Sifriyat Pijama b’America

4 August 2011 at 09:11 | Posted in Bicultural Families, Children's books, Hebrew & Bilingualism | 2 Comments

I’ve waxed poetic before about the PJ Library in the US and Sifriyat Pijama in Israel. But getting Hebrew books with Jewish themes in the mail in the States – for free? That’s a dream come true for us while we wait to move. Welcome to Sifriyat Pijama b’America! There is currently a waiting list, but you can sign up here and keep your fingers crossed.

I am a strong advocate of universal Hebrew literacy in the community and this project is a great contribution towards that goal. Good on you, Israeli Leadership Council. Hat tip to Shirah of Hebrew Play for pointing out this opportunity. Pay Shirah a visit, she has lots of great information on promoting Hebrew in the US – and if you are in Boston area, you can find out how to meet up and play in Hebrew!

An Ongoing Tale of Two Kitchens – WIP Wednesday

3 August 2011 at 22:52 | Posted in Life with Kids | Leave a comment

I am definitely sold on WIP Wednesday. Check out our kitchen coming together! As I mentioned last week, I am making a play kitchen out of cardboard using this brilliant pattern from forty-two roads. It turned out that that I did have enough cardboard in the storage closet, mostly because I lucked out and had two big double-layered boxes. I was a little hesitant to start cutting out the pieces with a preschooler hovering, but I’m glad I did. He was so careful and listened so well, fascinated by what I was doing. He helped measure and mark and is so excited about this project. Still to do: cut the assembly slots into the kitchen parts, get a handle and some wire (and figure out how to cut said wire), cover with contact paper, and sew the curtain. I ordered some bright yellow (why not?) contact paper from Amazon and am trying to decide on the curtain fabric. Maybe this one?

 

The other kitchen of this winding tale is a mud kitchen, which we didn’t do this week. I cleared out a spot for it, where we used to store the recycle bins. By angling the grill a bit and moving around the bins, I made a little  play space. Not the most glamorous, between the air conditioner and the recycling, but Ash loves it. We didn’t start the mud kitchen, though, because I didn’t find the materials I was hoping for lurking in the depths of the storage closet. In the meantime, we tried the water pouring wall from the summer fun list…which was a big flop, and not just because the materials I gathered didn’t work that well. Ash was completely uninterested in it: as soon as he saw the bucket I’d filled with water, he ran to get his matchbox cars and happily dumped the water over them and that was that.

Which proves my theory that a bucket of water is the best thing ever. I’ve been known to put one on a towel in the middle of the kitchen in the dead of winter.

And so the tale of two kitchens continues.

The Hauls of August

3 August 2011 at 12:01 | Posted in Recipes & Food | 6 Comments

Yosefa at Cooking Outside the Box is kicking off a monthly seasonal-food link-up, which I’m really excited about because this is an area in which I’d like to improve, and I need ideas. (I’m still going to eat salads in winter, because that seems to be an excellent perk of living in the twenty-first century…but I’d like to do it a little better, you know?) It should be a no-brainer to eat seasonally. Just eat what’s in season, right? You’d think, being that my mom grew up on farms and cooked all our food from scratch on a tight budget, that it would be second nature to me. I’ve sheepishly found this not to be the case. Sure, I never buy strawberries in the dead of winter and I realize that tomatoes are tasteless by late fall. But the produce section in my local supermarket, I’ve realized, is working against me: it adjusts only slightly to the change of seasons. Apples in the fall, peaches in the summer, yes, but tropical fruits, tomatoes, greens, and almost anything else all year around. And even the seasonal fruit is usually flown or driven from afar. It is not intuitive, selecting seasonal produce in the supermarket.

Right now in my supermarket, there are some local, seasonal vegetables. They’re hanging out in a display meant to look like a farm stand: humongous tomatoes, corn, and a nice array of summer squash. All the summer fruits I love so much are on display – peaches, plums, and apricots – but they’re still trucked in. I’ve been ignoring the produce section in favor of farm stands, farmers’ markets, and the quarter-portion of a CSA box I share. But as soon as the summer harvest is gone, I’ll be back to the produce section and then I’ll have to contend with its strange insulation from growing seasons and geographical limitations.

