Avivah Werner

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  • Freezer crisis mostly averted, but I am SO busy doing damage control

    Well, it looks like my freezer has given up the ghost.

    Unfortunately, it was packed with meat, chicken and fish that I had ordered for the holidays. I was able to put a good amount into the top freezer of my fridge and my smaller fridge in my guest apartment. I cooked generously for Shabbos, using some of the defrosting item. But about fifteen pounds of beef bones and six pounds of tilapia couldn’t be fit anywhere, no matter how tightly we packed it in. And just when I thought that’s all I had left to deal with, I found another six pounds of tilapia, three large roasts and a package of ground beef.

    Tonight we’ll be hosting a mens’ gathering for Rosh Hashana, with a focus on shared inspiration and words of Torah. I was intending to make some refreshments, but my husband suggested we upgrade the menu and serve some of the tilapia that is defrosted. That should be nice and I think the men will enjoy it. I’m thinking of trying something new – making pickled fish. That will be a project using the tilapia tomorrow.

    I made ten different meat/chicken meals for my boys (using the defrosting chicken and meat) and plunked them in the canner. Unfortunately, the canner malfunctioned – steam was leaking out and it wasn’t building adequate pressure. I’ve never had this issue and I was feeling somewhat pressured that right when I have all this stuff that needs to be preserved to save it, my canner isn’t working.

    I searched online for what could be causing the problem and tried canning a load using the suggestions I found. No luck. The next night I examined the top of the canner closely, trying to see what could be causing the problem. I was already imagining having to order replacement parts from the US, and how maybe that wouldn’t even solve the problem, when I noticed that a piece that screws together was a little loose. I tightened it, put in a new load and held my breath waiting to see if it would build pressure.

    I was so thankful when it worked!

    (Have you ever noticed how you’re more appreciative for something after it hasn’t been working and then starts functioning well?)

    Now I’m canning up the beef bones that are small enough to fit in a jar; I bought them to use for cholent and can still use the canned bones in this way. The bigger bones are being made into a huge pot of broth. I’m going to reduce it down and then can it, since that’s the most efficient way for me to use it. I’ll do a load of meat in the canner tonight, and tomorrow I’ll can the broth.

    Whew. Each canner load takes three and a half hours from start to finish. It’s been a bit of a marathon.

    I bought this freezer several years ago from someone who personally imported it from the US, and there’s nothing for sale here near that size. It’s huge and I’ve really appreciated having it. When I buy a case of meat, it slides right in. But there’s a point where you have to be willing to let go of things that are costing too much time or energy to maintain. Three months ago I had this same problem, and paid 600 shekels to have the refrigerant gas refilled. I hoped it would last for several years. It hasn’t and continuing repair costs aren’t justified.

    The freezer is still cool, though not freezing, so I’m going to hold on to it as a cooler until after the holidays. Thanks to this freezer issue and the need to deal with so much meat/chicken, I got behind with the produce, and now have grapes and lemons waiting to be made into juice, and apples, nectarines and pears waiting to be made into compote. I am thankful for the abundance we have, and I’m also very conscious of the work that goes into preserving it all. That’s often how frugality is – you can save a lot but there’s a cost in your time and energy.

    With Rosh Hashana coming up next week, I need to get all of this produce out of my fridge and make room for cooked holiday foods. I hope tomorrow to make the last batch of grape juice. then make a pot of compote using the ripest fruit. The apples and lemons can go into my freezer-turned-cooler; that will be helpful in acting as a holding place and giving me some breathing space while I focus on all the meats and fish.

    Avivah

  • Sending food, sending love

    In my last post, I shared about processing jars of home cooked stews and meats for my boys in a dorm. It’s shelf-stable and they just have to heat it up. In response, someone commented:

    >>The soup/stew solution seems like a really good start, but hard on you.<<

    I appreciated the intent to offer suggestions that would make it easier for me and put the ball in their court.

    My kids are very capable – very. Though I understate my kids’ abilities and capacities when writing about them, I can safely say you won’t find many boys their ages as capable as they are. They can certainly shop and cook for themselves; they don’t need me to help them find a solution for this. Since they don’t have cooking facilities, their solutions are unlikely to be as good as mine, but they aren’t spoiled and have a make-do-with-a-good-attitude ethic.

    But you know what? I want to do this for them. In so many ways, doing this for them says, ‘I love you’. Every time they heat up a jar of food I prepared for them, whether they think of it consciously or not, they’re imbibing some of my love, knowing that I went out of my way because I love them, and connecting to that love.

    I’m not interested in skimping on that. I’m not so busy with more important things in my life that this is a pressure for me, or one more thing to do on my overly full to-do list. I do have a list that doesn’t seem to get much smaller regardless of what I do, but being present for my children and having a relationship with them is high on my list – even if they’re far away and it’s a non-verbal food interaction. Not only is making this food not hard on me, I welcome the opportunity to show them how much they matter to me.

    There are different ways to show love, and people perceive love that is given to them in different ways. For my older son, I know this is meaningful for him. Someone else might say, ‘Meh, nice but it really doesn’t matter much to me.’

    I’m so, so aware of how quickly time goes by, how short the time with our children is. The process of growing up is gradual, a constant spreading of one’s wings and becoming more independent. Independence doesn’t happen suddenly when they go away to school or get married. The relationship with a child changes as they go through increasing levels of independence, and by necessity your active role in their lives shifts.

    We tend to associate food with times we spent with love ones, with warm memories, with feelings of being cared about and taken care of. Good food, served with love, has the ability to reach a person in ways that other things don’t.

