Latkes

I'm not Jewish, but this year I decided to celebrate Hanukkah.  I grew up in a tiny town in the Midwest and as far as I know, never met a Jewish person until I worked at a big camp in Maryland.  For a couple years I nannied with a family that was Jewish and was constantly being corrected on my pronunciation of Jewish words by the 3 year old when I would read her Jewish storybooks to her.  I love different cultures and traditions and realized that one of the most common religions in my country other than Christianity is one I knew little about so that is why I chose to do this.

The first night of Hanukkah I read about the holiday.  Each night I lit the menorah while listening to a recording of the Hebrew prayers that are said for it and then I would recite them in English.  2 nights during Hanukkah I made latkes.

The first night I had a friend over and we followed this recipe- http://www.yummly.com/recipe/Potato-Latkes-I-Allrecipes?columns=4&position=5/36 except that I used walnut oil instead of peanut oil because it's what I had.

I peeled the potatoes and shredded them with my cheese grater (which worked perfectly) until I had 2 cups.
I don't have a cheese cloth so I just used paper towels to try to squeeze out as much moisture as I could.

It says to use 1 tbsp grated onion but we just chopped it really small.

We beat 3 eggs with a fork then added the potatoes and onions, 2 Tbsps of flour & 1 1/2 tsp salt.

Frying them was easy and fun.  My friend preferred them crispier and I didn't so just fry to your tastes.  Like I said, the recipe says to use peanut oil, but I used walnut oil which I'm sure made a bit of difference in the taste, but I looked at a lot of latke recipes and many of them list different oils so I'm sure you could use whatever kind you have/want.

We served them with sour cream.  This recipe says it serves six and I think it made 6 latkes for us.  We each had 3, and that was all we had for the meal and it really filled us up.

The 2nd night I cut the recipe in half because it was just me and I also added some parmesan cheese to the mixture.  Both nights the latkes were delicious!!!!  This is something I would make more than just during Hanukkah.