Imagine walking into your dining room right before your Rosh Hashanah dinner as you’re greeted by a fresh meal accompanied by sweet apples and honey. It’s the start of the new school year and everyone is already looking forward to the next Jewish holiday for a day off of school and meaningful time with family. Not only can people get excited about not having school on those holidays, but the Lion’s Tale staff gets excited for all the traditional home-cooked foods that are only eaten a few times a year.

All families and countries have different recipes and secret ingredients when cooking their homemade meals. Editor-in-Chief Daniela Abrams’ favorite food is eaten with her family on Rosh Hashanah and it has its own special ingredient.

“My favorite meal is brisket which my granny from South Africa makes with coke, her special ingredient,” Abrams said. “It’s one of my family’s most celebrated dishes and we just get so excited to eat it every time.”

Continuing with the unique food traditions, Arts and Entertainment Editor Ella Kotok enjoys her neighbor’s homemade muffins. Just like Abrams, Kotok enjoys these delicious sweets on Rosh Hashanah.

“She brings them in three different flavors: apple cinnamon, carrot, and pumpkin. I have like 50 of them because they’re so small,” Kotok said, “she sometimes makes them for me just during the year because she knows how obsessed I am with her muffins.”

Speaking of unusual traditions, Editor-in-Chief Eitan Malkus and his family do something very interesting on Sukkot – they order pickles from a store in New York. The store is called Guss’ Pickles and it’s a tradition started by his father.

“When [my dad] lived in New York in his 20s, he would walk 40 minutes to the pickle store to get pickles for the holiday. They are supposed to be the best pickles in Manhattan,” Malkus said. “When we moved out of New York, he started shipping a big tub of pickles to our house from that store each year for sukkot.”

Whether eating pickles or apples, the High Holidays are an opportunity to spend with family cooking and eating traditional foods.