The Bunny Box

I'm not sure why I'm writing this. Part of me knows it won't help. But I'm having a rough weekend and sometimes you just have to say it out loud. Today I'm angry and I'm hurting. I don't owe you this, but I'll add the caveat that I know I'm emotionally stretched thin, like most people in the world living through year 2 of this pandemic. And I don't owe you this, but I recognize that you are also stretched thin and maybe you didn't have room yesterday, as a non-Jewish person, to read the news of 4 Jewish people being held hostage at a synagogue in Texas. In Judaism we try to "don l'kaf z'chus" (Judge on the side of favor). We give the benefit of the doubt. Maybe you were too tired of bad news. Maybe you just didn't have the capacity to acknowledge another tragedy. But yesterday I said havdallah, the ritual blessing with which we end the Jewish Shabbat, and I picked up my phone and was flooded with the news that the Jewish...

 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...

Last week, as celebration for finally finishing my Big Scary Paper, we had a few good friends over for Bad Movie Night. The essential components of Bad Movie Night are: A very very bad movie Lots of alcohol to get through said movie Junk food Well for this night, we chose Sharknado for the bad movie. Friends supplied the alcohol, and I made a veggie platter because apparently I don't understand the concept of junk food. Surprisingly, the veggie platter was practically gone at the end of the evening (and I still have alcohol in my fridge and bag of caramel corn. Apparently my friends have their priorities all wrong.) Even so, I still had a bag of straggling vegetables that didn't get consumed at the party.  Come Thursday evening, I felt I should use them before they started to go bad. So the veggie calzone was born. I roasted all the veggies in a pan with some olive oil, s&p, and garlic powder.  Then I made my pizza dough recipe , cut it into two ...

If you've been wondering where I've been, you may be surprised to learn that a lot has happened in the last few months. I started grad school We bought a house. We moved. And that may be a short list, but I'm sure you know that can keep a person pretty busy. Well today I finally finished writing the Big Scary Paper (BSP) that's been consuming all of my time for the past couple of months. This monster tips the scales at 93 pages, and as you can imagine, I'm thrilled to be done with it. At the same time, I'm way too exhausted to make "real food." So tonight I indulged in a grilled cheese sandwich. A really amazing grilled cheese sandwich. With pear... ...and cheddar... ...and spinach... ...and cottage cheese... ...on thick slices of Italian bread... ...with butter. Because if you're gonna make grilled cheese for dinner, you better be willing to go all the way. So I hope the Fall has b...

In past years, I've left cooking for the holidays largely up to my parents and in-laws.  We'd split meals between our families and at most, I'd be making some sort of dessert.  Well this year, with our toddler's nap and bedtime schedules, eating out for the meals really wasn't going to be practical.  So this year, I decided to go it alone and cook enough food to last for a 3 day holiday. I wanted to keep things simple, but I also wanted to incorporate the simanim (symbolic foods) into my menu. So here's what I came up with: Round raisin challahs Sweet & Sour Gefilte Fish Honey Glazed Meatballs (served over mashed sweet potatoes) Sauteed Carrots and Leeks Roasted Beets Acorn Squash Stuffed With Brown Rice & Dates Apple Ginger Crumble Everything came out tasty, but there was WAY TOO MUCH FOOD for two people and a toddler. So we have leftovers (yay!). By far, the most interesting and successful recipe of the holiday was the ...

A few weeks ago, a good friend of mine steered me towards a produce subscription service called Washington's Green Grocer  (H/T to Diana).  If you've never heard of a produce subscription before, here's how it works: You sign up to receive a box of produce, select the box size and the types of produce you would like to receive ( Organic , Local , etc .) and how frequently you would like to receive it (weekly, on-demand, etc.). They determine which specific produce will be in each variety of box for a given week and provide you with a list. You then have the opportunity (up until the night before delivery to your area) to remove items which you don't want to receive and replace them with extras of the other produce being offered. You can also order other items at no extra shipping cost (though you must pay extra for the items). The box is then delivered and the rest is up to you. After snooping around their site for a bit, I figured I could give it a try, an...

I don't have a lot of words for this post. Just pictures.

Heaven.... A while back, I saw something on the internet about making coconut milk whipped cream.  It sounded simple enough, and it definitely sounded healthier than making anything with Rich's Whip. ~shudder~ So about a month ago, when I started noticing strawberries in my grocery store, I picked up a can of coconut milk and decided to try it out. See that cool, smooth, creamy whippiness? I was pretty impressed with the results.  It whipped up well, it was perfectly sweet, and most importantly, it didn't really taste like coconut. I quickly came up with the idea of making a strawberry shortcake, and knew I'd want to make it chocolate cake because...well...I like it? Chocolate cake, whipped cream, and fresh strawberries. What could be bad?! The problem was that I just couldn't justify making a whole cake for just myself and my husband (because this is way too much sugar to give to my toddler).  So I'd been waiting for the opportunity...

It's been a long long time since I've made cookies.  I just couldn't take it.  Had to get back on that horse. But with baby around, I have to be a little more conscientious about what I bake. You know I like to make my cookies SLIGHTLY healthier with little changes like oil instead of butter, whole wheat flour instead of all-purpose, etc. But for my baby?  Doesn't feel like enough! Call me crazy.  Go ahead.  Do it. Anyway, with healthiness in mind, I made these cookies with apple sauce instead of oil, honey instead of white sugar, whole wheat flour, and less brown sugar.  I had to add more flour to the recipe to thicken the dough.  In the end, they came out tasting like kind of awesome muffins.  If I make this again, I'll put it in a muffin tin and add in some shredded zucchini, apple, and a dash of cinnamon. Oatmeal Muffin Cookies 3/4 C brown sugar 3/4 C honey 1 C apple sauce 2 eggs 1 tsp vanilla extr...