My goal for this coming year is to collect and make use of seasonal recipes. Here in August I’ve been concentrating on recipes that use summer squash, corn, tomatoes, eggplants, lettuce and other greens, potatoes, and all the summer fruits. I’ve been noticing that some of my favorite veggies are either winter crops, like brussels sprouts and cauliflower, or root vegetables that keep well for the winter, like carrots and sweet potatoes. I realize I can buy just as nice a cauliflower in the super right now as I will be able to in November, but then what will I do with all the beautiful zucchini? There is something exciting about waiting for the season.

Some summer recipes on my to-try list:

Got any more for me?

A Tale of Two Play Kitchens – WIP Wednesday

27 July 2011 at 22:45 | Posted in Activities for kids, Life with Kids | 1 Comment

I’ve pretty much embraced my toy minimalism, but there is one big-ticket item that I feel is missing in our home: a play kitchen. Last winter I got Ash a set of dishes and some play food, which he occasionally plays with with gusto, and then puts away and forgets about for a month. So I’ve been putting off investing in a good play kitchen. Then I came upon the perfect solution: a brilliant and thrifty DIY cardboard play kitchen design by Anna Wulick of forty-two roads. This pattern requires collecting a lot of large pieces of cardboard, which I’ve been slowly doing, though I may not have enough yet. It also requires a large cement surface, like a patio, to lay the cardboard on in order to cut it out (with an implement I refer to as a Japanese knife but which, to my husband’s disappointment, is not actually a ninja weapon but merely Israeli for box cutter). My goal for this week is to finally get out all the cardboard pieces on my newly-cleaned up patio, mark the pattern pieces on them, and cut them out.

While we’re in the business of making the play kitchen, I figure we should also set up a mud kitchen, which is at the top of my summer fun list. I’m not sure what we can use as the base for the mud kitchen, but it may well be lurking in our storage closet behind all the cardboard pieces I’ve stacked in there for the indoor play kitchen. I’m going to use the mud kitchen as an excuse to rid my kitchen of stuff I should really toss, like old nonstick pans and way expired spices. (I am okay with the newer nonstick I already own for limited low-heat use, but I don’t plan to buy any more for health reasons.) We may have to round out our mud kitchen with a few items from the dollar store, but I’m hoping we can repurpose all of its components from home. After nearly four years of obliviousness to birthdays, Ash is in full-on birthday appreciation mode and I think he’ll love “baking” mud birthday cakes. All right, I’ll admit it, I kind of like playing with mud too. Still.

Healthified Anniversary Peach Cake

26 July 2011 at 08:26 | Posted in Recipes & Food | Leave a comment

When my husband and I got married, we received as a gift a proper cake pan with a lid. This particular cake pan was super exciting because until it arrived, my entire set of kitchenware consisted of banged-up hand-me-downs. Printed on the cardboard wrapper around the cake pan was a recipe for “Peach Snacking Cake.” Maybe it was just the delightful turn of phrase snacking cake, but I cut it out of the wrapper and taped it into my recipe notebook. Every now and again I’d flip through the notebook looking for something new and think, hey, I should try that peach cake. Recently, I stopped at the recipe and decided to make it for Shabbat. I didn’t realize it was the Shabbat just before our anniversary – which makes it all the more perfect. This is a perfect cake to whip up on a lazy summer erev Shabbat, and it’s not even that bad for you, after I got through with it. Because of the whole-wheat pastry flour, the texture of this cake is a bit like a solet (semonlina flour) cake, coarse but fluffy at the same time.

Anniversary Peach Cake (parve)

  • 1/2 cup coconut oil
  • 3/4 cup + 1 tbs unrefined sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 tsp vanilla
  • 1/2 tsp baking soda
  • 1 cup whole-wheat pastry flour
  • 1/2 tsp + generous dash cinnamon
  • 1/2 cup walnut halves
  • 3 peaches, sliced

In a medium-sized bowl (or in your stand mixer), cream the coconut oil with 3/4 cup sugar. When blended, add the eggs one at a time, then the vanilla. Blend in the baking soda, then the cinnamon, and then the flour.

