A few days ago, I was waiting at a bus stop with ds4 and ds5, when an older woman commented on how cute ds4’s dimples are. I smiled back at her and told her that it’s a gift from Heaven. She agreed, and told me that she’s chiloni (secular), but she believes in G-d. I smiled.
A minute later, I glanced in her direction and she looked as if she wanted to say something to me. She then said, “I keep looking at you because I can see you’re a religious woman and I want to ask for your help with something.” So I told her I don’t know how helpful I can be, but I’m happy to help if I can.
She continued, “Even though I’m secular, I truly believe there is a G-d. But sometimes I feel a heavy weight on my heart. What do you think I can do about this?” Now, that’s a big question to answer while waiting for a bus that was supposed to arrive in about two minutes!
I’m not a spiritual counselor or anything like that, but generally I would ask someone more about what they were feeling if they said something like this to me. That not being an option, I told her the following.
“I can only tell you what has been helpful for me personally, and that’s to try to speak to G-d directly. I don’t mean formal prayer from a prayerbook or in a synagogue, because sometimes people do that but there’s still a disconnect (stumbled here while I tried to remember the word I needed in Hebrew) between the heart and the head. Intellectually you know G-d is there but you still don’t feel it. I mean just talking throughout the day to Him, asking for whatever you need.”
“If I need to be somewhere by a certain time time and am waiting for a bus, I ask G-d to send me the bus you need, and thank Him when He does. If I’m in the store shopping, I ask Him to help me find the groceries I need within your my budget, that whatever money I have will be enough. Little things like that. G-d truly is our father, He cares about us and wants us to be happy, and He’s always there for us – but we have to move towards Him. When I speak to Him and I see He answers me, it helps me to feel more connected.”
The bus pulled up as I was finishing saying this, so I warmly wished her well and she thanked me very warmly, too.
Spirituality is very individual and everyone finds their own answers to their search for meaning and deeper connection.
What would you have said if you were asked this? Would you have found this a helpful suggestion, or would you have suggested something different entirely?
We catered the entire bar mitzva weekend ourselves – this meant cooking for three meals, plus the kiddush. Friday night we had 25 people, for the kiddush there were around 200 (lots of kids!), for the main bar mitzva meal we had about 80, and for shalosh seudos (the third Sabbath meal), we had under 25.
This was definitely more work than hiring someone but: 1) in Karmiel there are no caterers so arranging catering from another city would have been complicated, and 2) we catered the kiddush for our last bar mitzva 5.5 years ago because it was a very busy time in our lives, and were extremely disappointed with the quantity, setup, and service.
I’ll backtrack for a minute and share with you that scenario – ten minutes before everyone entered the social hall, I came in and was horrified – a couple of other adults who saw it were also shocked – there had been just one table set up for men and women in the entire hall. Never, ever were receptions were set up in this way, and they had sent enough food for just one table! I had to ask that everything be rearranged at the last minute (the people who came down early immediately told the catering staff how it was supposed to be and started moving table around).
The young man who had been left in charge was very belligerent and unhelpful (the caterer had three events that weekend and wasn’t there), insisting it was all done just as it should have been. I had to have my kids run home with a baby stroller and bring back lots of food that I had for our main meal after the kiddush – kugels, salad, and big bags of cherries – to compensate for the caterer bringing enough for only half of the number we had paid for. I told the person in charge that I realized a mistake had been made, and asked him to put out the stuff we brought so the tables wouldn’t look empty. The worker was very upset at us – I think he was new to the job and insecure about it, and he didn’t want this to reflect badly on him – and though we thanked him repeatedly for his work and told him mistakes happen, we knew it wasn’t his fault – it was very, very stressful and unpleasant.
After the kiddush we took back whatever was left – the things we brought in addition to a small amount of cake and kugel the caterer had provided (which we ended up throwing away in a dumpster because it was so dry and unappetizing). When I spoke to the caterer after Shabbos, I was told that his worker claimed there was plenty of food (yes, because I brought so much!) and the proof was that there was food left over that I took home. I explained that I took back the food I had brought since I needed it for our meal following the kiddush, and there was only a small pan of the other things left that wasn’t what we had brought that I took back, but the clear implication was that I was lying. So no apology, no compensation – just accusations at me.
