Monthly Archives: August 2009

An interesting fundraising technique

homemaking

This morning I got what started off as a typical solicitation call – someone wanted to speak to me about sending a donation to their organization.  This wasn’t a personalized call, it was one of those automatic calls when you know they’re going through the phone book.  Anyway, the person on the phone informed me that I had made a pledge that I hadn’t yet paid, and belligerently told me to send them money. 

Now, I’m pretty careful about making pledges and I’m also pretty careful to send  payment promptly for any financial commitments.  We have checkbook used exclusively for charitable donations and all requests or pledges that we get in the mail are put to the side to either be paid right away or if it’s something I don’t remember committing to, I check with my husband to be sure that he did.  (Because I keep a separate checkbook for this, it’s also very easy for me to check when someone calls and asks me to match a previous donation from an earlier time – within a few seconds I can run through the dates and see if it’s there or not, and sadly, a lot of the time, the claims have been inaccurate.)  I rarely give pledges over the phone unless it’s an organization I’m familiar with, and I even more rarely donate to an unknown overseas organization since I try to keep my charity dollars directed towards local needs.

While I didn’t remember making any pledge to this organization overseas, knowing that things can slip between the cracks, I asked when the pledge was made.  November 2006, he said.  And then I made another pledge in October 2007.  Hmm.  They’re calling me almost three years after I first made the pledge?  I told him that I didn’t recall doing that – and it’s not consistent with how I handle my money, because I wouldn’t spend more money ‘on credit’ before paying for everything outstanding.   He insisted that I promised them money, was breaking my promise, and was costing their organization money because they kept sending me envelopes .  He said I had an obligation to them and demanded that I keep my promises. 

This was an interesting (though offensive) approach to take, I thought.  I’m not very responsive to charitable organizations aggressively making demands as if they were bill collectors.  I told him to avoid wasting any further envelopes on me and for the sake of absolute clarity, that I was officially revoking my supposed pledge.  He told me I couldn’t do that, that I had to fulfill my commitment and pay for what I had cost them.  I incredulously asked him if he wanted me to send a check for a dollar to cover the cost of the envelope.  He aggressively told me that they had sent me 18 envelopes (not one single one that I recall receiving, and I check all the mail) and I owed them $1.50 for each one.  

At this point I was pretty fed up and I politely ended our conversation, though he kept yelling as I hung up. (I try very hard not to hang up on telemarketers or soliciters, because as fellow human beings they’re deserving of respect – but if they insist on continuing a discussion after it’s clearly over, I  let them know that I’m unable to continue speaking to them and then say ‘good bye’.)   A minute later, the phone rang, and it was the same man calling back!  As soon as I answered he verbally accosted me and said I call myself a religious person but I’m breaking Torah laws because I’m lying and stealing from them.  Can you say emotional manipulation and guilt tripping?  I told him he was being presumptuous about my religiousity since I certainly didn’t discuss that with him, and told him he needed to be more careful about his own behavior (he said he wasn’t religious – I didn’t think that was an excuse as I’ve never believed that only a religious person can be a decent human being!). 

I suggested he stop yelling for a minute, and asked him if he felt his approach was an effective way to convince me to donate to his cause.  He told me that I wasn’t going to give them money anway because I was a dishonest person.  He told me again that I clearly wasn’t a religious person (because of my behavior), and ‘G-d will punish you for this’.  I told him I guaranteed that I would never donate a penny in the future to their cause because of him and it would be a very good idea to make sure my name was taken off their list.  I really did hang up at that point – there’s just a limit to how long you can try to be polite!

I know that times are tough financially right now for individuals and organizations, but being verbally abusive to potential donors isn’t, well, it’s just not smart! 

Avivah

Watermelon Candy

dehydrating, food preservation

Until recently, it never occured to me to dehydrate any of the juicy fruits, like melons.  But I someone online mentioned doing it, and figured I could try it, too!  This was very easy and the kids really like the results – we call it watermelon candy.

Basically, all you do is this: cut the watermelon away from the rind, then slice it about 1/4 inch thick.  Make sure you use seedless watermelon since the seeds don’t enhance anything in the final product!  Put it in the dehydrator at 145 degrees (that’s the fruit setting on the Excalibur).  It will take longer than most fruits because it has such a high percentage of water, somewhere between twelve and twenty-four hours. 

