Whether you live in Indianapolis, New Orleans or Juneau, Alaska, the Kosher.com Passover 2010 National Superstore is open and ready to take your order. The store will remain open and accepting orders from February 7th through February 17th, 2010.

Only 10 Days to Order for Passover from Kosher.com

That’s right, Passover 2010 orders being shipped nationally will ONLY be accepted from February 7th to February 17th. So, whether you are ordering from Kosher.com’s extensive selection of kosher for Passover meat (including beef, chicken, lamb, veal, turkey as well as harder-to-find kosher for Passover bison and kosher for passover organic beef), kosher for passover groceries or matzos, you gotta’ do it now!

Kosher.com Passover 2010 Food Market National Delivery Terms

Orders containing Passover products will be shipped out as the products become available (beginning the last week of February or the first week of March, 2010), so please order non-Passover items separately.

Passover quantities are limited; Kosher.com reserves the right to substitute products if items become unavailable.

Remember, if you live outside of Kosher.com’s local delivery zones in the New York City Metropolitan area, there are only 10 days to order your Passover meats, groceries and matzos. Click here to get started on your Passover order.

FREE local delivery for Passover 2010!

Kosher.com’s Passover Superstore will be open for local orders in Metro New York, parts of New Jersey and parts of Connecticut starting February 15, 2010. (Click here for national delivery info.)

Kosher.com Passover NYC Superstore Details

The Passover Superstore opens February 15th, 2010 and will sell Passover products until March 12th, 2010. Delivery slots will be available through March 24th, 2010.

Kosher.com Offers Free Delivery 5 Days a Week (Sunday-Thursday) in: Manhattan, Riverdale and Washington Heights, as well as Teaneck, Englewood, New Milford, Bergenfield, Fair Lawn and Fort Lee, New Jersey.

Weekly delivery is now available in West Hempstead, Great Neck, Brownstone Brooklyn, as well as West Orange, Livingston and Springfield, New Jersey, and Stamford, New Haven and Waterbury, Connecticut.

Kosher.com Passover 2010 Local Delivery Terms

Due to increased Passover demand, please place your order as early as possible. This will ensure you secure the most convenient delivery time. Orders containing Passover products will be shipped out as the products become available (beginning the last week of February or the first week of March, 2010).

Please order non-Passover items separately

Passover quantities are limited

Kosher.com reserves the right to substitute products if items become unavailable

Kosher.com Passover 2010 Bottom Line

Kosher.com is the online source for all your kosher for Passover holiday needs. Kosher.com guarantees service and quality. We appreciate your business and look forward to serving you for Passover and year ’round.

Wishing a sweet and kosher Passover to all!

We just had Tu Bishvat, which means that Purim is nearly here, which means that Passover is less than two months away. Oy!

Okay, don’t freak.  You still have time to get your Kosher for Passover orders in for national delivery (outside the local New York City Metropolitan Area).

Kosher.com Passover 2010 National Superstore Details

Kosher.com’s Passover 2010 Superstore will be open from February 7th through February 17th, 2010 for orders being shipped nationally.

Kosher.com Passover 2010 National Delivery Terms

National orders for Passover 2010 will ONLY be accepted from February 7th-February 17th

Orders containing Passover products will be shipped out as the products become available (beginning the last week of February or the first week of March, 2010)

Please order non-Passover items separately

Passover quantities are limited

Kosher.com reserves the right to substitute products if items become unavailable

Kosher.com Passover 2010 Bottom Line

Kosher.com is the online source for all your kosher for Passover holiday needs. Kosher.com guarantees service and quality. We appreciate your business and look forward to serving you for Passover and year ’round.

Wishing a sweet and kosher Passover to all!

The world’s largest on-line kosher grocery store is expanding its FREE local delivery* areas with new daily and weekly local delivery zones. Now get all your kosher groceries delivered in more areas in and around NYC than ever before.

Kosher.com is constantly looking for new and innovative ways to serve our customers. Expanding free local delivery is a natural step in the process of improving our service and we plan to add more local delivery areas in the near future. We also offer national delivery via FedEx. For more information on free local delivery or to order, click here or call 866-KOSHER-9.

Kosher.com Offers Free Delivery 5 Days a Week to Much of NYC and Parts of New Jersey

Look for Kosher.com refrigerated trucks daily (Sunday-Thursday) in Manhattan, Riverdale and  Washington Heights, as well as Teaneck, Englewood, New Milford, Bergenfield, Fair Lawn and Fort Lee, New Jersey.

Kosher.com Offers Free Weekly Delivery to Parts of Long Island, Brooklyn and New Jersey

Weekly delivery is now available in West Hempstead, Great Neck,  Brownstone Brooklyn, as well as West Orange, Livingston and Springfield, New Jersey.

