School's Out for Summer

I am officially on my way to my career change. I have finished two post-bac classes already. Hopefully I will be getting an A in both classes. Yes, I am a nerd. I did only a little cooking during the 6 week semester. First, I made gnocchi under the advisement of my mother. It needed more salt and pepper and I think I will take the mother's advice and add ricotta cheese to the dough. I then sauteed them with sage butter. Here are some visuals.







In addition to the gnocchi I bought a tart pan and am now an expert at lemon tarts. I made my own tart dough. I then made lemon curd and topped it with berries and a sprig of mint. I made it once for some friends and then my roommate complained that she didn't get any. So instead of a traditional birthday cake I made her a tart. Feast your eyes on this.

Foodie's Delight

So I have a new obsession- thank you Sara- with food blogs. I have copied down so many recipes from all of them and I can't wait to make them. I am hoping to make this blog more food oriented in the few times that I do blog. So, remember when I said I was going to try a new recipe every day. Well that only applied to when I was unemployed. So here are some pictures of what I made.
First I made a vegetarian loaf from a vegetarian cookbook. It called for brown rice, vegetables, eggs and feta cheese. So I was so excited about it but now thinking about I get a little nauseated. It was served with a mint yogurt sauce and I think I will not be making it again. I didn't do a bad job but I just think the recipe is a weird mix of ingredients. Here is the photo. I served it on the plates my mother gave me that I absolutely love!


Next I made grape nut bread. This is my favorite bread that my mother makes. One winter when I was living at home there was a blizzard and both my parents and I stayed home from work. I had to go to my dad's office to help him out and when we got home my mom had beef stew and fresh from the oven grape nut bread waiting. It is also delicious fresh from the oven with jam. So here is my version.

Unemployment Hobbies

As many of you know I am currently unemployed and am intermittently temping as I change careers. Some days can be extremely boring and long. So I have decided for the days that I am not working and am at home I will cook one new thing. Today was the inaugural day of this new plan. I attempted to make minestrone soup today. It sounds totally doable and easy, just a lot of chopping. My soup was more like a stew. I added plenty of water yet it seemed to drink it right up. I also used swiss chard, which the recipe called for, and it tainted my whole "soup." The soup tasted and smelled like swiss chard. I think I will not be making this soup again- maybe I will find a new recipe for minestrone but I think it will hinder me from trying new recipes. The next recipe is going to be a chocolate hazelnut quick bread. I have all the ingredients and won't have to go to the supermarket so that seems like a logical next choice. If anybody has any suggestions or recipes they would like to share - the forum is now open.

Reading Is Free-damental

I cannot decide if I am a frugal genius or just a cheap ass. In my building there are garbage "closets" on every floor which house the garbage chute and bins for recycling. Since we moved in in October my roommate and I have searched the recycle bins for reading materials every time we throw something away. It has even come to the point where my roommate will retrieve something that I have thrown away that I originally got from the recycle bin. I have noticed that Sunday mornings produce a wealth of wonderful reading material. So finally I hatched a genius plan. This past Sunday morning I took the elevator to the top floor- the 15th- and walked down every flight checking the recycle bins for reading material. I stopped at the 5th floor because I babysit for people on the 4th and 2nd floors and if they caught me and figured out what I was doing I fear I would lose my $12/hour secondary income. It was a successful trip as I scored 2 New Yorker magazines, a one week old New York Times Magazine and a Rolling Stone magazine. Does this make me pathetic?

Sleep Clinic

If you read my post yesterday then you know that the subway is my own personal sleep clinic. So apparently the clinic forgot to wake me up this morning. I have been riding the commuter rail and the subway for most of my life and most certainly my entire adult life. Not once in all my years have I ever missed my stop. I may be asleep but there is a little part of my brain that doesn't shut down and is always listening to the stop announcements. This morning, after a night of 8 hour sleep, I fell asleep on the subway again. And I missed my stop and woke up FOUR stops later. I could not believe it! Either I am getting old or I need more sleep. I had to get off the subway - and it wasn't one of those stations where you don't have to pay again. I had to go out on the street and cross it to go back uptown. What is happening to me?????