When it’s done, it will be very thin and chewy, like a piece of fruit leather.  Because all the juice has been dehydrated, the flavor is strong and very sweet.

After slicing up the watermelon for dehydrating, I decided to use the rinds to make pickles with.  I wanted to make it today but dh took the van to the mechanic to check out why the starter fuse keeps blowing out before I could go to the store for more vinegar, so I’ll have to wait another day. Then I chopped up the final bit of rind and instructed ds10 to bury it deep in the part of the garden beds that are unplanted, where it can break down.  Not a bit of garbage left from the entire thing!  And I even maximized the electricity being used to run the full dehydrator – dd8 made paper yesterday, so I had her put her paper pulp on top of the dehydrator, where it dried very quickly with no extra expenditure of time or energy!

We still like fresh watermelon, and economically it’s a better buy to eat it fresh than dehydrated.  But it’s fun to experiment, especially when the experiments are successful!

Avivah

Useful kitchen tools

homemaking

>>Would you be able to write a list of all the handy kitchen gadgets you own that help in your food preparation and preservation?<<

 Sure, I’ll be happy to.  I’ll preface by saying I’m not into gadgets – if I don’t need it, I don’t want it around.  So my list won’t be very long.

Pressure canner – I think this is the most valuable kitchen tool I have. It doubles as a pressure cooker, making cooking beans or any other food super quick, and it enables me to can any food I can think of.  That means I can buy lots of fruit, vegetables, or meat when the price is right and have a safe method to preserve it for using at my convenience at a later time.  It wasn’t an expensive purchase, and even combined with the cost of all the jars/lids that I bought, it didn’t take us more than a couple of months before the free/inexpensive food we were able to take advantage of because we had a way to deal with it that we recouped our expenses.  The more expensive the food you can, the faster you recoup the costs.  Being able to can meat at sale prices has been a major money saver.  I have the Presto 23 quart model.  

Canning jars – this connects with the above.  In addition to obviously using them for canning, I use them for making kefir soda and making lacto fermented vegetables.  Also good for storing grains, nuts, etc.  They look nice on the shelf.  🙂

Dehydrator – another very valuable food preservation tool.  Also saves us lots of money but I can’t say that we’ve recouped our costs yet.  I’m planning to give it a good workout this summer and fall to take advantage of cheap produce – I didn’t have this model yet last summer and relied mostly on canning as a preservation technique. I have the Excalibur 9 tray version.

Apple peeler/slicer/corer – this was very useful for us when we were able to get many, many pounds of free apples; it made processing the apples for canning much easier.  If you don’t need it for a lot of apples, it’s not necessary at all.  I have two, one from Pampered Chef and one from a company that I can’t remember – I paid $6 for one and $7 for another.  Hopefully I’ll have the chance to put them to use again this fall!

Food processor – we eat a lot of vegetables and this saves lots of time in preparing them.   I got a manual one to replace the electric one when it broke, but some kind of fast way to slice/chop/shred vegetables is very helpful for me.  Since the manual model chops and grinds but doesn’t slice and shread, there’s still room for me to get the electric model, which I’ll only do when the price is right. 

Grain grinder – because I like the nutritional aspect of freshly ground flour, this is a valuable addition for us.  We have the Nutrimill.

Blender – useful for making smoothies, homemade mayonnaise.

Handheld blender – I keep my main blender pareve and like being able to blend dairy soups with this. 

Good set of knives – I wouldn’t have put this on the list if you asked me a month ago.  But I just bought a new set since the knives we got as a wedding gift started to break.  The new ones are lousy even though they are the same company that made the originals and I really see what a difference good knives make (if anyone has recommendations for good knife sets in a moderate price range, please share!).

Griddle – this covers two burners on the stove and makes it possible for me to cook pancakes much faster than in a regular frying pan since I have more surface frying area.

There are other things I have which are useful, like a manual cherry pitter or a waffle iron, but they fall into the category of convenient but an extra.  You have to be careful about spending lots of money on unnecessary kitchen items.  Even if you get them for free, there’s the hidden cost of the space they take up.  To me, they have to be very useful to justify the room in the cabinets they use.  There are things like breadmakers that I don’t personally find to be of value that others swear by, so there’s really no universal list of what everyone needs.

