The Iron Chef

I feel like the Iron Chef right now, and it's pretty cool. I have in front of me steamed string beans and I want to make them differently than I usually do. Typically, I saute some onions in a little bit of oil, add salt and pepper and just call it a day. But, based on the food I'll be serving this evening, I think the string beans need to have some sweetness to them. Now, I recently picked up a bottle of apple honey vinegar and have some honey, soy sauce and sesame oil in my pantry. So, I'm going to do a little experimentation and pray that it works out.

Now, if you have any knowledge of the zucchini bread incident, you are probably shaking your head and screaming at the screen for me to not experiment. Sorry folks, it's time for me to try to spread my wings a bit in the kitchen. Hopefully, I'll learn to fly and not poison the 8 people I'm having over for Shabbat dinner tonight.

Speaking of which, last night Cousin Neil mentioned that I've been doing a lot of entertaining in this country. I thought about that a bit and if making four meals since November indicates a lot of entertaining then yes, I am doing a lot of hosting. To be honest, if I didn't live in the tiny apartment on the UWS, I probably would have made a lot more meals. I mean, I have a lot more friends on the UWS, and between the boyz, could have always met new people and invited different folks to each meal. At this point, there are only two new people coming to my dinner tonight, and one is El Jeffe's younger brother and the other guy I've met a few times.

I think the reason I entertain a lot more now is because I'm a little bit lonelier here in Tel Aviv. When I was in New York, I was content seeing people all week, going to shul on Friday night and Shabbos morning, and then just either eating with close friends or just eating alone and reading or napping in the afternoon. Here, I just really don't like being by myself over Shabbos. It's not that I'm no longer happy being independent, it's just really a different feeling. These people, in essence, have come to represent my family. A ragtag bunch that they might be, I've managed to make some really close friends here in Tel Aviv in the four months since I've arrived, and who doesn't want to spend Shabbos with quasi-family?

I'm waiting for the cauliflower to finally finish cooking so I can put the cauliflower kugel in a pie shell into the oven and move onto the next item on my list. Last night, I made chicken soup, cranberry-onion soup mix chicken, cinnamon chicken, orzo with sauteed mushrooms and onions and cut up the fruit for a fruit salad. Lana is bringing soda and the challah, Michael is making his famous mashed potatos and onions, Oren is picking up the "salatim" for the challah, and I tasked El Jeffe with dessert. Quite honestly, he is a great baker and his cookies are wonderful. It's another big item off of my list, which has grown suddenly. I also made a deli roll a few weeks ago and froze it, so it's defrosting now and I'll serve it tonight. Plus, with the strawberry salad, the Israeli salad and the string beans, I think we will have plenty of food!

We're having an end of semester party in Bret's class on the 16th and I offered to bake Shulamit's blondies (such a great recipe and sooo easy to make!) but I think I might make actual food instead. I'll be honest, baking just ain't my specialty.

OK, so back to the blackout of 2006. I have to say, not as much fun at the Blackout of 2003 although the climate was much, much better than the sweltering heat. I spent that August night spritzing myself with my water bottle while sweating through my sheets. When the lights came on at 6:30 a.m. that Friday night, I shut my window, cranked up my AC, left a message on my bosses machine telling her I wasn't coming to work, and went back to bed for a few hours. That was a special night.

Anyway, even with Itai and his girlfriend next door, I just really felt uncomfortable without any lights. My room got really dark but I had to shut the trisim in order to lock out some of the cold air. I did end up sleeping really well though, in spite of the pitch blackness in my bedroom, and was woken up by the pounding on my door. I was so out of it that I actually walked into the wall which fortunately, did not result in a black eye. Turns out, the problem wasn't with the main electric company (think Con Ed but for Tel Aviv) and we had to wait until 5:30 p.m. for the personal electrician to come check things out.

Wonder what one does all day long in an apartment without heat and light? Well, first I went and did a HUGE mound of laundry. I sat in the restaurant next door to the laundromat and drank tea with nana (mint in Hebrew) and charged my phone. I also spoke to the owner, who had this huge picture of David Ben Gurion handing him a photo album and some sort of metal from 1958. It was a really cool picture but the restaurant owner didn't want to elaborate on what he did to get the photo album - I surmise it probably went hand in hand with his glass eye (which never looked directly at me when he did, which is how I knew it was fake).

After the laundry, I came back and figured out what I needed to purchase for Shabbat so that I could pick up all the dried stuff before I had to get the perishables. The electrician had promised Itai that he was going to be able to fix everything on the spot so I didn't cancel my meal (as Dad recommended, although Mom had the faith that everything would be fixed so I decided to be an optomist and not cancel). I headed out to Supersol and picked up a lot of food for Shabbat, even the frozen cauliflower (I know, I didn't think about the fact that if my refridgerator couldn't hold chicken my freezer wouldn't be able to do anything with frozen food). Fortunately, the weather is so cold that I don't think anything spoiled in my fridge, although I did toss the milk because you just don't play around with lactose.

I was so happy once the lights came back on - and, let's be real - my VOIP phone was up and running again, that I practically skipped back to Supersol to pick up the chickens. Now, this time, the woman behind the counter didn't reach for the puny, tiny little organic chickens. Oh no, for me, she was going to give me the biggest, plumpist, fattiest chickens there ever were! I asked her for three whole ones cut into pieces (and then told her in my broken Hebrew that I needed them in 8th) and watched her hack these chickens a part. I've never seen such real life looking chickens before, honestly, all that were missing were heads and feets. I had to turn away when she started cutting them up, it was a little too much for me to observe. I like getting my meats and chickens already packaged and shrink wrapped, so I don't have to watch them disembowel the poor creatures.

Think maybe it's time I become a vegetarian?? Hmmm, I think I'm too much of a carnivore to try.

Anyway, it's off to yet another item on my to do list and scour the Food Network site for a recipe for my string beans! Mazal Tov to Michael and Ilya Welfeld too on the birth of their daughter Dorothy! I can't wait to meet her when I'm back in the States in a few weeks.

Literature of the day is Housekeeping by Marilyn Robinson, a terrific writer and teacher at the Iowa Creative Writing Program. I'm in the midst of this book now and I'm hoping to finish by Shabbos end. The language alone, minus the content, is simply beautiful. It's like reading a linguistic symphony.