Category Archives: frugal strategies

Bar mitzva plans

frugal strategies, homemaking

I’ve hardly written anything about our bar mitzva preparations, and it’s just a week away now!

Here are our basic plans: we’ll be having a meal on Friday night for family and any guests who are coming from out of town.  That will be around 25 people, so not a major crowd.   Then Shabbos (Sabbath) morning, ds12 will be called to read the Torah at a local synagogue, and we’ll be having a kiddush/ dessert reception for everyone.  (I can’t even guess at numbers for this.)

Following that, we’ll be having a meal for family, ds12’s classmates, and close friends  – this will be around 50 – 60 people.  Then later on, we’ll have the third meal for our family and out of town guests, so again, about 25 people.

Since we’re doing all the cooking and baking ourselves, as well as setup, etc, this has been a busy week and next week will be even busier!  Here’s what we did this week:

  • Dh took ds to Haifa to buy a suit (they bought a hat over a month ago on a trip to Bnei Brak, along with his tefillin).
  • Dh designed the invitations and printed them out, and they were given to classmates this week.  (Everyone else will get an email invite or verbal notice.)
  • Yesterday I bought almost all of the paper goods for the meals and reception.
  • Dd15 and dd17 did almost all of the baking for the kiddush/reception.  It doesn’t seem like so much to me, but we were told that fifteen cakes is usually enough.

This includes (all pans are equal to 2 9 x 13 pan unless otherwise noted): 2 dark chocolate cakes, 2 carrot cakes, 2 chocolate chip crumb cakes (loaf pans), 4 lemon pound cakes (loaf pans), 1 marble cake, 1 raspberry bars, oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, coconut snowballs, chocolate dipped shortbread cookies, and fudge crinkles.  In the works tonight are: checkboard cake, 3 lay orange cake with buttercream frosting and topped with homemade orange marmalade, lemon bars, and maybe shortcake if someone will go out to buy some more round pans at the store tonight!

I would like to have a couple of fancy frosted cakes in addition to the platters to dress up the tables, but the logisitics are a little challenging.  We only have a fridge sized freezer, but thankfully a neighbor has offered us her fridge sized freezer, so tomorrow I’m hoping to take all of the baked goods over since I’m maxed out for space at this point – and I haven’t even started cooking any food for the three meals!

The fancy cakes have to carefully stored and take a good bit of space, or have to be assembled a short time before they are served.  Since we’ll have about three hours on Friday afternoon to get all of the food for the entire weekend to the hall, pick up electric hotplates to use to heat the food on Shabbos, set up all the tables, heat the food, accompany our guests to the homes of their hosts – and we don’t have a car! – it’s going to be a busy three hours.  On Shabbos morning we have to be at shul by 8:30 am in order to hear the reading of the Torah by ds12, then will go straight there to set up the kiddush, followed by immediate cleanup and then setup for the meal.  I’m not seeing where the extra time to put together a three layer cake is going to happen, and it would be such a shame to put the time into making it now, and having it get smushed in the freezer.

Dd17 enjoys baking really nice looking cakes, and just about every day we have a conversation in which she suggests making something beautiful and time consuming, and I veto it and remind her the point is to keep it simple so we don’t get stressed out.  I was trying to explain the logistics to a couple of the kids tonight, so they could see the big picture that I’m looking at of everything that has to be done, to understand why I keep rejecting certain suggestions – but I think that they won’t really understand what I’m talking about until we’re in the middle of giving baths to the littles, haircut to ds, ironing everyone’s clothes, getting our house clean, in addition to everything else, that they’ll start to realize what I was talking about.  I also love when things look super nice, and if I had a better set up that would allow me to prepare and store things in advance, I would do more along these lines.

