Tag: Food

Poetry, Politics, Relationships

The Immigrant Mother Goes to the Movies

Jen

There are days

(like today)

when emails from teachers

with names beginning with

Aleph or Ayin or Chet

or long-winded reminders

via Google group

from neighbors whose

fresh-baked challah

I truly do enjoy

or the main menu

of the University’s

Babylonian student information station

all make me want to

gouge out my eyes

with aluminum skewers

left over from

last weekend’s “al Ha’Esh”

or eat Whoppers in front

of the movie Clue —

either of the three versions

released in December 1985.

Basically,

I need my information

spoonfed, please, from

the Confection Stand.

I want each request and update

to melt in my mouth like

candy did once

like Tim Curry

in 1985 before

Rocky Horror Picture Show

before heads went missing

before someone said to me,

No one moved to Israel

because it’s easy.

There are days

(not today) when

I am proud that science

has proven that my brain

works better now that it

needs to decipher whether

my daughter requested

dag or dog for dinner.

But today

I just want to suck it all

through a straw.

 

 

 

 

 

Parenting, Relationships, Religion

A Jewish Mother’s Passover Lament

Jen

At least this Jewish mother …

passover greeting 2014

Best wishes to my friends and readers who celebrate freedom this week. Happy Passover.

 

Community, Food, Kibbutz, Living in Community, Technology

How crowdfunding is like high school pre-calc

Jen

Did you know that the success of most crowdfunding campaigns rides on the contributions of extended family and friends?

And did you know that Hannaton’s winery, Jezreel Valley Winery, launched an indiegogo campaign last week?

By the transitive power of equality (or something very similar) YOU are the key to our crowdfunding success.

I live on Hannaton. So does the winery. The owners, Jacob and Yehuda, are my good friends. You are my good friends. So (here comes the part where Cherry Hill High School East feels as if pre-calc wasn’t wasted on me).

I drew this. That's you and me and wine. And, of course. love.
I drew this. That’s you and me and wine. And, of course. love.

 

You are the winery’s extended family and friends.

Your contribution — even a small one — will make a big difference in our success. (Disclaimer: I say “our” because I am on the winery’s team for this crowdfunding project. I do not own shares in the winery.)

What’s crowdfunding?

Only the best thing to happen to entrepreneurs since  free wireless.

Crowdfunding let’s you pitch your business idea or social initiative to your friends, family and interested strangers, and in most cases, offers a “perk” or a “return” in product instead of actual shares in the business.

People have written and published books using funds from crowdfunding campaigns; produced documentaries; and even funded a 3D printer pen that allows your drawings to become real! The most popular sites for crowdfunding business ideas are indiegogo and kickstarter. There’s even one specifically for Israel tech start-ups called Our Crowd (it’s equity-based and geared more towards traditional angel investors.) Friends of mine in NJ started Umojawa, a crowdfunding platform for educational initiatives and programs for youth.

Crowdfunding, to me, is a huge opportunity for people with ideas, with dreams. It’s one of the best things about the internet. And a little bit addictive.

So … please take a minute to click through to the Jezreel Valley Winery campaign page on indiegogo. What you’ll get in return if you contribute?

For $25, you’ll get a Jezreel Valley Winery winestopper and a 10% discount on wine for the rest of your lives! (The winery ships to the U.S.)

It only gets better above $25 (more discounts, more wine … and event a free wedding or bar mitzvah hosted at the winery. A great perk if you’re planning your kid’s bar mitzvah in Israel anyway.)

Why does this campaign matter? Contributing allows you to connect to Israel in a very meaningful way. The winery is a true start-up based on a dream. Two guys had an idea. Shook hands on it. Got it up off the ground running, grew some grapes, made some great kosher wine, won some awards and now they want to expand their operations.

For me, that’s inspiring and motivating.

Invest in their success!

Jezreel Valley wine in my kitchen

 

 

 

Childhood, Food, Memory, Parenting

I remember you on white bread

Jen

Meatball Surprise Mom is away.

