It was Thurs­day, 5 pm, and I am mak­ing a men­tal shop­ping list. The time is com­ing up where I will have to buy food and make plans for my Shab­bat Meals. The prob­lem is, what do I make? This is real­ly the eter­nal ques­tion of a Jew­ish woman. I remem­ber when I was younger my mom would make lists of meals and what she would serve at each meal. I always won­dered how she did it. Now that I live alone, and have to fend for myself, it is up to me. Since I am always sur­round­ed by books, and lots of them, I thought I’d give the cook­books a glance. Not being one to have any at home, I was eager to see what a Jew­ish Cook­book had to offer. It was an inter­est­ing expe­ri­ence. After look­ing around some one par­tic­u­lar cook­book end­ed up on my desk. What makes a good Jew­ish cook­book? The way I saw it, it’s all about tra­di­tion. We are a peo­ple who have relied on lin­eage, her­itage, and tra­di­tion to keep us going. The same is true with food. The first book I picked up that real­ly caught my eye was The Book of New Israeli Food by Jan­na Gur. Not only is the cov­er of the book beau­ti­ful, but the pic­tures inside real­ly make you feel like you are walk­ing down a street in Israel and eat­ing the food itself. The pic­tures are so crisp that when you look through them you get hun­gry, and crave the dif­fer­ent dish­es. The tra­di­tion is rich in the pages as well, with such recipes as Hum­mus with Ful, Home­made Shwar­ma, and Sephardic dish­es like Sofrito a dish sim­i­lar to the clas­sic Cholent. This cook­book is very well cat­e­go­rized, the recipes are writ­ten sim­ply, and its aes­thet­i­cal­ly pleas­ing. This is one book I would def­i­nite­ly rec­om­mend. I even plan on mak­ing one of the fish recipes myself. Wish me luck!