If I had to recommend two kitchen tools that I think are worth buying for the person interested in saving money on food, it would be the canner and dehydrator. Since I got these, I feel like my food costs are going down while the amount I can buy goes up.  But you have to have an idea what you’d do with them once you get them!  They won’t save you any money sitting on the shelf. 

Avivah

Support for homeschoolers

homeschooling,

Almost a year ago, I decided I wanted to organize the Torah Homeschool Conference that took place in June.  What prompted me to do it was because I get a good number of questions about homeschooling and I wanted to make the support and information available on a larger scale than one on one conversations.  I hear the same questions again and again, and I wanted people to have the chance to speak to and meet others who are homeschooling, for support and encouragement as well as information.   I know that there’s only so many people I can help personally, and I simply can’t spend an hour plus on the phone/computer with every person who calls/emails!

Most of the calls are from people who have no idea what’s involved (haven’t read anything, spoken to anyone, or done any research), and it’s a little frustrating to get these calls knowing how much attending the the conference 5 weeks ago would have helped these people, because it was for this group of people that the conference was in large part intended!  It’s interesting – people could have spent $15 on a conference for the entire day, or buy the mp3s from the conference for $24, but while they’re willing to spend thousands of dollars a year in tuition, the very small cost for educating themselves about homeschooling isn’t worthwhile for them.  Part of that is because they don’t want to think about how to educate, or why to homeschool, but just want a curriculum to follow or to pay me to homeschool their kids.    I think most parents don’t want to put in the time to attend a conference or read books – they want quick answers and easy solutions – something that matches being able to send them out the door to school and let the teachers take care of things.  But homeschooling isn’t like that at all.  Homeschooling is about empowered parents taking responsibility for their children’s needs, and to effectively do that, you have to understand what those needs are.

I asked the woman calling why she wanted to homeschool her child, and she said she didn’t really want to, but her husband wants her to.  They apparently just got their tuition agreement and it’s simply too expensive.  Here in my area, at least two of the main schools just raised the yearly tuition by $1800 or so.  Everyone is in a hard position, including the schools.  Because so many people can’t pay full tuition, they raise the tuition but then it means many of those who were previously able to pay full tuition no longer can.  The solution really has to be thinking an entirely different way about the problem and the solution, not more of the same, but that’s clearly not happening. 

So I got to speak to someone who really doesn’t want to homeschool, doesn’t know anything about what’s involved, but feels like they have to because they can’t afford school.  This isn’t my favorite kind of conversation.  I don’t believe everyone should homeschool, and I’m not trying to convert the world.  What I do is try to support those who want to do it.  But because I know this person will probably end up homeschooling by default, I want to give her at least a chance for it to be a positive experience for her and her child.  And I know that if she does what most people in this position do – copy the schools and look for a curriculum that covers everything in the way the schools would do it without taking into account who her child is and what her personal needs are – they’re both going to be miserable. 

But I don’t think I succeeded.  She asked me several times about my curriculum, and when I told her that I created my own each year for every child, she asked me to give her what I developed for my child at her child’s grade level (because my ‘curriculum’ for first grade is so loose and fluid as to almost not seem to have any structure, I’m positive it wouldn’t have helped her at all).  I understood her asking, but I tried to explain that just because it works for me, it doesn’t mean it will work for her, because I’m coming from a different paradigm of education and have different goals for my kids.  Her main concern was if my kids could keep up with school kids, and while I’m confident that any of my kids could hold their own in school in any area, my goals aren’t about keeping up with the schools.  After explaining all of this, she asked me why I’m unwilling to share my curriculum, as if I was being selfish, but even after trying to explain to her again the personalized angle of homeschooling, she still didn’t get it. 

Fortunately, this is balanced by those who do get it!  It’s the people who sincerely are thinking about how they’re raising their children that I most enjoy speaking to, because I know my breath isn’t wasted on them, regardless of what they decide.  Recently I was told that a couple who attended the conference will be homeschooling because of the help they got there.  It’s hard to homeschool when you don’t know anything about it or know anyone who’s doing it!  Others who send their kids to school told me that they heard perspectives that they can apply for their children, even though they aren’t homeschooling.  This week, someone else called to tell me she will be homeschooling after a conversation we had (not crediting myself or our conversation, though it was helpful to her).  And on Shabbos afternoon, a young mother told me that she’ll be keeping her 2.5 year old son at home another year before enrolling him in preschool.  (She said, “I kept asking people for advice because I really didn’t know what was best for him, but it wasn’t until I spoke to you that I heard something I liked.”)   These are all people who just need someone to give them some practical tips but more than that, who need to be reassured that they’re not crazy for keeping their kids home longer than normal or for learning at home with them.  And for every one of them I’m glad to be able to help. 

