ADAM: Happy Hanukkah, Earthlings! You’re watching Adam the Alien. I’m here with my friend Jess. Jess! What are we doing?
JESS: We’re making latkes! It’s a traditional Jewish food that’s also pretty awesome street food in a couple countries.
♪ [MUSICAL INTERLUDE] ♪
JESS:And it’s literally just potatoes, onions, salt, pepper, and a little flour in a blender. And it just makes a nice little batter, and you make it into pancakes!
They’re…they’re perfect. They’re great. A little greasy. But you can fix that with a paper towel.
Every family’s different. Um, we all claim to have the best ones. I’m pretty sure WE do. I love mine. Some people just do it with grated potatoes, and I don’t understand that ‘cuz that’s just a hash brown. Personally, whatever.
In my family it’s a tradition to eat them as we make them. So we’ll just kinda have an all-day thing, and usually all the women in my family will just kinda take turns frying them. And helping making batter and stuff and…yeah, people fight over them. It’s normally like fifteen of us in a kitchen, fighting over latkes. It’s pretty funny. It’s a good time. It’s one of my favorite family traditions.
[A LATKE IS STOLEN BEHIND JESS WHILE SHE TALKS]
LATKE THIEF: Hello!
JESS: There you go. See? Exactly. That’s the way you’re supposed to eat a latke, is straight off the plate. I mean, we’ll have some left over for the meal but honestly, by the time the meal starts, most of us don’t really want latkes anymore.
[ADAM LAUGHS]
JESS: We’ve had our fill.
ADAM: What else are we eating today?
JESS: Uh, we’re having a brisket, which I’m pretty sure is done? I don’t have a meat thermometer. We’ll find out!
Um, and just some asparagus and…and mushrooms. I didn’t really go all out with the side dishes. Or with the…I guess that’s technically the main dish, but the latkes are the main thing today.
ADAM: What would you say is the greatest significance of latkes?
JESS: I have no idea! We just really like them. All of our holidays are kind of, like, based around food. I mean, like, if you go to a Seder? There’s, like, forty-five minutes of ritual based around different little foods on a plate before you can actually eat anything. But you get to drink five cups of wine before you eat, so that’s pretty cool.
I don’t know. In my house, it was always the food.
♪ [MUSICAL INTERLUDE] ♪
In most Jewish households, we all have very, uh…no matter where, like, our upbringing is…our upbringings can be so different, but we all have kinda similar things in them. And it’s cool.
Writer. Actor. Director. Chalk artist. YouTuber. Nerdfighter. Traveler. Pansexual. Genderfluid. Millennial. Socialist. Living a complex life beyond those words.