    I can give my boys money to buy food if they need to, and I’m glad to do it. But feeling loved through the money for food is more distant than feeling loved by eating the food itself.

    Preparing food so my boys can have a home cooked meal whenever they’re hungry is something I can do for my older son this year. This is when he needs it and especially appreciates it. Next year he’ll be in yeshiva gedolah, where the food is usually much better, so this probably won’t be needed.

    I’m embracing the opportunity that I have now to send my sons love from a distance. It only looks like jars of food sitting on their shelves. But now you know what it really is.

    Avivah

  • How I’m providing nourishing food to our boys in a dorm

    >>I know how you cook and care about feeding your family nourishing meals- how do you “handle” (for lack of better word, handle seems a bit dramatic), your kids’ diets while they are away in their schools?  <<

    We’ve found the meals in Israeli dorms in the past to be decent, with good amounts of protein and fresh produce. It helps that my children aren’t picky eaters. I don’t really worry about their food once they’re out of the house; I assume they’ll make the choices that are right for them and work within the parameters of what’s available. They do appreciate home cooked food much more when they come home, though!

    However, at the current yeshiva both my boys are at, the menu seems to be scaled down; it’s heavy on the starches and light on proteins; there’s hardly any fresh produce. This isn’t a complaint; I think this is typical of yeshiva ketanas, and that the yeshiva high school my boys attended in the past had unusually good food. In any case, we have a situation we haven’t had come up before.

    When I spoke with my sixteen year old son at the end of last week, he mentioned how helpful it was that I sent them with so much tuna, since he eats a can every day.

    I sent it thinking it would be something he would have once in a while, and asked him why he was eating it so often. He explained that if he doesn’t have it a couple of hours after lunch, he’s so hungry he can’t think about anything but eating dinner the entire afternoon. He’s never said anything like this, so I asked him about what and how much he was eating. Since he has a cavity that just started that he wants to heal, he’s trying to avoid processed carbs. That’s the bulk of what is served at his school, and since he’s not able to fill up on bread/pasta/white rice, the small amounts of protein leave him unsatisfied.

    I wondered what I could do about this. What could I send him other than tuna? I wanted him to have foods that would be satiating. Cookies and crackers wouldn’t be helpful, nor would any of the snack foods available in the stores. I couldn’t think of anything that would be filling that doesn’t need refrigeration or involve some kind of preparation.

    Then I had a brainstorm. I asked him if he had room in the dorm for electric burners and a pot. He said he did. I asked if I sent him home canned foods, would he heat them up and eat them? Yes, he would.

    I offered to make him some hearty homemade soups to supplement his diet and asked what he wanted. He requested split pea soup, so that’s what I started with. I made a thick stew with a generous amount of rich broth, to pack in nutrition and calories; he could eat as-is or thin it down for a more typical soup consistency.

    I pressure canned seven liters of the soup, as well as seven pints of chicken wings. When ds15 returned back to yeshiva after Shabbos, he was traveling by bus with just a backpack and therefore could only take only a few of the jars back with him. Ds16 called to tell me that even without being able to heat it up, he enjoyed it at room temperature.

    One jar is four cups of soup, and is enough for both boys to supplement one school lunch. Based on their feedback, though, from now on I’m going to can pint sized jars for them, so they can eat separately according to their schedules. This week I’ll make them some beef stew, and by periodically canning different dishes, they’ll have some variety.

    This Shabbos both boys will be coming home, and I’m planning to send them back to yeshiva with a suitcase containing the burners, pot, and jars of food. They’ll bring the empty jars home for me to reuse. I’m also going to send some fresh vegetables and fruit, and a frozen bottle of raw goat milk. I suggested he buy yogurts and produce at a local store to supplement.

    This is a first for me. Until now, the food served at the dorms has been adequate for all of our boys. In this case, I’m sure they could have found a different solution, but this is one that I feel good about nutritionally. I hope this will be a good solution to keep them nourished from a distance!

    Avivah

  • My new steam juicer, clearing out the freezer, and finally fixing the dehydrator

    My son recently visited the US and brought back for me my latest kitchen tool, a steam juicer. I had put a lot of grapes in the freezer knowing he would be bringing it to me when he came for this past Shabbos, and yesterday I had a full day of experimenting with my new plaything.

    A steam juicer is basically a large pot that has three sections that nest inside one another: the bottom holds the boiling water, the middle collects the juice, and the top is a colander that the fruit or vegetables are put into. There is a plastic tube that leads from the center juice receptacle to whatever container you want to put the juice in.

    The basic idea is that rather than blend/mash/cook/strain the grapes to make juice, you can steam them and skip all those steps. It took longer than I expected for the juice to be extracted and I was a bit impatient waiting for it to be done, wondering if this had been a worthwhile purchase or not. After a few hours I realized that I had slowed down the process significantly by not keeping the juicer at a high heat the entire time. (I was afraid that the water in the bottom section would boil dry, and thought that keeping it at a simmer would be effective and minimize the likelihood of burning the pot). Once I realized my mistake, it went much more quickly. But it’s not a fast process.

    The last time I made grape juice I added water while the grapes were cooking. Since I wasn’t sure of the exact dilution, there was a question about if the bracha was still hagafen or not, so we didn’t want to use it for kiddush on Shabbos. This time I made sure it was 100% grape juice.

    Once I had eight liters of juice, I began canning the juice in jars so they would be shelf stable, while simultaneously adding a fresh batch of grapes to the juicer. In the end I processed 16 quarts of juice.

