Though hardly a traditional Hanukkah activity, Martha Stewart teaches us how to make our own candles. No, really. Simply turn on your blow dryer, roll the wax around the wicking, and, um, 44 candles later you have something you can get for 89 cents at Fairway…only more Martha-y.

Lame duck NY governor and ’08 GOP presidential hopeful, George Pataki, charges admission to his annual party celebrating the festival of lights. “Food! Wine! Free Gift Bags! Current Members only!” Admission to Pataki’s latke party is $10 in addition to a $75 membership in the Republican Jewish Coalition.

The festival of greasy palms?

– Sarah Rose, JCarrot Editor-in-Chief

Grand dame of Gastronomic Judiasm, cookbook author Joan Nathan, breaks out the obligatory Hannukah story with a visit to the Satmar Hasidic community in Kiryas Joel, NY.

Deftly sidestepping the elephant in the room, this year’s succession battle between the Rebbe’s sons, Nathan’s story is all sweetness and light. She paints an idyllic picture of a modern day Hungarian shtetl transplanted to New York State where grandmother Mindel Appel, the story’s heroine, raised 11 kids in a three bedroom apartment, and is busy at work cooking for a community engagement party.

Nathan lovingly details Appel’s Old World, nearly lost recipes:

Many so-called unaffiliated Jews find their connection to this here people through the very thing my family didn’t seem to have: Jewish food. Gourmania.com calls this denomination of our faith “Gastronomic Judaism.” But I am not a Jew by food.

Growing up as an Army brat in the Great Plains, away from any Jewish community to speak of, with a mother who didn’t dig the cooking schtik and a dad who converted from Christianity, I missed out on everything from knishes to gefilte fishes.