Free Weekly Delivery of Kosher Groceries to Parts of Connecticut

The folks in  Stamford, New Haven and Waterbury, Connecticut can also get free weekly delivery of all their kosher meat, fish, bakery, produce, prepared foods and groceries.

Kosher.com Local Delivery Schedule

*A minimum order of $50 is required for locations in NY and NJ; a $100 minimum order is required for CT locations. Orders must be placed by 3:00 PM on the day prior to delivery. For Sunday deliveries, please order before 3:00 PM on the Friday previous. Delivery slots are subject to availability; order early to ensure delivery. Delivery schedules are subject to change. Please call 866-KOSHER-9 for the latest information.

Costume Envy

Ahh, those wonderful childhood Purim memories … the hamentashen, the mishloach manot, the noisemakers we made back in nursery school out of old milk cartons filled with dry beans.

And then there are the costumes … Well, this is where my memories stop being so wonderful.

When it comes to the costumes, everyone else can reminisce fondly about Purims past, while I can only look back in utter horror and embarrassment.  As others wax nostalgic as they flip through old photo albums and grin and chuckle at the appearance of their younger selves dressed up in celebratory disguise, I have contemplated burning all visual evidence of my youthful celebration of Purim.

It is the photo of the 5 year-old me dressed up as a queen—I think I was supposed to be Vashti … but then again I could have been Esther that year—that is the hardest for me to look at. I can still hear the guffaws and snickers of the older kids as we kindergartners paraded through the school’s classrooms singing songs, twirling our groggers and showing off our costumes. “Who’s she supposed to be?” they wondered aloud to themselves, “Sleeping Beauty?!”

To be honest, it was hard to blame them for thinking that that was who I was dressed up as. You see, I was wearing a tinfoil-covered paper crown and a nightgown. Worse yet, the nightgown was topped with my mother’s housecoat, worn over my shoulders with one button fastened to keep this pretend royal cape from falling off.

Even before the advent of the kinds of professional-looking costumes kids wear today (the kind they order online from any one of the many fancy Purim cum Halloween costume websites that abound), there were Jewish kids whose parents were already trying to take Purim to the next level. How I envied my best friend, who was one year dressed like a real clown and the next like a blossoming tulip. Where, I wondered, did her mother (who I knew did not sew them herself) find such complex costumes made out of high quality, colorful satin? How did she manage to get a flower headdress whose petals miraculously never floppily wilted?

I finally had to come to terms with the fact that my mom was just not that creative—or competitive—when it came to Purim costumes. “Why do you need to be a tulip?” she asked? “I don’t remember any tulips in the Purim story. But Queen Esther, now that’s a classic that will never go out of style,” she tried to assure me. “And besides, you look gorgeous in my housecoat.”

So, the upshot of all this is that today, as a mother myself, I never limit my children’s Purim costume options to the story’s characters. But at the same time, I am not inclined to buy them commercially produced ones. It was only once I grew up that I realized that there was a method to my mother’s Purim costume madness, namely that she was ahead of her time in promoting the concept behind the “reduce, reuse, recycle” mantra our kids know so well today.  Thus, my sons have used cardboard boxes, scraps of material and arts supplies we had laying around the house to turn themselves into LEGO bricks and iPods on the 14^th of Adar.

As for the other aspects of the holiday? Let’s just say that, luckily for my children, I have had a complicated relationship only with what we wear on Purim, and never with what we eat.  It doesn’t matter whether hamentashen are homemade or store bought, large or small, prune or chocolate-chip filled. We happily and hungrily eat them all.

Back to Purim Central on Kosher.com

On Chanukah, latkes threw down the gauntlet. Now, with Purim 2010 almost here (this year Purim starts on  Saturday night, February 27th), it’s payback time. And this time, it’s pastry.

So here they are; the 8 reasons why hamentashen are better than latkes:

1. Baking hamentashen fill the air with the scent of sweet perfume. Latkes, not so much.
2. Hamentashen are portable.
3. Hamentashen: 144 calories, 4.5 grams of fat. Latkes: 200 calories, 11 grams of fat. Latkes=thar she blows!
4. Decadently rich, hand-dipped chocolate latkes? I don’t think so!
5. I wouldn’t call latkes fat, but when they sit around the house, they really sit around the house. (Not to mention your stomach.)
6. Hamentashen keep you regular!
7. Hamentashen … baked, not fried.
8. Three words … fruit filling, baby!