This was really upsetting to me because I was being treated like a manipulative liar, when I had been extremely reasonable about the entire situation, and really thought that there had been a mistake and the caterer would be embarrassed about this huge bungle. When I delegate something like this, I accept that if I’m not doing it, it’s going to be however it is – and as long as it falls into the range of acceptable, I don’t nitpick and I don’t micromanage – I trust whoever’s in charge to take care of things. He was more concerned about covering his ego and wouldn’t admit anything had been done wrong. The irony is that my husband had no idea of all that was going on behind the scenes of the setup – there was no time to tell him – and thanked the caterer publicly earlier that morning when he spoke, for the amazing kiddush that was so much nicer than we had expected! So our kiddush ended up being a feather in the cap for the caterer, and only a handful of people who saw things at the beginning knew that it was because I had worked hard in a very short amount of time to salvage what would have been a disaster.
I had people who told me right away that morning they’d back up what they saw if necessary when I spoke to the caterer (it was really bad), and could have made a big deal about this and insist on having part of the money paid refunded, but I just wanted to wash my hands of having to deal with the entire situation; we had paid in cash in advance so there was no leverage, and we would have had to fight for it. So in short, we paid a lot of money for the privilege of having all of it ‘taken care of for us’.
I wanted something different this time! By cooking and baking everything ourselves, it allowed us to have a variety and abundance of foods that we would have had to pay a lot to have had. Also, most caterers here seem to have the same basic menu, which is a lot of carbs that are all the same color (beige/brown/white), and I like when food on the table is visually appealing.
We did the baking for the kiddush the week before, mostly, and froze the cakes.The cooking was done entirely from Weds. evening through Friday morning. It may sound like a marathon but it really wasn’t – dd15 kept saying she felt like there should be more to do than there was.
For the bar mitzva kiddush (reception), we were told the norm here is cakes, drinks, fish (eg pickled herring), yerushalmi kugel, and sometimes crackers, dips, fruits and vegetables. Initially I considered this, but didn’t really like the idea since it made things more complicated with set up and clean up. I also feel like people are going home to a full Shabbos lunch, and I don’t need to provide a full meal for all of them before that. So I decided that I didn’t have to do that just because everyone else did, and would instead have just cakes and drinks.
(Below, ds4 helping spread filling for a the layer cake.)
Bar mitzva kiddush:
chocolate layer cake
6 layer strawberry cake
orange marmalade layer cake
oatmeal chocolate chip cookies
chocolate dipped shortbread cookies
chocolate chip loaf
chocolate chip pie
lemon pound cake
checkerboard cake
raspberry squares
fudge crinkles
chocolate cake
carrot cake
coconut snowballs
chocolate balls
marble cake
cinnamon blondies
peanut butter balls
A couple of people sent over yummy treats to put out, fancy looking concoctions that added a nice look to the dessert platters we put out, but I don’t know what they’re called. We took everything over to the hall before Shabbos, and set up for the kiddush late Friday night, including arranging all the platters. This was done by dd15, dd17, ds18, two 19 yo male guests, one 18yo female guest, dd11, and me. They all did a great job making the platters look fabulous. We covered the platters and put them on the tables, and the next morning we just had to uncover them when we got back from morning services. Very low pressure.
I heard yesterday from three different people how nice the kiddush was, and how impressive the many kinds of cake were – each of them had been told about it by several other people! That was very nice to hear, but we all felt good about how it went even before this – the tables looked nice and we had plenty for everyone.
200 challah rolls waiting to be baked
Bar mitzva meal:
First course –
homemade challah rolls
guacamole
hummus
Mediteranean chickpea salad
tomato onion salad
sweet carrot salad
coleslaw
cucumber salad
cauliflower salad
sweet-sour pepper salad with sesame seeds, almonds, craisins
savory carrot salad
Main course –
cholent (bean barley stew)
chicken
yerushalmi kugel (made by a friend)
sweet noodle kugel (made by a friend)
potato kugel
kishke (baked stuffing)
Dessert –
choice of lemon or strawberry pudding layer cake
We had the main meal in the same place as the kiddush, so we had to clear up from the kiddush before we could set up for the meal. When we got there from morning services, we had an hour before the kiddush began, and I used that time to begin cutting up the kugels and warming them up. A couple who came from Efrat for the bar mitzva came in to the kitchen to help, and cut up all the chicken, which was a big job.