I’d like to serve some kind of kugel, vegetable platters and dips in addition to the desserts, but particularly the dips will complicate the cleanup, and whatever I end up adding will be because I found lots of extra time and energy that I hadn’t budgeted for something else!  Not so likely, but not impossible, either.  🙂

Then there’s the three Shabbos meals, for which everything will be cooked towards the end of the week, so that it will be fresh.  It’s nice that we rented a place that we can use for not just the kiddush, but will be able to have all of meals in one place.  This wasn’t part of the original plan, but we decided on this a couple of weeks ago.  It will really help us keep things simple since I won’t have to juggle between hosting and serving in our home for two meals, and then in another place for the main bar mitzva meal.

Also, we’re not going to have more than three guests staying in our home for the weekend, and they’re all people we’re comfortable with and can be relaxed around.   There aren’t many people coming from outside of Karmiel, but we are deeply grateful to everyone of them for being willing to make the effort to share our celebration with us.

As far as our budget, I might be wildly unrealistic about this because I haven’t bought the food for the weekend meals yet, but I’m hoping to keep the food expenses within our usual monthly food budget of 2000 shekels or close to it (this obviously means being super frugal with our usual expenditures).  So far just about all of the baking supplies have been purchased and it’s looking optimistic.  I’ll keep track of all of my receipts so I can give you an accurate idea later on of how much our self-catered bar mitzva was.  🙂

Avivah

A wonderful morning foraging with my boys

frugal strategies, gardening

Last night I commented to dh that: 1) I really miss homeschooling (nothing like sending your kids to underscore how great homeschooling is!); 2) I missed ds5’s exuberant energy.  He’s seemingly adjusting well to everything, except this boy who used to be happy and excited about everything now is constantly whining, complaining, and crying – I realized yesterday that he hardly ever smiles from deep inside anymore.

This morning the whining started when a sibling gave him a spoonful of sugar in his second bowl of oatmeal, and it wasn’t a big enough spoonful.  You would have thought something terrible had happened, the way he began crying and yelling.  I asked him to speak pleasantly, and he really seemed unable to.

I explained to him that we don’t go to school when we are sick because it could make people sick, and it’s not fair to the people around us to go to school when  we are miserable; it makes people feel good when we smile and bad when we are unhappy.  So it became a ‘gan Mommy’ morning (‘Mommy playgroup’ – what staying home with me was termed for the sake of ds2.5 so he would feel like he was doing what everyone else going to school was).

He was upset about not getting to go to school, but within a half hour, he was smiling.  Really smiling.  I could almost see him unwind and inwardly relax.   It was so nice to see.  I told him at 10 am we’d take a walk and go to the park, but when we got there, the officials told us they changed the hours for the winter and wouldn’t be open until 3 pm.

I’ve recently noticed that it seems to be prime foraging season here – in the US it was after the winter – and lately I’ve had a hankering to get outside and just harvest something!  My motivation for this morning’s outing was that yesterday I noticed some rosehips when I was out with the kids, and wanted to check if there were more so I could prepare a big batch at once.  So it didn’t make much of a difference to me where we went, and when ds5 suggested another park, off we went.

We detoured somewhat, scanning the rosebushes that lined the streets.  On the way, I showed him what mallow looks like – I don’t usually pick any wild edibles around here that grow on the ground because there are lots of dogs.  But it had just rained and we were in an area that didn’t seem to be a dog spot, so we picked some.

Then we entered a big gorgeous park that has a playground but is mostly a huge beautiful natural area, and while the boys were running around I kept my eyes open for rosehips, but instead noticed that some of the olive trees had some ripe olives still remaining.  So when they finished running, I suggested we find an olive tree to pick from.  But ds5 said, “I don’t want to pick olives, I want to pick carob!”  He noticed right then that we were passing a carob tree, so I hoisted him on my shoulder and he picked a few nice long pods.  The three of us snacked on them as we went along, and then found some more mallow off the beaten trail.

As we followed the mallow trail, we happened upon a low growing olive tree with a huge rock underneath it. This was perfect since ds5 could reach the olives by climbing on this big rock.  Ds2 also wanted to pick, but it didn’t last long since it meant me holding him up high while simultaneously pulling the olive branch down low towards us.  I gave him the olives I picked to put in the bag (he was much slower than we were, so this wasn’t really suitable), then switched his job to holding the bag of olives open, but that wasn’t a great job for him either.  But I let him keep that job since he felt useful and ds5 and I filled our pockets as we picked, and periodically emptied them into the bag.  We ended up with 1 – 2  quarts of fresh olives.