Place the walnuts in a small bag, seal the bag, and crush with your hands. Mix about half (1/4 cup) into the batter, and set aside the bag. Pour the batter into a round cake pan. Arrange the peach slices over the top.

To make the topping, add a generous dash of cinnamon to the remaining walnuts in the bag. Add a tablespoon or so of sugar, then re-seal the bag and mix well. Pour over top of cake.

Place the cake pan on a lined cookie sheet (it may drip slightly) and bake in a medium oven (180°C /350°F) for about 30 minutes. The edges will be crisp and the center just cooked through.

Summer Fun List

25 July 2011 at 08:51 | Posted in Activities for kids | 4 Comments

I thought I’d jump back in to blogging by sharing my summer fun-list. These have been popping up, and I’ve enjoyed reading what other families have planned for my favorite season. Summer is like the dessert of the year, isn’t it? It helps to be cold-blooded like me, I suppose. I know summer is half over, but all the more reason to squeeze out every last drop. A deeply felt thank-you to all who wrote with kind words of support – they have meant a great deal to me.

Nature Play

  • Make a mud kitchen – lots of ideas here and here
  • Try some land art
  • Build some gnome/fairy houses - I didn’t realize this is a”thing,” but I loved doing it as a child!
  • Catch some bugs in jars and examine under a magnifying glass
  • Make a shell necklace

Outdoor & Active

  • Ima-kiddo yoga in the backyard – I need to get my hands on this book (originally in English) to use as guidance
  • All the swimming we can get in!
  • Explore our local and local-ish state parks and beaches
  • Make an obstacle course in the backyard
  • Croquet – buy a set? DIY somehow?
  • Build a water pouring contraption
  • Visit a farm

Art Activities

  • Make a fresh batch of playdough, reserving some for mixing with bits of flowers, twigs, and leaves – I use the “playclay” recipe in MaryAnn Kohl‘s First Art, which is amazing
  • Sidewalk paints – we’ll use powdered paints in place of food coloring
  • Rain art – another idea from First Art
  • Splatter art outside on the grass
  • Make a travel Shabbat candle box – not really to do with summer except that summer is a good time to do Shabbat crafts (though some clever people have thought up Tisha be-Av crafts)
  • Make some garden ornaments – clay? Mosaics?

Kitchen Adventures

  • Bottle up some homemade chocolate syrup – like this or this, but with the sugar content drastically slashed and therefore potentially ending up as a big fail
  • Experiment with more ice cream and frozen yogurt recipes, to go with that syrup
  • Try some new homemade artikim – like these or these (but with all full-fat dairy, that’s how we roll)
  • Make a batch of sourdough starter, with the goal of making this challah
  • Find more salad ideas – I love my tomotoes and cucumbers in lemon and olive oil, but sometimes one needs a change
  • Perfect a honey-sweetened rendition of lemonade
  • Try some recipes from my new copy of Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar, a birthday present from my sister!
  • Test out zucchini bread recipes, although it looks like I’m going to have to give our zucchini plants a little help in the mating department first

What fun stuff do you have planned for the rest of the summer?

Belated Chag Same’ach and a blogging break

10 June 2011 at 16:07 | Posted in Blog stuff, Holidays, Shavu'ot | 3 Comments

I hope everyone had a nice Shavuot holiday. I made mushroom-stuffed blintzes, caprese salad with fresh basil from the garden, and chocolate mousse for dessert.

I am also going to take a short break from blogging. We have been hoping to have more children for a long time, and we had another setback this week. I know hope will come back to me, but it hasn’t yet, and I need to wait for it quietly.

Shabbat shalom.

Lag ba-Omer Fail – WIP Fail

25 May 2011 at 11:15 | Posted in Holidays, Lag ba-Omer, Recipes & Food | 4 Comments

Apparently this has been the rainiest May on record here in Tri-State Area Suburb.

Lag ba-Omer, one of my favorite holidays: rained out. Yet another reason to make aliyah.

My brilliant idea for bilingual garden markers: rained out.

Look how cute they were:

Although more than a few boldly withstood the downpours we’ve been having, I have to admit that most ended up looking like this:

So, still a work-in-progress, our little garden and its markers.