After the kiddush, ds18 and three nineteen year old guests moved all the tables and chairs into place for the meal. Initially I had planned to set up the food buffet style, but realized that though it sounded easier, it would end up much more chaotic. So I decided to serve family style, which is what I do at home – I don’t like plating meals since I prefer for people to take the amount they want, of what they want.
Some younger guests who were around offered to help set the tables (their families were there for the kiddush and stayed for the meal) – I had so much help that I had to work hard to keep up with them all! While the tables were being set up, I was preparing dishes of salad for each table, so that they could be put on the table before everyone sat down to eat.
For the main course, I put out the kugels on the platters while everyone was still eating the first course – I could have asked someone to come in and help, but particularly my older girls and our 18yo guest had done so much that I really didn’t want to ask them to do more. They’re also entitled to enjoy the simcha! This was a big change from the hectic help of before the meal, when I had at least eight girls between the ages of 6 – 12 who kept coming in and asking for things to do, in addition to the help of the older girls. I kind of enjoyed the quiet; it wasn’t pressured at all. While I was setting up these platters, the older girls came in to the kitchen and began taking platters out to the tables.
Once I sat down to enjoy the main course, I didn’t get back up again. I let other people clear the serving platters and bring out individual plates of pudding cake, while I chatted with dear friends who came from Raanana. I stayed there chatting for a couple of hours, and didn’t do anymore food prep until it was time for shalosh seudos.
At that point, we rearranged the tables and chairs – again! – and set up for an informal shalosh seudos – rather than individual place settings, I set up buffet style – a pile of plates, napkins, cups, a basket of challah rolls, and then large serving bowls of salads and platters of kugel (planned leftovers from the main lunch meal). People began eating whenever they got there.
Then there was the final cleanup after Shabbos. All in all, it was a lot of work, but it didn’t feel tense or overwhelming at any time. And we were able to spend a lot less while getting a lot more.
How much did all of this cost? Dh took out 1200 shekels from the ATM and that went towards food and miscellaneous bar mitzva costs that came up (in addition to using some of our regular food budget money) but I don’t have any idea how it breaks down – honestly, it seems to me like it was too much. With all that was going on, we didn’t track the specific breakdown like we usually did. We spent an additional 400 shekels on paper goods. And the hall rental was 1100 shekels.
When figuring the total spent, I’m not taking into account that we have enough leftover chicken for another three or four Shabbosim, or any other leftovers that we’ll use at a different time (eg papergoods). Without working out the actual cost of what we used only for the bar mitva itself, we spent a total of 2700 shekels for the hall rental and catering for the entire weekend – at today’s exchange rate, this is equivalent to $715.
Considering that for our last bar mitzva over five years ago, we spent $1200 on catering for just the kiddush itself (and I already said how woefully inadequate the caterer’s provisions and set up were), we’re quite pleased that we were able to have the kind of event that we wanted without any compromises, while staying within a frugal budget!
We’ve had a couple of wonderfully rainy weeks here. This does come along with some potential downsides when you’re used to free solar energy!
The laundry hasn’t been easy to stay on top of, despite having two freestanding racks that can be kept indoors since I posted about living without a dryer. But the bigger issue has been hot water. For the last couple of months, our electric hot water heater (which is turned on by demand) hasn’t been working too well. Then a couple of weeks ago, it stopped working entirely.
With no sun overhead for two weeks and no way to electrically heat the water, this wasn’t so fun! The biggest issues were showers, so we compensated by fewer showers (which isn’t really such a big deal in the winter) and heating water on our gas stove. Yesterday, the electrician came out to see what needed to be done, and found the heating element had burnt out. That had burnt out the switch, so he replaced both of them. He also replaced the thermostat.
These repairs weren’t very complicated but took place over three days – we learned that “I’ll be back in a minute” could (and did!) mean leaving one morning and coming back the next afternoon! But last night, when the repair had finally been done….bliss! Steaming hot showers for a reasonable amount of time (versus get in and out as fast as you can before the warmish water runs out), so nice!
You really do appreciate things more when you haven’t had them for a while!
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. 🙂
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.
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.)
