Two leeks
One small onion
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp turmeric
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 cup chopped parsley
1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup bread crumbs
150 g yogurt
1 tablespoon baking powder
2 eggs
cubes of bulgarit - about 1/3 of a container (feta in the US)
Chop the onion small and the leeks in slices
Saute in olive oil until soft - about 15 minutes
Add the parsley and spices to the sauteed leek + onion
Make a batter of the flour, bread crumbs, yogurt, baking powder and eggs.
Mix the vegetables into the batter. Add the bulgarit.
Put on greaseproof paper in spoonfuls (think big cookies) and bake about 20 minutes at 170 C or 350 F. They should be browned and set like cookies.
This is only slightly different from what I did. This leaves out the sugar and butter from his recipe. (I used oil instead of butter but it was really unnecessary.) I would add the eggs - he had just one egg white. If you don't want to use two eggs, try it with one.
Serve with yogurt or sour cream, or make a fancy sauce by adding garlic and lemon to one or the other.
Let me know if you make these!!!!
Thursday, October 22, 2015
Tuesday, October 20, 2015
Nut loaf and green bean spread - two recipes
These two recipes start with the same ingredients but taste totally different. So grind up a bag of nuts - I prefer cashews or almonds - I think it's about one cup, just use the whole Israeli size bag. And chop and fry up two medium onions. Split each item in half and then proceed as follows:
Green bean spread - this is a veggie chopped liver:
For the spread (this is a moosewood recipe but she uses walnuts) - steam 2 cups of green beans and food process them. Hard boil two eggs. Add the green beans to the nuts and fried onions, then grate the eggs into the mix. Add two teaspoons mayonnaise and salt and pepper to taste. Refrigerate. Great on crackers or in sandwiches.
Nut loaf
My aunt Eva says I gave her this recipe. Must have been a long time ago. Chop 2 celery sticks and 2 apples and saute them till soft. You can also use kohlrabi or carrot, chopped small. I also used a few mushrooms this time. Mix with the nuts and fried onions. Add 2 teaspoons curry powder (original recipe says garam masala), 4 oz. breadcrumbs or crushed rice cakes, 1 tablespoon ketchup, 1/4 to 1/2 cup grated cheese and one beaten egg. Mix evenly. Bake at 180 C or 350 F for 40 minutes. Gabi likes it overcooked. My aunt makes a vegan version without the cheese and egg for her grandson. Now that's love!
Finally, how to cook swiss chard - slice it then fry in olive oil with garlic and ginger that comes in those little freezer cube. One cube of each for one pack of chard - one package (called mangold here) gives you one small bowl of cooked chard.
Green bean spread - this is a veggie chopped liver:
For the spread (this is a moosewood recipe but she uses walnuts) - steam 2 cups of green beans and food process them. Hard boil two eggs. Add the green beans to the nuts and fried onions, then grate the eggs into the mix. Add two teaspoons mayonnaise and salt and pepper to taste. Refrigerate. Great on crackers or in sandwiches.
Nut loaf
My aunt Eva says I gave her this recipe. Must have been a long time ago. Chop 2 celery sticks and 2 apples and saute them till soft. You can also use kohlrabi or carrot, chopped small. I also used a few mushrooms this time. Mix with the nuts and fried onions. Add 2 teaspoons curry powder (original recipe says garam masala), 4 oz. breadcrumbs or crushed rice cakes, 1 tablespoon ketchup, 1/4 to 1/2 cup grated cheese and one beaten egg. Mix evenly. Bake at 180 C or 350 F for 40 minutes. Gabi likes it overcooked. My aunt makes a vegan version without the cheese and egg for her grandson. Now that's love!
Finally, how to cook swiss chard - slice it then fry in olive oil with garlic and ginger that comes in those little freezer cube. One cube of each for one pack of chard - one package (called mangold here) gives you one small bowl of cooked chard.
Friday, October 16, 2015
Carrot muffins
Hard to believe I have not written almost any blog posts this year.
I made these carrot muffins, adapted from a recipe I found online. Everyone, especially the kids, loved them. I am noticing Sasha's friends like me for my cookies. I see how I can get them to hang out here!
Carrot Muffins:
Preheat oven to 190 C/400 F
1 egg
3/4 cup orange juice
1/2 cup canola oil
2/3 cup sugar
2 cups flour (the original recipe calls for half white and half whole wheat)
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinamon
1/2 tsp ground cloves
2 cups shredded carrots (4 carrots)
Beat egg, add orange juice, oil, sugar.
Sift the dry ingredients together and add them to the wet ingredients, stirring only till just mixed
Fold in carrots.
