One of the tenants of Passover is welcoming strangers into your home and feeding them. I hope you enjoy this lovely moment
that my good friend Chani Capland,
a kosher caterer in Columbus Ohio
related to me today via an email
"Here is a heartwarming story that happened to me yesterday.
A customer of mine walks in to my shop and hands me $1200
and says i want you to give me 10 gift certificates to your place.
She has me fill out $120 gift certificates and
then asks me to mail these 10 gift certificates
at my discretion to families that are needy for Passover.
I included my Passover menu and had no problem thinking
of 10 needy families. On the way to the mail box
I thought of another family and was so inspired
by this person i decided to go send another gift certificate
for $120 from me -- of course, what the heck, its nice to give at holiday times.
Now this person who brought the money to me
was not the giver of the money,
she was given the money from someone else who wants to be anonymous.
The highest level of Tzedaka
http://judaism.about.com/od/beliefs/a/charity_nine.htm
(note to readers this is a act of charity
by being anonymous, it becomes a higher act of charity especially since its
given from the heart not for the recognition).
So all of the gift certificates were signed from a friend.
What a beautiful MITZVAH!!
(note to readers Mitzvah = jewish blessing and kindness)
Happy Pesach to all - and remember those less fortunate
and open your hearts and tables to them
here are some "war" stories about passover orders
we've been sharing on our networking group
Subject: some silly people
from: Mimi - Bloomfield Michigan
I just opened a ton of mail for Pesach orders. Somebody cut my ad out of the paper,
filled in the items she wanted (definitely a female handwriting)
and then CUT OUT the section with her name, address and other financial info.
So now I have an order for 2 sweet potato kugels,
2 apple raisin kugels and 1 gallon of chicken soup
Subject: odd ball orders
from: Chani - Columbus, Ohio
I had that happen last year to me, someone faxed in thier order,
with no name and have no idea who it belongs to!
What we did was we filled the order
and wrote on the shopping bag "John Smith", of course the real "John Smith"
came in and swore that he put an order in and wanted his order
and so we figured it out.
Good luck
How about my phone calls today- I am not making this up
1 woman wants a whole chicken but only the white meat
so please can i have 4 peices of white.
1 woman wants a chocolate mousse cake,
but only half of it , can we split it with another customer?
Can you find a customer who wants only a half?
She is only having 10 people for dinner.
1 woman wants lemon curd on her chocolate cake,
not the mousse, she loves lemon and chocolate,
can i make her some curd?
1 woman wants potato salad only 2 pounds
( its not on my menu)
1 woman wants me to bake her vegetable terrine
in a 9 x 13 not in the loafs that we sell them
OY VEY
and I myself had someone who wanted us to deliver
passover dinner to Washington DC from NYC...
only in america...
just as a point of interest, after I started posting all these passover menus and stories on the blog we started to get incredible rankings on google. Apparently I am some sort of google genius, now if I could only figure out why ??? There must be a zillion other caterers in NYC nevermind the country/world who were also doing passover catering. Why did the cuisinetc blog rate so high
I know our clients and friends think we are number one and we like to think highly of ourselves too (tongue in check here folks) but still that sort of ratings on google usually costs $$$ and in this case it was just dumb luck.
check this out
Cuisinetc-catering.blogspot.com is number one
on google list
passover seder catering manhattan #1
pesach seder catering manhattan #1
pesach seder catering nyc #1
pesach seder catering #1
pesach catering new york #3
passover seder catering - second from bottom of first page
passover catering new york (not on first page fourth on 2nd page
passover catering new york (not on first page, fourth on 2nd page)
passover seder catering nyc #1
elite kosher catering passover #1
kosher catering passover bloomfield#1
kosher catering passover columbus #7
kosher catering passover the berkshires #6
kosher catering passover talladega #1
kosher catering passover great barrington#1
kosher catering passover portland maine #1
kosher catering passover (4th page - too generic)
kosher catering passover manhattan #6