Sleep Deprivation

One of my favorite past times is sleeping on the subway. Some of my best naps take place on the 2 train. So you know you are beyond exhaustion when you nap on the train on the way home from work and awake with a start and try to remember if you are on your way home or TO work. That really happened to me today. I woke up and was like oh crap I have to have a whole new day at work and then I was so relieved when I realized I was going to home to camp out on the couch and watch tv and eat bon bons.

Crisis on the Upper West Part II

Now if you are anything like me you were appalled by that article. In my opinion, young Jews are getting married too young already. Why don't we just set them up in high school and then save money on college tuition because who can go to college when you have 2 babies to care for. I sent that article around to some friends for a laugh and I love the response I got in return from one friend in particular- Ilana. Ilana you are my hero of the week and you are nominated for the Upper West Side Nothing Pulitzer. You would have won if you had sent the letter. Below is the email.

Nothing new -- Michael Steinhardt said worse at a lecture I went to last year, which prompted me to write this letter...should have sent it but didn't:

Dear Mr. Steinhart --

I never had the chance to thank you properly for fully funding my trip to Israel through your remarkable Birthright Israel Program. I want to assure you that it was money well-spent, and I took advantage of every opportunity to learn about and love the land of Israel, and recognize myself as a part of its history and its people. People often speak of you as a benevolent philanthropist, a man of vast resources who chose to bestow some of his wealth on the Jewish people in order to teach them about their heritage and encourage them to grow as Jews and as people, and in turn help others do the same. That is an admirable achievement and I applaud you for your vision.

Now I must thank you once again for opening my eyes to a truth that I did not realize before hearing you speak in person: I hold the key to the future of the Jewish people in my hands -- and with every successive menstrual cycle, I'm squandering that potential!

Last night, I attended the first of your series "Michael Steinhart Presents" to hear a panel of speakers discuss relationships, specifically strategies for finding and keeping your bashert. I came with a close friend, each of us looking to glean some insight from a panel of Jewish experts in the field, on how to achieve a meaningful and lasting relationship. The evening should perhaps have been titled: "Spinsterhood is Imminent: Why Your Life Without a Mate is Worth Less and Less with Every Passing Year". I must admit that after about twenty minutes of listening attentively, I expected to be told I fell somewhere on the food chain between tile mildew and bathroom fungus because I did not cap off the evening married and pregnant with twins.

Here's what the evening taught me:

I. You are all single-handedly responsible for the decrease in the Jewish population
II. You are well beyond your proper child-bearing years (note: 27)
III. Your standards are too high and romance is overrated
IV. Forget your expectations -- get married, get knocked up, and let's get the show on the road
V. Every Jewish woman would clearly rather make $2.40 at work than have seven children -- and herein lies the problem

Wow. I must be lacking not only in my reproductive capacity, but also in my mental resources. And here I was, thinking graduating Magna Cum Laude from Barnard College was a pretty big deal. Of course, my entire degree is irrelevant as I should not waste my time chasing after a meager $2.40 an hour (FYI, I believe this has not been the minimum wage for a number of decades, but perhaps as I am a woman and should really be spending my time barefoot and pregnant, it should not matter anyway).

It is not everyday that one has the unique opportunity to pay an admission fee to be told they are worthless. Generally, one can find that kind of validation for free from any of the following sources -- abusive spouses/boyfriends/teenage siblings, judgmental parents, various members of the clergy, and New York City taxi drivers. The homeless man on my block sometimes tells me I am worthless, although once I give him the requested donation to the United Negro Pizza Fund, he has the courtesy to stop.

