In the larger cities, all ethnic communities tend to be more insular. So schools, social gatherings, and other food-related interactions are easy for kashruth – you just spend most of your time with other religious Jews. Kashruth is taken for granted.

In the smaller cities and towns, though, every eating experience requires forethought. There is a lot of mixing of all ethnic groups. For example, in Urbana, Illinois, our girls were often the only religious Jewish children in the school system. In such cities, either you eat at home, or if you are eating away form home, you bring your own food, you make special arrangements, you look around for something with certification or you make do with a coke and a carrot stick.

3.  What are your top five tips for converting non-kosher recipes to accommodate a kosher diet?

1.    Choose recipes that are intrinsically kosher, that don’t require substitutions. Don’t limit yourself to your own experience – start with a web and choose something new every night.

2.    Stay away from artificial creamers, pareve cheese substitutes, and other artificial ingredients. These usually impart bad overtones to the food or ruin the texture as well. Rice milk (not soy milk) is sometimes a reasonable substitute for milk or cream in baking. Crisco is acceptable in baking to substitute for butter, but only in small quantities. Olive oil is best to use for savory dishes as a substitute for butter. Canola oil can also be used for savory dishes and in some cakes.

3.    If you are converting a baked good from dairy to pareve, use a recipe that does not focus on the flavor of butter or cream. Stay away from pound cakes, scones, butter cookies, cream-filled items. Save these recipes for your dairy meals. Instead choose recipes that have strong spices or flavors to provide an interesting addition to the otherwise bland or flavorless pareve shortening. Better yet, choose recipes for which oil is the fat.

4.    Be very careful to choose beef recipes that do not depend on the texture, fat, and tenderness of non-kosher cuts. Long-simmered stews, pot roasts, short-ribs, ground beef, and elegant rib eye recipes are the most successful. Also, finely trimmed and carefully cut beef for Asian recipes works just fine. Stay away from large pieces of poorly trimmed, tough, chuck or shoulder beef.

5.    Choose recipes from ethnic collections that are easy to adapt – many Asian or South Asian recipes just don’t have a lot of meat/milk mixtures. You can often substitute veal, or beef for the pork. Many of these cultures have rich and fascinating vegetarian recipes. Also, explore the full range of Mediterranean ethnic recipes. The emphasis here is on olive oil, vegetables, and ingredients that are easy to find in the kosher market.

4. What would you advise for keeping kosher on the road?

While raising our four daughters, we took endless road trips across the US (and Europe and Israel).  So we tried all methods of staying well fed and happy on the road. The best result was bringing homemade special foods – pizza, calzone, quiche, even macaroni and cheese. It was also good to keep everyone away from meat so that when we found the occasional kosher ice cream parlor, we could have a treat. Now that the kids are grown, and it’s only the two of us, we don’t take as many car trips. When we do travel by car, we pack sandwiches, fruit, and water – we’re easier to please.

Traveling in the US, without supplies from home, away from big cities is a bigger challenge. It’s important to arm yourself with information beforehand. Learn which products are already kosher (if you’re not from the US, take a look at the OU, OK, and other certification agency web sites). Then prepare yourself for the visit by looking at web sites for the cities you are visiting. Search for kosher restaurants and grocery stores or bakeries, and definitely call ahead.

If you are traveling with children, always bring some food with you. Don’t forget to try local grocery stores. Yogurt, cereal, tuna, smoked salmon, humus, cream cheese, peanut butter and fruits and vegetables all save the day. Fill this in with crackers, bagels, pita, dried fruit, cookies, and candy, and you might be able to manage with the already certified items in most groceries across the US. The last resort is an ice cream store.