I’m so excited about having cds and mp3s available from the conference, because now there’s more information that can be publicly circulated to help people.  I can’t tell you what a nice feeling it is to mail out cds or send the mp3 files and know that parents far away can be supported or encouraged.  Are these cds comprehensive and cover every possible issue?  No, absolutely not.  There are a number of topics that I’d like to still see systematically addressed (two of of these important topics were addressed at the conference but the recordings were lost), but we’ll need cds from at least a few conferences until we get to that point!  But until now, there’s never been anything in the frum community that supports parents who are homeschooling, and it’s gratifying to know that we’re starting to change that!

Avivah

Weekly menu plan

menu plans

This week I’ve decided to make lots of bean dishes.  There are so many kinds of beans and so many possibilities that there’s always a new recipe to experiment with.  I’m planning to do a big shopping at the end of this week, but it will have been eight weeks since I’ve stocked up, so supplies are running low!  But I still have a nice variety of beans and grains.  I’ve bought fresh fruit and vegetables, chicken, and some other odds and ends in the last eight weeks, but I’m looking forward to refilling my depleted pantry.  I definitely prefer shopping at the beginning of the month when I’m flush with cash, though.  🙂  It’s much easier to be relaxed when you know you have everything you need at the beginning of the month, and can splurge afterwards.

Sun- breakfast – traditional granola, milk, pears; lunch – celery sticks with peanut butter; dinner – turkey hash, wild rice pilaf, salad

Mon – b – Amish oatmeal; l – wraps – whole wheat tortillas, cheese, lettuce, tomato; d – barley and white bean salad

Tues – b – buckwheat/millet pancakes; l – barley and white bean salad; d – falafel with techina sauce, salad

Weds – b – pumpking pudding; l – stuffed baked potatoes; d – sausage bake

Thurs – b – cornmeal scones; l – will be out shopping; d – lentil rice mushroom loaf, or CORN if there’s enough in the fridge

The garden production is starting to pick up, and on Friday when I popped into the produce store, I realized I didn’t need to buy anything but lettuce for the salad, since we have cukes, tomatoes, yellow squash, and zucchini – and there was more than enough for our needs for Shabbos.  That was exciting!  I also have some swiss chard and spinach that I really should harvest.  So our homegrown organic veggies will be supplementing meals from now on.  As far as fruit, I have pears, cherries, watermelon, and bananas, so those will supplement our breakfast meals.  I have some dehydrating and pickling experiments I want to try in the next couple of days with the watermelon.

Avivah

What to do with overripe bananas

frugal strategies

I realized that I never answered the question of what to do with overripe bananas, and now I’m sure it’s way too late for the person who asked.  But I’ll answer now and in case another great deal on very ripe bananas comes along, you’ll have the suggestions already. And if you took my advice a while back and froze them, you might still have them waiting in the freezer, hoping for inspiration to strike so you could use them.  🙂

I’ve already posted about how to freeze bananas.  So in this post I’ll write about what to do with those wonderful bargains on very ripe bananas that you find. 

If you freeze them, you can then defrost them for using in banana bread, banana muffins, banana cake, and banana cookies.  You can use it for a breakfast of baked banana oatmeal.  You get the idea.  Anything you can bake can have a banana version!

Blend the frozen bananas to make banana ice cream.  Cut them in slices and eat them as a frozen treat, or dip them in a peanut butter sauce for a really special treat.  Insert a popsicle stick in the banana before freezing, dip into a chocolate or carob sauce, roll in dried coconut or walnuts, and you have a tasty dessert for kids. 

Bananas are perfect for smoothies and shakes – they add sweetness and creaminess.

Slice them up and put them in the dehydrator to make leathery banana chips.  Blend them , put them in the dehydrator on the paraflexx sheet and make fruit leather – we’ve found that using bananas for part of the fruit leather combination is the key to success since it holds together well.