Line muffin cups with paper or grease them, fill 2/3 full and bake 20 minutes till done.
Make 12 large or 18 small muffins.
I had forgotten how much I loved to make muffins when I was in graduate school. I still have my trusty muffin pan from that time. Hope you enjoy these are much as we did! And remembering Sarah Fenner - we miss you Sarah.
I made these carrot muffins, adapted from a recipe I found online. Everyone, especially the kids, loved them. I am noticing Sasha's friends like me for my cookies. I see how I can get them to hang out here!
Carrot Muffins:
Preheat oven to 190 C/400 F
1 egg
3/4 cup orange juice
1/2 cup canola oil
2/3 cup sugar
2 cups flour (the original recipe calls for half white and half whole wheat)
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinamon
1/2 tsp ground cloves
2 cups shredded carrots (4 carrots)
Beat egg, add orange juice, oil, sugar.
Sift the dry ingredients together and add them to the wet ingredients, stirring only till just mixed
Fold in carrots.
Line muffin cups with paper or grease them, fill 2/3 full and bake 20 minutes till done.
Make 12 large or 18 small muffins.
I had forgotten how much I loved to make muffins when I was in graduate school. I still have my trusty muffin pan from that time. Hope you enjoy these are much as we did! And remembering Sarah Fenner - we miss you Sarah.
Friday, January 30, 2015
Immigrant Mom musings
I guess I should take comfort in the fact that the experience of being an immigrant parent is something I share with my brother, my mother, and two of my great grandmothers, Pearl Antine & Fannie Diamond.
Today's Bat Mitzvah tekes (ceremony) at Gabi's school began with a learning session. For the first activity the teacher asked everyone not born in Israel to stand up. Alen & I stood with about four, yes only four other people, and two of them seemed to be grandmothers. The other immigrant moms are the moms of my daughter's best friends in her class, who are Russian.
Then she asked everyone whose parents were not born here to stand with us, and then everyone whose grandparents weren't born here, and by then most of the room of parents and kids were standing with us. Only a small number of kids and parents stood in the place for people whose grandparents were born here.
We learn from this that we were a nation of immigrants, but I learned from it that we are no longer one. I felt sharply how we are different here and how we stand out, in my daughter's class at least. She feels it and we feel it. I know that other schools in town and other towns in Israel have different compositions, but we are mainly around people who were born here.
Then we had a Beit Midrash, which fittingly enough began with a verse from Psalm 126, "When G-d returned the capitivity from Zion we were like dreamers." I had plenty to say, as did the other parents, but I was conscious how the girls in the group, my daughter and her friends, were not talking much, and of her strictures to me earlier that I was to keep my mouth shut. We were two men, four women, three girls, and one man did most of the talking. I would have said more but for the pressure I felt to be quiet from my daughter.
The story was about Honi HaMaagel, who slept 70 years and woke up to a world he couldn't understand. I can relate.
At the ceremony itself, the 59 Bat Mitzvah girls from her grade in the middle, the boys in two sections on either side. I'm thinking how much I hate gender, the whole thing about what girls are meant to be and look like, the whole confusion. The girls are wearing white with garlands of flowers on each girl's long hair. I'm thinking of all the conflicts and contradictions of this age.
Two moms tried to sum it up in their blessing and couldn't - saying that times have changed, that girls can be anything, knowing full well that if they choose "anything" they will give up on some other parts of things. They reminded the girls to stay true to what is real in being girls and women, whatever that means. One mom said that the girls should speak up or be quiet as they wish - could it be I am a mom who speaks up with a daughter who prefers to keep quiet?
I was emotional all along, but got most emotional hearing the boys sing, with cracking voices, about how "Mashehu hadash matchil achshav" (Something new is happening now). There was something so cute and poignant. Each boy gave a girl a plastic flower with a heart, very embarassedly. And the girls did their dance, and everyone clapped.
Then at the end Hatikva, and me feeling emotional that I am here, and in a Jewish setting, and at the same time wishing I was some place that felt familiar or comfortable in any way. I'm probably the only person who thinks at the end of Hatikva, "play ball!"
And my daughter came out smiling, until about two minutes later when she got mad at me for posting a photo I took of her, and stomped off. And in the car on the way home she told us how the moms who gave the blessing, the kind of moms I like, aren't cool and how I had better never stand up and say anything like that at any event.
And I came home feeling......like an immigrant mom of a teenager, awash in a future and a country I will never understand.
