Avivah Werner

Category: Homemaking

  • Gleaning free fruit

    I shared with you about my citrus trees and how much we’re enjoying harvesting them.

    Maybe you don’t have citrus trees – but there’s a good chance you can enjoy some free, freshly picked produce, too.

    This morning I was walking with my husband when we passed a pile of tree clippings. I always pause to see if there’s something I want to take a cutting of, and this time I saw one of the trees that had been pruned was a lemon tree. The prunings were filled with lemons.

    I picked the fruit that was easily accessible; I could see more but didn’t take it all. Here it is:

    This is one example of someone who has more than they can use, and the extra fruit has become a burden.

    Many people have fruit trees that produce more than they can use, and the fruit ends up wasted. On my daily walk I see trees loaded with fruits, with many fallen fruits on the ground below.

    If they have fruit trees, chances are good that they appreciate the fruits. Why would they not pick them? Maybe they have more than they can use, or their time and energy doesn’t allow them to harvest their trees. Maybe they moved into a home that already had fruit trees, and the fruit isn’t something that interests them.

    Many people would love to see the fruits being used, and a bonus is that their yards will stay clean of all the rotting fruit that would otherwise surround the trees.

    Obviously, some people might rather have the waste and mess rather than someone they don’t know coming into their space, and that is understandable. If someone came to me, I’d want to know they nice people, and weren’t going to destroy my trees, waste the fruit or make a mess in my yard.

    You might have people you already know who you can approach; it’s easiest to start with them. My next door neighbor has a lot of fruit and one of my married children asked me why I don’t ask to harvest their trees. The answer is that I have enough of my own! But she had told me I was welcome to pick if I wanted, that she doesn’t have time for it right now.

    Whether it’s someone you know or someone you’ve never met, before approaching someone with a fruit tree, keep in mind what their concerns might be. Be respectful, let them know you won’t leave a mess, and offer to give them some of the fruit you’ve picked. (I’ve never had anyone who wanted any of it, but some will.) You might want to bake them a pie or make some preserves with the fruit you picked that you’ll share with them.

    I started gleaning free fruit when someone on Craigs List posted they had lots of fruit free for the picking, so I went with my children and we picked a bunch.

    After seeing how happy the owners were that we came, I realized it was a mutually beneficial situation, and it didn’t look like we were poor and needy people who didn’t have money for food.

    I approached two different owners of apple trees, both within a few streets of my home, and both agreed.

    I approached the owner of two pear trees around the corner, and they agreed. None minded if I picked when they were there or not, and all were glad for the fruit to be used. One of them had children who watched us picking apples, and that made my children feel awkward.

    I used every bit of that fruit. Some I turned into compote, preserves and chutneys, and took some over to the owners, thanking them again.

    I have no doubt that I would still be able to pick those trees years later, based on the positive interactions we had.

    There are plenty of trees in the public domain that you can pick without asking anyone. Even without making much of an effort, we’ve found and picked carobs, dates, figs, and olives.

    Here in Israel the first tree we harvested was a pomegranate tree growing on our street. (You can see a picture of my then five year old with his haul.) My little boys picked loads of pomegranates from it, and from that time on, all the children in the neighborhood would pick them. But no one considered picking the fruit until then.

    Aside from the free fruit you get, it’s a nice activity, by yourself or with your family! You get out in the fresh air and sunshine, and it’s a wholesome and enjoyable activity.

    So don’t be bashful – if free, organic fruit interests you, give it a try!

    Avivah

  • Creating holiday spirit in your home

    The winter holidays have been commercialized so much that for many, the focus is on gifts and any deeper meanings are buried.

    So what is it really supposed to be about?

    Take the time before a holiday begins to think, ‘What do I want this to be about for me and my family?’

    For us, we keep our holidays low key and family focused – our priority is on spending quality time with one another and honoring the meaning behind each holiday.

    For a few weeks before Chanuka, we begin playing holiday music throughout the day, every day. We hang Chanuka themed pictures up on the front door. (I do this for all of the major holidays.)

    Some years we’ve done more in the way of decorations – when my oldest daughter was living at home, she always did a great job with this and until the box the decorations were in was damaged by water, we continued hanging up her creations every year. It gives a nice feeling of holiday anticipation for everyone.

    At this point, all of our children are old enough to light their own menorahs. Next year, everyone will light outside with my husband and the older boys, but this year, the three youngest children lit inside. We had two rounds of singing the blessings and prayers together (one for the group outside, one for the group inside) after the lighting.

    Each of the eight nights, menorah lighting was followed with dancing together while singing more Chanuka songs.

    We make some special Chanuka foods over the week but not every single day. The three youngest boys had Chanuka activities in their school camp and that included Chanuka themed refreshments, and I didn’t want to overdo it by making more of them at home. At home with me, dd8 enjoyed her special time without any siblings around.