This weekend we’re having an additional eight people sleeping at our home, and there will be a total of 22 of us for meals. My kids have asked, and this has been echoed by others since, where in the world are we going to put everyone?!?
Well, living in a five bedroom apartment, we’re obviously going to be sleeping in closer quarters than usual, but I think it will be workable. Here’s the plan: dd17 will move out of her room, which is the official guest room. The parents and their two year old will sleep in that room (we have three beds there).
Dd17 will move into the room with dd15 and dd11, where they will be joined by our eleven year old guest. There’s room for three beds to be opened at one time (though we officially have four beds there), so two of our girls will double up in one bed – they told me they’ve done this before and prefer it to the other option I offered them.
Then, ds18 and his friend will sleep in the older boys room, where ds12 and ds9 usually sleep. Last night all four of them slept there (there are two beds in that room that each have another bed underneath that can be pulled out, and there’s floor space for all four beds to be out at once). But for the weekend, we’ll have a nine year old boy here, so that changes the arrangement.
So ds9 will move out of his room and into the little’s room with our nine year old guest. Usually, the three littles sleep there. But now, ds2 will sleep in our room which he loves to do anyway! Then, ds5 and ds4 will be in their usual beds, and our four year old guest (boy) will sleep in the bed where ds2 usually sleeps. The two nine year old boys will sleep on mattresses on the floor with sleeping bags in this room. So all of the boys will be upstairs, where they have their own bathroom.
We rearranged the living room furniture to accommodate the furniture we needed to move in for Chanukah lighting – the living room window is high and a regular table wasn’t high enough to allow the menorahs to be seen. I was a little concerned how we’d have room for our dining room table to be extended, along with an extra table, along with an extra table for the menorahs, but it looks like it will work out well.
We borrowed a couple of blankets from a neighbor, but otherwise have enough sleeping bags and blankets for everyone. I washed all the linens this week so we have plenty of fresh sheets for everyone. The main challenge is pillows – I have exactly enough for each family member, and three kids have recently complained that their pillows have disappeared! Don’t ask me how that’s possible – we don’t live in a huge living space, they haven’t put them in the wash (you know how things sometimes disappear once they’re in the washer) and our home isn’t cluttered with lots of extra stuff that would cover them up, so I don’t know where they could be. Anyway, I might end up stuffing pillow cases with clean sheets if I can’t get hold of some otherwise.
Now, as far as meal arrangments: we borrowed ten plastic chairs from a neighbor – we have ten additional plastic chairs of our own, but they are the wider version with armrests, about the width of 1.5 of the other chairs. They limit how many people we can seat at the table, but by borrowing these chairs we won’t need to add a third table, which I really didn’t want to do – it would just feel too crowded. If you’re wondering why I bought chairs that aren’t so space efficient, the answer is that I didn’t – my wonderful neighbor lent them to us when we first moved here and didn’t have a stitch of furniture, and then insisted that we keep them. They’re perfect for a porch or garden, but less so for indoor seating. They are very comfortable, though!
Dd17 wanted to invite a friend, but her friend said she wanted to be home this weekend, so she’ll come on Monday, right after our weekend guests leave.
>>So much activity and so many people would stress me out, but you seem to thrive from all the extra energy!<<
Well, it’s not like we’re being forced to have people over – they’re people we want to have! We feel so fortunate that our friends are traveling here to visit us, since it’s an intimidating proposition for us to spend the weekend anywhere. To me, this makes our Chanukah more special, and my kids feel the same way. They enjoy when we have guests eating over – a couple of weeks ago I didn’t invite anyone in time, and they missed it. And they especially enjoy when we have guests sleeping over – it makes the weekend more full and fun for them.
>>Are you planning on buying a dryer? I don’t have one and with three boys and dh and I, and constantly doing laundry, I can’t imagine having a family your size without one!<<
I honestly don’t yet know the answer to this. So far we haven’t purchased a dryer, and my hope is that I won’t need to. Drying laundry in the sun is a no-brainer six months of the year here, when it’s sunny with not a drop of rain. The challenge comes during the rainy season, which we’re in right now.
In the rainy season, it gets much more labor intensive to consistently hang laundry outside. All the Israelis to whom I mentioned not having a dryer think I’m crazy. This last two weeks have been sunny, but for a couple of weeks before that it was consistently raining – which is a beautiful blessing in this country that is so dependent on it – and it was very, very tough to deal with the laundry.