Today's Bat Mitzvah tekes (ceremony) at Gabi's school began with a learning session. For the first activity the teacher asked everyone not born in Israel to stand up. Alen & I stood with about four, yes only four other people, and two of them seemed to be grandmothers. The other immigrant moms are the moms of my daughter's best friends in her class, who are Russian.
Then she asked everyone whose parents were not born here to stand with us, and then everyone whose grandparents weren't born here, and by then most of the room of parents and kids were standing with us. Only a small number of kids and parents stood in the place for people whose grandparents were born here.
We learn from this that we were a nation of immigrants, but I learned from it that we are no longer one. I felt sharply how we are different here and how we stand out, in my daughter's class at least. She feels it and we feel it. I know that other schools in town and other towns in Israel have different compositions, but we are mainly around people who were born here.
Then we had a Beit Midrash, which fittingly enough began with a verse from Psalm 126, "When G-d returned the capitivity from Zion we were like dreamers." I had plenty to say, as did the other parents, but I was conscious how the girls in the group, my daughter and her friends, were not talking much, and of her strictures to me earlier that I was to keep my mouth shut. We were two men, four women, three girls, and one man did most of the talking. I would have said more but for the pressure I felt to be quiet from my daughter.
The story was about Honi HaMaagel, who slept 70 years and woke up to a world he couldn't understand. I can relate.
At the ceremony itself, the 59 Bat Mitzvah girls from her grade in the middle, the boys in two sections on either side. I'm thinking how much I hate gender, the whole thing about what girls are meant to be and look like, the whole confusion. The girls are wearing white with garlands of flowers on each girl's long hair. I'm thinking of all the conflicts and contradictions of this age.
Two moms tried to sum it up in their blessing and couldn't - saying that times have changed, that girls can be anything, knowing full well that if they choose "anything" they will give up on some other parts of things. They reminded the girls to stay true to what is real in being girls and women, whatever that means. One mom said that the girls should speak up or be quiet as they wish - could it be I am a mom who speaks up with a daughter who prefers to keep quiet?
I was emotional all along, but got most emotional hearing the boys sing, with cracking voices, about how "Mashehu hadash matchil achshav" (Something new is happening now). There was something so cute and poignant. Each boy gave a girl a plastic flower with a heart, very embarassedly. And the girls did their dance, and everyone clapped.
Then at the end Hatikva, and me feeling emotional that I am here, and in a Jewish setting, and at the same time wishing I was some place that felt familiar or comfortable in any way. I'm probably the only person who thinks at the end of Hatikva, "play ball!"
And my daughter came out smiling, until about two minutes later when she got mad at me for posting a photo I took of her, and stomped off. And in the car on the way home she told us how the moms who gave the blessing, the kind of moms I like, aren't cool and how I had better never stand up and say anything like that at any event.
And I came home feeling......like an immigrant mom of a teenager, awash in a future and a country I will never understand.
Tuesday, September 16, 2014
Easy "Shabbat" sweet potato kugel
This is adapted from an Israeli recipe book, pashtidot olamiot. It's parve, it doesn't take long to put together and it cooks for a long time.
2 large or 3 medium sweet potatoes/yams/battata
2 large or 3 medium onions
4 eggs
1 cup flour
chopped herbs if you have/want
salt
pepper
sweet paprika
olive oil
food processor
Peel the sweet potatoes and use the slicing blade of the food processor to slice them thin. Put them in a big bowl. Slice the onions in the food processor the same way and fry them in a bunch of olive oil until they are golden. Add them to the bowl. Mix in the flour, salt, pepper and paprika and herbs (parsley, cilantro, whatever you want, it's fine with none). Beat and add the eggs and mix it all together.
Oil a large baking pan. Flatten the mixture into the pan - you choose if you want to make it deeper or more shallow by the size of the pan. More shallow will have crispier parts. This bakes for two hours at 180 C (365 F) or you can bake it overnight in a low oven. It comes out very sweet and delicious.
2 large or 3 medium sweet potatoes/yams/battata
2 large or 3 medium onions
4 eggs
1 cup flour
chopped herbs if you have/want
salt
pepper
sweet paprika
olive oil
food processor
Peel the sweet potatoes and use the slicing blade of the food processor to slice them thin. Put them in a big bowl. Slice the onions in the food processor the same way and fry them in a bunch of olive oil until they are golden. Add them to the bowl. Mix in the flour, salt, pepper and paprika and herbs (parsley, cilantro, whatever you want, it's fine with none). Beat and add the eggs and mix it all together.
