Yesterday Torre did not back down from the latest tsimmes in a tea cup.

The tsimmes is made from sweet potatoes tracked down at a Thai market near our apartment.

She had the soup going, the fish sauce heating, the kugel beginning to sizzle and the carrots cooking for the tsimmes, a sweetened side dish.

ONLY weeks ago, there was a major linguistic tsimmes about the roots of Yiddish, the language spoken by so few yet heard by so many.

"We're making a traditional Passover meal for 35 people - gefilte fish, chopped liver, brisket of beef, tsimmes, charoset, matzoh, wine and personalized yarmulkes."

Carrot tsimmes ($5.95 a pound), simply grated carrots and raisins, is sweetened with honey, as is typical, yet the dish is refreshing rather than cloying.

I also refuse to give an inch to Grandmother on the issue of tsimmes, a puddinglike side dish that usually combines dried fruit with carrots or sweet potatoes.

We eat tsimmes made with Thai sweet potatoes, roast lamb with Turkish glaze and sweet, Georgian haroset.

The delightful little tsimmes from Vero Beach is what we were waiting for as we sat through the Endless Winter Games, proving that cryonics actually works.

It will cover vegetarian matzoh ball soup, vegetarian "chopped liver," sweet potato and carrot tsimmes and poached pear compote, not to mention gefilte fish.

In all, there are about 200 recipes in the book, ranging from seared Hawaiian ahi with Japanese salsa to the Queen's English trifle to brisket and tsimmes.

The entree for the meal will be a choice of beef and sweet potato tsimmes or roast free range chicken with pears and almonds as well as grilled salmon fillet with walnuts.

We agreed on a schedule: on Thursday, I would watch her make chicken soup, potato kugel, tsimmes and gefilte fish, and on Friday, the challah, apple tart, cholent and roast chicken.

In one of his cans he collected bread, chunks of cold potato pudding, scraps of meat (on rare occasions) or portions of tsimmes, the Shabbes dish made of carrots and plums, meat bones and fat.

With main courses, Mr. DeMarco has his cheeky moments, like juicy, meaty pork chops in a mustard-vinegar sauce ($15), paired with sweet potato tsimmes, a Rosh Hashana dish that has probably never been up close with a pork chop before.

Typically, this piece is so full of Yiddishisms ("a tsimmes of talentless trombeniks"), bilious invective and ancient history ("Are you aware your instructor Silverfish was fired for editing a Hollywood movie because Henry Fonda was repeatedly cut in upside down?")

SUNDOWN on Friday marks the beginning of Rosh ha-Shanah, the Jewish New Year, when Jewish families across the nation will sit down, as Jewish families have for centuries, to traditional meals of roast chicken, tsimmes, beef flanken and kreplach soup.