    We spent one afternoon preparing foods to take to take to our family Chanuka party in Jerusalem. The next day was the party itself. In attendance were all of our children, their spouses, granchildren, and my mother. It wasn’t an easy trip there and back, (we got home at 3 am) but it was worth it.

    One day I took the three youngest children to Tiberias buy a bike for ds9’s birthday (it was a week before Chanuka), and we participated in a Chanuka event in the area (bouncy houses, crafts, music and face painting). This kids enjoyed it, and while it would be possible to take them to Chanuka events more frequently, I find that less is more. A couple of hours at this one event was just the right amount of time for us all.

    Another day was spent travelling to get our new dog and bring her home.

    On the last night, my teens boys expressed a desire to have an activity night together with my husband and me after the younger kids were in bed. The younger kids are a very strong presence, and it was really nice to do things without them around.

    The five of us spent three hours piecing together a 500 piece puzzle and making doughnuts (filled with homemade vanilla pudding and topped with chocolate glaze).

    What about gifts? It’s so easy for presents to become a focus and an expectation – and a pressure. As I said above, less is more, and each parent has to see what the right balance is. To counter the ‘give me, give me, what did you get me?’ that children can develop when habituated to receiving lots of gifts, I’ve chosen to downplay gift giving at this stage.

    As a result, despite having purchased a number of family games in the three weeks prior to Chanuka, I decided not to give them on Chanuka but to spread them out over coming weeks. (If the boys hadn’t been in camp, we would have had time to play them together each day as was my original intent. )

    The only gifts we gave were fleecy winter pajamas for the youngest children on the first night. It was cute how excited they got about them simply because they were presented as a gift.

    It doesn’t take a lot of money or even a lot of time to create a warm atmosphere that your family looks forward to in years to come, and looks back on fondly. It does take some effort to clarify for yourself what you want your holiday to look like, and then take the actions that support your goal.

    Avivah

  • Reupholstering my bedroom set

    About seven years ago, I would wake up every morning with an aching back. I knew the problem was the mattress, but new mattresses are expensive and at the time I had no budget for any kind of mattresses.

    Soon after I began thinking how much I wanted new mattresses, I was walking somewhere with my kids. As I walked up the hill, I absentmindedly noticed that someone had put two twin mattresses to the side of the street for giveaway and glanced at them.

    I stopped in my tracks in disbelief. They were name brand mattresses in pristine condition, clearly swapped out by someone replacing them for a new set. I called a taxi company, asked them to send me a taxi with a roof rack, and took the mattresses home.

    When my neighbor saw us unloading them, he admiringly asked where we got them. He was shocked they weren’t new.

    The first night I slept on one my back stopped hurting. G-d sent me just what I needed, when I needed it! I felt so grateful and blessed.

    The mattresses were a meter wide, wider than our bedframes. I looked for used bedroom sets for a while, but 1 meter wide isn’t a standard Israeli bed size. Finally, it became apparent I wasn’t going to find used bedroom sets with the features I wanted that would fit our mattresses.

    I kept an eye on the furniture stores and when there was a sale on beds, went to a store where I was able to customize the bed size, the headboard design and the bottom of the bed design so it included a built in storage area underneath.

    I rarely buy new furniture and when these beds arrived, it was such a prosperous feeling. They were beautiful, they fit the mattresses perfectly, and they were exactly what I wanted. I was so happy with them.

    But over time, I was dismayed to see the synthetic leather headboards and baseboards began to peel. I hadn’t had any previous experience with this material, but supposedly it was long lasting. It wasn’t.

    At first the peeling was very minor and hardly noticeable, but it got worse over time. Eventually, my beautiful beds looked shabby and beat up. I thought of buying new beds, but the mattresses are still in great condition, the beds are exactly what I want, and I really didn’t want to make the effort of buying new beds and having to sell our current beds. It was a lot of work I didn’t want to do.

    I felt a little stuck. I didn’t want to have beaten up furniture, but if I wasn’t going to buy new ones, something had to be done to make these look good. That meant reupholstering them, and the cost for professional upholstering would be formidable – not to mention needing to transport the furniture to the reupholsterer was more work I didn’t want to do.

    After thinking about my dilemma for quite a while, I decided to try reupholstering the beds myself. I figured that the worst thing that could happen was I would take them apart and do a bad job. Since I was already at the point of considering buying other beds, I wouldn’t have lost much if they didn’t turn out well and could move on to buying something new if I had to.

    I watched a few YouTube videos to get a sense of what was involved, and then I began.

    Here’s a picture of the first headboard before I started.

    I headed to the store and bought six meters of inexpensive black velvety material. Since it was going to be used on furniture that got minimal wear and I didn’t know what I was doing, spending on high quality fabric didn’t seem warranted.