    My conclusion on the steam juicer is that I’m glad that I bought it since the actual hands on time to make the juice is cut down quite a bit, so I was able to do other things while the steamer basically made the juice for me. The end product is nice and clear, and the flavor is excellent. Now that I have a steam juicer, I’ll be looking for other opportunities to put it to use and justify the space it takes up in the cabinet!

    I bought my dehydrator back in 2009, and it served me well until last year it suddenly stopped working.

    I wasn’t sure what was wrong with it, but since it’s basically a simple contraption, figured it could only be one of two possibilities. When I originally bought the dehydrator, I got a reconditioned one for $150. To buy the same thing new at this time would be $319, so the investment in a couple of parts seemed like a worthwhile choice. I bought a thermal fuse and a motor from the online store for about $50, but they don’t ship to Israel so I waited for many months until my husband made a trip to the US and was able to bring them back.

    My husband brought back the replacement parts in February but putting them in was low on the priority list of projects. When he was ready to replace the parts, the transformer had blown. Since I bought and used my dehydrator when living in the US, it runs on 110 electricity and needs a transformer to be used here. I had to get the part for that to be fixed before working on the dehydrator.

    I was taken aback and discouraged that I couldn’t find any local hardware stores that had the size fuse I needed. I made two separate trips to RBS over a period of several weeks and each time looked for the fuse; thankfully I finally found it the second time, when I took the boys to yeshiva for their first day. I did not like that several of my appliances are dependent on a five shekel fuse that I couldn’t find, and they couldn’t be used for weeks while I was searching for the fuses. I don’t want to be in that situation again if I can help it, so when I found them, I bought four extras to have on hand.

    After all this time and effort, I finally have a working dehydrator again! I wanted to clear the freezer since I’m getting my chicken and meat order for the holidays soon, and need to make space. In addition to taking out the grapes, I took out all the frozen peas and frozen mixed vegetables, four bags of each, and put them all in the trays to dehydrate.

    Once they were finished drying and had cooled off completely, I put them in containers on the shelf, and am ready for my meat pickup later today! I like canning so much and it has its advantages, but it can’t compare with how compact and lightweight food is after being dehydrated.

    Avivah

  • From expansion to contraction – so many children leaving home at once!

    We’ve been enjoying our summer with lots of guests and activities! For the past few weeks my oldest daughter was staying in the house behind us so on most days we had twice daily visits from her with our grandchildren. Then our second daughter came with her family for Shabbos, joining our 21 year old daughter and all the boys other than ds20 were home (he went back to yeshiva early to get settled in). It was so, so lovely to have Shabbos together with all of them.

    From expansion to contraction – it happens abruptly. On Saturday night, our second daughter’s family left. Sunday morning I took our sixteen and fourteen year old sons to yeshiva in RBS; our 21 year old came along and I dropped her off at a bus stop to Jerusalem. I returned in the evening and learned that our oldest daughter and her family had returned to their home that day. So it’s just me, my husband and the three youngest boys at home now. Two of them will be starting school in a few hours; by the time you read this they’ll already be sitting in their classrooms.

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    Last night I attended the introductory meeting for mothers for my five year old’s class. I was the first mother to arrive, and I had time to say only ‘Hello’ before the teacher exclaimed, “Let me guess whose mother you are!” (She met the students when she came in one day during camp.) I waited for a moment, and she guessed, “Rafael Werner!”

    Right, I told her with a smile. (She accurately guessed all the other mothers who arrived afterwards as well.) “I could tell because he looks just like you.” Isn’t that nice? She’s not the first one to say he looks like me! But she’ll probably be surprised when she eventually learns that he’s not my biological child.

    Afterward the general meeting she commented I had been quiet. I told her I didn’t come to talk, but to hear what she had to say. It’s an hour drive to the school, so it’s a commitment of several hours for me to attend. I make the effort not because I learn anything important for me, but because I want his teacher to know who Rafael’s mother is and to be aware that we’re actively involved in his education.

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    It’s been a long summer but it seems to have gone by so quickly! We chose to keep ds10 and ds5 home for six of the eight week vacation; I enjoyed having them home and at the same time, feel ready for them to go back to school. Not with a sense of, ‘finally, I get time to myself!’ More like, they’ve been filled up by all this time and they’re ready to fully benefit from their time in school, and for the first time I’m sending them without any ambivalence.

    As we did last year, the boys will leave school by 1 pm, returning around 2 pm. This is unusual since the school day is officially over at 2:30 and all the other children stay for the afternoon program, which ends at 5 pm (they would get home close to 6:30 pm). Some of you will remember that we started this arrangement the year before last, when ds10 began attending this school towards the end of the year. We were told this was the only time slot available for transportation for him. Then last year, I told them we would be willing to take that slot again, and at the end of the year filed a formal request for them to be allowed to leave school early.

    So this year we’re doing the same early dismissal for them. 

    Don’t think they come home and I fill their day with lots of enriching activities. I don’t. I don’t ignore them all afternoon, but we made the above choice with the understanding that it’s draining to be in school, and we want them to have the downtime to relax. When I can do activities with them, I do, but I also appreciate that they know how to constructively occupy themselves together. 

