Frequent readers of this column are aware that about once a year, I get out of the house head off to Kosherfest, which is the biggest kosher food industry trade show within a seven-mile radius from my house. For two days, everyone in the kosher food industry gets together – manufacturers, kashrus organizations, Israelis selling face cream, and security guards, and apparently one security dog, who was there to sniff for dangerous items but ended up spending a lot of time near the sausages – to either shake hands or pretend that they’d really like to, but they’re holding too many food samples.
Because yes, the manufacturers put out food samples, and you cannot tell by looking at me that that is not the main reason I am there. The main reason I’m there is to write about the current food trends, so my loyal readers can know what foods are and are not in style to eat, except for that one year that security didn’t let me in.
Well, it wasn’t security exactly. It turns out that the show in general has gotten stricter about who can and cannot get a badge. My guess is that they’ve had overcrowding problems in the past, thanks to people like me, who advertised this show as a fun weekday kiddush where you didn’t have to bring a present, and everyone wanted to go to. But they have to keep letting the media in, and it’s not like they’re going to tell us we can’t write anything. So they decided to pick and choose which media they let in, and they lean heavily toward actual food media. I am not a food writer per se; I write about all topics equally, except politics, because that’s a good way to lose half your fans. But everyone likes food, so that’s a topic.
But for some reason, they never approved my application one year, and the front desk wouldn’t give me a badge. I tried making an argument that this is Kosherfest, and I write for a paper that only lets me write about kosher topics, so that has to be something, right? But that didn’t work. So then I was like, “Fine, so I’ll stop writing about only kosher topics,” and the Link said no. So now I don’t know what to do.
The dog can get in, but I can’t.
So that year I didn’t end up writing about Kosherfest, and for an entire year, all my readers were not sure what to eat. Nor was anyone sure what to eat last year, when there was no Kosherfest because of Corona, so everyone just ate everything. Just whatever food came along.
But this year, somehow, I was actually able to get in, so I could help document Kosherfest’s 30th year. (The first year was just 28 booths of macaroons. And huge barrels of pickles. Those were the trends back then.)
“Wait,” you’re saying. “The food industry has trends? When I’m hungry, I just eat. I don’t say, ‘What’s everyone else eating?’”
Technically, you do. Also, look at me: I used to make my kids fish sticks on a semi-regular basis. Then one day, for no reason at all, they all decided to stop eating them, so I stopped making them, because my wife and I were eating way too many fish sticks for two adults. But all of a sudden, in the last year or so, my kids got back into fish sticks. They prefer them over any other shape of fish. And then I come to Kosherfest, and everyone’s selling fish sticks!
Sure, they don’t all call them fish sticks. One brand calls them “fish fingers”, because the image they want is of mutant fish with hands that don’t quite taste like any other part of the fish. Also, one company was advertising them as “battered fish portions”, nebech.
And it wasn’t just fish. Breaded vegetables are also a huge trend. I saw breaded cauliflower, zucchini, mushrooms… It’s like they’re just looking for new things to add bread to. Apparently, no one’s eating bread anymore, so the food industry is wondering, “What do we do with all this bread?”
“Well, what are people eating?”
“Vegetables.”
“Well, why don’t we bread those?”
I’ll tell you why we don’t bread those. We don’t bread those because the only reason we eat vegetables is to be healthy. If they’re not going to be healthy, why are we eating them? There are other unhealthy foods that taste a whole lot better than breaded vegetables.
Okay, so it happens to be that breaded vegetables taste pretty good. But we shouldn’t know that.
I think the idea here is that we want to trick ourselves into eating vegetables, so we disguise it as fish sticks.
“Oh, man! I forgot that these fish sticks were actually beets!”
Let’s let our failing memory work for us.
Or maybe the trend has more to do with finding uses for foods that people don’t eat a lot of. This would explain the recent trend of sweet potato fries, which are everywhere, pretending to be spicy fries. Food companies found that not enough people were eating sweet potatoes, but then they said, “Well, people like fries.” But you can’t just make a sweet potato version of everything we eat that has potato in it. Before you know it, there’s going to be a sweet potato salad.
Also in the trend of trying to fool ourselves, one company had various nut butters, such as almond butter, pecan butter, cashew butter, and coconut butter, which I think doubles as a face spread. (It’s possible that all of them do.) Yes, they’re trying to mimic peanut butter, but peanuts aren’t really nuts, are they? They’re beans. So we should have bean butters, like kidney butter! It’s ideas like this that are the reason I am not in the food industry.
Whoops. I am. I am totally in the food industry.
And speaking of things that are not quite in the food industry, there’s a trend of electronic devices that we’re allowed to use on Shabbos. For years, it was just the blech and the Shabbos Lamp, but now there are new products, such as an urn with a warming surface on top, which is genius if you think about it. I personally can’t fit anything over my urn, because I got the biggest one that fits under my cabinets, but I do know that by the end of Shabbos, all my spices are warm.
There are some other trends that I talk about almost every year, such as portability and convenience, and those trends continued this year as well, because nobody complained.
“Enough with convenience already,” they didn’t say, before taking a swig of their gallon-bottle of water.