    I took the headboard apart, and I learned that a headboard is basically just a piece of wood with smaller pieces of wood covered with foam and then fabric, all screwed together.

    Although when I ordered the beds the headboards were what I wanted, styles have changed and now I preferred a design running vertically rather than horizontally. I was pleasasantly surprised that rebuilding the headboard was easier than I expected.

    Here’s what the headboards look like now.

    Finishing the headboards was so gratifying.

    Then I moved on to the fabric frames of the bottom section of the bed. That was a little more challenging since I needed to maneuver into awkward spots inside the underbed storage area. But they also turned out beautifully.

    For 175 shekels of fabric and several mornings of my time, I was able to give new life to my bedroom set. I’m very happy with how they look!

    How do you think they turned out? Is this the kind of project you would do?

    Avivah

  • Saving money on groceries – loss leaders

    This full cart of groceries that cost just 400 shekels was filled with loss leaders. Today let’s talk about what loss leaders are and how to take advantage of these amazing prices.

    A common strategy is to offer very discounted prices on select items to get customers into stores. It’s known that once the shoppers are there, they’re likely to buy other items to fill in their shopping, items that are full price and have a high profit for the store. So they advertise the sales items that they don’t make money on, and maybe even lose money on – the loss leaders – to get you into the store.

    Last week, loss leaders were carrots, onions and cabbage at 1.90 a kilo, and I bought a lot of them all. This week the onions and cabbage remain on sale, and fennel has been added to the sales line up so I got a big bagful of fennel.

    They don’t usually have fruit as loss leaders in this store, but this week they had oranges and clementines on sale for 1.90, so I got two bags of clementines. The kids love having these in their lunch for school. (I have clementine and orange trees but the fruit on them isn’t yet ripe.)

    When you see a loss leader, how much do you buy? I try to get as much as I can realistically store and use before they go bad. Most produce stays fresh much longer than people think.

    How did I store what I bought last week?

    Cabbage has a long shelf life in the fridge, and can stay fresh for weeks out of the fridge if it’s super hot that time is obviously less.) I bought four large heads to make a big batch of sauerkraut with. Even though I didn’t have room for them in the fridge and haven’t yet gotten to making the sauerkraut, even with the hot weather we’re having (in the 90s), they’ve stayed just fine.

    Carrots also store well in a cool and dry spot. I keep the bags of carrots in the fridge.

    Onions store well in a cool, dry location. I have a four tier storage basket system in my kitchen where I keep produce that doesn’t need refrigeration, and now one and a half of those baskets are filled with onions. Onions last such a long time – months. Even in super hot weather, I’ve been able to keep onions without any special storage for weeks, though I did keep an eye on them in case something got soft so that it didn’t spoil.

    Here are the sweet potatoes that I bought last week at 3.90, now 9.90. Sweet potatoes last a long time stored in a cool, dry place. One of the baskets in my stacking system is filled with now filled with them, all bought at a discount. .

    Here are the avocadoes this week, also 9.90:

    We love avocados and eat a lot of them when they come into season. But not at this price point. I bought loads last week when they were loss leaders at 3.90 a kilo. I chose avocados that were rock hard; I keep in the fridge until I’m ready to take them out to ripen, a few at a time.

    Whenever you see a loss leader, think about how you can integrate them into your budget to maximize your savings. You’ll probably have to shift your way of thinking about grocery shopping, but it’s worth it – your home can be well stocked with groceries for much less than most people are paying.

    Avivah

  • You do you, I’ll do me – not judging anyone for their choices

    It seems that my post about not spending money you don’t have rankled some readers.

    >>sorry, i think this post was super judgmental. no one should homeschool if it’s against their values because they can’t afford tuition in the school that aligns with their values, and if it carries a social/emotional cost. <<

    I would never, ever suggest to anyone that they make choices that don’t align with their values. I’m wondering why suggesting that people struggling with the costs of tuition consider other options seemed judgmental? I want to encourage people who feel they are financially drowning and feel doomed, who feel there’s no way out because this is the cost of life – I want them to think outside of the box so they can find contentment in living a life aligned with their values that is financially doable for them.

    If they can afford it and their lives are working for them, then there’s no reason to make a change. However, there are a lot of struggling families – a lot – and these are whom I’m addressing. I’d love to hear your suggestions on how families can minimize the struggle.

    The beginning of change is recognizing that something isn’t working in your life and you need to stop doing what you’re doing. You can’t make anything better until you reach this point. Once you are honest with yourself, it’s the beginning of finding solutions.