    (The most important aspect of this choice is that it’s much harder to be emotionally connected to a child/parents you hardly see, and we like to be around our children and for them to be around us. )

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    My fourteen year old is now attending the same yeshiva as his brother. He’s been homeschooled for most of his life (he attended gan/kindergarten for 18 months after moving to Israel eleven years ago), he’s a very likeable and enjoyable person to spend time with, and it wasn’t easy to think of him leaving for a dorm. I just tried not to think about it. Then a little thing – seeing a bowl of freshly gathered eggs from his coop and thinking he won’t be here to gather them anymore – got me all choked up before he left and it was hard to reel that sadness back in. Sometimes feelings come out unexpectedly sideways.

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    A number of people have asked me why I chose to send a child to yeshiva, when he was excelling in every way when homeschooled. It was a hard decision, and I spent several months thinking about it before bringing it up to my son. When a child is so happy with their lives, when it’s so well-balanced (spiritually and materially) and filled with good things, it’s hard to change anything. Why mess with success?

    I knew that my son could continue in the path he’s on, and would do well. But as I told him, we’re put in this world to grow, not to stay comfortable. I want him to expand as a ben Torah, specifically in reaching higher levels of Torah learning and in connecting with a variety of Torah role models, and that meant sending him somewhere where he could access more opportunities. As much as I strongly value having my children living at home, building relationships with them daily….his spiritual development is even more important to me at this stage of his life.

    We talked about this a lot. He was concerned that the long day of learning would be difficult and stressful; his hesitation was if he was unhappy, then that wouldn’t constitute growth. I suggested he look at being at yeshiva as a different kind of happiness; rather than as giving up everything that makes him happy now, he could focus on the gains he was making. I told him that what he has here now will be waiting for him if he chooses to come back to it, but the opportunity to go to yeshiva at this stage of life will pass.

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    So what will I do with myself now that I’m officially homeschooling just my thirteen year old? I don’t know yet. I do know that I want to be very conscious of spending time with him. The dynamics change every time a child leaves home, and this time the dynamics are shifting in a big way. We’ve never had just one child being homeschooled before. There have always been siblings to do things with.

    Last year, when ds5 began school, I had time in the morning for myself, something I hadn’t had for many years. But I still had two teen boys in and out of the house all day. My bedroom is like Grand Central. I go in there to take a nap, and within a short time everyone follows me. It’s uncanny how that happens. 🙂 During vacation I can easily have five or six of my sons sitting around there at one time. 

    Each time one of our children has moved out, it positively shifts my relationship with the next child in line as they become the oldest in the house and have more time one on one with me. I know how fast time passes, how quickly our children grow up, and I don’t want to get so busy with other activities that I let this time with ds13 slip away.

    What that means practically speaking is that I’m considering scheduling our morning time to ensure that we don’t miss each other, so that our schedules coordinate. This has been a challenge for me and ds13 until recently, as he was a night owl and I get up early. By the time he would get home from shul and daily learning, I’d be ready for my midday rest; he’d be ready to talk late at night when I could hardly keep my eyes open. After his bar mitzva three months ago, he began going to sleep earlier in order to be at shul by 6 am. That has meant that our schedules are much more naturally aligned than they were in the past. 

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    For those of you beginning a new school year, whether at home or at school, I wish you a wonderful start!

    Avivah

  • Waste not, want not – do you need it, can you extend it, can you upcycle it?

    There’s a pithy phrase that was popularized in the WW2 era: ‘Waste not, want not’. There are so many resources available to us and when we look at them with a creative set of eyes, you’ll often find more life left in that item than you previously assumed. Do you need it, can you extend it, or can you upcycle it to use it differently?

    Here are some examples:

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    Food – Do you need to use the expensive ingredients listed in the recipe, or can less costly similar ingredients be substituted? Can you prepare less of the dish rather than be left with leftovers that end up being thrown away? Can you cut down on the frequency of meat meals, and integrate meatless meals during the week?

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    Repurposing clothing – My son ripped the elbow of a high quality shirt that was in excellent condition. Patching that wouldn’t be doable or aesthetic, so I headed to YouTube to watch a video on how to turn a long-sleeved shirt into a short-sleeved shirt. It was the first time doing this for me and my first attempt wasn’t perfect, but it looks pretty good. Next my husband asked if I could do the same to a cufflink shirt of his; he now has two ‘new’ work shirts.

    Another example: my boys are hard on pants, and I periodically recycle their ‘good’ pants to ‘work’ pants. That is almost always because they’ve ripped the knees. I patch them from behind using material from a pair of pants that I keep for this purpose, then reinforce the patch at the knees and the areas around it repeatedly so they’re very strong. I do it all with the same color thread as the pants, and this extends the life of them for a long time as work pants. They do a lot of hiking/biking, outdoor work and home repair work, so these pants get a lot of use.

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    Spatula, a valuable frugal tool – Ds10 and ds5 and I made banana muffins yesterday. Ds10 wanted to taste the batter and I told him he could lick out the bowl when we finished. He was dismayed when I took out a spatula and ran it along the bowl, scraping out enough for two or three more muffins. He still got to lick the bowl but it didn’t have the generous amount leftover that he was hoping for! A spatula is a simple thing but it’s amazing how much you can get out of that can or container or bowl by scraping it with the spatula.

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    Repurposing containers – At the same time that there’s a huge industry selling us storage containers to organize items in our homes, there are many free containers that come into the home that can be productively reused, reducing or eliminating the need to buy the ‘storage solutions’. Here in Israel when we buy screws and nails, they are sold from bulk bins and you bag the amount you want. So you don’t come home with a box for them. My husband recently was organizing the hardware and found that the peanut butter jars with screw on lids were perfect for keeping nails and screws organized well.