It was a gorgeous day, the sky was a perfect blue and the sun was shining, and it just felt so marvelous to be out doing this.  I felt so happy I almost cried – I didn’t realize how much I missed the feeling of being out in nature.  And it felt so right to be with my littles, giving them opportunities for self-directed outdoor experiences, so unlike the kindergarten environment where everything is structured and adult-led.  I watched ds5 and ds2 find a huge ant hill, try to feed the ants olives, mash some olives with a rock and show me about the dye that resulted, all while soaking in vitamin D from the sun.  You can’t manufacture real experiences like this, and there’s something about these kind of things that is good for kids (and adults!) at a deep, soul level.

On the way out of the park, we found an abundance of rosehips concentrated on a few bushes  – all the other bushes we found were still in bloom.  Ds2 planted himself right next to one and got busy picking, and when I told him it was time to go a few minutes later, he looked at me seriously and said, “I’m not done yet”, and got back to industriously picking the rosehips and putting them in the sandwich bag we had with us.  He was so focused and felt so accomplished!  I let him pick a while longer, but then we really did have to leave.

On the way home we found a small lemon tree – they weren’t so big and I have lemons at home, but they were happy to be able to pick three of them.  We got home with all of our treasures, tired after being out all morning but only one of us ready for a nap (me!).

I don’t honestly find foraging to be about frugality for me.  We’re way too big a family and the amounts I can pick are so small that they’re not generally consequential, and the time investment – if looked at it strictly from an economic point of view – doesn’t usually justify the expenditure.  But from an experiential and empowerment perspective, it’s definitely worthwhile.  I like that my kids can identify plants and food that grow around them, and have a chance to be in touch with the physical world in a real way.

Do you ever harvest food growing in the wild?  What kind of things grow locally to you?  What do you like about foraging?  Do you share my feeling that it’s empowering on a personal level?  

Avivah

(This post is part of Monday Mania, Traditional Tuesdays, Fat Tuesdays, Homestead Barn Hop, Real Food 101 and Real Food Wednesdays.)

Great Depression cooking videos and book recommendation

frugal strategies, homemaking

I learned about these videos several years ago, and enjoyed watching several of them on You Tube at the time with some of my children.  The videos are hosted by a lovely elderly woman, Clara, who shares recipes and demonstrated preparation of foods they made during the Depression.  She also shares anecdotes and stories about her life.  There are 28 videos, and are each very short and have a warm, wholesome feel to them.

I believe she made the first one when she was 89.  I was reminded of these tonight since Clara, now 96, recently released what she said will be the last video in the series because she’s ‘getting old’.  I enjoyed these so much and am sharing a link to them since I think a  lot of you will enjoy this as well.

Great Depression Cooking with Clara

On the note of the Great Depression, a couple of years ago I read a book recounting memories of this time that I really enjoyed.    You can learn a lot about frugal living, self-sufficiency, and just plain out making do by reading about what life was like during the Depression. The book is,  Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression.  It’s not a gloomy and difficult read, which you might associate with the Depression, but has a realistic but optimistic air about it.  (I was able to find it at the library.)

Avivah

How to render beef fat

canning, frugal strategies, nutrition,
Five jars of cooled (white) fat, jar on right with melted fat still hot

Some things are so easy you feel almost foolish posting instructions on how to do it, and how to render beef fat (or chicken fat) is one of those things!

But since Chanukah began just last night and it’s traditional to fry foods in oil during this eight day festival, I’m going to go ahead and share an option for frying that our family enjoys year round!

Firstly, you’ll need to get hold of a good bit of beef fat.  This is also called suet.  There are different qualities of fat; if you have a choice, you want a big chunk of white fat rather than a blob of little pieces.  But either way, you’ll prepare it the same way.  We got a nice slab from the ribs, which is good quality fat.

