Happy Cheesey Holiday

it is 9:00 a.m. in the holy city of safed.  all is quiet.  tonight starts the holiday of shavuot.  in hebrew, a shavuah is a week.  we count the weeks from pesach to shavuot when the jews were given the ten commandments.  it is commonly known as the chag of chessecake.  there are many references in the torah for why we eat dairy on this holiday.  i will spare you and not list them. and anyway, i want to dash down to the local pool and move around a bit.  i have alreay eaten a large piece of salmon and many spoonfuls of my weird and very runny cheesecake.

shavuot is a dairy food fantasy and orgy of sweets.  people make pizzas, blintzes, pancakes, lasagnas, quiches, kugels, tartlettes, pastas, salads, cheese platters and fruits and every type of cheesecakes and icecreams.  the men stay up all night learning torah.  we go to synagogue in the morning to hear the ten commandments.  some of us say a ritual prayer for the souls of our deceased parents. we then go home and stuff ourselves silly.  i usually gain five pounds.  last year i sampled all of the desserts but was lucky not to go off into binge land.  i have already gone to binge land sadly,once again.  it has been very stressful since pesach.

the holiday starts tonight and goes through shabbat.  on friday morning we have dairy kiddushes and gauge on cheesecakes.  we then have a regular holidy meal which consists of fish, meat and challah.  this year the holiday goes directly into shabbat so we have another meal.  some people skip the meat during the day time.  i am going over to a friend for tonight's meal.  i already made some broiled salmon and beaised some turkey wings and chicken thighs for my shabbat meals.  i also baked some beets and some sweet potatoes.  i usually eat alone on shbbat when the kids don't come.

i take walks in the late afternoon and usually, visit friends.  we are entering another intense heat wave, so i doubt that i will be doing much walking.  for the past couple of years i have been; prety much, sugar free. i bake with bananas and eat dates for my sugar high.  i made an 'alternative' crustless cheesecake  out of ricotta and greek yogurt.  i skipped the bananas.  big mistake!  it is a watery, warm, cottage cheese like concoction.  i even added a few tablespoons of honey.  it is sweet for me but it has no body  there is no high fat content to give it any.  oh well, at least i tried. i threw in some blueberries for flare.  big waste of my blueberries.

i need to clean the house.  it is filled with dust and dog hair.  i think i will manage to get the house in order when i return from the pool.  it is already hot.  i went to the pool yesterday and the water was freezing.  it took half an hour for me to get acclamated and i finally took the plunge.  i did 2 laps.  i am not a swimmer.  i dog paddle.  took me 70 years to make it t the deep end.  my friends are all swimmers.  what do you expect from californians?  i don't think new yorkers are all that enthusiastic about swimming.

i have been out of new york for nearly forty years.  perhaps it has changed.  i have always loved the water.  i am a water sign.  i am a crab.  but, i love the feel of water.  oddly enough, i am not a bath person.  i go to the pool to cool off and calm down.  yesterday was a freebe so there were a lot of teenagers at the pool and it was definately not calm.  i left.  hopefully it will be just us, old timers there at 10:00.

wishing you all a chag sameach! andshbbat shalom.

Roll It

it is 4:00 P.M. in the holy city of safed.  i am finally back to my blogging after a long hiatus.  i stopped blogging in october of 2021. i purchased a smart phone and got it activated at the onset of covid.  i was able to see my grandkids via video chats and got onto facebook.  i got reaquainted with friends from the past.  i got totally addicted.  i didn't voice my opinions about the vacinnes because i was afraid of the censorship.  a little while ago; i was reading comments regarding yesterday's reign of rockets and missiles in the southern part of the country.  a few of the arab comments called for the second coming of hitler and the total destruction of israel.  i told one to go to hell and i wished for another to be blotted off the face of the earth.  interestingly, i got a warning about my language.

i have been thinking about blogging for a while.  i was honestly, too busy before pesach.  i have been jounaling about my pesach spring cleaning rituals for years.  my computor was on its way out and somehow, windows 10 got erased.  i made a mad dash to buy a new one.  this year i became devoted to having house repairs done , getting new light fixtures and door handles and tweeking the pictures and judaica.  i even bought a few house plants. i have already pretty much, downsized the objects in my home.  i gave away most of my books to a jewish english book store and a couple of book shelves, too.

i realized like most of my friends, that it was time to take care of myself and my needs.  it was time to spend my money on me.  i started buying more organic products and orthopedic shoes for myself.  i had no guilt whatsoever, in spending money on a new computor.  well, maybe, just a bit.  i haven't gone near, said, computor since i got it.  i am too comfortable with my smart phone and my eyes are getting destroyed, nightly; by watching hours of videos on the phone.  i am quite pleased to admit that the larger monitor is a sheer pleasure.

the whats app is my link to my grandchildren.  i do not travel very often and they live in another part of the country.  yesterday, my grandson asked if i could buy him a few fruit rollups.  i didn't think anything strange about his request.  i used to buy them for his father.  back in the day; it was considered a 'healthy' treat.  i told him that i would buy him some the next day.  i will use any excuse or errend to get me out of the house and out for a walk.  i went to one store that sold nuts and sweets and dried fruits.  each roll up was 15 shekels. that's 4 dollars for one fruit roll up.  i saw a large box of 72 roll ups.  i asked if it was for sale.  she wanted 1080 shekels.  that is 296 dollars for a box of fruit roll ups.

i thought i must have misunderstood.  i walked over to another store that sells party goods and toys and chocolates.  they were selling 3 rollups for 10.90 shekels.  that is about 3 dollars a roll up.  i ended up buying a box of 72 roll ups for 260 shekels.   yes, i spent 72 dollars on that box.  i met a neighbor on the bus ride home and told her about my quest to buy fruit roll ups.  she told me about the afternoon shelling in the south and told me about tik tok's play on fruit roll ups.  apparently, they put them in ice cream for crunch.  i suddenly realized that i was holding onto gold.  i also realized that it was not safe to mail a package of this gold to my grandson.  i needed nothing short of a brink's secrity truck.

my grandson was delighted when i sent him a pix of the box of the roll ups.  he told me it was trending.  i told him that we would sell the roll ups to recover my 'seed' money.  yes folks, i was excited.  i was on fire.  this afternoon i got a text from my granddaughter asking if they sold fruit roll ups in safed.  it is very hot today.  we are in the middle of a heat wave.  i have had a pain in the back of my head all morning long.  i do not want to spend another 72 dollars buying more roll ups.  i gathered from my grandson that his sister was not interested in selling them.  she has a nail polishing business on the side.  she is 11.  i am planning on going back to the store to see if they have any roll ups left.  iam willing to spend another 30 dollars at the most.  are we haivng fun yet?