Where's the custard?

During our tour and during this dig, we have done a lot of eating in hotel dining rooms. There's always a LARGE choice of wonderful salads and also a good choice of meats, etc. along with rice and/or potatoes. There's usually also a reasonable choice of desserts but none of them have tasted extra good. It wasn't until this week that I really understood why.

I knew about "kosher" food and that observant Jews don't eat pork along with certain other animals, and seafoods like shrimp. But I hadn't really realized the impact of the prohibition of mixing meat with milk. This comes from the rabbinic interpretation of the Scripture about not boiling a young goat in its mother's milk (see Exodus 23:19). So the rabbis have specified that milk-based foods should not normally be served along with meaty foods. (I think it might be possible if it's certain that they can never be put onto the same plate.)

Anyway, what it means is that the desserts are all made with milk and cream substitutes, hence they never taste quite as good as the real thing. (Maybe it also explains why non-dairy creamers are popular for coffee???)

It also affects international franchises like MacDonalds. By kosher rules, a cheeseburger cannot be eaten by Jews because it contains meat and milk-based foods together. So apparently there are two kinds of MacDonalds restaurants here in Israel -- the kosher ones and the non-kosher ones -- identifiable by a certificate on the door as you enter. The kosher restaurant CAN sell cheeseburgers, but the cheese will be made from soy, as will the icecream or sundaes and other desserts. All of the supplies will have come from certified kosher food suppliers to be certain that there's no pork fat used for the frenchfries, etc. The non-kosher restaurant will, of course, sell the real thing with genuine cheese and milkshakes and icecream.