Blog of Bermanism

My wife and I celebrated our four year anniversary last Friday. It is seriously hard to believe that we have been married for four years, let alone that we started dating nearly 12 years ago. We have been together for so long and from such a young age, that we had the unique opportunity to grow up together, to learn to change and adapt to the other’s experiences and needs, and to communicate with each other as best friends would, all before we got married. These last four years have gone by very quickly and it really seems that we got married only last week. As with all types of relationships, our marriage has had its ups and downs, but overall, it has been spectacular. I’ve got one of the greatest, most intelligent, most beautiful, down-to-earth, independent women on earth. Plus, she’s a lot of fun. I’m very lucky to be a part of her life.

Normally, I plan something very elaborate, and wholly extravagant for our anniversary or for Valentine’s day or days of that kind. I have been unable to plan anything elaborate for the past two years because friends of ours were getting married on our anniversary. Apparently, we picked a very common wedding date. Anyway, with an impending move, the amount of work I have to do right now, and the crazy schedule that we’re keeping, we decided to keep it low key this year and just go out to a nice dinner. So, for once, that is exactly what we did. Some of our friends had recommended this restaurant in central Austin called Zin Bistro. It is a lovely little restaurant that is nestled right next to Kerbey Lane Cafe, an Austin favorite. Zin has a classic, contemporary American atmosphere complete with the softened industrial feel of finished concrete on the floor, brushed metal track lighting, and splashes of finished wood throughout the restaurant. The walls were decorated with large plasma screens that were showing a rotating display of photos from Webshots, probably from the Scenery and Nature category. Needless to say, being an ultra geek, I loved the touch of the plasma screens. Why buy one, stagnant painting or a framed photograph when you can have an endless supply of art and photos that change every 30 seconds? Rachel enjoyed them also. We spent a lot of time identifying various shots that popped up and wondering whether we had been there before.

Anyway, the menu was replete with contemporary American cuisine, definitely gourmet. We ended up not getting any appetizers because most of them had fish in them, and Rachel doesn’t like fish. Besides, we wanted to save room for dessert. So, we each started off with a drink and a Caesar salad. The salads were very good. They featured a very large amount of shaved Parmesan (nothing bad can come of putting more cheese on anything) along with polenta croutons, which were a surprisingly nice touch. For dinner, Rachel had chicken (she was in a safe mood) that was fabulous. Her chicken was topped with a portabella mushroom, a mound of warm goat cheese, and finished with a balsamic vinegar, olive oil drizzle. It was served with fantastic mashed potatoes and asparagus spears. For a standard chicken dish, this was extremely good. Since Rachel had ordered the least expensive thing on the menu, I, of course, had to order the most expensive thing off of the menu. I ordered their veal special. This dish consisted of a veal chop, done medium, topped with a black truffle butter sauce and surrounded by a veal demi-glace. The veal was served with asparagus spears and potato fingers. This dish was to die for! It was so good you almost couldn’t believe that you were eating a veal chop. For those that don’t know, veal chops are incredibly difficult to cook correctly. They either end up being over or under done leaving them chewy and stale in either case. This chop was cooked to perfection, which allowed by butter knife to cut through it as if it were butter. The veal melted in your mouth. It was phenomenal and worth every penny.

Finally, we ordered dessert. For Rachel, there was only one dessert listed on the menu, and that was creme brulee. Their creme brulee was perfectly done. It was slightly fluffy and tasted light, while the sugar coating was cracked nice and thin on top. The dessert was served with very fresh and perfectly ripened raspberries. This dessert was gone very quickly in Rachel’s hands. I ordered the dessert named The Zin Sin. This dessert consisted of a slab of chocolate torte that must have had a mass equivalent to a small moon. It was so think and so rich that you almost felt that you were eating a giant, slightly melted chocolate bar. The torte was surrounded in a raspberry sauce, topped with fresh raspberries, and finished with a chocolate shaving. It was to die for, but it was definitely enough for two people. The dessert hit your stomach like a ton of bricks. I could have eaten only this dessert for my entire meal and been full afterward. Needless to say, I couldn’t finish it, but it was fantastic.

Overall, Zin bistro was a great dining experience and I would definitely recommend it to anyone looking for a romantic dinner. The prices are not outrageous and the wait staff and host were fantastic. This place was a perfect way for us to spend our fourth anniversary. The simple, small, and intimate setting (only 11 tables inside), made it very easy for us to talk to each other and reminisce about the last four years. It was a great experience.

We finished off the night by coming back to our house and keeping up with our tradition of watching our wedding video. It was fun to see again. Both Rachel and I have lost a lot of weight since then, and it was interesting to see that. It was also good to see some of the people that were in our wedding and who came to it. For all you married couples out there, I highly recommend that you adopt this tradition. It tends to bring you back to your roots and to help you remember how it all began. By the end of the video, we were both very happy and felt very warmly towards each other. It is a renewing experience, which is what an anniversary is supposed to be anyhow. So, here’s to another year, one that is destined to be filled with adventure and change and I’m looking forward to every minute of it. Thanks to Rachel for being you!