Oil a large baking pan. Flatten the mixture into the pan - you choose if you want to make it deeper or more shallow by the size of the pan. More shallow will have crispier parts. This bakes for two hours at 180 C (365 F) or you can bake it overnight in a low oven. It comes out very sweet and delicious.
Tuesday, August 26, 2014
Gail's last supper
Alen is coming home tomorrow so I am taking advantage of the opportunity to be creative and sloppy in the kitchen, like I like it, and to eat things she wouldn't. Tonight's creations:
Gail's celery soup
This is so sweet, mild and delicious I am surprised! Gabi thinks it needs chunks - this recipe is just for a medium broth. (Not light, not thick.)
I know it's too hot for soup - but soup nuts were calling my name and I needed something to eat them with!
Half a celery (the inside half) cut up
One kohlrabi, in chunks
One diced onion
Four garlic cloves
One carrot in chunks
Cover well with water, add salt and boil for 45 minutes to an hour.
Puree with soup blender.
I strained it because Israeli celery is so stringy
Then add salt and pepper to taste and a dash of milk if you want.
Reheat and serve with the finest soup nuts!
Gail's salmon cakes
Two potatoes, cubed, boiled and mashed
1/2-1 lb (300-400g) leftover salmon, mashed
One onion, chopped and fried
2 tablespoons chopped cilantro
2 eggs (you could do one egg, or one egg and one egg white - these were a little eggy)
1 tablespoon flour or one crushed rice cake
2 tablespoons grated fresh parmesan cheese
salt and pepper
Mix this all together and make into cakes on a cookie sheet - I used greaseproof paper. Bake for 30-40 minutes at 180 C (375 F?) until they hold together and are slightly brown. Serve with ketchup.
These were delicious. Sasha even ate one, but he gave it a score of 6 out of 10. We couldn't taste the cheese much - maybe add more if you want to taste it.
Alen would eat the salmon cakes, but not the celery soup!
Gail's celery soup
This is so sweet, mild and delicious I am surprised! Gabi thinks it needs chunks - this recipe is just for a medium broth. (Not light, not thick.)
I know it's too hot for soup - but soup nuts were calling my name and I needed something to eat them with!
Half a celery (the inside half) cut up
One kohlrabi, in chunks
One diced onion
Four garlic cloves
One carrot in chunks
Cover well with water, add salt and boil for 45 minutes to an hour.
Puree with soup blender.
I strained it because Israeli celery is so stringy
Then add salt and pepper to taste and a dash of milk if you want.
Reheat and serve with the finest soup nuts!
Gail's salmon cakes
Two potatoes, cubed, boiled and mashed
1/2-1 lb (300-400g) leftover salmon, mashed
One onion, chopped and fried
2 tablespoons chopped cilantro
2 eggs (you could do one egg, or one egg and one egg white - these were a little eggy)
1 tablespoon flour or one crushed rice cake
2 tablespoons grated fresh parmesan cheese
salt and pepper
Mix this all together and make into cakes on a cookie sheet - I used greaseproof paper. Bake for 30-40 minutes at 180 C (375 F?) until they hold together and are slightly brown. Serve with ketchup.
These were delicious. Sasha even ate one, but he gave it a score of 6 out of 10. We couldn't taste the cheese much - maybe add more if you want to taste it.
Alen would eat the salmon cakes, but not the celery soup!
Wednesday, July 16, 2014
Good To Be In Woods Hole
My kids just left the house with Alen at 4 am to fly to Woods Hole for a month. This trip was planned since last summer and though I am going to miss them a great deal until I join them in two weeks, I could not be happier that they are going.
Growing up I had two anchors: Judaism and Woods Hole. I had the enormous privilege to spend every summer in Woods Hole, and it really was almost like another, non-competing, religion.
The values of Woods Hole began with reverence for Nature. Louis Agassiz said, "Study Nature, not Books," and that was the motto of the Children's School of Science where we learned each summer. During the day time the town is criss crossed by groups of kids with buckets, nets, and sometimes cameras, learning from the sea, earth and sky. Seashore Life, Marine Biology, Oceanographic Electronics, Invertebrate Zoology, Advanced Marine Biology were some of the courses I took. I'm grateful I had a great biology education before I met my sexist high school biology teacher Mr. DeMarco (maybe I'll write about him one day). If you know Alen and her work you can understand how deeply I "get" what she does from this amazing aspect of our Woods Hole education.
Woods Hole, of course, is home to adults who study science as well, but my experience was from a child's perspective. Adults worked in labs, attended lectures, spoke on the beach about their research. Kids went to science school.