These are some things that we’ve done when we’ve had a lot of ripe or overripe bananas (and I have a bunch on the counter right now waiting to be dealt with, so you now what will happen to some of them!).  There are lots of other ideas and if anyone has tips to share or recipes that they’ve especially enjoyed, please share them!

Avivah

Family trip to amusement park

parenting

On Tuesday, I took the kids to a private person’s home to go fig picking, only to discover the figs weren’t yet ripe.  When we got home, I took them as a replacement activity to a friend’s pool.  While the kids spent a few hours there, I went to Home Depot to buy more pavers and sand to finish off the patio, then spent a VERY long time toiveling about 22 dozen canning jars.  I’m almost up to date now – I only have about five dozen left to kasher and toivel, and then all my jars will be ready for use.  Now I just have to refrain from buying any more, which I think I can do, though if I have the chance to get some for free I don’t think I’ll be able to withstand the test! 

I was so grateful as I was toiveling that a) almost no one else came during the entire time I was there – I would have hated to have had a line of people waiting; and b) the sky was overcast, and even though it was a hot and muggy day, it was comfortable.  I found it almost relaxing, and I was very glad to get it all done.  Then after coming home with everyone later in the day, I worked with the kids to finish laying the patio.  It’s not perfect, but I decided it was better to basically lay everything and level it more at a different time so we have a sense of closure for now.  We still have to cut bricks to fit into the edges, but I haven’t been successful yet in accurately cutting bricks with a chisel.  It’s on my list of things to work on. 🙂  But even though not totally finished and perfectly leveled, it still looks nice and it’s gratifying to be able to enjoy a lovely patio!

After all of that work, I was ready for a break!  Fortunately, we had a full day family trip planned for the next day (yesterday) to an amusement park several hours away called Knoebels.  In general, I’m not a fan of amusement parks – they’re expensive, loud, and overstimulating. But this park is different than most.  1) There’s no entrance fee – you pay only for the rides.  That means that adults who aren’t planning to ride can enjoy being with the family without being forced to buy an expensive ticket just to get in.  I appreciated this when we went two years ago and I was seven months pregnant with a child too young for rides in a stroller.  Also, there are various discount packages – the best of these is the one we took advantage of – unlimited rides (doesn’t include 5 or 6 of the most expensive rides, though) for four hours on Wed or Friday evenings, for 8.50 for adults and 6.50 for kids.  This is a super price and means our entire family can enjoy an amusement park for what we’d have to pay for three tickets at a typical park. 

It’s also not as commercial as most parks. It’s lower key and more homey, which I like, since I don’t like hyper energy or settings that are frenetic.  It’s still an amusement park – lots of flashing lights and noise, especially noticeable when watching the reactions of ds23 months and ds3- but it’s not overwhelming.  There aren’t long lines (at least not when we’ve been there), and it’s a family centered kind of park.  I think going at night also makes it feel more relaxed, not to mention cooler! 

They have this interesting sign that dh and I were remarking on, the rules of their modesty dress code.  The sign shows a picture of: sleeveless tank top – with an ok sign; sleeveless tank top that goes half way down – ok; bikini top – not okay.  Dh was kind of rolling his eyes at this, and while it may not be near our personal ideas of what modesty entail, having rules like that means that people are walking around with some kind of clothing, however skimpy.  They have other rules, too, like men must wear shirts, and shoes must be worn.   That may not sound like a big deal, but it makes a big difference in the kind of things you see – I remember often seeing people walking around shirtless or with different minimal combinations of bathing suits and clothes at amusement parks in the summers. 

However, we scheduled our trip at this time to coincide with two things: dd13’s birthday the day before, and ds16 being at camp.  As much as I think he’d enjoy it, and even though the lack of immodesty isn’t nearly as drastic as most parks, it’s not a place for a teen boy who tries to avoid these things.  When we were planning the trip he told us he wouldn’t come because of the immodesty factor, which we very much respected.  While there, I was also struck by the young teen couples walking with their arms around each other – all of a sudden I’m seeing these things through the eyes of a mother with a child that age, and it’s even more disturbing to me.  When I was a younger mother, teenagers seemed old enough to be distant to me.  But now I have children in those age ranges and it strikes me even more strongly how sad it is for kids to be so prematurely involved in boy/girl relationships.

