No Harm in Asking

Yesterday it took ages to get out of Sha'ar Binyamin, the shopping center just north of Jerusalem.  So, today when I was there I decided nothing to lose, no harm in asking, when I saw a neighbor in the Rami Levi discount supermarket and asked her for a ride.  She said "yes," so I had just enough time to pick up the two things I wanted and got home, straight to my house.  It couldn't have been any better.

Actually, the entire day went pretty well.  I got a ride to Jerusalem, walked from Shmuel Hanavi to downtown, made an appointment with the eye doctor for "in less than an hour," mailed the cd of pictures from the wedding, bought a gift for this week's wedding, saw the eye doctor, got my OK, made an appointment at the opticianss for next week, already picked out a possible frame, then walked back to Shmuel Hanavi to catch a bus to Sha'ar Binyamin for another appointment.

Maybe having a new job on the horizon is giving me added energy, G-d willing.

I'm Not The Spectator Type, But...

Honestly, I was rather surprised at the negative comments my Shiloh Musings post about football games received.  To be perfectly frank, I'm not a football fan and never attended a game until my son began playing for the IFL Jerusalem Lions.

There's an ambiance at the games you won't find any place else.  Yes, that's the IDF COS Ramat Kal sitting in the row above me.  Our sons play on the same team.

These games aren't "events" like in North America or like soccer and rugby games in Europe.  In some ways it's more like the "little league," since a relatively high percentage of the audience is related to the players.  Yes, that's even though the players are in their twenties and thirties and even older.  Parents, siblings, wives, children etc come to root for their family members and friends.

No offense to all my loyal blog readers, but I do think the real f2f audience participation is healthier than living via a screen.  I'm not the type to wait and watch.  It's not my nature, even when it means that I'm schlepping unnecessarily (bad for my back) or end up with smudged nail polish, because it takes too long to dry properly. 

I don't enjoy watching sports games on television.  Maybe it's because I really don't care who wins or loses. But as a mother I do care about my son.  I want to see him come out whole and healthy after a game and in a good mood.  So, that's why I want him to win, and that's why I must watch the game whenever I can.

When I see his smile, looking like he did as a little boy, I'm happy, relieved.  I feel good.  The players are amateurs from all different ages, backgrounds and professions.  This isn't big business.  This isn't the NFL or American college football, and I'm not just talking about the level of play.

All I ever wanted to be was to be a mother.  I never expected that being a mother would bring me to hard, cold cement seats, but a mother does what she must for her kids.  Right?

What A Nice Compliment

Today when I handed in some forms for my G-d willing new job, the HR clerk went over them and then as she read one of the forms and saw that I had crossed it out, she said?

"What?  Don't you have any children under the age of nineteen?"

That's a real compliment.  My youngest is twenty-seven.  Sometimes I get very disappointed when the bus drivers passively accept my senior discount tickets.  At my age, my parents needed proof for discounts.

I'm considering this a good sign for my new job, Baruch Hashem.

more to follow when there's something....

Yummy! Middle-East Flavored Coffee

Hadassa, one of my most loyal blog "commenters," took my coffee posts very seriously and sent me, via some lovely young messengers, a new for me coffee.  In Hebrew it's:

קפה קלוי וטחון עם הל

Roasted and ground coffee with hal cardamom

Now, what's cardamom?  Yes, click if you didn't before.  Apparently, it's a favorite addition to coffee in Arab homes.  It sure gives more kick than French Vanilla!  I'm glad I waited a week after the flu to try it, and it will now be a regular on my shopping list!

I cooked it up in a pot with water and sugar and added milk.  I don't think that's the way it's traditionally served, but I like it.

Hadassa, thanks so much!!

Post-Flu Energy? Is That Why I Baked Challah?

I'm not quite sure why I did it, but I baked challah for Shabbat.  And not only did I bake it, but I baked it on Friday on one of the shortest pre-Shabbat Fridays of the year.  And I got very little sleep the night before, but for some really peculiar reason I baked challah.