    You may not like my ideas that focus on each family taking personal responsibility to find a way out, but criticizing someone who suggests looking with a creative eye at how to live within ones means, isn’t constructive in finding solutions. I can validate how frustrating and difficult the struggle can be, but I’m not helping anyone to sympathetically agree, ‘yes, it’s impossible to live nowadays, of course you can’t manage’. And I can’t agree that if you want something you can have it regardless of your financial capacity. That’s not my belief and it’s not my lived experience.

    If it were easy to find solutions, then they’d already have been found. We’re going to have to do very creative or very hard things to change the direction things are moving in, as individuals or as a community. The cost of Orthodox Jewish life in the Tristate area of the US is reaching a crisis point (this is what was being discussed in the podcast I wrote my reflections on) and there’s a lot of community conversation happening about what to do. (While this was a specific community issue, it’s worth discussing since rising costs and the fear of not having what everyone around us has are affecting all communities.) I’m adding my thoughts to the wider discussion. As with everything, you can take them or leave them.

    I’ve never advocated homeschooling for everyone. Never. I wrote in the post following the one commented on: “I’m the first to agree that homeschooling isn’t for everyone. My point is that while educating one’s child is a need, there’s flexibility in where and how that education happens. When people begin to realize this, it can get their mental gears to brainstorm possibilities. This is my position about every expense: we have to separate between what is a need and what is a want, and find solutions so that our needs are met.”

    As I said in that post, I also suggested that people can look at less expensive communities, in which tuition is much more manageable. For example, I know someone living in a PA community where the school limits tuition to 15% of family income.

    >>ditto for seminary, if it’s an important life stage that you actively want your daughter to experience (from what i hear, excellent seminaries exist in the US, israel is not a requirement, but i can make a financial case for israel- a girl who experiences it and wants to remain here may end up costing the parents less as she marries).<<

    Like everything else, if it’s important to you and you can afford it, go ahead and pay for your child to have that experience. I’m not telling anyone how to spend their money. I’m grateful I was able to go to seminary in Israel and it was very impactful on my life, and I was able to do that because I worked hard to save money to attend. I’m saying if you can’t afford it, then you have to look for options or you need to accept you don’t have the financial resources you’d like to have.

    >> do you say the same about yeshiva gedola tuition for boys? that it’s “optional” if you can’t afford it? sure, in that case, send them to public school. it’s free. <<

    I’m very consistently saying the same thing, again and again. If you can’t afford something, you have to look for options. That doesn’t automatically mean doing without; that can also include possibilities that many have accessed such as asking for scholarships or requesting family assistance, work-study arrangements, or agreeing to pay a lower monthly tuition for more years. I’m sure many more things have been negotiated.

    >>no- we are moser nefesh (self sacrificing) to educate our children with our values, and there is value in having a mainstream school experience.<<

    Being self sacrificing means you’re giving something up in order to have this experience. Someone who is sacrificing is accepting that everything can’t be a priority. If you want to have one thing, making that choice ipso facto means you’re not going to be able to have another.

    Self sacrificing doesn’t mean we insist we can have whatever we want, whatever the cost. If something is important to you, find a way.

    >> and, yes, conformity is a basic human need. children who feel weird will make life decisions based on those childhood feelings, and that often backfires.<<

    Conformity isn’t a basic human need. Belonging is a basic human need. A person can conform and not belong. A person may not conform but still belong. You may think you need to conform in order to belong and there is some overlap, but they aren’t at all the same.

    >>from your posts, i understand that you and your family expend extraordinary time and effort to be frugal. <<

    No, we actually don’t spend extraordinary time and effort being frugal. Perhaps it seems that way because I detail various things we have done, with the intent to help others see there are different ways to achieve your goals. I don’t aspire to live in deprivation and lack, and my finances aren’t endless, so I choose to take alternative actions to live a life that is abundant to me.

    While we don’t spend enormous efforts being frugal, it would be accurate to say that we’re probably more intentional than most about spending our time and money in a way that gives us the most value.

    >>living where you do might be cheap and enjoyable, but you know better than i do that it has high external costs (e.g., waking up at 4am to commute to work by public transit, because you have one car and work is in the center of the country).<<

    Where I live isn’t cheap, and in fact many people considering moving here have been surprised and discouraged by the cost of housing. Yes, I do find it enjoyable to live here, and am grateful that by selling a smaller apartment in a more expensive part of the country we were able to buy a larger home here while keeping the housing costs the same.

    Your example of high external costs references a post in which I explained why we chose not to continue having two vehicles. I don’t think that’s a good example of the discomforts of living in a less central location. To clarify: my husband took the train even when we had a second car. The second car was used for him to drive to the train station instead of taking a bus there. We agreed to do without the second car and he takes two buses a week instead.

    He has the option to take our car to work if he wants and avoid public transportation altogether, but he chooses public transportation because it’s easier and less stressful than driving to Tel Aviv in rush hour traffic. While this may sound like something that would be difficult for your family, for us it’s not a high cost at all, but a choice we’ve made that fits who we are and what we want for our lives.