Though there was no synagogue in Woods Hole, there was a "rabbi", Phyllis Goldstein. She was my childhood hero and even as an adult I held her in awe. The religion she taught was democracy and human rights, reverence for all cultures and for history, and of course the joy and value of music. She taught it through folksinging every Tuesday night, each summer for forty years. She was a living role model who had lived through tragic loss and risen. She was incredibly charismatic - at times stern (to keep kids quiet) and almost always smiling and laughing. She seemed like a walking encyclopedia of history and music. She taught us about the evils of slavery, the music that accompanied the fight for freedom, the labor movement, the history of whaling and New England, songs from Africa and elsewhere around the world, languages and more. We used to sing "Everybody Loves Saturday Night" in about 20 languages. The message of her songs was that all people have value, all people have songs and stories, all people can care for and about one another. It's a message that never grows old.
(I wrote more about Phyllis here when she passed away in 2011.)
So now a terrible war is on, and my kids are getting on a plane. I smiled and hugged them and reminded them that although they are leaving, they are going to be "mini-me". With tears in my eyes I remember how we traveled to Woods Hole in 2002. We had made aliyah during the intifada, and for 20 months had not returned home. We went back to the US at the end of a year we had spent in Jerusalem when 200 people were killed in terror attacks in Jerusalem and the death toll from the intifada on all sides climbed over 2000. I remember seeing Phyllis and talking to her, and I remember the look in her eyes when I told her I was living in Israel. It was a look of incredible compassion, and a moment in which I understood that she felt the pain of what I was living through and she believed in me to continue to stand up for the values she had taught me, even when their realization seems hidden.
Jeremy Korr continues to sing Phyllis's songs in Woods Hole with a new generation of children. And my kids (who met Phyllis when they were young) are going to sing and to feel the earth, ocean and sky. And just maybe, they too will find their an anchor.
Growing up I had two anchors: Judaism and Woods Hole. I had the enormous privilege to spend every summer in Woods Hole, and it really was almost like another, non-competing, religion.
The values of Woods Hole began with reverence for Nature. Louis Agassiz said, "Study Nature, not Books," and that was the motto of the Children's School of Science where we learned each summer. During the day time the town is criss crossed by groups of kids with buckets, nets, and sometimes cameras, learning from the sea, earth and sky. Seashore Life, Marine Biology, Oceanographic Electronics, Invertebrate Zoology, Advanced Marine Biology were some of the courses I took. I'm grateful I had a great biology education before I met my sexist high school biology teacher Mr. DeMarco (maybe I'll write about him one day). If you know Alen and her work you can understand how deeply I "get" what she does from this amazing aspect of our Woods Hole education.
Woods Hole, of course, is home to adults who study science as well, but my experience was from a child's perspective. Adults worked in labs, attended lectures, spoke on the beach about their research. Kids went to science school.
Though there was no synagogue in Woods Hole, there was a "rabbi", Phyllis Goldstein. She was my childhood hero and even as an adult I held her in awe. The religion she taught was democracy and human rights, reverence for all cultures and for history, and of course the joy and value of music. She taught it through folksinging every Tuesday night, each summer for forty years. She was a living role model who had lived through tragic loss and risen. She was incredibly charismatic - at times stern (to keep kids quiet) and almost always smiling and laughing. She seemed like a walking encyclopedia of history and music. She taught us about the evils of slavery, the music that accompanied the fight for freedom, the labor movement, the history of whaling and New England, songs from Africa and elsewhere around the world, languages and more. We used to sing "Everybody Loves Saturday Night" in about 20 languages. The message of her songs was that all people have value, all people have songs and stories, all people can care for and about one another. It's a message that never grows old.
(I wrote more about Phyllis here when she passed away in 2011.)
So now a terrible war is on, and my kids are getting on a plane. I smiled and hugged them and reminded them that although they are leaving, they are going to be "mini-me". With tears in my eyes I remember how we traveled to Woods Hole in 2002. We had made aliyah during the intifada, and for 20 months had not returned home. We went back to the US at the end of a year we had spent in Jerusalem when 200 people were killed in terror attacks in Jerusalem and the death toll from the intifada on all sides climbed over 2000. I remember seeing Phyllis and talking to her, and I remember the look in her eyes when I told her I was living in Israel. It was a look of incredible compassion, and a moment in which I understood that she felt the pain of what I was living through and she believed in me to continue to stand up for the values she had taught me, even when their realization seems hidden.
Jeremy Korr continues to sing Phyllis's songs in Woods Hole with a new generation of children. And my kids (who met Phyllis when they were young) are going to sing and to feel the earth, ocean and sky. And just maybe, they too will find their an anchor.
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