Here’s what it looked like: wake up, look for a break in the rain, and quickly hang the laundry up. Keep your eye on the overcast sky the entire day. Tell your kids to let you know if they see any rain. At the first sign of a sprinkle, the kids come running and yelling that it’s raining, and you bring in all the still wet clothing. Hang the damp sheets over doors. At least that’s one thing that dries. Keep your eye on the sky. Rehang all clothes when you see a break in the rain. Try to remember to take them in before you go to sleep even if they aren’t yet dry, or hope that if you take the risk of leaving them out overnight, that it won’t start pouring in the middle of the night.
Take your risk since you really want these clothes to dry and you’re 2/3 of the way there….and you lose. Wake up in the middle of the night as you hear the rain suddenly pour down, and frantically jump out of bed and maniacally begin taking in the laundry, until your rational brain tells you to stop because it’s too late.
Once they’re soaked in the downpour, leave them hanging another two days until you’re at the same place you started, with clothes as damp as if they just came from the washer. Bring them in once more when they are halfway dry and the rain comes again, and hang them once more when there’s a break in the weather. Five days after you first did the load of wash, bring them in with gratitude that you are finally finished with this load, look at the huge pile of dirty laundry needing to be washed, and start wondering how long it will take you to cave in and buy a dryer.
No, I am totally not exaggerating. Five days and I hung and rehung the same laundry three times during that time. I’m telling you, I felt like my family needed to say a lot more than ‘thanks’ for those clean clothes! Thankfully the laundry was finished after five days and then during the next week with nonstop rain, I got smart – before I went to sleep at night, I covered the clotheslines with our heavy duty plastic tablecloth, and only took it off when there was a break in the weather. Moving a plastic tablecloth was a big improvement over taking all the laundry in and putting it back out.
Because the air is so damp and cold, even when it’s not raining the laundry doesn’t dry quickly. So it still takes a while to dry but with my new system I don’t think it will take more than three days, and probably only two, for clothes to dry.
I’ve developed strategies to stay on top of the laundry despite the weather. Firstly, wash clothes regardless of the weather. Then you have them ready to hang as soon as you have a chance. (Usually, I wash one load, hang it, wash another load, hang.) Secondly, really keep an eye on the weather. You know the saying, “Make hay while the sun shines”? That’s my motto. When the weather is sunny, I do a ton – sheets, towels, rags, anything that needs washing so that I’ll be set if it rains the next day.
In general in the winter, I try not to let dirty clothes build up. If it means putting in a load of clothes and the machine isn’t totally full, that’s okay. Waiting another day for the machine to be totally full could be the difference between trying to dry things in the rain or the sun.
When I wake up in the morning and see the blue sky, I am SO grateful because I know I’ll be able to get my laundry done. Really, you don’t know how nice it is to hang the laundry one time, and then take it down when it’s done. And even leave it overnight without worrying. The small pleasures in life. 🙂
All that being said, I very much hope we’ll have a very, very rainy winter and I’ll be constantly pushed to deal with my laundry that isn’t drying easily. We need the rain!
Do you line dry clothes year round? Why or why not? If you do, how do you deal with inclement weather?
Monday – b – polenta fries; l – meat sauce and pasta shells, salad; d – apple lentil bake (double for tomorrow’s dinner), beet salad
Tuesday – b – eggs; l – butternut coconut curry, rice, carrot salad; d – apple lentil bake
Wednesday – b – rice pancakes; l – chicken pot pie (double and freeze one for next week), beet salad; d – split pea soup, cornbread (double for tomorrow lunch)
Thursday – b- oatmeal; l – split pea soup, cornbread, salad; d – Russian borscht
Friday – b – eggs
The fruits that are accompanying breakfast this week are red grapefruits and apples. A neighbor invited us to pick navel oranges, two kinds of lemons, and mandarins in her yard last week, and we went through those very quickly!
The kids take freshly baked bread every day for their ten am meal at school, along with some fruit and/or a veggie – usually pepper strips or cucumber; this isn’t listed on the menu.