Not like that one time fancy schmancy mozzarella with tomatoes from BJs unusual but usually some concoction something on the stove from scratch from what was in the fridge

No I remember Meatball Surprise little Jason little Jen

Pancakes log cabin syrup big glasses tinted lens steaming up with fog

laughing rather snorting rather smiling rather some blend

a beer on the back porch only when Uncle Steve’s in town only once a year maybe every other year

rootbeer or Pepsi Free from the fridge from the door in the fridge no don’t remember on the island there on Garwood Drive next to a plate of egg noodles with cottage cheese and sour cream and Wonder Bread and that was being Jewish I think

lunch on Saturday after cartoons after you went to the market but before soccer or after i don’t know there in the middle when it was sunny on the deck

Not like Wednesday when it was 5:30 and you were making green salad green iceberg lettuce green cucumbers green peppers Italian dressing French from scratch one time that didn’t work was yucky was too red not yellow or orange enough on the island

hamburgers on the grill but never cheeseburgers never with cheese not with Kraft American cheese in plastic never ever even though that’s what mom wanted and me too probably because hamburgers with bubbles on the top are gross

never parmesean on meatballs not like at Bubbi’s house not because it wasn’t kosher like you said but because you didn’t like the smell put the green container back in the spice cabinet now almost yelling but not

Flounder

But never shrimp

Never ever coconut shrimp except that one time at a chinese restaurant but i wasn’t there that’s just a story I think mom could tell or Uncle Harvey and Aunt Iris but not me I wasn’t there when your throat almost closed up but for years i didn’t eat shrimp God Forbid

Not because it wasn’t kosher

Fake poop but that’s for another time

Food food food this time that’s where we’re going

Never would’ve guessed it but it’s there on the top of a birthday cake 66 candles

but 39 years of food

funny i would’ve said beach boys beatles singing in the car bad smells bad jokes roll the window down the top down but no there’s

fried matzoh

syrup or salt or jelly perhaps, too, Grape Welch’s the flavor of 6 7 8 9 10

Passover

Pesach

Sandwiches on white bread

but what was in the middle

Yellow mustard for sure

but also what

Turkey? Bologna? Not ham, never ham

The only ham was you

on stage

with a frying pan.

* * *

Meatball Surprise Recipe

Ingredients

  • Egg Noodles
  • Ground Meat
  • Red Sauce from a Jar (Preferably Ragu)
  • Shredded Mozzarella Cheese

Instructions

Cook it all up regular like and mix it together in a pan and eat it up

Culture, Food, Food allergies, Survivalism

Classified: In need of better ice cream in Israel

Jen

I made my own ice cream last night.

I did this out of despair.

I do not like store bought Israeli ice cream. It’s awful. Even the halavi (dairy) ice cream (as opposed to the soy-based parve) is gross.

A complete waste of calories, if you care about that kind of thing.

I don’t.

I just want some decent ice cream every now and again.

For a while, I would splurge on the Ben & Jerry’s you can find occasionally in the supermarket, but the last five times I bought it, I opened the carton to find the ice cream melted and refrozen into an icy gelatinous mess. So, in addition to having no ice cream to satisfy my already salivating glands, I had to plan a trip to Shufersal to get my 48 shekels back.

Not easy when you live in the middle of nowhere.

Grrrr.

I exaggerate. I live in the outskirts, but Israel is not a third world nation.

We do have high-falutin “Italian ice cream parlors.” However, I have no taste for Leggenda or Dr. Lek (which is spelled the same as Dr. Lick, but is apparently pronounced Dr. Lek, go figure) or any of these gelato type places that charge you 18 shekels for a cone (that’s $5, my US friends).

Even if they didn’t charge so much, I can’t go there with my nut allergic kid.  I found a peanut in my vanilla ice cream there just the other day, which successfully proved my  theory in the company of my husband that ice cream parlors are not at all safe for nut allergic kids.

So last night, for about 6 -7 shekels (the cost of cream, milk, sugar, salt, and vanilla), I made a pint of my own vanilla ice cream following these instructions and using this recipe which totally worked.

homemade ice cream

The recipe is super easy, and while a bit time consuming, does not require an ice cream maker.

Which is quite a relief.

There’s nothing more infuriating than searching like mad for a recipe on Google, finding one, only to realize it requires some expensive piece of equipment or a brand of soup mix only found in New Zealand.

Quite the opposite with this recipe, I had everything I needed  … even the ice (which was the hardest of all the ingredients to come by in Israel).

So, finally, one ice cream discontent in Israel may now be content.

Until the container is finished.

Food, Religion, Spirituality

The beet goes on

Jen

I thought the most interesting thing about today would be the beet.

I pulled four beets from the vegetable drawer because I knew if I didn’t do something with them today they’d go bad tomorrow.