    And then there’s the glass jars and bottles that store bought food comes in. I didn’t use to reuse them because I didn’t see the value of the recycled containers or cleaning them out seemed like too much work, but now have recognized how useful they can be! So now I reuse most of the glass jars that come into our home. If the jars have metal pop-top lids, I use them for canning. If not, I use them for storage.

    Lately I’ve been saving glass grape juice bottles rather than recycle them – until now I’ve been storing our goat milk in recycled plastic water bottles, and while plastic has its advantages, glass is a healthier option for storing food.

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    Saving electricity – Electricity costs have gone up world-wide, and that’s motivated me to be more conscious of all the quiet leakage going on in our home. Though we hardly use air conditioning, we regularly have way more lights and ceiling fans on than we need. Someone leaves a room without turning off the light, then goes into the next room and turns on the light – and so it goes. I’ve begun asking our boys to be more conscious of this, and while I don’t go around all day long being the electricity police, I do turn off lights and fans that aren’t in use. I’ve explained to them there’s no use spending money on something that brings us no benefit; it’s just throwing money in the garbage.

    Building supplies and natural resources – My son dug up a lot of dirt in the backyard when preparing to build a shed. He piled it to the side of the yard and left it while he was building the shed. Once the shed was done, it was time to find a place for this dirt. The easiest thing would have been to dump it. However, I wanted to build a raised garden bed, and it made no sense to dump it and then at a later time to dig up more dirt to fill the raised bed. We also had pallet wood in the spot that the shed was built that we needed to find a new home for, so I asked him to use the wood to build a garden bed. He built the raised bed using the pallet wood scraps, filled the bottom of the raised bed with more wood scraps hugelkultur style, and then dumped all the dirt on top. (Though the dirt is low quality fill dirt that will have to be actively enriched to be a decent growing medium, it was still worthwhile to do this.)

    I’ve been looking for a rack to hang in the kitchen to organize brooms, dustpans and sponja sticks for ages. I know they exist but haven’t found one. Finally, I asked my husband if he could make something for me. Using a scrap of white painted wood (a castoff from another project), he attached hooks along the length of it. Then he screwed a wire ring into the end of the sponja stick so it could be hung; the brooms already had holes in the handles. Free, using what we already had in the house, and now my kitchen is better organized.

    These are just some ideas to get you thinking creatively, not a complete list of things we’ve done. I could give you so many more examples – we do this regularly because it’s an extension of the way we think: to look for ways to use our resources wisely and responsibly. It’s particularly satisfying to create something useful from something that seemed destined for the garbage/recycling. And I also appreciate when we are able to put in the effort to maintain an item rather than replace it.

    I do want to clarify that I don’t like clutter, so this doesn’t mean keeping a huge amount of stuff piled around. If it’s something I’m not likely to reuse, I rehome it as quickly as I can so it doesn’t take up space in my home.

    Waste not, want not – there is abundance in using what you have wisely and well.

    Do you have things you’ve done to recycle, upcycle or otherwise extend your resources? Please share your ideas in the comments for others to learn from!

    Avivah

  • How my kids are staying busy during vacation

    >>I’m trying to keep everyone happy and occupied during the summer break.  Do you have any good suggestions?  What are your kids doing to keep busy? <<

    I believe the question is directed more towards younger children, so I’ll begin with that. Fortunately, my ten and five year old boys are close friends and so they always have someone to play with. A single child is more easily bored and generally looks for more outside assistance in structuring his time.

    Having a pool makes a huge difference for our two younger boys. They are in and out of the pool all day. Though that results in towels and clothing dropped throughout the house during the day, it’s a worthwhile tradeoff. During the week before Tisha B’Av when they couldn’t use the pool, I opted to send them to camp. Swimming is great exercise, it keeps people cool and during the heat of the summer (and it’s very hot where I live) that means being less irritable. Swimming is the single biggest activity for them. My daughter who lives locally also comes to visit daily with her children, so they join our boys in the pool.

    Otherwise, it’s the usual: including them in meal prep when I’m cooking or baking, reading together, occasionally I’ll play something with them but generally they play on their own. I encourage my kids to occupy themselves, as I think it’s very healthy. They find things to stay busy with around here.

    With a day old chick

    Collecting eggs from the chickens
    View of the chicken coop in the spring

    The shade cloths above all the local parks have been removed due to older kids climbing on them and tearing them, so this summer I haven’t taken them out to parks since it’s too hot without the shade. That means that we’re home most of the time. My husband takes the younger boys to shul most evenings during vacation, and their older brothers have taken them an a couple of hikes, which has been really nice for them.

    I don’t take them to the beach at the Kineret during vacation season, since it’s too crowded. I prefer to take them before and after the summer vacation, and am so grateful that I have that possibility.

    As far as our teens: my sixteen year old is running the yeshivas bein hazmanim at shul for teen boys (until he got married, my 23 year old son did it), and all of our boys ages 13 – 20 spend several hours each morning learning in shul. (My sixteen year old also took on himself to raise all the funds for the program, which wasn’t easy for him but he did a great job and he ‘grew his muscles’, as I call it when they do things that are outside their comfort zone.)

    We’re blessed to live where the older boys have a lot of opportunity for purposeful activity and outdoor fun. All the boys ages 13 and up have as much paid work as they want, and I’m wondering what the people they’re working for are going to do when they go back to yeshiva! They are all good workers and they spend a few hours working every other day or so. We don’t give our sons pocket money so this is a good opportunity for them to earn money for the coming academic term. They schedule their work in a way that they still have time for fun.

