Much To Do About Nothing

it's 10:00 a.m. in the holy city of zefat. i should be cooking and doing laundry because it's erev shabbat but i decided to hang out a little and blog. i've been busy all week with the baby. i got sick this week and it felt like the flu. i took an over the counter homeopathic flu remedy and got back on my feet. i felt a bit of a relapse coming on last night.

i think baby sahar and i are trading germs every day. we hang out all morning long on the t.v. couch snuggling and kissing. he's teething and i'm losing all my teeth. what irony! i jumped up at 8:30 a.m. this morning in a small panic because i thought that i had overslept. i went upstairs to see what was going on. gal usually leaves the house by 7:30 a.m.

everything was cool. gal took the morning off and sahar had slept soundly through the night. what fun! i am officially 'off' this morning from babysitting detail. all i have to do is cook a shabbat meal for the family and bake a cake. oh yes, i still have to go downstairs to the makolet and buy challahs and dog food and sodas and i still have laundry to do. i just might blow off the laundry until sunday.

my throat is scratchy and hoarse. i feel like going back to bed. however, i have to get moving and start the food preparation. gal's married sister and husband moved into the neighborhood last week. zvi and shachar are great buddies and gal and orital are really good friends for sisters. the young couple doesn't have children of their own yet and are completely devoted to sahar's well being. sahar adores his uncle shachar.

this new arrangement definately works for me. i can now drop off sahar before i go to yoga. it gives me a back up system. we are all having shabbat together. orital is bringing cholent for lunch so i just need to make some salads for the day meal. i was thinking about making kugels and a cheesecake but i think i'll just pass. i can make rice and greasy roasted potatoes, instead. i will make the cheesecake next week for a family reunion meal. my nephew and niece are both visiting from new york with their sole surviving grandparent. i offered to make a family dinner and my sister offered me to take care of her mother in law for a month. sounds like a plan?

i found an interesting recipe for a marble cake on the net. i will 'improvise' and make it non dairy. my friend, michal, would not approve. she believes that this is sacreligious like breaking a commandment. i do a lot of substituting when i bake and it usually pans out. sometimes it doesn't. i'm of the julia child's school of cooking philosophy. if something doesn't exactly turn out, you can always call it something else. i will not be a slave to a recipe.

i made a cheesecake recently, and the whites didn't fluff up. i folded them in anyway and i received a lot of compliments. in fact, michal said that it was the best cake that i've made to date. go know!

i bought tons of veggies to make salads for shabbat. i have two kinds of cabbage, fresh carrots and beets and a huge bag of mixed salad greens. i want to make a tabouli salad because i have some fresh mint. i plan on using quinoa instead of bulgar. sue me!

i hope that you are all enjoying the comments from our chinese friends as much as i am. shabbat shalom!