One of the reasons I don't bake challah is because I love my challah and I eat it.  So I made small challot.  Nobody else found it irresistable, just me.  I don't quite understand why.  I'm not supposed to eat the challah, since it's not on my low carb diet.

It was all done by hand, no mixer, just me.  I tried to think good and loving thoughts.

So, I guess I'm finished with the flu, though I'm still a bit congested, nothing serious, thank G-d.

Now I have to freeze the left-over challa.  It was delicious, too delicious....

Enjoying Old Age and Senility

When my sister started her search for the right place for our parents, she came across a senior citizens home which promised "the right to fall" instead of strapping the residents into their beds and chairs.  They made the environment as safe as possible, but they also tried to preserve the residents' dignity.

When my father was living with us, the doctor said that there was no reason why he shouldn't have cake a few times a day, since he had no diabetes nor overweight problem.  I was told to give him his favorite foods.  At the place my sister found for them in Arizona they gave them potatoes with every meal.  I was surprised, because it's high glycemic.  I had given my father more rice, especially the low carb basmati variety.  Afterwards I discussed it with my neighbor who was his doctor here.  I thought that it was strange that they served so much potatoes and no rice.  She said that constipation is harder to deal with when it comes to the very elderly than diabetes which can be controlled with more insulin.

I just found this article in the New York Times about a nursing home for those with Alzheimer’s, Beatitudes nursing home.  They don't fight with the patients.  They let them eat what they want and when they want and play like kids.  It makes sense.

When my father was living with us, I let him pace us.  My entire life slowed down.  In some ways I'm having trouble, even six months after bringing him to Arizona, getting back on track and doing what I had planned on doing before he moved in with us.

The elderly and those younger with Alzheimer’s and other neurological impairments are like babies and young kids.  I'm the mother of five, and each of my kids was different.  When you have a baby you must be flexible.  I breast-fed by demand.  It was the easiest way, most efficient and trains a child from day one to only eat when hungry.  I think that is an important thing to prevent later food problems, overweight and anorexia.  At Beatitudes they give the elderly that same power, demand feeding. 

Experts say that the elderly and infants need similar care.  I guess it's true, though it's hard to see once strong, independent people suddenly infantile.

"Should I buy four dresses?"

I remember his Bar Mitzvah!  I was pregnant with my fourth child, first son, though I didn't know that I was carrying a boy.  My friend remembers me dancing:

"And your enormous belly kept going up and down.  I thought the baby was going to fly out."

That baby will be thirty at his next birthday, so you can calculate how old the groom is!  A couple of years ago, my friend decided to try to hurry her son into marriage by buying herself a dress to wear to his wedding.  NO, he wasn't dating anyone.  Nobody could see a wedding in the future but her.  So, when she spotted a dress which looked just perfect to wear to his wedding, she bought it.  It stayed in her closet waiting for a wedding for two years.

My friend told me that if I want my kids to get married I must buy a dress.

"But four of my kids are still single.  Should I buy four dresses?!?"

It did work for her.  So, I guess if I see a dress I can picture on myself at a child's wedding, then maybe I'll buy it, one by one, G-d willing!

MAZAL TOV!

It Tasted Like Coffee

This was called "Pot of Filter Coffee" on the menu at "Cuppa Joe's."  I met a friend yesterday for a chat and coffee.  It wasn't too expensive.  I was tired so it wasn't bad for late afternoon. 

A New Job Offer, If I Blog It, It's Real

In one of those classic siyatta d'Shmaya events, the other night, on the way to a wedding with total strangers, I ended up being offered a job.  Earlier in the day, or the day before, I had been talking to a friend, a teacher soon to be retiring. She said that when she retires, she's like a simple type of part-time job, like working in a shop of food place, just a few hours a week.

Financially, this has been a rough year.  I didn't find enough tutoring jobs, and although my weight has stayed down, people don't want to pay for my words of wisdom and encouragement.  I haven't really marketed my photography either.  Yes, things are not going well in the money department.