    They do a lot of hiking/biking/camping. The friends they go with differ from time to time; for example, this week a friend from yeshiva of my twenty year old son is visiting, so our 13 year old took him on a morning hike to a spring. Then my older son got back from learning, and all three of them went on another hike.

    Meanwhile that same day, ds16 took a group of younger boys on a hike.
    He does this as a community service, since there are no local camps and he sees the boys appreciate the outings. Last week he took them on a bike trip, and this week is taking them all on a hike to a natural spring.

    ——————————–

    This week in yeshivas bein hazmanim, they had a shiur given by a visiting rabbi about how to kosher meat. That was followed by a trip to a farm to see a chicken being butchered and then kashering the meat. The same rabbi gave another shiur about Sukkos and the mitzva of lulav, and then they went out to harvest palm fronds. Hands on learning!

    A couple of days ago I took ds16 and ds13 driving in the dirt roads among the agricultural fields. (Meaning, I let them drive for the first time.) That was such a nice thing to do with them; we all enjoyed it so much! I’ve never done that before, but would love to do it again before their summer vacation ends in a week. In Israel we don’t have the possibility of getting a learner’s permit and then driving with an adult; all driving happens only with paid instructors until a person gets a license. Driving isn’t a very hard thing to do, and practice is what makes a person good at it. But there’s nowhere to do that with a minor here; hence my realization that I could do this in the back roads meant a new opportunity.

    ———————————

    It’s really nice to see how constructively busy and happy they all are. A vacation is an opportunity to recharge and connect with your family and friends, and I love that they’re doing that. Life is made for happiness and meaning, but too often the day to day grind that has become the norm.

    Someone staying in my vacation apartment commented that living here, I probably never need to go away on vacation. She’s right. I live in a place and in a way that is relaxing and renewing for me, and I have no desire to ‘get away’ at all. My vacation time is special to me because I have all my boys at home, and I cherish that.

    Eleven years ago today, our family left the US to make aliyah. It’s a very wonderful thing to be where we all are after all these years!

    Avivah

  • Picking lychees, homeschooling projects

    Recently we enjoyed an outing to pick lychees in a lychee grove, and came home with a bucket full of them! It was such a nice outing with three of the boys, and we all enjoyed snacking as we picked.

    After eating quite a few fresh, my son put a bunch in the freezer. We put them out for dessert on Friday night, and everyone enjoyed them.

    For the remaining lychees, there was a small opening at the top of each fruit where they connect to the branch that was slightly open from picking. Within a day we started to see those get overripe, so I quickly peeled and pitted them all, and put them in glass jars in the fridge. I’m making a large batch of plum compote today, and will put the two jars of lychees in the canner when I water bath the compote.

    Ds5 enjoying picking the low-hanging fruit

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    Directly from fruit picking, we headed to the hardware store. Ds14 is in the middle of building a storage shed. It’s a serious project with a lot of responsibility and attention to detail. I didn’t realize until quite far along that it’s actually the exact same process as building a room addition.

    Setting the footings in concrete.

    He’s spent a lot of time on the foundation, and he told me that despite
    for all the hours it’s taken him, it didn’t look very impressive. I responded that the time spent on the foundation of any activity is like that – that’s where most of the time needs to be invested so that whatever is built on top of it is strong (a family, a business, or any other project). Someone looking from the outside doesn’t see the extensive laying of the foundation or appreciate the importance of this unexciting work. They see how fast the walls go up; they see respectful and helpful children; they see a business with great cash flow – and it looks so easy at that time.

    Neglect the foundation and you’re setting yourself up for failure. Spend the time to get it right, and everything else flows better.

    ________________________________________

    Last week my son asked me to buy a more powerful drill to work on the shed, so off we went to the hardware store to buy a new drill. Unfortunately, when we got home we found it didn’t work. When we went back, we exchanged it for a different brand.

    On the way there, ds told me he wants to teach himself how to weld. No one in our family knows how to weld, and it would be such a useful skill! We can connect wood with screws and nails, but when it comes to connecting pieces of metal to one another, we just don’t have the know-how.

    He spent 600 shekels to buy himself a welder, metal rods and a visor. I told him I’d be happy to buy them since it will be a skill and tools that will benefit us, but he said he wants the tools to be his. I asked him to please watch a video about welding before experimenting, and he told me he’s seen people doing welding, and thinks he has a sense of the general process. The contractor he worked with for a couple of months this winter advised him that if he wants to learn to weld, he should buy the equipment and then practice, practice, practice. So that’s what he’s doing.

    I don’t know if he ended up watching a how-to video or not, but after dinner, he went outside for an hour to practice with some scrap pieces of metal. I saw showers of sparks spraying all over, and asked him to move away from the pool so he didn’t melt a hole in it. Then I decided to move myself away since I’m more relaxed about my children using tools like these when I don’t watch them! I know they’re careful and responsible, and chittering to them like a worry wort isn’t helpful.

    ________________________

    Since I’m talking about his projects, I’ll update you on his chick business. I no longer have any chicks running around the yard nor in cages in the yard. They were cute but it was a short term arrangement. He sold a number of chicks, and had more interested buyers than he had chicks available, which was really nice since at the beginning he got almost no calls. As of last week he took his ad down, and decided that all the rest of the chicks remaining will be for us. Once the females get big enough, we should have a nice amount of laying hens for fresh eggs. When he goes to yeshiva in another few weeks, our thirteen year old will be entrusted with the care of his brother’s chickens.