I have a strange relationship with beets.

I want to love them.

I want to savor them like my friend Allison, who once said to me,

“Mmmm…I love beets.”

But I can’t. I just can’t. At best, I can tolerate beets when they’re roasted just so and soaked in a little olive oil and balsamic vinegar.

But beets are so incredibly beautiful that I will wash them and peel them and slice them and stand over them in wonderous amazement even if I won’t eat them.

dancing beet

The red pink of beets should not exist in nature.

It should be synthetic, it is so beautiful.

The spiral designs inside a beet, however, should exist in nature.

Beet innards are exactly the kinds of puzzles that nature produces and we call God.

I love beets, but I can’t eat them.

After the beets, I tried to take a nap.

Two of my kids were sleeping: one sprawled on the couch in a beet-colored dress with wrinkled flowers on the strap and the other with his head hanging off the bottom bunk.

He fell asleep in the middle of a tantrum while I tried to soothe him with Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, Chapter 1, page 1.

There was a knock at the door.

It was Nachum.

Looking for my son.

I knew it was Nachum because I heard his fingers drumming on the metal railing outside.

I liked that I knew it was Nachum and didn’t mind so much that he was rousing me from my almost nap.

My son was not at home. He was at a basketball game with his dad.

I told this to Nachum. He turned around and left as quickly as he came.

I tried to take a nap.

There was a knock at the door.

It was not Nachum, but a man whose name should have been Nachum.

He was in a rumpled white button down shirt and black pants.

He had a long black beard, too.

He might have had a black yarmulke but I didn’t notice when he turned to walk away.

I was too busy remembering his smile.

I gave him 20 shekels and he was happy.

I was happy, too.

So happy, I stopped trying to take a nap.

= = =

(This post was written in less than 15 minutes. Wanna take on the Friday 15-minute challenge? Write today for 15 minutes and leave a link to your post in the comments below and tag your post 15-minute Friday.)

Food, Mindfulness, Writing

Writing prompts change the world

Jen

A few years ago, I took a brief, but fantastic memoir writing course with poet and writing professor, Chloe Yelena Miller. It was in this course I was first introduced to the concept of writing from a prompt.

Wow, how I loved this exercise.

Not all writing prompts work for all people —  and it could be the ones that Chloe chose resonated with me personally — but, regardless, I had a lot a fun with them.

I wrote one piece about my childhood stuffed dog/bear, Floppy.

I wrote one piece about my ex-boyfriend’s family beach house.

I wrote another about a long-kept secret.

What exactly do I love about writing prompts? I’m not sure.

But I think it has to do with looking at life differently. From a different angle. Upside down. Inside out.

To see people and things in a way they’ve never been observed before. To imagine them in a purpose or a place they’re unused to.

Today, my writing prompt was Mr. Mushroom Butt.

mushroom butt

While slicing vegetables for my breakfast stir fry, I couldn’t help but notice the cute little butt in one of my deformed mushrooms.

In an instant, I could imagine the yellow peppers as arms and legs. And hurried to arrange them and photograph the scene before it disappeared from my imagination or I got too hungry not to eat it.

The Sad and Sorry End to Mushroom Butt was born from my breakfast.

A story was born …  a character, a fractured fairytale. And who knows what else? A film? A line of toys? A breakfast cereal?

One morning, I birthed Mushroom Butt . And now he exists.

This is what’s amazing about writing prompts.

And about writing.

This ability to birth something or someone anew.

There are writing prompts everywhere masquerading as boring nothingness.

But once you name them as writing prompts, someone or something exists where there was previously nothing and no one.

And the list of possibilities for their adventures becomes endless…

 

Food, Food allergies, Health

Israel creamed me

Jen

For three years before I moved to Israel, I was dairy free.

And not just, “No thank you, I won’t have extra parmesan on top of my fettuccine alfredo” dairy free.

I was hard core, no dairy, no way, not even a lick from the spoon after making my kids Mac and Cheese, dairy free.

Why?

Because I realized about a decade ago the connection between what I ate and how I felt, both physically and emotionally.

On top of that, my kids were all diagnosed with food allergies and our home became food-focused and poop-focused.

(There’s a lot you can tell about your health by being poop-focused, don’t ya know? Good poop. Good times.)

The best I ever felt in my entire life — physically and emotionally– was when I was dairy free, wheat free and sugar free.