For example, one company is now selling olives in a little packet that you can bring with you on the go. Are you ever sitting on the bus, thinking, “I need olives now, but not more than seven”? So there you go.
You could also carry around all your kosher Korean sauces now, thanks to something called the “Kosher Korean Basic Sauce Gift Set.” It’s a gift set! Like if you’re ever going to someone for Shabbos, or someone you know is making a bar mitzvah or has just had a baby, and you’re wondering, “What should I get them that they probably don’t already have?” you can get them the gift of basic Korean sauces, and they will look you in the eye and say, with heartfelt sincerity, “What am I supposed to do with this?”
“Well,” you can say, “You can do a lot of things. Read the box. There’s ganjang and doenjang and gochujang and gochugaru. Go nuts!”
This gift sends the perfect message of, “I barely know you, but I know you don’t have this.”
“Okay. I’m going to go put it in the warm spice cabinet.”
And speaking of weird gifts, Kedem now makes a tomato paste that comes in a toothpaste tube. Once you get over the idea, it’s actually pretty smart, because whoever uses exactly one full can of tomato paste? I’ve been putting the rest in random pots that are cooking on the stove, and my wife has been getting annoyed.
This is also great for taking tomato paste on the go – for all your tomato-paste-on-the-go needs – but not onto airplanes. And arguing that your toothpaste is really tomato paste raise all kinds of red flags.
“You can’t take that tomato paste on the airplane, sir. There’s no telling what you’ll do with it.”
“Yeah; I don’t know either.”
Or you can use it as a toothpaste. It’s a good way to brush out all the nut butters. And you can tell if the kids are brushing their teeth.
“Your teeth aren’t red enough; go back and brush again. I want to smell pizza.”
There’s also a company that sells canned, cut-up, sautéed onions, so you don’t have to stand there and cut them. As far as I know, no other company makes this. There’s no other company that’s willing to work surrounded by onion fumes all day long, permeating the factory, the offices… and then come home every night and cry themselves to sleep. But they know they’re making the world a better place.
I was wondering, though, if, when you open the can, you’re hit in the face with the whole smell at once. Unfortunately, they didn’t let people just open the cans. Why do I even carry a can opener on my key chain? So I can have problems getting through Kosherfest security?
“You have to put that through the X-ray machine. We can’t have people opening all the cans.”
Mordechai Schmutter is a weekly humor columnist for Hamodia, a monthly humor columnist, and has written six books, all published by Israel Book Shop. He also does freelance writing for hire. You can send any questions, comments, or ideas to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Frequent readers of this column are aware that about once a year, I get out of the house head off to Kosherfest, which is the biggest kosher food industry trade show within a seven-mile radius from my house. For two days, everyone in the kosher food industry gets together – manufacturers, kashrus organizations, Israelis selling face cream, and security guards, and apparently one security dog, who was there to sniff for dangerous items but ended up spending a lot of time near the sausages – to either shake hands or pretend that they’d really like to, but they’re holding too many food samples.
Because yes, the manufacturers put out food samples, and you cannot tell by looking at me that that is not the main reason I am there. The main reason I’m there is to write about the current food trends, so my loyal readers can know what foods are and are not in style to eat, except for that one year that security didn’t let me in.
Well, it wasn’t security exactly. It turns out that the show in general has gotten stricter about who can and cannot get a badge. My guess is that they’ve had overcrowding problems in the past, thanks to people like me, who advertised this show as a fun weekday kiddush where you didn’t have to bring a present, and everyone wanted to go to. But they have to keep letting the media in, and it’s not like they’re going to tell us we can’t write anything. So they decided to pick and choose which media they let in, and they lean heavily toward actual food media. I am not a food writer per se; I write about all topics equally, except politics, because that’s a good way to lose half your fans. But everyone likes food, so that’s a topic.
But for some reason, they never approved my application one year, and the front desk wouldn’t give me a badge. I tried making an argument that this is Kosherfest, and I write for a paper that only lets me write about kosher topics, so that has to be something, right? But that didn’t work. So then I was like, “Fine, so I’ll stop writing about only kosher topics,” and the Link said no. So now I don’t know what to do.
The dog can get in, but I can’t.
So that year I didn’t end up writing about Kosherfest, and for an entire year, all my readers were not sure what to eat. Nor was anyone sure what to eat last year, when there was no Kosherfest because of Corona, so everyone just ate everything. Just whatever food came along.
But this year, somehow, I was actually able to get in, so I could help document Kosherfest’s 30th year. (The first year was just 28 booths of macaroons. And huge barrels of pickles. Those were the trends back then.)
“Wait,” you’re saying. “The food industry has trends? When I’m hungry, I just eat. I don’t say, ‘What’s everyone else eating?’”
Technically, you do. Also, look at me: I used to make my kids fish sticks on a semi-regular basis. Then one day, for no reason at all, they all decided to stop eating them, so I stopped making them, because my wife and I were eating way too many fish sticks for two adults. But all of a sudden, in the last year or so, my kids got back into fish sticks. They prefer them over any other shape of fish. And then I come to Kosherfest, and everyone’s selling fish sticks!