Easy Ways to Keep in Touch with Israel

19 May 2011 at 14:17 | Posted in Aliyah, Bicultural Families | Leave a comment

As a child of the “Israeli diaspora,” I’m an expert at conducting love long-distance. Sometimes, actually, it feels like I’m too good at it – that it’s all too natural to have all those people I love so far away from me. Luckily, I don’t have to resort to the tricks of my childhood anymore, which included making cassette tapes to send to my grandparents. (Yeah, phone calls were that expensive in the eighties.) The internet really has shrunk distances and I’m so grateful. Though it’s nowhere near enough.

Whether you’re interested in keeping in touch with loved ones, keeping an eye on what Israelis are actually talking about, or just knowing what’s going on beyond the US media bubble, I hope you’ll find something here to connect you to Israel.

  • Use Skype video chat. This is probably not news to anyone nor will it be of use to those who don’t already know someone ba-Aretz, but it’s at the top of my list.
  • Read the Israeli press (and not just the headlines and opinion pieces). Much of the Hebrew-language press is being translated into English, for those who don’t read Hebrew – although it does not always reflect the current content on the Hebrew site, as Maya of Becoming Israeli points out. If you want a mainstream, middle-of-the-road newspaper, try Yediot, which has a great web presence (better quality than the print edition). Don’t stop at the front page: check out the culture section too, although it’s very limited in English – no food, for instance.
  • Listen to Israeli radio and watch Israeli TV at the Israeli Broadcast Authority online – they have a newly-launched English site. I listen to the classical music station (88FM) while I work at home and that way I also get news on the hour.
  • Follow events you’re interested in on Achbar ha-Ir (Hebrew), Time Out Tel Aviv (Hebrew and English). I subscribe to the kids’ section of Achbar ha-Ir via RSS, so I can kind of keep an eye out for trends and events concerning kids. This is primarily of interest for those considering aliyah, but can also be a nice way to keep up with cultural info. (Did you know that the Israel Museum reopened last summer after an extensive renovation?)
  • Stock up on Hebrew-language CDs . Music is a universal language; even if your kids don’t understand Hebrew, they can learn Israeli kids’ songs, which play a huge role in kid culture in Israel. Outside of Israel, Judaica stores usually have a limited and expensive selection, so if you are in North America I recommend Sifrutake (NYC-based) and Tzomet Sfarim USA (LA-based). Both sites can be navigated in English; Sifrutake has a larger selection and better prices. (My links are directly to the Children’s CDs sections in English).
  • Put YouTube to good use – you can find some nice playlists for kids, show your vehicle-obsessed child what buses or trains look like in Israel (just an example), or sing along with gan kids (just search for your favorite song and chances are you’ll find a video of gan kids singing it). If you’re scouting out places to live, you can try to get a picture of what they might look like by typing the town name into a search.
  • Get in touch with your local Israeli Consulate. Mine sends out at English-language newsletter with Israeli and Jewish events taking place locally. Maybe yours does, too. The Embassy of Israel to the US has a nice website.
  • Get an Israeli phone number through Bezeq - I have a “local 03,” which means family and friends in Israel can call me as though they’re calling Tel Aviv (03 area code). To call Israel, I dial a local number to get to an operator, then proceed as though I’m dialing within Israel. It’s easy, cheap, and much better quality than the satellite calling plans we used to use. All you have to remember is whether it’s daylight savings in Israel or not (+6 or +7 hours from EST). The fact that calling is so easy and cheap really helps with psychological distance.

Literary Jammies

19 May 2011 at 10:11 | Posted in Children's books, Life in Israel | 3 Comments

I was probably way too excited to spot  these pajamas in Steimatzky last summer, printed with illustrations from Israeli children’s classics. Tiras Cham won out and Ash has been waiting for warm enough weather to wear his pjs.

I love that books for children have such a central place in Israeli kid culture, we make pajamas out of them. In the States I’ve seen Dr. Seuss pjs and sheet sets and some Eric Carle clothes and fabric amidst the sea of animated characters, which always makes me happy. But Eric Carle just doesn’t do it for me. Miriam Ruth, Leah Goldberg – I am powerless against that sort of nostalgia.

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