If you want to make life more involved for yourself, then go ahead and dice the fat up.  Or put it in a food processor, or chop it.  I’ve seen all those things recommended.  But you know me, ‘why make more work than necessary?’ is my motto, so I just put the entire big chunk in a pot.

Put the burner on low, and let the fat slowly melt over the course of time – it might take up to a few hours, depending how much fat you have.  When it’s liquid, it’s called rendered – pour the fat through a strainer into a glass jar or container.  If you are going to refrigerate the fat and don’t care if there are tiny pieces of meat that end up in it, don’t bother straining it.  The beef particles will sink to the bottom of the jar.  I use this up so quickly that it doesn’t matter to me if it’s clarified (strained) or not.

If you have a big chunk, you might find that you can pour off most of the melted fat, but there’s still a chunk left.  Go ahead, pour off what’s melted, and keep melting the remainder – that’s what I did above, which is why one jar in my picture was in the hot melted stage while the others had already cooled off.

When the fat is liquid, it will be a lovely golden brown,  but when it hardens, it turns a pure white.  You can see that in my picture above.  (You can also see the little food particles at the bottom of the jar of melted fat on the right, if you look closely. )

You might be left with some tasty cracklings at the end of this – if you are, save them and use them to season another dish – it’s delicious!

Now, how do you preserve your rendered fat?  Assuming you’ve strained it, you should be able to keep this at room temperature for quite a while.  What I’ve liked doing in the past is rendering a large batch of fat at a time, pouring the hot strained fat into glass canning jars, and then immediately closing each jar with a new canning lid and ring.  It will seal as it cools, and will stay shelf stable for many, many months.

For those of you wondering why in the world I’d want to use something as artery clogging as beef fat, it’s because it’s not saturated fat that causes heart problems, but processed vegetable oils (yes, like the widely touted canola and soy oils).  They’ve done analyses of the stuff they’ve scraped out of arteries and it’s not saturated fat.  There’s lots of fascinating research about this and if you’re interested in reading some articles, here are some to start you off:

http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2011/01/does-dietary-saturated-fat-increase.html

http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2010/08/saturated-fat-consumption-still-isnt.html  (This blogger has a PhD in neurobiology and has a number of excellent articles on different aspects of the research on saturated fat – you can do a search on his blog if you’re interested in reading more.)

http://www.marksdailyapple.com/saturated-fat-healthy/ (This is an excellent site and is filled with high quality information, but you’ll find a little bit of off-color language from time to time – just a warning for those who would be bothered.)

http://www.drbriffa.com/2010/01/15/two-major-studies-conclude-that-saturated-fat-does-not-cause-heart-disease/

The benefits in terms of cooking with beef fat are that it has a high smoking point, which makes it good for frying and baking.  Flavor-wise, I prefer to use coconut oil or palm shortening for baking, but find the beef fat adds a nice flavor to most other things.

Avivah

(This post is linked to Make Your Own Monday, Monday Mania, Homestead Barn Hop, Real Food 101,  Traditional Tuesdays, Real Food Wednesday, Works for Me Wednesdays, and the Real Food Hanukkah Blog Carnival.)

A gift-free holiday season

aliyah, frugal strategies, parenting

Has anyone noticed that I haven’t mentioned the holiday season even the tiniest bit?  I haven’t been purposely ignoring it as much as not really thinking much about it.

Usually, I’m pretty aware of the holidays coming up – I use the advance time to stockpile gifts for all of our family members that they’ll appreciate at prices that my wallet appreciates!  Sometimes this has been buying things at thrift stores or yard sales, sometimes it’s meant making gifts.  But whatever I did, I needed to think ahead to be ready.  (Here’s a post I wrote about my approach to holiday shopping.)