    >>our family’s cost-benefit analysis is different, which you address in your post, and we aren’t in any debt, but it’s irrespective of the objective cost of living. we’re planning a simcha now BH, and are being very mindful of staying at the lowest end of acceptable – as we’ve done for all our previous simchas- and at the same time making sure we’re not weird outliers. thankfully we’ve chosen a community where the standard is very affordable.<<

    That’s wonderful! You’re making choices that work for you. That’s what my message is, for everyone to make choices that work for them.

    Regarding the two comments you made about being weird, I’ll simply state that my family and children are all well integrated into our/their communities. Even though I refrain from sharing the positive sentiments regularly expressed about our family, it’s because I think it’s unseemly for the ‘rich’ to flaunt their ‘wealth’, not because we’re ‘weird outliers’.

    Avivah

  • Make your own spice blends

    One of the little money saving things I do is to make my own spice blends.

    A few months ago it occurred to me that I regularly season certain foods with various spices, and it would save me time if I put those seasonings together into a mix.

    You can buy specialty spice blends for a premium price, or you can make your own. I decided to do a search for some recipes since it’s fun to try new things rather than stick to the familiar all the time.

    I buy spices in bulk 1 kg bags and I have a nice variety of spices so I can make spice blends very affordably. I’ve made a chili spice blend and pumpkin pie spice in the past that I keep on hand, and now I’ve added a steak seasoning mix, a chicken seasoning mix, and a shwarma seasoning mix.

    This is so easy but it is already saving me from having to individually measure out multiple spices when I cook. I measure the ingredients into recycled peanut butter jars and label the top of each jar so I can see at a glance what’s in each one.

    I also added the recipe I used for each one and stuck it to the front, so that if I want to make more once it’s finished, I won’t have to spend time searching for what recipe I used.

    As I said, it’s a small thing but it makes my cooking go more quickly and every little bit of savings of time and money adds up!

    Avivah

  • Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur, Shabbos menus 2025

    The way the holidays fall this year – Shabbos, day off, holiday, day off, Shabbos, day off, holiday, etc – means a cooking marathon for a few weeks!

    **Before I go on to menus, I want to share our happy news, that exactly two weeks after our last granddaughter was born, our youngest married son and his wife had their first baby – a girl! We haven’t yet seen her in person due to the holidays but hope to see her soon – in pictures she looks adorable! Thank You, Hashem.**

    I got up at 4 am this morning, the morning after Yom Kippur, to get started cooking for Shabbos. I don’t like feeling rushed and pressured, and I’ve really been enjoying doing the bulk of my cooking on Thursdays and having a stress free Friday.

    This week that’s not an option since Yom Kippur was Thursday, so getting up early is the best option for me. As I write at 7:30 am, there are six roasts in the oven, a sixteen quart pot of chicken soup simmering on the stovetop, the load of whites is finished and ready to hang, and a load of coloreds are in the wash. I made lunches for the three boys who have school today and got them out to their school van. Now I’ll hang that laundry, and dd8 and I will go to the store to pick up some things that we don’t have since part of the Mishnat Yosef order didn’t arrive this week, and will resume cooking once we’re back home.

    My teen boys are all home, the last one arriving in the middle of the night so I haven’t seen him yet. Bliss…you all know how I love when they’re all home. My youngest married daughter and husband were here for Yom Kippur, so they’re still around but will be going back to Jerusalem at some point today.

    The boys will take down the pool today (my husband already emptied almost all of it) since it’s on the patio where we’ll be building the sukka, and will start working on the sukka.

    To make this time of year easier, whenever I’ve been cooking, I’ve doubled or quadrupled quantities of some dishes to put in the freezer. I don’t have freezer space for everything, so meat, chicken and fish I make fresh before each holiday. Soup and salads are also made fresh. Some dips like matbucha, marinated eggplant/peppers, and pickled beets I’ve canned so those are shelf ready.

    That means challahs, dips, kugels, and desserts are what I put in the freezer. Right now I have in the freezer I have: peanut butter ice cream, mango ice cream, leek quiche, potato kugel, onion kugel, carrot muffins, sweet potato souffle and apple spice cake.

    My stock of ready made foods helped me a lot on the Shabbos right after Rosh Hashana, when I was so mentally exhausted that I didn’t have any energy for cooking – I pulled from the freezer and some canned goods, and asked my husband and son to make the meat, chicken, fish and soup, and no one could tell I hadn’t been in the kitchen at all that day.

    I’ll share what my menu plans have been so far, including for this Shabbos, beginning with Rosh Hashana.

