Next motzoai Shabbos the US will finally go from Daylight Savings Time to Standard Time. Obviously some of our clocks will need to be changed next week to show the correct time. But there's another issue coming up as well. There are going to need to be some scheduling/shopping/preparing changes also made. With the change to Standard Time, Shabbos is going to be starting very early--4:30 in the afternoon. Plan ahead! Leaving everything to do on Friday could result in some very frazzled balabustas.
Sitting down now, before the clock change, and rearranging your household schedule just might save you from "fear inspiring" moments after the clock changes. No, even if you put the oven on its highest heat setting, you are not going to be able to roast a chicken in 34 minutes. No, if a soup takes 3 hours to cook, it won't be ready in time for Shabbos if you first put it up at 2:00. No, if your shopping takes you about 2-4 hours to conclude, you are not going to have plenty of time to shop if you first go out at 1:00 pm.
Leisurely Fridays are soon to become a thing of the past. How well or how poorly you do in coping with those short Fridays could well depend on how much thought you give now to how you do things.
7 comments:
"Shabbos is going to be starting very early--4:30 in the afternoon."
ahem, for some of us that means 4:48
(can you roast a chicken in 52 minutes?)
Yes, thank God for the little things in life...like the 18 minutes. :)
"can you roast a chicken in 52 minutes?"
A whole lot of factors to take into consideration before you can answer that question. Is the chicken whole or is it cut into quarters or into 1/8s? How big is that chicken? How many chickens will you be roasting at one time?Is it going into the oven frozen, partially frozen or fully defrosted or fresh? Will there be liquid surrounding the chicken or will it be roasted dry? Are other ingredients also going to be roasting with that chicken whose cooking times may be longer than the chicken's cooking time or which could be aversely affected by too high a heat? Do you like your chicken well done/dry/tough on the outside and barely done on the inside? Does your recipe call for baking covered or uncovered?
Then there is this: will that chicken remain in the oven, an oven set for low heat for all of Shabbos? If it will, and it is not completely cooked before Shabbos, you run into whether or not you are cooking on Shabbos rather than just rewarming the chicken. The less time the chicken spends being cooked initially the more likely you are to run into this situation.
So to answer the question--maybe you can and maybe you can't. Why play Russian Roulette with the food for Shabbos?
JS:
when i started going out with my wife i dropped her off once close to shabbat and she thought she was going out with a mechalel shabbos. she didn't know about the 18 minutes.
one thing that could get me to make aliyah is that minhag yerushalayim gives you 36 minutes!
"Why play Russian Roulette with the food for Shabbos?"
you think you can use this to scare someone who plays russian roulette with getting home on time for shabbat. (although while i've had to walk more than once, thankfully we've always had food)
What you didn't mention re those shorter Shabbosim is what happens in homes where there are "people" (read husbands) who won't eat leftovers and who believe that meat or anything cooked on Thursday is a leftover if served first on Friday night or Shabbos day. I finally found a way that works for me in getting my husband to see reason but it may not work for everyone.
For a few weeks I set the alarm for 4:45, got up and cooked everything Friday fresh and then went to work. Immediately after bentching I went to bed (didn't even make it through the whole dinner one night), leaving my husband with the clean up, putting the food away, entertaining our little ones and getting them to bed. After a few weeks of this he grudgingly agreed that eating "leftovers" was preferrable. It's been a few years now but he still prefers the longer Fridays when things are fresh to the shorter Fridays.
AVIVAH:
why don't you make him get up at 4:45am to do the cooking?
Clearly you are not speaking to families where both spouses are working ... we never have leisurely Fridays no matter what time the sun sets. Everything is pretty much cooked Thursday night all year round - it has to be. Leisurely Friday, what's that?
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