Sure, they don’t all call them fish sticks. One brand calls them “fish fingers”, because the image they want is of mutant fish with hands that don’t quite taste like any other part of the fish. Also, one company was advertising them as “battered fish portions”, nebech.
And it wasn’t just fish. Breaded vegetables are also a huge trend. I saw breaded cauliflower, zucchini, mushrooms… It’s like they’re just looking for new things to add bread to. Apparently, no one’s eating bread anymore, so the food industry is wondering, “What do we do with all this bread?”
“Well, what are people eating?”
“Vegetables.”
“Well, why don’t we bread those?”
I’ll tell you why we don’t bread those. We don’t bread those because the only reason we eat vegetables is to be healthy. If they’re not going to be healthy, why are we eating them? There are other unhealthy foods that taste a whole lot better than breaded vegetables.
Okay, so it happens to be that breaded vegetables taste pretty good. But we shouldn’t know that.
I think the idea here is that we want to trick ourselves into eating vegetables, so we disguise it as fish sticks.
“Oh, man! I forgot that these fish sticks were actually beets!”
Let’s let our failing memory work for us.
Or maybe the trend has more to do with finding uses for foods that people don’t eat a lot of. This would explain the recent trend of sweet potato fries, which are everywhere, pretending to be spicy fries. Food companies found that not enough people were eating sweet potatoes, but then they said, “Well, people like fries.” But you can’t just make a sweet potato version of everything we eat that has potato in it. Before you know it, there’s going to be a sweet potato salad.
Also in the trend of trying to fool ourselves, one company had various nut butters, such as almond butter, pecan butter, cashew butter, and coconut butter, which I think doubles as a face spread. (It’s possible that all of them do.) Yes, they’re trying to mimic peanut butter, but peanuts aren’t really nuts, are they? They’re beans. So we should have bean butters, like kidney butter! It’s ideas like this that are the reason I am not in the food industry.
Whoops. I am. I am totally in the food industry.
And speaking of things that are not quite in the food industry, there’s a trend of electronic devices that we’re allowed to use on Shabbos. For years, it was just the blech and the Shabbos Lamp, but now there are new products, such as an urn with a warming surface on top, which is genius if you think about it. I personally can’t fit anything over my urn, because I got the biggest one that fits under my cabinets, but I do know that by the end of Shabbos, all my spices are warm.
There are some other trends that I talk about almost every year, such as portability and convenience, and those trends continued this year as well, because nobody complained.
“Enough with convenience already,” they didn’t say, before taking a swig of their gallon-bottle of water.
For example, one company is now selling olives in a little packet that you can bring with you on the go. Are you ever sitting on the bus, thinking, “I need olives now, but not more than seven”? So there you go.
You could also carry around all your kosher Korean sauces now, thanks to something called the “Kosher Korean Basic Sauce Gift Set.” It’s a gift set! Like if you’re ever going to someone for Shabbos, or someone you know is making a bar mitzvah or has just had a baby, and you’re wondering, “What should I get them that they probably don’t already have?” you can get them the gift of basic Korean sauces, and they will look you in the eye and say, with heartfelt sincerity, “What am I supposed to do with this?”
“Well,” you can say, “You can do a lot of things. Read the box. There’s ganjang and doenjang and gochujang and gochugaru. Go nuts!”
This gift sends the perfect message of, “I barely know you, but I know you don’t have this.”
“Okay. I’m going to go put it in the warm spice cabinet.”
And speaking of weird gifts, Kedem now makes a tomato paste that comes in a toothpaste tube. Once you get over the idea, it’s actually pretty smart, because whoever uses exactly one full can of tomato paste? I’ve been putting the rest in random pots that are cooking on the stove, and my wife has been getting annoyed.
This is also great for taking tomato paste on the go – for all your tomato-paste-on-the-go needs – but not onto airplanes. And arguing that your toothpaste is really tomato paste raise all kinds of red flags.
“You can’t take that tomato paste on the airplane, sir. There’s no telling what you’ll do with it.”
“Yeah; I don’t know either.”
Or you can use it as a toothpaste. It’s a good way to brush out all the nut butters. And you can tell if the kids are brushing their teeth.
“Your teeth aren’t red enough; go back and brush again. I want to smell pizza.”
There’s also a company that sells canned, cut-up, sautéed onions, so you don’t have to stand there and cut them. As far as I know, no other company makes this. There’s no other company that’s willing to work surrounded by onion fumes all day long, permeating the factory, the offices… and then come home every night and cry themselves to sleep. But they know they’re making the world a better place.
I was wondering, though, if, when you open the can, you’re hit in the face with the whole smell at once. Unfortunately, they didn’t let people just open the cans. Why do I even carry a can opener on my key chain? So I can have problems getting through Kosherfest security?
“You have to put that through the X-ray machine. We can’t have people opening all the cans.”
Mordechai Schmutter is a weekly humor columnist for Hamodia, a monthly humor columnist, and has written six books, all published by Israel Book Shop. He also does freelance writing for hire. You can send any questions, comments, or ideas to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.