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.
No comments:
Post a Comment