It is so hard to believe that we are halfway through October and already thinking of Thanksgiving. One of my favorite things about Thanksgiving is all the traditions and memories associated with the holiday. My job as a kid was to set the Thanksgiving table. I took this job very seriously. When I was about 7, I made salt dough turkey cut-outs and then hand-painted them with my sister and cousin. My mom still uses them at every place setting to this day. As I got older, I was in the kitchen with my mom all week leading up to the big day and those are some of my favorite memories cooking all day with my mom.

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One of our favorite things about Catering by Michaels is the different cultures and religions on our team. Many members of our team are not familiar with the Jewish holidays when they join our company. Since these holidays are a big part of our business, we always take the time every year to teach the traditions and cuisine of each holiday.

On Yom Kippur, people will come together for fasting and prayer from before sundown on the previous night until after sundown on the day of the fast. This means no food or drink is consumed for 24 hours. Foods that are comforting, filling, and requiring minimal preparation are the perfect foods to eat after a day of fasting.

Food and Tradition

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This year, Rosh Hashanah is particularly meaningful. The holiday marks the beginning of a new year in the Jewish calendar. And beginnings are an opportunity to look toward the future while acknowledging the past which brought us here.

Rosh Hashanah is a time to reflect on family, happiness, and humility. During these times of the COVID-19 pandemic and political/social uncertainty, all of us at Catering by Michaels believe family, happiness, and humility are the perfect antidotes to the extraordinary circumstances of 2020.

We read an amazing article in The Jerusalem Post about celebrating Rosh Hashanah during COVID-19. Andy Slavitt, a former Obama administration official who ran Medicare and Medicaid, says, “This is a year for maximum creativity! When I say use creativity, don’t lose the spirit of what makes the holiday special!” We couldn’t agree more and can help be your creative partner.

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I don’t know about you, but I always like to have something to look forward to, especially now, during this global pandemic. I cannot even believe that September is almost here, and the end of summer is near. I always loved Labor Day weekend as a kid – it normally meant summer days full of pool swimming, lake house weekends, and delicious backyard barbecues with friends and family. As an adult, Labor Day weekend normally means a weekend full of events or on the rare occasion we have the weekend off, a road trip, or a short flight somewhere for a long weekend with adventures, great food, and time with my husband, friends, and family. This year definitely looks a little different, but that doesn’t mean it can’t still be full of your favorite things!

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My name is Lisa Ware and I am the Director of Business Development & Special Projects at Catering by Michaels. I have been writing each week about our journey through COVID-19. If you have not yet read the previous episodes – be sure to start from the beginning!

The Abrupt Shutdown

We all arrived to work the Monday after our all-team meeting and the day started out like usual – for about an hour until we realized that we actually have to figure out how to abruptly shut down our business. The scramble began. We close our business for a few days every January to give our team a much-deserved break after the insane hustle of the month of December, but we do not actually fully shut down, more like a deep clean. This was a true shut down – of everything. Let’s talk about the first layer – events needed to be rescheduled, deliveries needed to be canceled, 200+ employees needed help filing for unemployment, all the questions from our team needed to be answered, our initial policy for how we were going to handle what would be hundreds of rescheduled events needed to be made, the templates for our sales team needed to be written so we were sending out universal messaging to all clients, our offices and kitchen needed to be deep cleaned, signs needed to be made for all the doors saying we were closed, vendors needed to be notified, deliveries needed to be canceled and the kitchen needed to be shut down. More on the kitchen soon. That could be an entire blog.

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