Friday, March 29, 2024 -
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The secret ingredient

Break out that bounty! It’s Sukkot! We are here to celebrate the autumn harvest of fruits. The colorful crops we have amassed. Be they in produce, in life, in friendships, in family, in what we have been given and received. And in what we have, ourselves, given.

Bounty. I just love this word. It kind of sounds like bouncy and I could just picture all that good out there bouncing around!

There is all the bounty G-d and the world provides us. Just being — its bountiful experience uplifts me from constriction to expansion. This is Sukkot. Bounty is the true ornament to the space of the sukkah we are encompassed by.

I think recognizing bounty in our life inspires gratitude for the things  we are given. With this perspective, we can experince life from a place of bounty and richness instead of scarcity, of the haves rather than the have nots of our life. Of movement and not stasis.

Sukkot: a time to be bountiful. A time of open doors.

Perhaps that is why we leave one part of the sukkah open and unfinished. For sure, we leave the sukkah not totally covered on top, darkness and stars peeking through. For sure, we leave an open door as a welcome to a friend out there, an open door, because there is so much that isincomplete and unfinished;  but maybe, also, to signal that experiencing bounty is to experience it with an opening toward others. We don’t experience bounty closed off in a perfect, sealed sukkah. No, that would not be bountiful.

Bounty is for expansion and sharing and inclusion. And so a door is left open for the abundance to flow both directions. In and out.

Sukkot is for letting this bounty in. And for sharing this bounty out.

So, as we decorate our sukkot this autumn, what bounty are we decorating it with? What gratitude has your bounty inspired in you? The bounty of family? friends? accomplishments? contentment? generosity? growth?

This sukkah is so enveloping and positive that it naturally cultivates our appreciation for life. The sukkah can expand our capacity to give as well as to recognize everything that has been given to us so genreously. Take hold of that sense of possibility and strength. Be bountiful!

Crank up the heat on that stove top. Turn out a bountiful table. Bring on those roasty, toasty, earthy and smokey fall flavors in your maple cakes, pumpkin chocolate cakes and brown butter pear and cranberry cakes, too. Let the bounty encompass the abundance, the having, the enjoying, the receiving, producing, collecting, and providing . . . let it all be gathered, “al kanfei hashechinah,” on the wings of the divine, where heaven and earth meet — right there in the intimite space of your sukkah!

Here is a pumpkin cake recipe that usually there is nothin’ left of, but the crumbs on the plate!

Pumpkin Cake with Swirled Chocolate:

8 tbsp. butter
1 1/2 cups sugar
3 eggs
1 1/2 cups pumpkin puree
2 cups flour
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. ginger
1/2 tsp. nutmeg
1/4 tsp. allspice
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1 cup(s) chocolate chips, depending on how chocolatey you want it
whipping cream
maple syrup to taste
cinnamon for sprinkling

Cream the butter and sugar for a few minutes. Beat in the eggs —  one at a time. Stir in the pumpkin puree.

Combine the dry ingredients and incorporate it with three separate beatings.

Pour most of the batter into a bundt pan.

Melt the chocolate chips. Swirl or fold the melted chocolate into the pumpkin batter in the pan.

Cover with remaining pumpkin batter.

Bake at 350° for about 45-55 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.

Now, while the cake is baking, whip up that cream with maple syrup to taste. When the cake is out of the oven and cooled, spread the whipping cream.

Sprinkle with cinnamon. Enjoy!

And, by the way, it most definitely tastes better out in the sukkah! That is the secret ingredient . . .

Chag Sameach!



Tehilla Goldberg

IJN columnist | View from Central Park


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