WHY YOU MUST BE VIGILANT

Recently, we spent ten days as a guest at Long Island Jewish Hospital. During that time, we had the distinct displeasure of eating from the kosher menu. Hey, of course we ate from the kosher menu- we keep kosher. But it was a distinct displeasure.

One day we got a meat meal for lunch (instead of pareve) and it was served with dairy margarine and a dairy pudding. Almost every night for dinner (always a meat meal), we were served dairy margarine for our bread.

We ordered decaff tea with every meal. In ten days, three times we got regular tea. Once we got hot water but no tea bag. Twice we got tea bags but no hot water.

At least once every two or three days we got a meal we had not ordered. One day, we got oatmeal. It was either the tea or the oatmeal- there was only one cup of hot water. Another day, we got an envelope of treife hot chocolate. Bad enough that it was treife, the packet said that hot chocolate had more grams of sugar than we eat in two days! And we were on a sugar free diet!

Most of the meat was mystery meat, made soft by virtue of the sauce it was cooked in. Several times we had mashed potatoes that were lumpen glops of tasteless paste. The meat was tasty, though. The menu offered brisket, pot roast and goulash. We tried all three- they were all the same!

The best was the chicken dinner. The rice and the veggies were great- really! The chicken dinner consisted of two thirds of a chicken wing, and one third of a thigh. Whoa- who serves such large portions today?

We did have tasty string beans at almost every meal. Ten days of string beans is a bit much, but we do like string beans. The baked ziti (served with at lunch was very good, if very short on cheese. The macaroni and cheese was also good, but it needed pepper.

We had the eggs for breakfast one day. As you can imagine,they were reheated microwaved eggs. Short on taste, long on chewy texture.

The main thing, however, was all the mix ups in kashruth. Even though the hospital is under a national hashgacha, there is apparently no mashgiach on the premises. As a result, lots of mistakes happen.

If it happens on Long Island, it probably happens elsewhere, too. Caveat Emptor!