    __________________________

    Speaking of animals, our thirteen year old has taught me along with some other family members how to milk our new goat. He’s a good instructor, very patient and clear. It took me a week to feel competent with milking, but now I’m pretty good at it and enjoy it.

    I do the bulk of the care for the goats – I’m an early riser, so I’m able to clean the pen, change the water, feed them and do the milking, long before he gets home from shul in the morning. It doesn’t take long and I enjoy it. Then he does the afternoon milking.

    He’s also been taking care of pool maintenance for us, as well as for a couple of others who were away. He refused to accept payment from us, explaining that he enjoys being able to do something for our family and doesn’t want to take money for it. I very much appreciate his taking responsibility for the pools (we have two, one for us and one for the vacation apartment), since maintenance is a never ending task. He learned quite a bit by asking questions to someone who has done a pool maintenance course.

    That’s a little bit of what’s happening around here!

    Avivah

  • Peach Crisp and Peach Cobbler recipes, canning peaches

    It’s the summer and summer means delicious peaches are in season!

    With all these luscious sweet fruits to work with, I’ve appreciated being able to make desserts that I don’t make the rest of the year – peach crisp and peach cobbler.

    In case you’re wondering what the difference is, peach crisp is a baked dessert that uses a crumb topping over the peach filling. With peach cobbler, the cooked peach filling is baked with a biscuit dough – sometimes the dough is placed on top, sometimes on the bottom. I tried making it both ways in the last couple of weeks.

    I have fond memories of my mother making peach crisp when I was a child, so I enjoy it when I have a chance to make it. It’s an easy dessert to make, and easy to make gluten free. Here’s the recipe I made:

    Peach Crisp

    • 4-5 peaches, sliced
    • 1 c. ground walnuts (or any other nut flour)
    • 1 c. oatmeal
    • 2/3 c. sugar
    • 1/2 t. cinnamon
    • pinch salt
    • 1/2 c. melted butter/coconut oil
    • 1 t. vanilla

    Place the sliced peaches in a pan. Mix all the remaining ingredients for the topping, then sprinkle on top of the peaches. Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit/180 degrees Celcius for 40 – 45 minutes. Serve hot.

    Frugal note: if you don’t have nut flour (and many times I don’t), just substitute an equal amount of oatmeal. To be clear, I don’t mean rolled oats, but the chopped rolled oats that are sometimes sold as instant oatmeal. If you only have rolled oats, whiz them in a food processor to make them smaller.

    The peach crisp is on the right in the picture below (one pan was already eaten by the time I thought to take a picture for you!); the peach cobblers are the other two pans.

    Peach Cobbler

    • 5 c. fresh peach or nectarine slices
    • 1/2 c. sugar
    • 2 T. potato starch
    • 1 T. lemon juice

    Topping:

    • 1 c. flour (use a gluten free flour mix to keep this gluten free)
    • 2 T. sugar
    • 2 T. brown sugar
    • 1 t. baking powder
    • 3 T. butter or coconut oil that has been refrigerated so it’s solid
    • 1 egg
    • 4 T. milk or coconut milk

    Combine the peaches with sugar, potato starch and lemon juice. Bring to a boil, let cook for a couple of minutes. Pour the peach mixture into a 9 x 13″ baking pan.

    Mix the dry topping ingredients together. Cut in butter/coconut oil. Mix the milk and egg together, then combine them with the dry ingredient mixture. Stir until just combined to keep the crust flaky. Drop this mixture by spoonfuls on top of the peach filling. Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit/180 degrees Celcius for 25-28 minutes, until brown.

    Upside Down Peach Cobbler

    • 6 T. butter/coconut oil – put in baking pan and melt
    • 1 c. flour (use gluten free mix to make gluten free)
    • 1 c. sugar
    • 2 t. baking powder
    • 1/4 t. salt
    • 3/4 c. milk/coconut milk

    Mix the batter ingredients in the order listed. Pour the batter on top of the hot melted butter/oil in the pan. Top this batter mixture with the peach filling, including the juices. Sprinkle with cinnamon.

    Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit/180 degrees Celcius for 38 – 40 minutes.

    I made two 9 x 13 pans of this one as well, but didn’t take a picture. The batter mixture rises up through the peaches. It’s a different kind of recipe than the first cobbler; my family liked them both and didn’t have a preference for one or another. By the way, serving any of these hot with vanilla ice cream is so, so good.

    —————————–

    I don’t buy gluten free flour mixes, so I looked up a recipe and mixed up my own. I used a combination of white rice flour, millet flour and potato starch. (I have a grain grinder so this was the work of just a few minutes to whiz them up.) This worked great for the cobbler recipes but was too dry when used for Yirmi’s birthday cake.

    I had some more ripe peaches and though my children wouldn’t mind daily fresh pans of peach cobbler exiting the oven, I keep foods like this for a treat. The season that peaches are very affordable isn’t usually very long, so I decided to can whatever peaches I had that had a soft spot or two that would lead them to spoil.

    Though I prefer to minimize sugar, my first batch of cooked nectarines really wasn’t good. As compote it would have been perfect, but I had added lemon juice as a preservative for canning it sugar-free, and that took away the sweetness. I probably added too much lemon juice, but I can’t say for sure.

    What I do know is that I added a bit of sugar to the cooked fruit mixture before water bath processing them, and then it tasted great. Anyone can do water bath canning with a regular stock pot, as long as it’s high enough to cover the jars with an inch or two of water.


    The above jars are a liter, which means they each hold four cups of cooked peaches, so one jar is just right for a 9 x 13 pan of cobbler or crisp.