I thank God you have decided to rid the single population of Manhattan of having STANDARDS. Of course we should throw the "checklist" you spoke of out the window -- lest it grow too long to manage and overwhelm with its sheer weight and size! I only wish your audience had been filled with more eager, idealistic 20-somethings, because I think they would have benefitted immensely from your warnings. You would have sent some directly to tears, others straight to the Entenmann's aisle in Gristede's, and others still to their psychiatrist for a refill on their prescription for Zoloft.

Why has the single population never before realized it is so easy to meet, marry and feel complete? Thanks for clearing that up. What a relief. My one regret is that I walked out when I did. Perhaps I missed the climax of the evening, when you single-handedly solved the energy crisis, the Iranian nuclear threat, the AIDS pandemic, the rise in juvenile obesity, and figured out a way to permanently get rid my apartment of the pesky dust-bunny problem.

So in deference to your compelling argument, here is what I have decided to do: This Friday I plan to mobilize a task force of my closest female friends, set up shop in front of OZ just in time for the Friday night shul crowd to emerge. We're going to scan the crowd for a few nice-ish, mentchy-looking, average Jews and approach with a meek, submissive countenance. We're going to offer ourselves up as the mothers of their fill in the blank children. In nine months, we will make a sizable dent in the population deficit, and the Jewish community will live happily ever after.

Most sincerely,
Ilana
aka: "Currently Just Another Statistic"

Crisis on the Upper West Part I

This is going to be a two part blog because it is quite long. Anyone who knows me knows that I cannot stand the term "singles crisis". I don't believe such a thing exists and I think it is just perpetuated by smug marrieds who think that singles don't want to get married and are just too picky. Well I say BAH to those people. I enjoy my life and I am not going to sit home and mope and be depressed about being single and I am certainly not going to settle just so I can grow bored and get divorced in a year. Anyway, I am not going to rant because you all know this.
Gary Rosenblatt, editor of the Jewish Week, asked the Jewish community at large to come up with the next great Jewish idea. Below is an article about the most ludicrous thing I have ever read- courtesy of myjewishlearning.com

The Next Big Idea
by Daniel Septimus • December 8th, 2006 3:23 PM
Category: Ideas & Beliefs

In this week’s Jewish Week, editor Gary Rosenblatt begins his search for, what he calls, “The Next Big Jewish Idea.” For Rosenblatt, the last big Jewish idea was birthright israel, which just brought its 100,000th participant to Israel (free of charge, of course).

Rosenblatt discusses a symposium that took place last Sunday in honor of CAJE’s Dr. Eliot Spack. The panelists were asked to come up with The Next Big Idea in Jewish Life.

Now, I wasn’t at the panel, so I only have Rosenblatt’s summaries to go on, but if they’re at all representative of the real conversation, we might be in trouble.

Rabbi Elliot Dorf, rector of the University of Judaism, focused on the fact that the American Jewish community is “in a major demographic crisis” because “we are not replacing ourselves.”

With many Jews marrying after college and graduate school and starting families relatively late, he said they are having one or two children, and some are facing infertility problems in their 30s and 40s.

His suggestion: encourage these young people to marry and have children while in graduate school, and for the community to create and subsidize affordable day care in Jewish institutions.

I have enormous respect for Rabbi Dorff, but is this really the best he could come up with? Encourage people to procreate at an earlier age? And how exactly do you expect to do that? Plus, here’s something to think about: Maybe our dearth of ideas is a result of our obsession with continuity. Maybe if we stop thinking about procreative sex for just a minute and exercise our brains and prophetic vision, we might actually have an idea or two.

Dr. Bethamie Horowitz, research director of the Mandel Foundation, asserted that “Jews don’t have to be cloistered” to live Jewish lives anymore, and that rather than ask “why be Jewish?” the question should be “why not be Jewish?”

I truly hope that this summary misses Horowitz’s point, because as it stands, it’s incomprehensible. I mean, really, rather than ask “why be a nudist?” the question should be “why not be a nudist?” Right? Enough said.