I use bone broths as a base for all my soups as well as to cook grain or bean dishes. This adds a lot of nutrients to a meal that would otherwise be vegetarian. I was delighted last week to stumble on a sale on chicken bones – 4 shekels a kilo, and so I bought all that they had. As much as that seemed at the time, we go through broth at such a quick rate (three sixteen quart pots a week) that they won’t last nearly as long as I’d hope. And now that we don’t have raw milk every morning, I’ve been thinking maybe we should get into a habit of drinking broth daily to compensate.
I started soaking the lentils on Sunday, so they’ll have time to sprout by the time that I’ll be cooking with them. I also started a new batch of kimchi, about two and a half gallons this time – the first four gallon batch that we started a couple of weeks ago still isn’t ready, though it’s breaking down nicely and is about two gallons in volume now (the cabbage breaks down as it ferments). I like to have a cup of the juice as a morning probiotic drink, so that also accounts for the lessening volume! By making a new batch of kimchi now, when the time the first batch is finished, the second one will be ready. Cabbage based ferments take a lot longer than pickles or carrots, so you have to plan ahead unless you don’t mind not having any kimchi for a few weeks while a new batch ferments.
Cucumbers are going up in price quickly, double what the summer prices are, but they’re still affordable. This week I’d like to buy a big batch and make a few gallons of pickles before the prices really shoot up and I set aside pickled cucumbers until they come back into season. The kids enjoy this a lot, and we have them regularly with our lunch meals, though I don’t list it.
I woke up at 7:30 am, and the house was quiet. Not a good sign, since the kids need to be up, dressed, fed, and out by 8 am. I had been up with ds2 quite a bit, so I decided since the littles were all still sleeping, to let them stay home this morning. Fifteen minutes later, I heard ds5 wake up and dd15 was telling him she’d help him find clothes to wear, so as soon as I heard that I quickly got up to help get them all ready to go. In that short fifteen minutes, all five of the kids who hadn’t yet left to school managed to get dressed and pack lunches, while I quickly fried some eggs in butter, wrapped them in napkins, and put them in baggies for them as a breakfast replacement, in addition to the food we packed for the 10 am meal at school. Not ideal, but much better than letting them go to school hungry.
It was pouring outside, and right after ds9 and dd11 left with ds4 and ds5 (they take them to school in the morning), I saw one of the two umbrellas had been left behind. I ran out to the porch in time to throw it down to them, so that they’d each be able to stay dry with one little next to them.
I went inside, and not even two minutes later saw that the littles’ boots were still lined up against the wall! Apparently in the rush, they had each put their sneakers on by themselves. Usually that’s fine, but in the heavy rain and with a fifteen minute walk to school, that wasn’t good at all.
Ds2 was feeling under the weather (that’s why I woke up so late this morning, since I kept waking up with him during the night), so I held him while I logged on to check my emails after sending the kids off to school. I was surprised to see responses to a post on vaccines that I hadn’t even intended to send out, since it needed some extensive editing. (If you commented and don’t see your responses, they were automatically deleted by the system when the post was deleted.) I had been doing my computer work the night before holding ds, and it seems I pressed ‘publish’ instead of ‘save draft’. Not the first time it’s happened, but still a rare situation. I quickly deleted the post.
I was interrupted by a call from ds5’s teacher. He had just gotten to school and was shivering and his lips were blue, and he needed dry clothes. Could I please bring him some? Of course! So off I go in the rain (which thankfully lessened while I was walking there since I had no rain gear), getting thoroughly splattered by a bus driving by. When I got to ds5’s school, I saw ds was dry except for the bottom inch of his pants, socks, and shoes, but when your feet are wet, all of you will be cold. I put on dry socks and boots, and he was right away nice and toasty.
I had taken along a set of dry clothes for ds4 as well, assuming that if ds5 gotten so wet on the way, ds4 probably also had. So I went into his school with dry clothes for him, and the teacher told me he was drenched when he got to school, and what was I thinking to send him dressed like that? Sometimes you have to make a conscious effort not to feel defensive when questions are posed in that way! I told her that I thought between his lined rain resistant windbreaker and being under an older sibling’s umbrella, he’d be fine. Doesn’t that seem reasonable on a rainy fall day? I exchanged his wet shoes and socks for boots (otherwise he was totally dry), gave him an extra sweatshirt for warmth, and headed home.