Back to Purim Central on Kosher.com

If you haven’t figured it out yet,  I love, love, love to entertain—as long as it’s easy entertaining my way—and the Super Bowl fits the bill like no other. The Game has become a quasi-national holiday; even people uninterested in football tune in with friends. And because it’s all finger foods, prep, service and clean up couldn’t be easier. So whether you’re hosting your own, or need to bring a dish to a friend’s, here are some easy treats for your Super Bowl party from the Kosher.com Kosher Recipe Box where you can find over a 1000 kosher recipes.

Super Nibbles

Store-bought kosher  chips and nuts are an easy solution but making your own puts you in the creative driver’s seat.

Super Dips

Dips are the heart of an easy, breezy get together. Just add chips and you’ve got an instant party!

Super Sips

Have plenty of soda, beer, water and juice on hand so your guests don’t go thirsty. Add a signature drink or cocktail to give your kosher tailgate a little something extra.

Super Apps

I know, I know, you’re already full, but just in case the half-time show is lame, how ’bout some more substantial fare. Heat up some ready-made kosher appetizers like frozen kosher chicken wings or make some of your own.

Don’t see what you like? Consider ordering some gourmet kosher deli platters or kosher sushi platters. And for dessert, try a fruit platter or some good ‘ole parve chocolate chip cookies.

Are you ready for some football!?! Go Saints! Go Colts!

Do you watch the Super Bowl? What do you serve at your Super Party? Leave us a comment and let us know.

Hava narisha … Esther, Mordecai … Purim’s Here!

This year Purim falls on Sunday, February 28, 2010 (the fun really begins on Saturday night).

The Story of Purim

The Web is a like a limitless well of Purim information, but for the basics check out the Purim pages at Wikipedia, Holidays.net,  Chabad, Judaism 101, Jewish Virtual Library, and My Jewish Learning.

This printable Purim guide from Chabad offers a run down on Purim traditions and mistvot. The Jewish Reconstructionist Federation tackles some tough  Purim questions in their Purim FAQs.

Kids’ Purim Activities

Stuck for a costume for you or the kids? Sarah Zeldman shows you how to make 9 easy and inexpensive, no-sew Purim costumes.

Learn to make an animal mask with Babaganewz’s Purim Mask Craft or sing along with High School Megillah. And who can pass up Jewpardy the Purim Edition!

Need an easy Purim art project? Check out the coloring pages at Aish.com and TorahTots.com coloring pages. Or surf to Holidays.net’s Purim Craft Project page for a variety of fun activities.

Misloach Manot and Purim Treats

Holidays.net has a primer on creative Purim baskets to help you take your mishloach manot to the next level. (Of course, you can also send  Purim baskets and gift platters at Kosher.com!)

For hamentashen recipes and tips, check out Aish.com’s hamentashen page or Kosher.com’s collection of hamentashen recipes.

To help you get your fill of food and drink this Purim, check out these recipes from Jamie Geller guaranteed to put some spirit into your Purim celebrations.

Back to Purim Central on Kosher.com

I had a fabulous cheese course planned for Tu Bishvat, but this year the holiday falls on Shabbat (January 30, 2010), which means that most of us are going to spend the day fleishig. What’s a gal to do? One word: Breakfast!

A breakfast cheese course is not really that far-fetched. I mean all the food is already prepared so you can serve it up quickly, no cooking involved. Add salad and some great crusty bread and you have an easy brunch ready to go. For Tu Bishvat add some dried fruit, grapes, fig or date jam, and you have an elegant cheese course perfect for the holiday.

The secret to the cheese course is variety! Traditionally, cheese courses have at least three different types of cheese including a soft ripened cheese like Brie or Camembert, a hard, sharp cheese like Cheddar or Parmesan and something really robust (i.e. stinky) like Danish blue cheese or goat cheese. If this selection isn’t to your taste or you can’t find everything on the list, serve whatever you like and is readily available. Handcrafted mozzarella, sheep’s milk feta, kashkaval, Gouda, Muenster, Monterey Jack—choose whatever cheeses you and your family enjoy. Finish your plate with some grapes, almonds or walnuts, some dried apricots and you’re done!

If you want to round out this meal, add a salad like this Biblically-Inspired Salad or an Israeli Salad. Crusty french rolls, sourdough bread or challah (call it “brioche” if you want to be fancy about it) represent the wheat in the seven species. You can leave it at that or add a side dish like Barley & Wild Rice Pilaf with Pomegranate Seeds (prepared with vegetable broth). Tabbouleh, a salad made from bulgur wheat and chopped parsley, and dressed with olive oil and lemon juice also works well.

There you have it. The perfect Tu Bishvat cheese course and an easy Shabbat breakfast, to boot. A new Tu Bishvat tradition is born.

What are your Tu Bishvat traditions?

Check out Tu Bishvat Central on Kosher.com for more articles and recipes or head here for your Tu Bishvat Seder or celebration supplies.