    Rosh Hashana 2025 Menu

    Round spelt challahs – I made a large batch of ten challahs, froze what I didn’t immediately need

    Simanim/symbolic foods for Rosh Hashana nights:

    • apples and honey
    • roasted beets with honey and basil
    • stir fry – gourd, carrots and onion
    • leek patties
    • black eyed peas
    • pomegranate arils
    • dates
    • baked tilapia
    • fish head

    Dinner 1:

    • challah
    • simanim
    • chicken soup
    • roast brisket with carrots
    • sweet potato/potato fries
    • Cucumber/tomato/purple onion salad
    • Apple spice cake

    Day 1:

    • Dips: guacamole, fresh tomato, eggplant with tomato/pickle/onion finely diced in, Moroccan carrot
    • salmon (honey)
    • sweet potato souffle
    • leek quiche
    • chicken
    • cabbage craisin salad

    (No dessert, took apple spice cake and onion kugel for kiddush at shul during break before shofar blowing)

    Night 2:

    • challah
    • simanim, plus new fruit – dragonfruit
    • (no soup, everyone full from simanim)
    • roast meat (with tomato sauce)
    • roasted carrots and apples
    • salad – raisin cabbage slaw
    • dessert – apple plum crumble

    Day 2:

    • challah
    • dips –
    • salmon
    • chicken
    • roast sweet potatoes
    • carrot muffins
    • onion kugel
    • cabbage salad
    • tomato cucumber salad
    • dessert – apricot compote

    Yom Kippur 2025 Menu

    first meal on erev Yom Kippur:

    • challah (I made another large batch of eight challahs, since the last batch was finished)
    • baked fish
    • chicken poppers with dipping sauce
    • vegetable quiche
    • potato kugel
    • tomato avocado salad
    • cabbage craisin salad

    Meal two/seuda hamafsekes erev Yom Kippur:

    • challah
    • chicken soup
    • meat
    • dips
    • cucumber tomato salad
    • Korean carrot salad
    • sweet potato souffle
    • melon

    Yom Kippur kids meal:

    • pitas
    • hot dogs
    • french fries
    • chicken wings
    • salad

    After Yom Kippur – break fast meal:

    • chicken soup
    • meat
    • honey garlic chicken wings
    • carrot salad
    • cuke tomato salad
    • dessert – fresh mango

    Shabbos between Yom Kippur and Sukkos :

    Dinner:

    • challah – from freezer
    • chicken soup
    • roast meat with carrot and onions (I’m making several kinds and will slice and freeze some for Sukkos)
    • roast potatoes with schwarma spice
    • purple cabbage mango salad
    • avocado tomato salad
    • dessert – easy fruit pie

    Shabbos Day meal:

    • guacomole – (I’ll be making multiple recipes of the first four dips listed and freezing them)
    • chumus
    • techina
    • carrot dip
    • marinated eggplant and peppers (from pantry)
    • baked tilapia
    • chicken (just came home from the store after writing this and got a great sale on fresh chicken quarters – 25 shekels a kg) so updating to say I’ll prepare it all and pop it in the freezer)
    • cucumber tomato salad
    • Korean carrot salad
    • dessert – ice cream

    I hope those of you celebrating are enjoying this special time of year and not feeling overwhelmed by the preparation! It’s a lot and give yourself lots of pats on the back for all that you’re doing that is seen and even more for what isn’t seen. When I get time pressured, I still get everything done but tend to feel resentful at people around me for not doing as much as me. I may not express it, but it’s there. That’s my personal tendency I’m aware of and need to work on. So doing more in advance means I’m relaxed and the appreciation I get from others is extra, so it makes for a happier me and a more pleasant environment for us all.

    Avivah

  • Changes for more enjoyable Shabbos prep

    Today I did some housecleaning on the blog – I’ve been overwhelmed by hundreds of spam posts by AI bots. I found that in the midst of those of almost 500 in the last month that still weren’t deleted were about fifteen legitimate comments from the last couple of years that I didn’t see and therefore didn’t approve. If you commented at some point and thought you were being ignored, please know that it wasn’t intentional, but a matter of falling through the digital cracks.

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    Today (Thursday) I’m doing the bulk of my Shabbos cooking. I usually do most of my cooking on Friday, but am shifting my schedule after a conversation with my husband and sixteen y ear old son.

    Our almost 18 year old is now living in the yeshiva dorm and will only be home every few weeks for Shabbos. Every time someone moves out, the logistics in the home shift and we discussed what would make our Shabbos more enjoyable.

    We began by discussing erev Shabbos preparations, since that affects how you go into Shabbos.

    We agreed we’d all like to be ready earlier – we’re usually almost ready a couple of hours before Shabbos, but that bit that isn’t quite done keeps us from feeling completely able to relax. We don’t like the feeling of work that goes on and on. We would all like to take a nap in the afternoon, so that we aren’t tired by the time we begin our meal after 8 pm.