    Avivah

  • Ten years after our Trisomy 21 diagnosis…reflections

    Last week we celebrated Yirmi’s tenth birthday. It doesn’t seem like a decade ago that we got the surprise diagnosis that our newborn son had Trisomy 21. I suppose time always seems to pass more swiftly than you expect it to.

    I’ve learned quite a bit along the way, but the biggest ongoing lessons have been: believe in yourself – you love and care about your child more than anyone and you are capable; believe in your child – you know him and his potential more than anyone; and keep believing in him even when externally it looks and feels discouraging.

    As I just wrote that and looked at it, I thought to myself, well, what was so different about that than any child? And the answer is, nothing. But these have been my biggest takeaways during this last decade, and continue to be what I hold in the forefront on my mind.

    I’ve shared before that I’ve often felt inadequate, wishing I had the resources to do more for him. I’ve had to put aside thoughts of what other mothers do to support their children and not compare myself.

    In spite of what I haven’t done and continue not to do, I have an intelligent and capable son who happens to have T21. He’s doing great and continues to develop and mature. And I’m maturing, too, continually becoming more appreciative of things in the present moment, as they are right now, without holding out for perfection.

    I really don’t believe in perfection, but when it came to Yirmi I wanted so much to be able to give him the support I felt he deserved that would enable him to actualize his potential. While that is a noble intention and came from a place mostly of love (but let’s be honest, there’s always ego there), realistically I have to wonder how many human beings on the planet have fully realized their elusive potential.

    I had an internal struggle after having Yirmi, since my educational philosophy is based on giving kids the space and time to step into who they want to be and want they want to do. I’m not a fan of pushing kids much. But the proactive moms of kids with T21 whom I most identified with, do a tremendous amount to actively support their children. The accomplishments of their children looked so compelling, and I wanted those for my child, too.

    I can feel guilty about it or not, but I am who I am. I’m a fantastic mediator, I’m a good role model of life-long learning, and I provide a lot of hands-on, skill-based learning opportunities. That comes easily to me; I don’t have to read books on how to do it or schedule it in to my day, or work hard to remember I should be doing that. I read quality books to my children, use good vocabulary when speaking to them, and their comprehension and verbal expression reflects that.

    Other things don’t come naturally to me…activities that don’t come naturally to me are the things I end up feeling inadequate about. I felt they should be done whether I found them easy to do or not, since my child deserved to have this kind of support.

    It’s so, so easy to slip into focusing on what you’re not doing. My challenge has been to let go of that ‘not enough’ voice and actively appreciate where we are now: “My kids are doing great, I’m enough and let’s just keep doing what we’re doing.”

    I’ve also found peace of mind about having him in a special needs school. Letting go of my ideal of inclusive learning wasn’t easy. While the school he attends is a state of the art school and I very much appreciate all that they do and how they do it, I felt I failed by not continuing to pursue inclusive school environments. Why not? Because it felt like too much pushing, too much advocating, too much interfacing and educating teachers and administrators. I questioned if it was fair to him to put him in a school system where he was likely to be at the bottom of the class, no matter how hard he tried. I’ve never put my children in high pressure environments, since I don’t believe that’s beneficial developmentally. I wouldn’t do it to my neurotypical kids, so why was it desirable in the name of inclusion to do it to my sensitive, open-hearted child with T21?

    I can sum up the last decade by saying, I’ve had and continue to have opportunities to practice appreciating who I am and putting the focus on that. The more that I’ve stayed true to myself, to what I believe- even if I disappoint those who would prefer I promote a different message or take different actions – the more at rest I feel within myself.

    We seek to create an atmosphere at home in which our children can find that critical ‘rest’ that is so necessary for development, a place of not having to prove, of being safe, of knowing he is just right the way he is – and this is the same kind of space we should be creating for ourselves as parents.

    You can see that most of the last ten years wasn’t about Yirmi – it was about me sifting through lots of information and perspectives, and making room for my own beliefs. It was about letting go of frustrations I sometimes felt when he wasn’t hitting milestones at a pace I would have liked, and replacing it with genuine appreciation and acceptance for his personal timeline. It’s been hugely about accepting and appreciating my own self.

    Raising children isn’t for wimps. Raising kids with special needs has the potential to make you look even more closely and deeply at yourself. While I can look at what others do and genuinely appreciate their efforts and be glad for them, I no longer participate in T21 groups that I had considered a source of inspiration, because the inspiration I received paled next to the inadequacy I was left with. Recognizing something can be valuable to someone else but doesn’t serve me at this time, and being willing to let go of it is an important lesson.

    Someone asked me today, is it really much harder to raise kids with T21? I paused, because I don’t want to sugarcoat and I don’t want to exaggerate.

    Two and a half years ago I went on a two day trip sponsored by the school ds5 was in at the time, and it was such a positive experience for me to be in a room with other parents of children with a diagnosis, and I hope I’ll have another opportunity in the future to participate in a similar kind of getaway. It was a relief to be able to mention an area of challenge, without feeling someone would judge me as complaining or judge my child for being limited.

    So yes, there are things that are harder or different, things that have required me to be more patient, to work harder, to do more. Has it helped me grow as a person? I hope so.

    I feel the most accurate answer to the above question is, “It’s mostly the same as raising any child, with some differences.”

    A teaching assistant of Yirmi’s told me a couple of years ago, ‘There’s nothing wrong with Yirmi and his developmental pace. The problem is the world expects it to be different.” There’s a deep, deep truth to that statement.

    Avivah