Though we’ve always made a very conscious effort to keep things simple in the gift giving arena, when you have so many children buying and making gifts for one another, things begin to take on a life of their own and it gets harder and harder to keep it simple!  (You can read about preparations for past Chanukahs – do a search for ‘chanukah’ or ‘chanuka’ in the search bar – as well as one of our favorite gifts of the last night of Chanukah that has become a family memory to be treasured!)  And of course we were living close to grandparents who were eager to come by with the goodies they had for the kids.  And even though the gifts we purchased weren’t expensive and were often things we would have bought them in any case, but saved them until Chanukah to give, there were still gifts, and it was hard for a certain degree of focus to not be on presents.

I think we did a good job of straddling gift giving and finding meaning in the holiday, but now we’ve decided that we’d like to use our recent move as an opportunity to reset our family expectations and focus more on what the celebration of this holiday is about.  So we’ve agreed to totally cut out the presents.

Tonight was the first night of Chanukah, and it was lovely!  Though everyone in the past had their own unique menorahs, we only brought my husband’s menorah with us (yep, the luggage limit thing again!).   We bought inexpensive tin menorahs for everyone; ds4 brought one home from gan (preschool) today, and he lit for the first time with us all.

The first night of Chanukah in our home

After candlelighting in front of the window that overlooks our street, we sang together and my husband and all of the kids danced (I don’t know why, but somehow I usually prefer to sit and watch them!).  After that, ds12 prepared latkes (potato pancakes) for dinner, while dh played Chanukah tunes on his guitar and dd15 played her flute – they started working on a Chanukah song that they can play together.  I was really glad we brought the guitar along!

Last night dd11 and I attended her school performance, which consisted on several dances and songs by the sixth, seventh, and eighth grade girls, followed by a one woman act, a play about the Inquisition.  Wow, was she talented!  I enjoyed it very much, and periodically whispered explanations in dd’s ear about what was going on.  I heard today that many of the Israeli girls for whom language wasn’t a barrier didn’t understand the concept of the Inquisition and the forced conversion of the Jews to Christianity, never having been exposed to that time in history, and weren’t able to follow the play.

That evening was the beginning of the active Chanukah season!  As I said, today ds4 came home with a menorah, a box of candles, and a dreidel from school, and tomorrow all of the kids (except maybe ds12, not so sure about his school) will be having Chanukah parties on their last day before vacation begins!

Thursday morning ds12 will be putting on tefillin for the first time and we’re sending homemade doughnuts and other baked goodies to the minyan (prayer service) that he’ll be attending.  Mid day we’ll be attending a bat mitva, and I hope that around 5 pm, ds18 will be coming home for Shabbos (after being gone for a couple of months) and bringing a friend.  A couple of hours after he gets home, we’ll be attending a local hachnasas Sefer Torah (dedication of a new Torah scroll) that will be attended by one of the leading Torah sages of this generation.

Then on Friday, friends will be coming from the Jerusalem area with their family to spend a few days with us, and that evening and the next day we’ll be joined for meals by a young family of four visiting from Germany.  Then sometime on Sunday a blog reader visiting Karmiel will stop by with her family and we’ll get to meet in person.  So we’ll have a nice full house to enjoy Chanukah with!

It’s really nice to see how the chief rabbi of the city has worked to ensure that there will be Chanukah events suitable for the religious public here.  We’ll be missing the puppet show on Thursday afternoon in order to attend the bat mitzva of a friend’s daughter, but on Sunday there will be an all day Chanukah event at a local park, and that evening is a special performance for women that I’m looking forward to attending with the older girls.  (Unfortunately, they didn’t go with us last night.)  There’s also an event for men the following evening.  I’m sure we’ll hear about more things that are planned as the week goes on.

It already feels like a wonderful holiday, and it’s only the first night!

What is your position on gift giving during the holiday season?  What are things you’ve done to keep the focus on things that are more meaningful, such as family time or spiritual traditions?

Avivah

How to preserve eggs

food preservation, frugal strategies

Have you ever had an abundance of eggs, or seen a great deal on eggs and wished you could stock up, but didn’t because you thought they’d go bad before you could use them?  I have!  Here’s an alternative that can be helpful.