I carried on like this for a good year or so. And despite the inconvenience to my family and my book club, I felt AMAZING.

Practically everything I ever thought was going to kill me one day (stomach pain, gas, anxiety, asthma, eczema, migraines) practically up and disappeared when I stopped eating those foods.

Since moving to Israel, however, I no longer cut the cheese.

The cheese cuts me.

cream

I tried to stay away from it. And succeeded for a while.

Until Shavuout.

Damn you, Shavuout.

Shavuout 2011 was my downfall.

Quiche, lasagna, blintzes, cheesecake, chocolate mousse.

After that, I totally I cheesed out.

Started with goat cheese. I was one of those girls who was all like “I’m so totally healthy because, like, I only eat organic, locally-grown Feta now.”

But cheese is cheese.

For me, at least.

Before long, Feta became mozzarella became butter became sour cream became homemade whipped cream three times a week became

OUT OF CONTROL.

And I am pretty sure my body has suffered because of it.

True, I’m getting old. And true, I live on a kibbutz — home to every environmental allergen imaginable.

But I have to believe that the dairy (and the sugar!) are playing a big role in how downhill my physical health seems to have gone in the past two years. (I’ll spare you the details.)

So, in honor of Shavuout this year, in honor of the dietary laws passed down from generation to generation, I am pledging to not pass anything this year. Nothing foul at least.

I’m giving up dairy again.

It won’t be easy. I’ve grown really fond of homemade whipped cream.

And this guy.

goat cheese guy

* * * *

(Follow my last hurrah on Instagram )

Culture

Israelis don’t like rootbeer

Jen

Do you ever notice how easy and acceptable it is to stereotype your own?

And how easy and acceptable is it to find yourself up in arms when “outsiders” stereotype us?

Of course, this is human nature and true of most ethnic, religious and gender groups.

It’s the classic rule: I can talk smack about my momma, but don’t you even think about it.

I stereotype Israelis. Especially since I moved here 2 1/2 years ago.

But what’s funny is the type of stereotyping I find myself responsible for is not your classic Israel bashing.

They’re so rude/impatient/loud/demanding. They’re always up-your-butt in lines. They all carry uzis.

Those aren’t stereotypes. They’re truths! Israelis will be the first to admit (loudly, and rudely) that lines are for friarim. Pushing your way to the front is why God gave us two hands. The third one is for our uzi.

I stereotype Israelis from a place of love, like one does when making fun of one’s brother…or oneself. But I also stereotype Israelis as a study, from a place of still feeling like an “inside outter.” Like someone who thinks she is supposed to fit in, but doesn’t quite yet. And perhaps never will.

This was very obvious to me while traveling last week in the U.S. with 8 Israeli born colleagues. Though working insanely hard, we had a great time. My colleagues, experienced travelers, still counted on me to lead them, inform them, and give them a bit of a navigation in a foreign country. So for me, the trip was an opportunity to finally feel like a grown up again — like someone who knows her way around. Someone who can order for herself in a restaurant; find her way around airport security.

An insider.

Traveling in America with a group of Israelis, however, also made me feel very American. So much so, I began to question my own identity. Who am I when I am in America? Am I American or Israeli? Or some strange hybrid better suited for a third independent country? (Uganda? Atlantis?)

I loved the cafes we lunched in; while they frowned at menus filled with burgers and sandwiches.

I sipped rootbeer satisfied, while they longed for tea with nana.

rootbeer

I spoke quietly and respectfully to our waiters. They demanded extra salad dressing in Hebrew.

They laughed at me. At my American-ness. And I at them. At their complete and utter Israeli-ness.

And then we laughed at ourselves

Since I moved to Israel 2 1/2 years ago, I constantly wonder where I fit in.

But then I remind myself that this is a question I’ve been asking for as long as I’ve been asking questions.

And for as long as I’ve been asking questions, I’ve been carefully observing myself and others.

Comparing myself to them. Comparing their behavior to mine.

Searching for the differences and the similarities.

Seeking harmonies. Identifying irritations.

This is what we do.

We humans.

With ease, we assign the harmonies to people who look and act like us, and the irritations to people who look and act different from us.

Until something happens to shatter the reliability of our stereotypes.

For me, this happened when I made Aliyah.

As I live among Israelis; and more so, as I become an Israeli, I’m busting my own stereotypes, and creating new ones.

But always defending Israel like she was my momma.

I can talk smack about her, but don’t you even think about it.