No, I haven’t fallen off the other side of the world!  My evenings lately have been full with attending the weddings of friends’ children, doing parenting consultations and getting to sleep at a reasonable hour – all of which has limited my writing time here.

My mom arrived for a visit today and for dinner ds9 put together a bagel spread in honor of her coming.

A few weeks ago I was given a stack of Hebrew language magazines that I gave to him, and he discovered that each one had a recipe.  He started by making baguettes (by himself), then asked if he could make bagels.  I thought that was a bit ambitious for a nine year old relatively new to baking to do on his own, but since I try to give my kids support in doing something that interests them I told him he was welcome to go ahead.

He impressed us all and did an amazing job.  They were delicious!  (And when ds16 was home for Chanuka vacation and wanted to make bagels, he turned to ds9 when he had a question on proper procedure – which ds9 answered with forced patience.  :))

Then I found wheat berries at the store and that coincided with someone bringing me the part for the electric grain grinder that has been unusable for a looong time… and for the first time since we left the US in August 2011, we had freshly ground whole wheat flour!

Ds9 has made bagels at least once a week in the last month (which makes us all happy – who wouldn’t be glad to have fresh bagels for lunch or dinner?), and told my mother that he planned to make some for her when she came to visit.  Today he went shopping with me to get additional ingredients he wanted – sesame seeds and dehydrated onions to top the bagels, sliced cheese, cream cheese and hummus as options for the filling.

When we got home, he got busy grinding flour, and decided to make the bagels a mix of white and whole wheat flour since he said it would make the texture better than just whole wheat alone.  It did.

Then he set the table for dinner, put out fresh vegetables, spreads and of course, a stack of his freshly made bagels.  And then…it was amusing how quickly everyone came to the table once he announced dinner was ready.   🙂

I looked over at one point and noticed ds3 eating what looked like everyone else’s very non-gluten free bagels.  When we went shopping, we had bought him gluten-free rolls and ds9 said he could cut a hole from the center so ds3 would feel he was eating a bagel like everyone else.  But what I saw on his plate was most decidedly not the gluten-free rolls that I bought.

Ds3 likes to eat what everyone else is having and sometimes will sneak some bread if he can, and I thought maybe without anyone realizing he had taken a regular bagel.  I asked about it and ds9 told me it was gluten-free.  I wondered aloud how that was possible since it wasn’t the bread I bought.

Ds9 told me he made bagels out of coconut flour and topped them with dehydrated onions so that ds3 would have bagels that looked the same as everyone else’s.  Wasn’t that thoughtful?  (Don’t ask me how he knew how to make a gluten free bagel, I think he made it up!)

Avivah