The Bunny Box

 As we barrel towards the end of another largely disappointing year in history, I've been seeing quite a few posts about grief. It's likely that, if you're a human being right now, you've been experiencing grief in one way or another over the past 2 years.  Maybe it's not a death you're grieving. Maybe it's some other loss, like your entire sense of normalcy and safety. We humans have a unique ability to grieve both physical and spiritual losses. We grieve the tangible and the philosophical. We grieve what was and what could have been. Much of my grief has been spiritual. I grieve plans, identities, connections, and ideologies. I grieve for potentials: mine and others. There is a theory in the grief world called the Dual Process Model which describes grief as a pendulum swinging between two paradigms: Loss orientation and restoration orientation. In the loss orientation, we yearn for what was and what could have been; in restoration we experience the growing

Welcome back to Date-Night Cooking! After last week's minor fiasco with bland food out of Albania, I decided against sticking exclusively to recipes offered up on Global Table Adventures. You'll be happy to know that this week's country offered up a healthy, flavorful, balanced meal!   You see, for this week, I did a little Pinterest hunting and found out that one of the prominent regional recipes in Northern Africa (where Algeria can be found, in case you were wondering) is chermoula. Chermoula is a creamy, rich, pesto-like marinade for meats, but particularly for fatty fish, like salmon. I found this recipe over on 64 sq ft kitchen (follow link for recipe). Salmon with chermoulla and Algerian Green Beans. A simply divine plate. So, let me begin by saying how much I miss eating fresh salmon. The Huz and I used to eat it weekly as our Shabbos dinner main course, usually served with green beans and couscous (the other compone

Last week, I played some catch up with you guys and introduced you to stay-at-home date night. Continuing in our new endeavor to cook foods from every country in alphabetical order (a la Global Table Adventure ), we took on Albania last night. Ok, last week, when we did Afghanistan, I was blown out of the water. The flavors were bold and bright and earthy and I was just--Wow--it was great. This week? Eh. Byrek with puff pastry...gotta love that crust... We had a couple problems for this week's meal. First off, the main course is lamb in yogurt sauce. Now, kosher lamb is pretty expensive, and not as widely available in my area as beef. Also, when eating kosher, you can't mix meat and dairy, which would mean finding a substitute for yogurt in the recipe. The thought of taking that kind of risk with such an expensive piece of meat was just a little too daunting for me, so I figure we'll wait to make lamb when I can follow the recipe to a T. So, we went ahead w

Hey everyone! In spite of my best intentions, I have found myself continually slacking on my blogging duties. So the first thing I'm going to do in this post is play a little catch up on some tasty things I've made in the past two months.   Latkes with applesauce. A classic combination. First off, let's take a  look at the Chanukkah cooking. Obviously there were latkes. The Toddler and I spent an evening cooking those up together after several weeks of anticipation. You see, she had gotten a book called "The Runaway Latkes" which included a recipe at the end. She was eager to try it out, and insistent that OUR latkes would not be allowed to run away, but there was a twist. You see the Toddler is terrified of the food processor, so she started crying when I took it out of the cabinet. Thinking fast on my toes, I said, "Well, I guess I could hand-grate it..." and after that the Toddler insisted we get out the grater. 30 painful minutes of elbo

Well it certainly has been a while since we've had a good recipe post, huh? How does shakshouka sound? Okay, I realize not everyone has heard of this dish, but it is a Moroccan staple, according to Wikipedia , and pretty popular in Israel. The dish consists of eggs poached on top of a sauce consisting of tomatoes, peppers, onions, and spices cooked up in a cast-iron skillet. Sound good to you? Then proceed... The idea to make shakshouka was born of a conversation with my boss about "Jewish" food, and after discussing various Ashkenazi (Easter European Jewish) dishes, I mentioned that Sephardi (Spanish and Middle-Eastern Jewish) dishes are a bit different. After briefly discussing shakshouka with my boss, I went to see if I could find a recipe, since I'd never actually made it before. The recipe I found was over on The Shiksa in The Kitchen , and I started out with that recipe followed to a "T" and then made a few minor changes based on personal

Wow, it really has been a long time since my last update. I won't bore you with the details of my life in the past year, but I do have a lot of recipes to post and catch up on. It's just been a busy year, and it's not getting better. I'm about to start an internship and my last year of grad school, so figure I'll be pretty out of commission as far as my blog is concerned. That being said, I've been searching the internet for work/school lunch ideas. Primarily, I've been looking for freezable options that can be prepped in single servings. Last week, I made a batch of Spinach Ricotta Rolls to send with the toddler to preschool and they were a big success. This week I plan to try out sandwich ideas I've found on pinterest, including cheese avocado roll-ups. In other big news, we tried our hands at some simple gardening over the Spring/Summer.  Way back in May we bought a large planter and dropped in a few carrot seeds. Then we just waited and