    Friday is the only day that my son and husband are both available to do things around the house. Those tasks get done at a slow pace, because they both help in the kitchen. I recognized that I’m less appreciative of this assistance than I generally am of the things they do, because what I really want is for them to knock out the ever growing list of home repairs.

    Here’s the plan we worked out together:

    I’ll switch my cooking day to Thursday, leaving Friday for soup and fresh salads. Last night I did a shopping trip that I usually would have done this morning, so that I would have an uninterrupted block of time for cooking today.

    I’ve always preferred to bake challah on Fridays so it’s fresh, but now I’ll bake it in advance and wrap it well before freezing it. I’ve found when I do that, it’s still tastes very fresh when defrosted.

    Last week I made a double batch of challah dough and froze half of it, so I defrosted the dough last night. I was able to shape the dough into challahs when I got up at 5 am. They rose while I got the kids ready for school and the freshly baked challahs were in the freezer by 10 am. That was nice to have done.

    I’ve made the meat and chicken, and as soon as I finish writing this, will prepare a pan of potatoes and sweet potatoes, then bake them all at once while I take a nap.

    My plan is to have all the laundry washed and hung up in time for it to dry by Thursday evening, so I don’t need to deal with any laundry on Friday. I have one load of whites in the washer right now, and then maybe I’ll do a small load of towels, but otherwise all of the laundry was done yesterday.

    My son and husband will do the cleaning on Thursday night, so we’ll all wake up to a house that is ready for Shabbos. Just as I preferred freshly baked challahs on Friday, my eighteen year old son preferred freshly mopped floors on Friday afternoons. He was the one doing the mopping, so that was his schedule.

    Now with his job shifting to someone else, the mopping will be done in advance, with a quick damp wipe of the floors an hour before Shabbos.

    Instead of helping in the kitchen, my husband and son will have a set time for home repairs/projects, on Friday from 10 am – 1 pm. 1 pm is the hard stop time; they will be completely finished before or by 1 pm. None of us want to finish all we need to do early, and then fill our time with more tasks.

    All of the youngest four kids are home by 1. Once they get home, we’ll all have quiet time (this was our routine every day of the summer) so that everyone will be able to rest and feel fresh by the time Shabbos begins.

    It’s helpful to periodically reassess what is working well in your home and what isn’t. Our previous schedule was working well for a long time for all of us and it was still okay, but we realized we could all feel more of a sense of accomplishment, connection and relaxation by making these changes.

    Have you changed how you’ve done things for a long time to make it better? What did you do differently?

    Avivah

  • Creating structure at a time of uncertainty – a must

    With the war on, it’s created a lot of uncertainty and changes in the day to day routines of most people. Uncertainty is a very difficult mental state to experience, for adults and children.

    The first day that the war began and it was announced school was cancelled for the day, I assumed that our kids would be home for the summer. I didn’t want to be waiting every day for an update, wondering if and when they’d go back to school. The determination was made immediately and then no mental energy was spent on wondering about it.

    My initial focus at this time was to create a feeling of stability for our family. That meant creating a predictable framework that could allow everyone to mentally relax.

    My routine isn’t rigid and blocked into time slots; it doesn’t need to be. For us, it’s creating a regular flow for the day:

    • wake up
    • get dressed
    • organize the safe room (particularly important since most family members are sleeping in this room)
    • breakfast (sometime between 7 – 8 am)
    • davening
    • learning activities – this includes reading together, playing games
    • snack
    • swimming – the kids go in and out through the day
    • lunch (around 1 pm)
    • quiet time – this is one hour that they need to stay in bed quietly but don’t have to nap
    • afternoon activities – similar to the morning, with a snack mid afternoon
    • dinner (we start between 6 – 6:30 pm)
    • bedtime

    This gives us flexibility at the same time there’s predictability.

    Predictability around food is also an important part of a schedule. While I prefer to plan meals a week in advance, right now I’m planning just a couple of days ahead, and sometimes even the night before. That’s still enough to have time to prep foods that need advance planning, to not feel the pressure at 5 pm of wondering what to make for dinner, and to have a ready answer first thing in the day when asked what we’ll be eating that day.

    I also plan for twice daily snacks. Since the twins still feel food insecurity and tend to ask for food all day long when at home (even right after finishing a meal), being able to tell them what snacks we’ll be having and when we’ll be having them is calming.

    I’m also trying to create some predictability for myself in my early morning so that I have a slice of time to meet my own needs. What worked when the kids were in school doesn’t work with everyone home, so my routine is now: wake up early, go outside immediately to soak in the early morning sun, daven/pray, feed the chickens, water the plants, and if there’s any time left before the kids wake up, sit and enjoy the sounds of nature.