So, back to the ride.  In the backseat, my new friend and I were talking, and it ends up that she's manager of a clothing store, and before I knew it I had been offered a job.  I told her straight away that I could only work part-time.  She said that three shifts a week are minimum.  Perfect for me.  Of course it's not great money, but compared to what I got in that Gilo tutoring job which was too hard physically traveling, it's about the same for the day's work, when you calculate time leaving home to return.  And the store is much, much closer to home.

Today, I must get a doctor's appointment for a "fitness to work letter."  And then I call her to sign up and then she puts me in the schedule.  G-d willing, thank G-d

Once it starts, I'll let you know where it is.

Strange Dinner, Mostly Left-Overs

I ate a great lunch out with my husband's cousin.  We ate at the popular Jerusalem, Emek Rafaim, "Joy."  We both chose exactly the same meal:

• pea soup
• salmon with (not enough) green vegetables
• and we shared the sorbet

The only difference was that I had plain water and she has some selzer.

After we took a long walk back to her hotel, I then met a NY friend for some coffee at "Cuppa Joe's."  I just had what they called a pot of filter coffee.  It was that new French press I think.  It was OK and didn't include much milk, which is good.

By the time I made it home, I wasn't all that hungry, but I needed a salad, so I ate:

• a fresh simple salad (cucumber and tomato)
• a glob of sesame paste
• vegetables from Shabbat, mostly sweet potatoes, heated up
• apple and ginger compote reheated

It all tasted better than it sounds/reads.  I really didn't feel like having a "real meal."  My husband had a large dinner, happily finishing off all the meat left-overs and eating well above his diet regime, but no cake!

Sorry, no pictures.

That Clean House Smell

One of the bad results of my recent flu was that the house began to stink.  At one early point when I was sick I discovered that the garbage hadn't been thrown out.  I couldn't smell anything at the time, but I knew it was bad news.

A few years ago when I picked up a new pail to be used as a garbage can, לא חשוב מי lo chashuv mi not important who said that I should have gotten something larger.  I insisted that on most days even smaller would be larger than we need, because I have no intention of keeping garbage in the house more than a day.  I 100% disagree with the idea that you have to fill the garbage as a prerequisite for emptying it.

Our nest has been empty for years, and besides when cooking/cleaning for Shabbat, the bag is pretty empty each morning (on a good week) when my husband throws it out.  I go for daily routine.  That way it gets done.  Let the garbage fester in those giant "green frogs" outside, not in my house!

Another secondary, or tertiary, side effect of my flu was that my food burned, since I couldn't smell it cook.  I cook by smell, not by timer.  And because I had still been very weak on Friday, I didn't wash the floors.

My senses of smell and taste have been returning very slowly.  Actually, I hadn't noticed the return of my sense of smell until I walked back in the door yesterday after seeing the grandkids:

"This house stinks!  I have to air it out, even if it's freezing!"

It really did smell awful, like burnt over-cooked food with too many spices.  A few minutes ago, I took a short break from the computer, yes at 5am, to pour some concentrated combo of bleach, flour cleaner and water on the floor and swish it around.  Unfortunately, ok, rather stupidly (chalk it up to post-flu delirium-irrationality) I did it wearing a very expensive woolen bathrobe a few inches too long which mopped some of the liquid up.

G-d willing that cleaning effort will improve matters in the war against the stink.

Ladies, if you cover your hair for religious reasons, do you wear...? Poll Closed

Take a look at the poll, please.  It's on the upper left sidebar of this blog. 

OK, not all that many women participated, but one thing is clear.  Women's hair-covering is a very individualistic mitzvah.  What I mean is that the vast, vast majority of women to observe that mitzvah wear a large varieties of hair-covering.

For very few women is there just one way to cover her hair.  Most of us probably have a ridiculously large variety of hats, scarves and wigs for those who wear them.  I even have some wigs, but I wear them on Purim, and when my kids were in school they'd borrow them as theater costumes.

I've heard a couple of interesting approaches about hair-covering by rabbis.  One American rabbi would tell women that it's not worth the fight, the risk of Shalom Bayit, Peace in the Home, to insist on covering your hair if your husband hates the idea of it.  He even used the word, "custom," fudging the halachic (Jewish Law) basis.  I think he's mistaken.  He should have tried to work with the wary husbands to help them make peace with the idea that their wives should cover hair.  It would have been better to empower the husband to help choose the type of hair-covering.