We were comfortable letting the oldest five kids go around on their own, and they decided to break up into two groups: dd14 with ds10, and dd13 with dd8 and ds7.   Being able to go around on their own added the extra dimension of fun and independence for them. We spent the first two hours taking the littles on the kiddie rides – there were plenty of them.   We made arrangements with the kids in advance so that dh and I would also have a chance to enjoy some rides together, and arranged to meet dd14 and ds10 at 8 pm, so they could take the littles on rides for an hour.  When they met us we all went on the ferris wheel together, and by the time we got off, it was already 8:30. 

After making sure the baby was fed and diapered, dh and I dashed off to have a little fun alone.  I haven’t been on rides in an amusement park for 18 years!!  Before our trip I mentioned that I used to love amusement parks, particularly the very thrilling and scary roller coasters, and dh and the kids were all surprised – they had no idea!  As I mentioned, last time by default I ended up being the one to stay with the baby in the stroller and watched everyone else go on the rides, and this time dh insisted that I get to enjoy myself also.  We were supposed to meet the kids at 9 pm but were delayed by a roller coaster that didn’t look exciting but was remarkably unassuming (especially exciting for the first person in the train, who happened to be me – I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face)!  

We met the kids again at 9:15, the same time as dd13 arrived with dd8 and ds7.  They were meeting us there to take their shift with the littles and it worked out perfectly that they got there late, since it meant that both groups of older kids only had 45 minutes shifts.  Dd14 and ds10 ran off for more fun together, and we left the littles at the kiddie bumper cars with the other dd13 and her entourage, which ds3 loved and ds23 months didn’t (they stopped the ride to let him off because he started screaming – the man who ran the ride was very nice and saw he didn’t know how to push on the pedal and go, so he sat on the end of his kiddie car to help him, which scared ds because he’s a stranger too close with all of us too far and that’s why he cried – he wouldn’t have minded sitting there and getting bumped by everyone else). 

Then dh and I went on a couple more rides together – the Flume was our favorite.  That’s a water ride when you sit in a ‘log’ and go up and around and down with a huge splash soaking you at the end.  It was so relaxing (except for the final big splash, but that was refreshing!).  We love spending time with our children but there’s something so nice about being able to be alone and do something light purely for the sake of fun without them.  Every time dh and I get out of the house together, it recharges us in a way that spending time alone at home together doesn’t.

We ate a picnic dinner before we went into the park, and then took some treats in with us – a bag of chips and a bar of chocolate for each child.  Because this isn’t something they have all the time, it added to their feeling of having a special trip.  I was concerned about how the littles would handle the very long day with no nap (aside from falling asleep for an hour on the way there) and being up late, but they did great. 

We all had a really nice time.  We finished up by watching teens at the water park diving off the high board while dh davened mincha.  It was a good way to key down before getting into the van and starting the long drive home.  Last time we went we made it a two day trip and stayed in the campgrounds right there, but this time didn’t want to do that.  It was a very long day, since we had a three hour drive in each direction, and we got home at 2:15 am. 

Now you know why I didn’t post yesterday! 

Avivah

Fostering family connectedness

homeschooling, parenting,

>>i am curious how you foster such a feeling of family connectedness. how do you get your kids to feel like they are all on a team and they need to help each other? perhaps it is a corralary of them growing up all together instead of being farmed out to schools, but your family really seems to band together and i would love to have more of that here. any suggestions??<<

 I addressed this somewhat a year ago – http://vibrantmoms.com/parenting/kids-helping-each-other-and-being-responsive-to-moms-requests/.  But I was thinking more about this.  Sometimes we do things and we’re consciously trying to get certain results, and sometimes we do things and we don’t realize that we’re doing something that’s creating the results.  Was that sentence way too confusing?  🙂 

Anyway, this question falls into the second category for me, so I needed to think about this.  We do have a strong sense of family connectedness, but I didn’t specifically try to create that.  I would tell you that we spend a lot of time together and that we have expectations of how family members treat one another, and my expectation rubs off on everyone.  But that’s not so helpful as a practical suggestion, and since there are families that spend a lot of time together but they don’t feel like a team, it’s not by itself enough.  I do think having a lot of time together is a key component, though – it establishes a framework for everything else to happen in. 

