The holiday season has officially begun; last night was our first night to light the menorah, and my girls were extremely excited by the prospect of eight nights of gifts. D was able to get home early last night, and I was delighted to have a nice family dinner.

For your amusement, here’s our holiday merriment in a fourteen second nutshell:

Hanukkah is not something I celebrated as a kid. I am not Jewish, and actually neither is D. However, D’s father is a Jew, though a non-observant one. His father might just be a better atheist than I am, though that’s not saying much. (I may be a little atheistic, but I’m not devout about it.) D’s mother is not religious, but comes from a family who were Christian.

They raised D with the traditions of Hanukkah and Passover, as well as Christmas, in a fairly secular way. That’s basically what D and I are doing with our kids, too. We want them to be tolerant of people’s different religions, and to understand that while we aren’t a religious family, there are many families who feel very strongly about religion. I don’t want C or A to end up offending people with insensitive comments about church-going, or whatever.

But I digress. Back to Hanukkah.
Because I never celebrated this holiday as a child, I have no negative emotional associations to overcome about it. I also have no obligations to travel, telephone, visit or otherwise engage with my parents just because it’s Hanukkah. Imagine if I had to call my mom every night for eight nights, or visit her and stay for eight nights? It would be too much, it would be stressful.

So it’s good that Hanukkah is our little family’s fun tradition. To celebrate the first night, I made a special dinner featuring plenty of oil. I fried meatballs, and latkes (potato pancakes) and we also had fresh steamed green beans for our vegetable. The meatballs were a big hit, so I’ll share my easy and tasty recipe* with you.

In my valiant effort to get non-toxic toys as presents, I am doing pretty well so far. But not getting things from China? Gee, it’s almost impossible. Especially not on my budget. I decided to hit the dollar store but be a little discriminating about what I bought.

Before checking out, I reviewed the things in my shopping cart and I asked myself: Does this seem like a soft plastic thing that might have phthalates in it? Does this look like it might have lead paint in it? Does this look like crap that will be clutter after the two seconds of joyful playing have ended and it’s thrown into a heap in the corner? If the answer to any of these questions was ‘yes’ then I put it back on the shelf.

Here’s what got put back: a set of 10 little plastic food containers, a stretchy koosh ball kind of thing, and a set of metallic colored gel pens, and a package of hanukkah stickers. Here’s what I bought: two cardboard 100 piece puzzles, two ‘littlest pet shop’ coloring books, two blank doodle pads, and four bingo markers (which were made in Canada and said ‘non-toxic’).

Aside from the bingo markers, it was all from China, of course.

I also bought them each a couple of Scholastic books, from a book fair at the younger one’s school: it’s a fund raiser to help the school, but the books also weren’t very pricey. (Naturally, the books were printed in China.)

* Pann-Fried Hanukkah Meatballs

1) Mix the following ingredients up thoroughly in a mixing bowl (just with a spoon or a fork. You don’t need to use an electric mixer):

1 pound ground turkey meat (raw)
3 Tablespoons Parmasan or Romano grated cheese
1 egg
2 teaspoons dried basil
1/2 cup bread crumbs
2 Tablespoons finely ground flax seed or flax meal (optional)
Salt & Pepper (as you like it – can add later rather than mixing in)

2) Heat a griddle, or cast iron frying pan, with a mixture of oils. For example, about:
3 T olive oil
1/2 cup Vegetable oil – enough to keep your pan good and oily

Your heat should be a bit higher than your middle heating. You don’t want the oil so hot that it smokes, but you want it nice and hot, such that there’s a sizzling sound when you drop the first meatball onto the pan.

Make your meatballs about the size of a walnut, and place them in the pan, letting them sizzle and brown. Turn them, gently and brown all over. Because the meatballs are small, they will cook pretty quickly.

Let them drain on a paper towel some before you eat them, unless you really love oil.