One Potato, Two Potato. 100 Potatoes to Cook Up Super-sized Chanukah Latke

by Sandy Sand

Only in Southern California. A beach town Jewish congregation creates a super-sized potato pancake to make McDonald’s proud.

Southern Californians like to pride themselves in being innovators and concocting new ideas that the country soon follows.

Members of Temple Isaiah in Newport Beach combined a green Chanukah with the traditional blue and white celebration making it into a light aqua event, and an attempt to break the world record for the largest potato latke.

Potato pancakes -- latkes -- are traditional fare served at Chanukah parties and are usually about four inches in diameter.

Isaiah congregants shredded enough of the spuds to make a three-foot wide super supper latke, which they cooked up in a solar paneled oven.

Record setting by itself, it must have taken a fantastic amount of sun power to heat up an oven big enough to cook that giant pancake. Not even new kitchen ovens are that big.

Rabbi Marc Rubenstein said in a sermon to the 100-family congregation that focused on the environment, "We are our brother's keeper, and we also have to take care of the Earth."

A neat idea and a fun thing to do, but I’m afraid there will be no prize as far as latke purists are concerned.

Real potato latkes are fried; their’s was baked.

If anything, they should win a prize for baking up the world’s biggest potato kugel.