This past Saturday night, the 23 of April, marked the beginning of the Jewish holiday Passover, which commemorates the Hebrews’ exodus from slavery in Egypt. Passover begins at sundown on the 14th of Nisan (first month of the Jewish calendar, corresponding to March-April) and lasts seven days in Israel, eight days in the Diaspora (although Reform Jews observe a seven-day period). The holiday begins with a ceremonial feast, called a Seder, which is part of a home-based service that is read from a 2,000 year old text called a Hagadah. The meal consists of traditional Jewish fare that is considered Kosher for Passover. It is always good, and it is usually spent with family and friends.

This year was a little different for Rachel and I. Since I’m so close to graduation and still have so much work to do toward that end, I chose to stay in Austin for this Passover so that I could write and relax. Both sets of parents requested our presence at their homes for Passover, but I chose not to go to either house. Rachel chose to stay with me in Austin, mainly because she’d been traveling for the previous two weekends, the first to a conference in Dallas, and the second to Hawaii with her friends (yeah, I’m really feeling for her too). Anyway, our families were disappointed that we wouldn’t be joining them for the holiday, but they understood the reasoning behind us staying home. We missed them for sure.

Anyway, as I mentioned above, Passover lasts for eight days. These days are spent eating specialized foods which help us constantly remember why we are celebrating Passover. Mainly, we do not eat anything leavened, like bread. The reason is that when the Jews were exiled from Egypt, they had to leave so quickly that they didn’t have time to let their bread rise, so they baked it and ventured out into the desert. This was the birth of flat bread, or Matzoh. Matzoh tastes a little like a mixture of cardboard and dirt with a stale crunch to it. Basically, it isn’t very good. I always need to put something else on it to make it good, like cream cheese or jelly or something like it. It makes a nice crunch when used as a sandwich and you almost don’t notice that the Matzoh is soaking up every bit of water in your body because it is so dry.

If you clicked on the Kosher for Passover link above, you saw that our diet essentially excludes anything that can be used to make bread. Mainly grains and legumes (beans). Wheat, corn, rice, rye, barley, oats, and legumes. You’d be surprised how many things in the American diet this excludes. It definitely cans bread, tortillas, cookies, pitas, pizza, and pasta, and other things that you might not expect like sodas, fruit snacks, granola bars, and cereals. These foods are excluded due to the presence of things like high-fructose corn syrup and wheat and barley. Speaking of barley, the diet also excludes things like beer (since it is brewed from grains like barley) and things like vodka and rum since they are distilled from a mash of grains that can include wheat, corn, rye, and usually potatoes. While potatoes are fine, it is rare to find a liquor made with only potatoes. Thus, the only alcohol left to us is wine, which suits most of us just fine. The other aspect of maintaining kosher for passover, is that all of the foods eaten have to have been prepared under the supervision of a Rabbi. The Rabbi monitors the entire production process to make sure that the food does not come in contact with any of the forbidden foods and that the food is processed by the guidelines of standard koshrut law, mainly that dairy, grains, and meats are not processed on the same machinery, or even in the same facility. So, we usually look for foods that carry the Kosher for Passover symbol on it:

The hebrew reads “kosher l’pesach”, which translates to kosher for passover as the text reads in English. No idea what all that Hebrew at the top means. You can imagine that all of this specialized processing, supervision, and care ends up taking it out of your pocketbook, and it does. Maintaining kosher is an expensive proposition, which is why most modern day Jews only keep kosher during passover. Remember also that kosher for passover is much more strict than common kosher practices.

In addition to eating kosher, we are supposed to go through all of our food before passover begins and remove all non-kosher foods. Traditionally, we are supposed to take it all out on the lawn and burn it, but since Jews hate to waste anything, the powers that be decided that it was ok to sell or donate the extra food. Also, we are supposed to remove all dishes and silver used for every day eating and cooking and replace it with special passover china, that is only used during passover. We’re also supposed to scrub all of the shelves and drawers that held the contaminated eatery. Rachel and I don’t practice this, and neither did my parents growing up, but Rachel’s parent did, and still do adhere to this practice. It seems a little extreme, but it does force a very nice spring cleaning to occur. Maybe Rach and I should try it, we need to clean up a little around here.

Anyway, that is a brief explanation of Passover and the rules and reasons that we do the things we do. Most of us really enjoy the holiday, despite the eating restrictions and we usually enjoy the company of family. One might equate Passover with Christmas when compared on a family level. It is certainly one of the most important holidays to the Jewish people and one of the most revered. Rachel and I had our own little Seder this year, complete with her famous chicken and honey, noodle koogle (a sort of noodle casserole with sugar, cinnamon, rasins, and noodles that are made with potato, of course), matzoh ball soup (which is way yummy), and specialized Passover desserts like macaroons, which are like soft cookies made from coconut. Hopefully, we’ll be able to spend next year in the company of our families, but for this year, we are content. Please feel free to comment if you have any Passover questions.