That brings me to the psak and great insistence the Lebovitche Rebbe had that women should wear wigs.  His rationale was that more women would accept the mitzvah if they could wear a wig.  Make the woman love the hair-covering and she'll love the Mitzvah.

Think of it this way:

There's a hair-covering for everyone.  This is a mitzvah to enjoy!

Take a look here in this picture I took at Matan to get an idea of the choices we have.  There are women in wigs, but you can't tell.

Likes My Cooking

Good food shouldn't go to waste.  No, I've never gone for the:

"Eat, I cooked it with love."
"Don't waste the food; children are starving in China/India etc."
"It cost too much to throw it out."
"What do you mean it doesn't taste good?  Everybody else likes it."
--fill in your own favorites...

My style is more:

"It's a waste for it to go on the waist."

So, what do I do with food that for various reasons, nobody human can eat?

I give it to a lucky and grateful animal.  There's a local dog who considers me the elite dog caterer, and for dishes like this flu-spiked fish meal, we have some cats who sniff by.  Yes, this white cat is the lucky recipient of the meal I planned on eating the day I was downed by the flu.  I had sampled a bit, so I wasn't going to give the flu virus as extra spice to my husband, certainly not intentionally.

First Real Coffee in a Week! Modah Ani... Thank You, G-d, For Giving Me My Health Back!

My tastebuds aren't fully back this morning, but I decided to take the plunge.  I cooked up a batch of my usual Turkish coffee, boiled with some sugar in a small pot.

Post-flu, still recovering but for sure last night I was pretty close to normal, Baruch Hashem, Thank the Good L-rd.  HaKodesh Baruch Hu, The Holy Blessed Be He, is being very good to me.

Yesterday morning the clinic nurse told me to be patient.

"As long as there's some gradual improvement, you're doing fine.  There's nothing the doctor can do for the flu."

My latest pictures are being uploaded to Photobucket.  I'm back to using that to blog pictures, since Picasa said that I've reached their maximum for the free account.  Sorry, but I can't afford to pay any extra.  I actually like the general service on Photobucket just fine.  My computer with Picasa did do some fun things, but I'll just have to live without it.

Last night I attended a totally fantastic festive TaNa"CH Bible study evening at Matan, the Siyum of our Al HaPerek Joshua studies.

G-d willing, I'll be posting more about it on Shiloh Musings.

Picture This- JPIX!

Leora's lovely JPIX, the Jewish bloggers' picture carnival is perfectly gorgeous.
 

Here's a sample of the included posts.  I won't tell you from which blogs.  Click to find out.

Thanks Leora for the wonderful treat.

Shavua Tov--Have a Wonderful Week!

Request, Please

Please, my dear readers, friends, family...

Next year, as soon as the announcements begin offering Israelis their flu shots, please remind me to get one.

Email me, text me, phone me, make the appointment (Kupat Cholim Leumit Shiloh Branch) and drag me out of the house.  Walk with me to the clinic.  I'll behave; I promise.  And make sure I get the vaccine.  Please.

I'll be eternally grateful if it means that I won't have to go through this flu again.

Thanks

Kitchen Safety, Poisoned Dishes?

During my years as cook for the local day care center, I prided myself on the fact that there hadn't been any food-borne epidemics on my kitchen watch.

Now, here in my own kitchen, I wonder if I handled things correctly.

On Tuesday, just before one when I started my aborted trip to the grandkids I washed the dairy dishes.  Then I started eating the fish lunch that had been cooking at the time.  I couldn't eat it quickly enough, or maybe that was the first sign that I was getting sick, so I packed it in my good food container and took it with me.  When I made it back home sick without going any further than the bus stop, I put the fish in the fridge and didn't wash the dairy dishes until a short while ago (Friday, noon.)  And over those three days, nobody washed the dairy dishes unless my husband wanted something very specific that was some place in that sink.