    I do all of this (except davening) while grounding, also called earthing. Grounding is just connecting your body with the earth. Generally this is most easily done barefoot while sitting/standing/walking on the ground. I’m not a barefoot person at all; I get fully dressed the minute I wake up and always have, so this is a conscious shift for me. This is a simple action that has physical and mental benefits, one of which is modulating the autonomic nervous system – but honestly, it just feels good.

    If you’re feeling like things are out of control and stressful, try creating some structure in your day. Structure doesn’t create enjoyment or fun; you determine the kind of activities that you’ll do within the framework you create, so be sure to plan things that give you pleasure.

    There are many things outside of us that we can’t do anything about, but creating a routine puts your focus on something positive you can change that will create a more calm environment in your home.

    Avivah

    PS – I’m going to add this note to the next few messages until readers get used to the new format here. In this format, you can’t see any comments from the main page. To comment and/or read the comments, you’ll need to click on the post and then scroll all the way down.

  • Making mung bean flatbread, mustard, and canning baked beans

    With the kids home all day, there’s always someone asking for something to eat and while I have so many ideas of things to make, ds12 has dietary restrictions that are very limiting. It’s not fair to make foods that he can’t eat and then expect him to decline them when he sees everyone enjoying them. But it takes a lot of the pleasure out of cooking for me when I have so so few base ingredients to use. I like cooking and baking.

    I decided I need to redraw the lines of what I will and won’t make for the summer, and that will mean loosening the boundaries for ds12.

    Our foundation will continue to be high in animal proteins and have no processed foods. Though there are so many fun alternative grains to bake with, I’m choosing to limit them to infrequent appearances. I’ll include beans, potatoes and sweet potatoes regularly, and use more nuts and seeds for baking.

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    In preparation for a couple of meals planned for this week, a couple of days ago I soaked a big pan full of white beans, and another pan full of mung beans.

    After soaking for a day, I drained and rinsed them, then let them sit out for another day to start the sprouting process. Soaking and sprouting beans minimizes leptins, decreases digestive discomfort, and increases the nutritional benefit.

    I used the mung beans to make what were supposed to be wraps but were more like flat breads. The recipe is a simple concept – blend up the soaked mung beans with some water and a drop of salt, then fry them like a large pancake. (You can do something similar with soaked lentils.) I served them with tuna salad, and the kids liked them a lot so it was a successful experiment. I didn’t taste them but one of my teens said they’re perfect with filling but bland eaten on their own. I’ll experiment with adding seasonings next time, which will be in the next couple of days since I still have a large amount of batter waiting to be used. I’m thinking they could be used for enchiladas, burritos, and lasagna, so there are a number of potential ways to use them.

    I cooked all of the white beans on a very low flame overnight, so when I woke up they were ready to use. I made chicken chili for dinner, using chicken breasts that I canned in 2022 (I canned so much meat and chicken in 2022!! ).

    Since I only used six cups of beans for dinner and I had cooked a big pot full, I decided I’d can the remaining beans as baked beans. Every time I can something I’m doing something my future self thanks me for because it makes that future meal easier.

    I pulled up a baked bean recipe that called for barbeque sauce and mustard, neither of which I had in the house. For a moment I thought about reconsidering my intentions, then then realized there wouldn’t be any need to change plans, since I have ingredients and the willingness to cook from scratch.

    So often we don’t realize how many items we’re accustomed to purchasing in the store can be made quickly, easily and resulting in a much higher quality product – right in your own kitchen. And of course it saves you money as well!

    I had never made mustard until tonight, but it was quite simple. I buy mustard seeds to use for pickling, so I blended some into a powder, mixed in vinegar, salt, tumeric, garlic powder and paprika, then cooked the mixture until it thickened. Voila, mustard!

    I then prepared a recipe of barbeque sauce, which was tomato paste, vinegar, water, (brown sugar but I left it out since the tomato paste has sugar added – very annoying but that’s how it’s sold here and for this recipe it evened out), soy sauce, mustard, garlic powder, cumin, onion powder and smoked paprika. It tasted great.

    I mixed the barbeque sauce into the beans, then filled up jars until I used up all the cooked beans in the pot. I popped the five liters of baked beans into the pressure canner, and I’m writing this while waiting for them to finish processing.

    I also have a pan of potatoes baking in the oven for tomorrow’s lunch menu, which will feature double baked potatoes. Dinner will be sweet potato chicken casserole, and I’ll use canned chicken to prepare that. Knowing today what I’ll be serving tomorrow makes tomorrow an easier day.

    Avivah

    PS – I’m going to add this note to the next few messages until readers get used to the new format here. In this format, you can’t see any comments from the main page. To comment and/or read the comments, you’ll need to click on the post and then scroll all the way down.