Crack your eggs, slightly beat them, (edited to add – and sprinkle a tiny bit of salt in), and pour them into ice cube trays.  (Pay attention to how many you use so you can do the math on how many eggs are in each cube.)  Once they’re frozen, pour them into a zip lock bag.  Put them in the freezer until you need them.  When you’re ready to use them, defrost the amount of cubes you need in your fridge, and use them in whatever recipes you want to make.  And here’s where the math comes in: one cube equals – xxx eggs.

Do you have any other practical and easy ways to store eggs long term (except for keeping them in the fridge!)?  Have you ever used this strategy or something similar for eggs?  

Avivah

Almond sesame napa salad

frugal strategies, recipes

Here’s a recipe that I created when I bought a case of napa on sale – you don’t even want to know how much that is!  A whole lot, even for a family of 11 that likes lots of veggies!

Almond Sesame Napa Salad

  • 1 head napa, shredded (you can also use cabbage or romaine)
  • 3 oranges, peeled and sectioned
  • 2 T. olive oil
  • 2 t. Bragg’s amino acids or soy sauce
  • 1  T. sesame seeds
  • 1/4 c. sliced almonds

Toss the napa/cabbage with the orange sections.  Mix the olive oil and Braggs/soy sauce, adding in the sesame seeds.  Toss in the sliced almonds at the end.

You can play around with this basic recipe – if you substitute romaine for the napa, you can substitute diced avocado for the almonds and leave out the sesame seeds.  That’s what I made this weekend, yum!  You can also add a sweetener to the simple olive oil and soy sauce dressing, but I prefer the natural sweetness of the orange segments, though sometimes I’ll juice an orange and add it to the dressing.

Avivah

Israel clothing recommendations

aliyah, frugal strategies

>>(if you are able and willing, could you share your ‘clothing situation’ in Israel?…ie how much to have, to store away, what you had to buy extra once you moved, what is unnecessary to have etc.)<<

We moved here and brought only what we could take along in our suitcases, so this definitely minimized the amount of everything we brought, clothing included.    If you’re bringing a lift, you have more flexibility.

We brought clothes for everyone for about the first year – I didn’t want to have to start shopping as soon as I got here.  (Though I ended up less than two weeks after arriving needing to buy uniform clothing.)  I didn’t feel everyone needed an extensive wardrobe – a few skirts/pants per child, a few tops for basic daily wear.  Some dress clothes.  What I made sure to bring more of were items that are significantly more expensive here, and not easily purchased used.

Those items included: shoes – very, very expensive here, and if I could have I would have brought more (I just didn’t have any more allowed luggage weight); underwear and socks – again, very expensive and the quality doesn’t match what you can buy from Hanes or whatever other company.

Coats – We brought a coat for each person, and in this area I’ve debated with myself if it was the best use of our space.  Although we’re in the north, we’re actually in a pleasantly temperate area.  Reminds me kind of Seattle.  So it really hasn’t gotten very cold yet – I’ve worn my coat a handful of times.  It might have been a better idea if we had brought our warm lined raincoats; it hasn’t rained much this year, but when it did, I was desperately sorry to have warm coats when what was much more important was being waterproof.  However, once I bought umbrellas for every family member, this internal debate disappeared since we now have a way to be dry and warm.

If we hadn’t brought coats and had needed them, buying them new would have been an expensive proposition.  (I was able to find a used coat for dd11, whose new coat I got right before we left somehow didn’t make it here, and paid just ten shekels for it.  It’s a decent coat and I’m glad to have been able to find it, but it’s nowhere near as nice as the one I had gotten her.)  But at least here in Karmiel, you don’t need a heavy down ski parka – that’s way overkill.

Boots – I gave away all of our boots, except for the littles.  Again, this was due to space  restrictions, not because I didn’t think boots would be useful.  I’ve been very glad to have boots for the littles, since they have a fifteen minute walk to school and their sneakers would be soaked on rainy days by the time they got there.  It would be nice for the rest of us, but since it hasn’t been very rainy yet, it’s easier to say that boots are somewhat a luxury here.  But if you can bring them, it’s definitely worth it – even if it’s not raining, they keep your feet toasty when you’re inside.  I kind of regret not bringing them, but again, I didn’t give them away because I wanted to, but because I had to be ruthless about making choices to stay within our luggage allowance.