I’ve been thinking about this since I got this question last week.  I asked my husband and he said he thinks we expect everyone to be a team and they are.  But I started listening to myself talk to the kids and realized that the way I talk builds this up.  For example, instead of putting the baby down in his bassinet, I put him on the couch and told my ds3, “Can you take care of your little brother and make sure he doesn’t fall off the couch while I get a drink of water?”  (Baby doesn’t roll and was tucked into the side of the couch away from the floor.)   Did I need him to watch the baby for thirty seconds?  No.  But I try to give them opportunities from the time they’re young to take care of each other. 

When I have something to give to a child, I very often ask one of the kids to give it to the other.  This can be something as simple as giving a sibling a fork or a piece of fruit.  Sometimes this is a help for me and sometimes it would be easier for me to give it to them myself.  But I want them to have the feeling of giving and getting something nice from one another.  If someone gets himself a drink, I’ll suggest they give a sibling a drink, too.  Just now, my ds7 asked if he could peel a carrot for himself.  I told him if he peels one for ds3 also, then it’s fine with me.  I wouldn’t have been likely to have said yes close to dinner to his request for just himself.  So he gets the message that helping his brother helps him, too.  Even with my baby, who’s just 2 months old, when I pass him to his siblings to be held, I tell him how lucky he is to have big brothers and sisters who love him so much.  Little things like this, all day long, day after day really build up the message that we love each other and take care of one another. 

Rav Dessler wrote that giving brings to love.  Culturally, we think of love in terms of what we get from someone, but it’s not true. Why do we love the tiny infant so much, so soon?  Because we’re immersed in giving to him all day long.  The more we give, the more we love, and when we encourage our kids to do things for one another, then that builds the love and connection they feel. 

My part in building this dynamic is to support it from a very young age. I encourage my kids to play mostly with each other and to view friends as supplemental. In fact, if someone isn’t behaving kindly to his sibling, there is no way I will allow him to play with a friend until he has remedied that (and I don’t mean a quick ‘sorry’, either).  They all have friends outside of the home, but the quality of the relationships the kids build while living at home together is the foundation of their adult relationships that they’ll further develop when they get older.  I want my kids to have strong relationships with one another that will be a source of strength and support as they get older.  If it doesn’t begin now, when will it happen? 

Avivah

Recycling jars for canning

canning, food preservation, frugal strategies

Today I was soaking some empty food jars I had saved (peanut butter, mayonnaise) to get the labels off so I can reuse them for canning.  That’s the best kind of recycling, don’t you think? 🙂    Then I soaked several more that I was given last week – I got six dozen jars for free, and about six of them had labels on them.   When I glanced in the box and noticed that, there was a feeling of, ‘oh, not real canning jars, but they’ll come in handy anyway’.  But it was really interesting to see that after I soaked the labels off, they were literally identical to Atlas mason jars in every regard, including the name of the canning company on it!  Then I remembered reading something posted by a long term canner about this, who always buys the spaghetti sauce in a jar made by a particular company (wasn’t kosher) because she gets the sauce along with a free canning jar. So while these particular jars were about ten years old, it’s still possible to get canning jars after eating up the supermarket foods that they contain.

As long as the glass jars fit the standard canning jar lids, you can use them for canning, in addition to storing anything that you find helpful.  In addition to using them for canning, I also like using glass jars for storing my dehydrated foods, grains, and other pantry items, so they come in handy.  

Some will say that you can only use jars that were specifically manufactured for canning, and that it’s unsafe to use other jars.   When I read this a few days ago in a local newspaper, I also noted a recommendation from the same writer to never reuse canning jar bands – because it’s not safe.  I don’t like when people feel they have to err on the side of caution to the point that everything becomes off limits and has warnings on it, even when it makes no sense.  The recommendation to throw away bands after one use unnecessarily brings up the cost of canning and is wasteful – I commented to my kids that anyone following that advice would at least be doing their part to stimulate the economy, since the ones to benefit from the suggestion are the companies that manufacture canning lids/bands.  And the writer also commented that canned goods have to be stored with the bands on them, which is exactly the opposite of what you’re supposed to do. sigh.gif

Is it actually unsafe to reuse jars that mayonnaise or peanut butter come in?  Though this is frequently cited as a safety issue, I don’t believe it is.  I’ve seen a number of people who have been canning for years post online about their experience with used canning jars.  All of them have said they haven’t noticed a difference between the breakage rate of used glass jars and specially made canning jars. Some have noted that the canning jars are in some instances thinner than the recycled jars.  Some have said that they’ve taken the precaution of only using those jars for water bath canning versus pressure canning, which makes sense to me, if you feel the mayonnaise jars are made of thinner glass and wouldn’t be able to stand up to the higher pressure. 

