagogue. But it's all worth it because, in the end, my wife compromised for love. She always wanted to marry a Jew, and somehow or another, she chose me. So for that, I will spend the rest of my life trying to get better at it all because, if nothing else, I owe her that. So anyways, in the end, I hope that anyone who reads this will find it at least mildly amusing. And now, on with the show...