Some parts of Israel are much colder than others.  In Tzfat (Safed), just a forty minute drive, it’s noticeably colder than here.  Jerusalem is much colder as well.  But wherever you live, I think that layers are a very, very good idea.  Often the outside temperatures aren’t low, but inside it’s freezing.  It’s happened almost every day last week that inside our apartment I’m sitting in the afternoon with a light fleece blanket over me, and if I go outside, it’s sunny and warm, and all I need is a light sweater or sweatshirt on top of a long sleeved shirt!  That’s because the buildings are made of stone and generally not well insulated – so they keep you nice and chilly, which is good if you run hot.  Which I don’t.

Knowing this in advance, I tried to pack thermals or long sleeved solid shirts for all of us that could be worn under other clothing, warm fleece sweatshirts that could fit under a coat, and then a coat.  Almost all of the older kids wear layers and sweatshirts on top of their uniform shirts while in school; the little kids are either moving around a lot more or their classrooms are kept warmer, because they don’t more than two layers.  Our teenage girls have the longest walk to school and have yet to wear a winter coat to stay warm on the way, but are the most heavily layered when inside.

The only clothing items that I brought to store away were little kids shoes.  I had a lot of clothing in storage that I had bought on sale, and donated almost all of this.  But the exception were shoes for the littles; I brought most of the shoes I had in sizes 9 – 13 because I knew I’d use them even if it didn’t fit someone right now, and they were small enough that I could still keep to my limit of one suitcase of clothing per person.

I hope to build up my clothing storage again, since I was able to save significant amounts of money by ‘shopping in the attic’, rather than needing to go out to stores every time someone needed something.  Some used clothing has come my way, and some of this is now in storage for when it fits someone it’s currently too big for.

For those of you who have made an overseas move (wherever it may have been!), is this similar to what your approach was?  What did you feel was most important, and what did you think ended up being a waste of space?  What recommendations would you have for someone moving to Israel?

Avivah

How to kasher chicken livers

aliyah, frugal strategies

 >>Avivah, I’m going to hijack your post here to ask you about chicken livers.  Do you know how to prepare them? I have been wondering this for a long time. <<

Yes, I do!  It’s kind of like making bread dough – in the beginning, hearing about all of the steps sounds overwhelming and then you do it, and it’s really not such a big deal.  I find that kashering livers myself saves me a boatload of money.

I use a gas burner on my stovetop, so that’s what my instructions are for.  You can use a grill and can use the same steps for the actual kashering process.

Before I start with the actual livers, I prepare the stovetop.  I take the grates off of all the burners, and cover the burner I’m going to be using with a disposable aluminum pan.  You can see below how I cut a big X and then folded back the metal flaps to create a hole that will fit around the burner.

A disposable pan cut to be a drip pan

Put the pan over the burner on your stove – this isn’t necessary but I like to minimize the work I have to do, and it makes it easier to clean up the splatters.  (You can reuse this drip pan for a future liver preparing session, if you like – I had accidentally thrown mine away so I had to make a new one.)

Drip pan fitted over gas burner

I bought a two sided hinged rectangular grill thing (sorry, no idea what the term is for this) with two handles – I thought it was impossible to find it in Karmiel so we bought it in Jerusalem, but last week saw it in two places locally (for those who are interested – with kitchenware in Mega Bul and Gama Deal).  I got the big one but have since learned that all the livers can’t simultaneously roast at one time when it’s full, so I really could have gotten the smaller size.  At least it makes it easy to rest on the pan so I don’t have to hold it at all while it’s grilling.

Anyway, this grilling tool is something you can find with supplies for grilling.  You can see below that the raw livers are on one part of the hinged grill, and the other part is resting at a 90 degree angle.

