A Healthier Approach to Hanukkah

The Festival of Lights is just around the corner and it's time to celebrate. If you aren't familiar with the holiday, winter marks the time that Jews celebrate the miracle of the oil, which occurred during the re-dedication of the temple in Jerusalem after a victory over the Seleucids. Tradition called for an eternal flame to be kept in the temple, but there was only enough consecrated oil to last one day and it took eight days to produce more. In spite of the shortage, the oil lasted the eight days and the flame was not extinguished.

To commemorate the miracle of the oil, Hanukkah meals traditionally include latkes, potato cakes that are pan-fried, or deep-fried pastries dipped in honey. The wonderful thing about Hanukkah foods is that they honor family traditions that have existed for thousands of years--the downside is that a meal that highlights fried foods isn't necessarily the most healthful.

Don't throw tradition out the window; holidays are not the time to be overly concerned with your caloric or saturated fat intake. The most important aspect of any holiday is the history passed from one generation to the next. And with a little tweaking, you can make sure that the meals that you serve on Hanukkah are nutritionally sound.

The first step is to look at your latkes or pastries and make sure that you are minimizing their fat content. This can be accomplished in two ways, either change the ingredients in the recipe or modify the method you use to cook them.

We can easily replace the fat in cakes and cookies with a fruit puree like applesauce but the cookies will not be the same. During the course of a normal week, this isn't such a bad thing but try messing with your grandmother's recipe on a holiday and people aren't going to be happy. More importantly, the fat content of a latke or deep-fried pastry doesn't come from the ingredients in the recipe; it comes from the oil used to cook them. Here's where you have more control than you think. Remember that the miracle was that a small amount of oil lasted eight days - to really honor the event, try to make the oil you use go as far as possible.