With New Year’s Eve coming up, the subject of calendars has come to mind. I usually wait to buy any generic, secular calendars until very late December, when the prices come down to bargain level.

Maybe I seem a bit cheap, but I refuse to pay full price for a calendar that, sure, may have the cast of Lost on it, but doesn’t include most of the Jewish holidays. Thankfully, my congregation sells messianic calendars at our congregational bookstore, and those I’ll pay full price for, but if we ever move, the only workable solution will probably be custom printed calendars on a color inkjet printer.

They’re not as fun, but at least they’d have everything I want on any calendar I use on them - including the Jewish months, days and year. Happy New Year, everyone! It’s 5768, at least by the Hebrew calendar. And it’s been that for a while now.

My wife and I have taken to watching a lot of the Food Network in the wake of the writer’s strike, and while they have a lot of interesting ideas, I generally trust my wife with the cutting boards in our kitchen more than I would any Food Network chef, because virtually none of them seem to know how to cook kosher.

That reminds me of a quick story about kosher diets and food. And air travel.

One aspect of air travel where Jewish and messianic folks seem to get the shaft is in food service. While most passengers are treated to hot meals, the last time I was on an airplane and ordered the kosher meal, all I got was a bagel and some salmon-flavored cream cheese. Granted, it was good, but when you consider other passengers were getting hot, fully-cooked meals, it seemed like the short straw.

One of the challenges for the recently-wrapped reality series, The Next Iron Chef, was for the contestants to cook good airplane food.

I think someone should take up the challenge to offer up not just good airplane food, but good kosher airplane food. Now that would be a challenge!