By JUDY ZEIDLER, Special to The Times Saturday night, the first night of Passover this year, will mark our 100th family Seder. When we were married just one year, my husband Marvin and I decided to observe the first two Seder nights of Passover in our own home, and we have done so ever since. The house we lived in 50 years ago was very small, but we borrowed chairs…

When you feel like you are always packing the children’s lunch boxes with the same old boring foods, it is time to branch out with new ideas and ingredients. I am sure that school lunches can be more creative and exciting than when my kids went to school. In those days, it was peanut butter and jelly day after day. To make the job easier, plan ahead. Make sure the things you…

Smoked Salmon Pizza. Photos by Lynn Pelkey I have known Wolfgang Puck since he was about 19 or 20 years old and he was working as a chef at Ma Maison restaurant in West Hollywood. I met him at a cooking class, probably the first one he had ever taught. I will never forget what happened when he rolled out the pastry dough for a raspberry tart. He confidently flattened…

Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, begins this year on Sept. 16 at sundown. In planning the holiday menu, I like to include some of the traditional recipes that many of us learned in our mothers’ and grandmothers’ kitchens, but I always add some new, modern ideas. The symbolic foods for the New Year include apples and honey, representing “a sweet year,” and pomegranates, one of the first fruits of…