When I got home, partially dry but slightly shivering, ds2 wanted to be held some more, so I looked at my emails again while I held him. Then I read an annoyed sounding message from someone who had sent me the first message at 1:30 in the morning, wanting me to take care of something ASAP. I asked dh if he could soak some barley while I took care of that issue, and a few minutes later, he came in to show me that the barley was crawling with bugs – really infested. Yuck.
So that was all thrown away, I went to prepare some more barley for a thick stew for lunch (since I was out of coconut milk for the planned meal), when I saw that I was out of onions. And someone had used the little shopping cart filled with apples waiting to be made into applesauce as a step stool, apparently, because some ripe apples were smushed all over the floor. And the cloth shopping cart material was all ripped and the flimsy metal frame broken. Oh, well. This is an example of the costs in having a big family – things that you might think would last a while are closer to disposable!
I made some soup, cleaned up the kitchen, swept up the house, noted with dismay at the clothes on the clothesline that hadn’t been taken in last night when they were dry, then got online to let those of you who saw the deleted post know why it was gone. And then saw that somehow, it wasn’t deleted the first time. So I deleted it again – I hope. 🙂
Some mornings are just like that, but I have still have hours ahead of me to enjoy a wonderful day!
Did you know that every nineteen years, the lunar and Gregorian calendars line up? Not a well-known piece of information, but one of interest to me today. Today is my birthday, and the third time in my life my lunar and Gregorian birthdays fall out on exactly the same day – and the first time since I learned about this factoid several years ago.
So yep, that means I’m now 38 years old! I don’t have any plans to celebrate today in any special way – I feel very content and grateful for my amazingly normal and wonderful life, surrounded by people I love. Here’s an excerpt from the lovely message my husband wrote for my birthday (I asked if he minded if I shared it here first), who I feel so blessed to be married to for almost two decades:
“Thank you for being such an understanding, accepting and loving wife. Thank you for running our home with dedication, positive energy and joy. Thank you for being a loving mother to our children.”
I feel almost overwhelmed at how quickly what seemed like an impossibly unreachable dream of moving with our entire family to Israel happened, when just a year ago, I was feeling so grateful that I would be able to make a short trip to visit my daughter who was studying here, something I didn’t think would be financially or logistically in our reach. It wasn’t until March 2011 that we decided we’d like to make the move, and a few months later, here we were! Sometimes I feel like pinching myself that we actually live here, and it’s just normal for us to be here.
This morning I was looking at an affirmation that I copied down a while back, and thinking how nice it is that it’s not just something I want to have in my life, but something I feel is my life right now (here’s part of it):
“Life is wonderful and I have lots of time to experience it fully….I love looking out of my windows at the beautiful environment. I have a spectacular view, which continually inspires me. I am so grateful for all of the beautiful riches that are continually overflowing my life!”
It’s not easy starting all over in a new country, new language, new everything at any stage, and with nine kids who have to make the adjustment, too, it’s really not simple. I feel very grateful that we are are getting to know people and starting to feel like part of the community. On Thursday afternoon, I passed a few mothers chatting, and one of them called after me (I didn’t turn around because I didn’t think anyone would be calling me!) and then followed after me to let me know that she and several other parents were having a kiddush in shul (synagogue) this week and wanted to be sure I knew about it and was invited to come. I was so appreciative – a little thing like that makes a big difference when you’re new, that someone thinks of you enough to do that.
And when I actually was there on Shabbos morning at the kiddush, my kids had what used to be a familiar experience – being ready to leave, and having to wait for me repeatedly since I kept stopping to talk with someone else. Do you know how nice it is, to be here less than three months, and already have so many people I can talk to, and not feel like a wallflower standing to the side?
No, my life isn’t perfect – I have challenges and frustrations that I deal with on a daily basis, like everyone. But seeing how fast the years go by, I really try to fully enjoy and appreciate all that I have on a daily basis, and not take it for granted.
Since on his/her birthday, a person has a special power to bless others, and it’s well-known that words do have power to influence things, I’d like to use this opportunity to wish for every single one of you peace, health, love, meaning, and an abundance of everything good. And also to bless you that you are able to see and appreciate all the wonderful things that are already in your life, and to bring joy to those around you by sharing some of what is beautiful in our amazing world with them.