Yes, three days of festering flu virus, unless they don't thrive in a sink of dirty dishes.  I took the fish meal and fed it to the strays who like my cooking.  Then I poured some bleach on the dirty stuff in the sink.  Not an awful lot,  just a bit...  And then I finally did my usual very thorough job with soap and hot water.  When I say hot, I mean wear rubber gloves hot.

I guess I'm immune from my own flu, and we're not having any guests, and if my husband gets sick it could be from my coughing, during the first couple of days when I couldn't raise my arm to cover my mouth.

So far all I've eaten for lunch has been a banana.  I need more energy.  Maybe I should cook up some fresh ginger and an apple...  I had my "usual breakfast."  I don't think it has done much good or bad.

TU B'Shvat is Coming, Yum, But...

I love fruit.  If I had to choose between a fruit plate-which of course includes all sorts of dried and preserved-fruits and a platter of the fanciest cakes, I'd take the fruit.

My neighbor has been advertising that he's selling "TU B'Shvat fruits."  I salivate at every email message on the community list.

Even though our house has been an empty nest for years and he doesn't like fruit, my husband always buys some.  Temptation can be very dangerous when you're trying to control your eating.  The only food type I have trouble limiting is fruit.  I'm supposed to have three (maximum,) but I frequently have more.  Did I tell you that I love fruit, fresh, dried, baked, compote... well, I can ignore applesauce.  I need to chew.

It's not even Shvat yet.  I shouldn't be obsessing about TU B'Shavt fruit.  We're still suffering a serious drought here in the HolyLand.  One good rain a couple of weeks ago, no matter how strong and heavy isn't enough. 

This is what winter is supposed to look like.  It was taken a few years ago.

This year the ground is still dry and brown.  At most I see a few blades of weed when I walk around the neighborhood.  The lovely green and flowered gardens are all watered artificially.  Nobody can count on rain.

TU B'Shvat signifies that the winter is hardly over, but this year it hardly began.  I guess that this year we'll find ourselves with more imported fruit, even though that seems to be against the intention of the holiday.

Post-Flu, Pros and Cons of Raw Food Diet

For many years, decades, I've been reading all sorts of books, articles and magazines touting the health-giving of raw foods.  Because of that I'd switch into raw food gear when sick.  I don't know if it speeded up recovery.  But I did get terrible back pain.  I couldn't move/twist at those necesary times.  I just considered it as part of the flu.

Then I consulted with my brother-in-law, who practices all sorts of alternative medicine.  His original training is Chiropractic, and he has broadened his skills over the decades.  Well, we he heard about the pain and what I had been eating he perscribed cooked food only.

So for this flu, that's what I did.  I have only been eating cooked food, since I went back to eating.  I didn't force myself to eat, like I used to try to get raw salad and fruit in me duing other flus.  I do drink freshly squeezed lemon in water.

This flu started close to 1:30pm on Tuesday, and now it's almost 9:30pm on Thursday.  I'm not all better, but, Baruch Hashem, I'd doing pretty well, better than in the morning.

The abdominal muscles that hurt when I cough could be from coughing or it could also be from the exercise machines I worked out on Tuesday morning.

So, the bottom line here is that the raw diet isn't best at all times for everyone, and it may even be harmful.  And it's not all that natural.  Humans cook.

Finally Sitting... Had Been Sick

Actually, I still am sick, but I feel better than I did from Tuesday afternoon.  I was fine in the morning, and then when I was waiting for the bus to Ofra to see the grandkids, suddenly I began feeling strange, sick, awful.  So I called my daughter and told her that I was going home.  I got home and collapsed for about forty hours. 

It's Thursday, when I usually cook for Shabbat.  Luckily I have some food in the freezer.

I've been drinking lots of water, water and lemon, teas with lemon.  I tried some soup which just didn't taste right. So when my husband got home from work I asked him to make me an apple compote.  Of course, I had to tell him how to do it.  I at a drop of that.  I don't know what I'll eat today.

Next week's a busy day, so I hope I'm all better by then.