Thanksgiving

it's 8:20 a.m. in the holy city of zefat. i just got out of bed and did my new ritual of brushing my teeth with salt toothepaste made from baking soda. i then rinsed with hydrogen peroxide mixed with water.

my gums have been gushing blood again. after eating fruit for an entire week, you'd think that the vitamin c would have kicked in. apparently, not. i also blew my diet last night by eating almost an entire chocolate cake and half a bag of bambas. i don't know why i keep on sabotaging my efforts to lose weight. it seems that eating a bowl of oatmeal may have triggered my binge. i don't do well with carbs. i think i may need to go to OA.

we went out for shabbat meals together so on friday, i concentrated on cleaning up the apartment. i managed to bake a dairy chocolate cake between throwing lots of buckets of water around the house. it took me about 2 hours to finish the floors and clean off the counters. i really neglected everything last week to take care of cookie dog. i had dirty dishes all over the house.

she seems back to her old self except for her skin. it seems crusty in some places. she isn't scratching any more and genuinely, seems healthy. i have to admit that i didn't give her a skin treatment yesterday. i also didn't give her any prepared food. i saw that she was eating the dried dog kibble last night. i'll give her some tuna and eggs and slip in some echinacea later on.

the 4 yorkshire terriers are coming on wednesday so i have to get that room in order today. sahar went to his other grandma this morning, so i have the entire day to get it done. i was planning on going to yoga this morning. i figured that i had enough time to blog before i left. i then remembered that we started yoga at 8:00 a.m. this morning. oh well...

i got it in my head on thursday to make a thanksgiving dinner this year for friends. i then received an email from a pal, asking if i was making a meal and if she could come. i guess it was meant to be. thanksgiving was my parents' non jewish wedding anniversary that we celebrated each year. i started to fantasize a lot about recreating some of my mother's dishes.

mom always made string bean casserole with canned mushroom and barley soup and she topped it off with fried onion rings. that was her friend, edith's recipe. i doubt that they have frozen onion rings here. and forget about the canned soup. i have seen frozen breaded chicken rings, but it is just not the same. so, i went surfing on the net for basic batter recipes.

if i really want to get purist here, i can fry up my own onion rings and make a batch of soup. or i can serve crunchy string beans and almonds, and dish out a small serving of mushroom and barley soup on the side. i can also, just skip the soup all together. i seem to struggle with the candied yams casserole that mom always prepared, too. you know the one with the domino brown sugar, pineapple rings and miniature marshmallows. i want to go authentic mom 1950's but i also want to go healthy. i might just go with baked sweet potatoes topped with canned pineapple, and drizzled with a bit of date honey.

i actually found a recipe for a 1950's frozen fruit mold that called for cream cheese, mayonnaise, whipped cream, marshmallows and fruit cocktail. i remember seeing this concoction in a magazine, but i don't think that we ever made one. i think i'll go with a yellow jello carrot, celery and raisin salad mold. i doubt that i'll find lemon jello here. it might have to be apricot flavored.

we don't have whole turkeys here. they wouldn't fit in our tiny israeli ovens and cooking them on the stove just isn't the same. we do have ton's of turkey products. i haven't decided whether to make cutlets, meatballs, thighs or roulade yet. we'll see what's available in the supermarket next week. mom always made individual potato kugelettes. i might just do that. i'll buy some little aluminum muffin tins. of course, for the desert, i want to make a pumpkin pie. mom never, ever, made one. i can't really remember what we had for dessert.

i bought a can of real american cranberry sauce last year. it's somewhere in my closet. i sure hope it's still good. a few years ago, i made cranberry muffins with dried craisins. at one point in time, cranberries were impossible to find. i plan on making cornbread. that's also something that mom never made. you can't find the libby's canned pumpkin here, either. you have to buy a hunk of pumpkin and cook it up and mash it. i'd love to make pumpkin soup and pumpkin muffins also, but i really have to chose one pumpkin dish.

a few years ago, i watched martha stewart's thanksgiving theme show. what a pity they took it off the air, here. i really loved it. i especially, loved watching her make jewish dishes, like potato latkes. she smothered them with sour cream and caviar. it was so sickening! she also dalloped her peroges and stuffed cabbage with sour cream too. her mispronunciation of the jewish dishes was priceless.

i'm so excited that i will finally get to use my straw turkey bread holder and turkey napkins this year. i'm thinking about serving sangria. the trees are full of oranges and tangerines. i want to buy fresh corn too, but i don't know if that's over kill or not. we shall see.