Thursday, November 23, 2017

What's Cooking? A post (loosely) related to baking

Well, we already celebrated "Franksgiving" a few weeks ago, when my publicity-shy sister and brother-in-law were here (I think I'm allowed to say it was a GREAT visit, as long as I don't post photos [apologies to cousin Gil, who always says that there are not enough photos in my blog....]).

I had an interesting morning yesterday, when I got up early to cook for the Lone Soldier's Thanksgiving Dinner.  1000 soldiers who are here without family (and able to get the afternoon off, which evidently disqualified another 6000 soldiers) will be joining together for the meal.  It's quite impressive to see the loooong Google doc get slowly filled in as the weeks go by and more and more people sign up to bring parts of the meal.  50 people signed up to bring cooked whole turkeys!  I, perhaps not unsurprisingly, was not one of them.  I did, however, make two of the 25 pans of rice (much more my speed) and brownies.  Thanks to having a car this year, I am helping out two neighbors and taking their cookies and sweet potatoes up.  Teamwork!

I also baked for neighbors who had had a death in the family.  Walking down the street, I saw this taped to the wall:
This is how deaths are announced here (additionally, sometimes a car with a loudspeaker on top drives slowly around town announcing funeral details, as funerals happen here usually on the same day and many people are not on the internet either at all, or as much as their US counterparts.  Of course, I have also seen funerals announced on Facebook and via the city list-serv).

I don't really know these neighbors at all, and they are sitting shiva in another city, so I sent a cake over.  While baking, I thought to share this photo, as I find it hard to believe that this is how baking ingredients are sold here:
I have never seen boxes of baking soda (the ad campaign to pour it down your sink has not yet arrived here), and both baking soda and baking powder are sold in tiny packets.  The middle product is powdered sugar.  You need something like 1000 of them to frost a cake (to her credit, Penina pulled it off recently, when she made a cake for a girl in her school [love the school's program--when it's a girl's birthday, someone else in class makes a cake for her, rather than *her* bringing in a cake to share)
Anyway, while a kilo of white sugar is certainly not a small amount of a dangerous substance, there is nothing bigger--no "let's buy a 5 lb bag of sugar so all that Thanksgiving baking will be easily accomplished".  I also need to say that the idea of sugar in paper bags (that often leak) in a warm country is, while great for the environment, probably nicer to the local ant population than it needs to be.

A final note regarding food issues: while at a routine appointment at Hadassah Hospital yesterday, I wandered into the new mini market that had just opened.  I was surprised to see something I truly cannot imagine seeing in a US hospital:
Happy Thanksgiving!

Tuesday, November 7, 2017

Fill 'Er Up

This blog post has taken two years to write....

In the US, I took gassing up the car for granted; it was a simple little errand that I usually did at one of the 5 or 6 gas stations that were within a mile of our house.  Self-serve and keep on driving.  Then we moved across the world and I discovered that things are not always so easy when done in a new language and in a new culture.

To begin with, there are no gas stations in our neighborhood.  The nearest gas station is either about 7 minutes away in a direction I rarely need to go in, or about 12 minutes away in the main city that my neighborhood is part of.  Okaaaay.  At least I can usually figure out an errand or two to do in the main part of town, to make it worth driving almost half an hour round-trip.

Self-service is quite different here.  Don't know your car's license plate number?  Walk around and take a look because you'll need to input it to pay at the pump.  Once you've done that, put in your national identity number.  Don't know enough Hebrew to understand the words displaying on the pump?  Head on inside to (try to) pay at the cashier.  Don't know how to say "fill it" in Hebrew?  Yeah, you need one of those phrase books from the 80s.  You may never need to say, "my friend and I are making a small dinner party and were wondering if you'd like to attend?" (my favorite phrase), but you DO need something other than waving your hands around while looking panicked and finally saying, " umm, everything on (pump) number 4" and then saying "yes" when the cashier says some sort of questioning words that you take as confirmation that she's saying "fill it?".  Invariably, the cashier then asks if you'd like to buy headphones, an electric nose hair trimmer, or a small espresso maker from the display on the counter.  Since the cashier usually points while saying this, you are able to figure out what she's talking about and politely decline.  These experiences often leave one on the verge of tears (not that I'm, erm, speaking about myself here.  Oh noooo). 

What about full-serve?  That's actually a very nice experience here--they even clean your front- and back windshields, which I haven't seen in the US since I was a kid.  Except that even full-serve has incomprehensible questions, like "Do you want the number of your license plate printed on your receipt?"  ("What?  Can you repeat that?  Say it slower, please--I don't understand why anyone would want that?!".  A gas station employee who spoke English finally tipped me off that it's in case people want to use the receipt for reimbursement or tax purposes.  This in itself was a very inspiring-yet-humbling moment--the Russian guy who works at the gas station speaks English better than I speak Hebrew.  Sigh).  The next question is something like, "Would you like to buy a package of baby wipes or an espresso maker from the display outside?"  (Israelis drink a LOT of coffee and those espresso makers seem to be everywhere).

Anyway, yesterday I gassed up at the lovely new gas station that's *halfway* to the big city.  It felt so near (and yet, frankly, still rather far to go just to get gas)!  And I did self-serve and I understood all the questions and got them all correct!  Yay!  Give the lady a full tank of gas and get her back on the road!

Sunday, November 5, 2017

Choir

Short post:

Penina and Ilana are in the choir for what I'm pretty sure is the biggest English-language play production in the country.  The Zir Chemed/Regal Productions musical happens in January and sells out the 600-seat Jerusalem Theater for each of its 6 shows.  This is also the biggest yearly fundraiser for Zir Chemed a non-profit that helps couples with fertility issues.  As such, each cast and choir member is required to fundraise a page of ads for the adbook. 

Thanks to my brother-in-law Stephen's cleverness, no one need pay $50/line to join with us in wishing the girls well on all their hard work (and it has been hard work--this week the choir will be meeting at 4 a.m. to catch sunrise for a video of one of their songs!), you can just email me with your message and the amount you'd like to donate.  Don't have my private email address?  Then please ignore this message--this post is only for friends and family ;)