Sprinkle the liver with coarse salt.

Raw liver on grate over burner

Turn on fire and start to grill the livers.  When one side seems to be done, flip it over to the other side.

Livers roasting over gas burner

(The liver above had just been flipped.) The main caution I’d make at this point is to watch the heat of the fire – you don’t want to end up with chunks of charcoal, but you want to make sure that the insides are dry and there’s no blood left.  I usually grill the first side on high and the second side on low.  Remember, don’t stick a fork inside the liver to check it when it’s grilling because it will make your fork unkosher if there’s still blood there.

When the livers are roasted, put them on a plate or in a pan.  I’ve heard that you’re supposed to rinse the salt off at this time, and tried to confirm if it’s necessary to do or nice to do, but am not yet clear on that so would say to rinse it off.  This is a pain since freshly roasted livers are delicious!  And they’re not quite the same when you rinse them first.  (If you know about this, please let me know – I’d be very glad not to have to rinse them.)

When I kasher livers, I prepare a large batch at a time (this last time I did three kilos), and freeze it into portion sizes.  As far as using the livers, you can turn them into the classic chopped liver (which I have never done), or use them in some creative concoctions.  My kids like them straight off of the grill, so I have to make an effort to ration them so they last for future cooking experiments.  🙂

Do you kasher your own livers?  Is this similar to what you do?  Have you found the money spent justifies the money saved?

Avivah

Great resource for supplements

aliyah, frugal strategies, health

I just looked in my drafts file, and though I cleaned out over forty drafts a few months ago that I felt wouldn’t be of interest to anyone now that I moved to Israel, I still have 164 posts pending.  Sheesh.  So many things to write about, so little time!

Anyway, I’m going to try to post some of those pending posts since some of them are waiting an embarrassingly long time for me to finish them up.

The first of these is about a great resource for supplements for those in the US as well as overseas that I first learned about from a blog reader.  I didn’t want to share about it until I had tried it out successfully, but being that it’s been over a month since my first order arrived, and my second order is sitting and waiting at the post office for me to pick it up, it’s time to share the details!

I mentioned that we began buying cod liver oil recently, and I’ve been buying from this source, iherb.com.   The prices are good, and what makes it a great option particularly for those overseas is the very low shipping – I paid a flat rate of $4 for each order.

Another nice plus is that you can see the weight of each item that you order, and since you need to keep your order under a certain weight to avoid taxes on the receiving end, this makes it very easy to be aware of the shipping weight total of your order.  (The weight limit is either 3 or 4 pounds – I’ve seen people saying both, but limited my order to three pounds each to be on the safe side because dealing with the huge taxes that can be slapped onto orders received is no fun.  If you have definitive information on this, please share!)

I got $5 off of my first order thanks to a coupon code I had – this was only good for first time buyers.  You can use the code OBO992 for your first order to get this discount.  On my second order, I bought my cod liver oil when there was a ten percent discount for two days on everything on the website, so that helped my cost stay a bit lower for that.  But it still was very affordable, under $30 for three 12 oz. bottles of cod liver oil including shipping.

I am buying the Twinlab cod liver oil, not because I think it’s best, but because I think it’s decent and it’s affordable for us.  I’d LOVE to be able to buy fermented cod liver oil, but even with reduced bulk pricing, I can’t spend a few hundred dollars on a few bottles of cod liver oil, even though it is much more valuable nutritionally.  (I seriously looked into this because I’d love to give it to my littles to give them the significant nutritional boost it offers.)

You can strive for ideal, but when ideal isn’t an option (and it frustrates me sometimes that in the real food world so many people seem unable to validate that ideal isn’t possible sometimes, that there are real budgetary limitations), you can do nothing or you can do the next best thing.  So we’re doing the next best thing.

I’d like to be able to find what we need locally, versus having visitors from the US regularly bringing me all those things I miss from there.  So far we’ve done really well in making a shift to Israeli brands and products for just about everything, but sometimes you can’t find what you want here, and it’s nice to have an affordable way to get it!

Avivah