I’ve had jars break in the canner during processing, but all of those that broke were standard canning jars.  That happened in my early days of canning, and it was my inexperience in canning that lead to that, not a defect in the jars.  So far I haven’t made any attempt to treat the recycled jars differently than the canning jars, and haven’t had any breakage issues with them. 

I also like the ‘twofer’ aspect of buying food in glass jars and then being able to use the packaging the food came in.  Unfortunately, so many foods now come in plastic jars that it’s not as easy to find glass jars to recycle! (And the kosher companies don’t use standard sized jars for the most part – all those gefilte fish jars weren’t helpful when it came to canning.  But I did use them to give Chanuka gifts in, so they were still useful. :))   These particular jars came from a health version of mayo and the others from organic and sugar free peanut butter; I think that the healthier items tend to be packed in glass rather than plastic.

After soaking off the labels, I spent a very long time in the kitchen kashering used canning jars that I either purchased or was given.  The jars I bought several months ago were mostly still unkashered, so when I got this latest batch of six dozen, it was an incentive for me to get myself busy to clear the backlog.  I was getting tired after seven or eight dozen, and then noticed that my ds16 had kashered 4 dozen instead of the two dozen I thought he did (he marked the boxes a few months ago when he did them), and washed another couple of dozen in preparation for kashering (washing them is a chore since they have to be spotless and that’s not always easy).  Tonight when I write him a letter (since he’s in camp) you can be sure I’ll be thanking him for that! 

I still have another four dozen to go, but decided to have mercy on myself and call it quits for tonight.  Tomorrow I hope to toivel them, along with a bunch of new lids.  (Rav Heinemann told us we have to toivel the lids, even if using them one time – and since I’m going with his psak on kashering used jars, I have to go along with that, too! :))  Since I have at least twelve dozen to toivel, that will be an activity.  Good thing it’s not a busy time of year for this kind of thing; can you imagine the line I’d cause if I was doing this around Pesach time?!

If you’re wondering how many jars I have by now (Julie, you’re keeping track better than me!), I really have no idea.  It doesn’t seem like so many.  But I decided today that though a person can say that they never can have too many canning jars, I have an excess of the half pint size (some of you may remember last summer when I bought more than 30 dozen in that size, all brand new)- it’s not practical for my family at all since it’s so small; it’s like a one person serving!  I think I’ll sell them or take quart or pint sized jars in exchange. 

Avivah

Flavor of coconut oil

nutrition

>>I have a question about dfifferent brands of coconut oil and their taste.  I went to my local health food store and they had a couple of brands of coconut oil (either expeller pressed, virgin or extra-virgin).  I asked one of the sales people about the flavor and she said they are all pretty coconut flavored.  I want to make both sweet and savory foods and I cannot imagine coconut flavor going over well in a Italian or Mediterranean dish :).  Can you help with a brand that will fit that need?  I can buy a jar of the other kind for sweet foods and for skin care, etc. <<

This just goes to show that just because someone works in a health food store, they won’t necessarily have accurate knowledge of all products!  Extra virgin is the best quality and will definitely have a coconut flavor.  If it’s expeller pressed, it’s odorless and flavorless.  I use expeller pressed for most of my baking and cooking, when I don’t want a coconut flavor. 

There are apparently differences between the flavors of extra virgin coconut oils, but I’m not very sensitive to the differences.  I’m currently using Golden Barrel expeller pressed and Mountain Herbs extra virgin coconut oil, and am satisfied with them both. I’ve also used Spectrum and Omega extra virgin, and they were also both good.  If anyone would like to share their experience or preferences for certain coconut oils, please do in the comment section below – others considering using and learning about coconut oil will find it helpful!

Avivah