Shabbat menu

 

It's time again! The weeks keep flying by, and every time I turn around, I need to think about Shabbat...

Looking forward to the day of Rest!

Here's my super simple menu this week, focusing on produce I got for 2-2.5 shekels/kg and the chicken I got for 9 shekels/kg:




Challot
Vegetable Soup
Roast chicken
Potato Kugel
Apple Crisp (got some cooking quality apples for 2.5 shekels/kg, so I can finally make this again!)
Roasted Cauliflower
Israeli Salad

and maybe some cookies, since I should be using up my stash of flour!

And that is it. I should get started...

What are you having?

Now that Purim is behind us...

Now that Purim is behind us, it is officially time to consider the impending arrival of doom, er, I mean Pesach.

Don't get me wrong, I actually enjoy Pesach when I can manage to escape from my kitchen! And after all the cleaning, kashering, planning, and shopping is done too...
That actually leaves me very little time to enjoy the chag, but this year I'm hoping to do better.

So starting now, I'm doing a mostly pantry challenge month. I want to stay out of the supermarkets and not buy anything extra - just fresh produce and milk, if at all possible. That way, when the time comes to do that outrageously expensive Pesach shopping (Hello, shmurah matzah for 18 for the seder, anyone?! Gasp! What was I thinking inviting 12 guests for seder?!), I'll hopefully be able to more or less stick to budget.

And as far as the Pesach prep goes, I'm happy to say that we've pretty much enforced a no-food on the second floor rule since we moved into our home, so I'm not worried about Pesach cleaning upstairs (just regular cleaning, which is hard enough!), and the downstairs shouldn't be so bad once we have the kitchen cabinets finished, and then we'll have a place to actually unpack our Pesach dishes into! I was hoping to have new counters, but it doesn't seem to be in the cards for pre-pesach, so we'll just have to kasher what we have (yes, they are granite, but just not the kind I really want). I'm hoping to get away without staying up too many late nights or rubbing my knuckles raw, what are the chances?

And as it gets closer, I really hope to come up with some no-fuss menus that will let me enjoy the chag and stick to all of our various food restrictions and avoiding allergens (aah, pesach with an egg allergic child and a nut allergic me. what fun!)...

I'm planning to be the one at the shuk buying everything I can for 2 shekels/kg at closing time. And then we'll eat a lot of vegetables.

Who else is doing a pantry clean-out now? Let's share some menu ideas!
 

My deal of the day

Check it out -

A case of strawberries (not overflowing, but lots of them).

Not perfect but still good (we'll throw out a few I'm sure)...

For 20 shekels. Total

I think we'll be eating lots of strawberries this weekend, and baking with them too.

So yum.

Maybe I'll attempt to a jam (I have no pectin, so we'll see)...

What's your deal of the day?

GREAT Book Sale

Click to get to the sale!

Book Lovers,

There's a great sale going on at Better World Books!

Get 22% off 4 or more used books (from the bargain bin)!

That's a pretty awesome deal.

And of course, always free worldwide shipping!

I have a list a mile long, and I'm guessing the people at BWB will be sending me another M-bag sometime soon!

Purim, part II

Earlier, I wrote about how I minimize mishloach manot.

I'll admit, the first year I only made a few gift packages it felt very strange, and I was even a little sad. But, I realized, it is so nice to know that there is less work to do, and more tzedakah being given, so in the end, I've gotten used to it and decided it's a good thing.

There are still two more things that tend to cost a lot of money Purim-time: costumes (a minhag/custom), and a Seudat Purim (one of the mitzvot of the day).

I must admit, I was far from frugal this year when we figured out costumes for the kids... You see, since the Jewish Year began, I have spent about 2.5 months not exactly functioning. I got sick twice (once with the flu), and both times I ended up with long, drawn out, awful asthma spirals. Both times I took tons of medication (including steroids) and about a month to get back to breathing... So I've been feeling like I just cannot stay on top of things. And when my kids started asking about shopping for ready-made costume "stuff", I agreed, as I figured if I spent less time with sewing and designing and all that, we might actually be able to catch up on some of the other areas where we've fallen behind. So I spent about 150 shekels altogether on costume supplies.

Of course, for me, this was time-frugal, even though it wasn't shekel-frugal. Everyone needs to make that call for him/herself. If you are set on making your own costumes, there are so many DIY ideas out there. There are even some great "no-sew" costumes, that you can easily find if you search (and I've definitely done that in the past!).

The other thing to think about is the Seudah, the Purim meal.

This can be elaborate and fancy. Some people I know serve 4 course meals. And have lots of wine and other alcoholic drinks available, as well, as somehow this seems to be a Purim thing for many people.

HOWEVER, I am not a fan of using Jewish ritual as an excuse to get drunk, so I don't advocate having an "open bar" at your seudah. It will save you a lot of money and probably a lot of emotional distress as well. We bought a few bottles of Smirnoff Ice when they were Buy one Get one free at Yeinot Bitan, so we'll chill a couple for the adults at our table. That will do it for us.

As far as the food goes -- it's totally up to you! There is no real requirement except that you must wash netilat yadayim and make hamotzi on some bread, and have a meal - it should start before the sun sets, so it is still Purim! It can be meat, dairy, vegetarian - whatever you like. We are having a quiet family seudah this year (for a number of reasons), and we plan to have a simple meal, but perhaps a step above our norm. We'll have some homemade foccacia (a treat for us - I normally make healthy whole wheat sandwich breads!), a lasagna, macaroni and cheese for picky children, and some salad. The lasagna noodles are an "extravagance", as I don't usually buy them! (But we got some when they were on sale, of course, for about half price, or less. We paid 7 shekels/box.)

Dessert will be hamantashen, of course!

And that, my friends, is how we are having a festive meal without spending a lot of money. We chose not to go to our community's communal seudah (again, for a number of personal reasons), but if we had gone it would have cost us a lot of money (seems like 170 shekels, which for a meal "out" is not so terrible for a family of 6, but for us, a meal out WITH the kids and whole lot of people who may or may not get drunk -- I'll stop there), but for some people a communal seudah may be very worthwhile. Ideally, we would have another family or two over to join us for the seudah, but it wasn't possible this year, because of some logistics we could not work around. Sometimes it IS good to just have a family celebration though. This way our kids are getting 100% of our attention, and that is great. We'll make sure they all feel the Purim joy and celebrate the miracle of the day.

I'd love to hear how you plan to celebrate Purim!

Purim, part I

Hi all! PURIM is coming!

I know how much everyone loves Purim! And here, we are busily preparing for the big day, but I needed a break, so I'm ignoring my crazy house and writing a blog post!

There are 4 mitzvot of Purim.

I'm pretty sure that if you're reading this blog you've already figured out how you will keep the first one - megillah. Enjoy hearing the story of Purim, read right out of a parchment scroll (yes, it's real parchment, and yes, I've read it from the scroll), twice on Purim! Once at night and again in the day. Don't forget that it really should be heard twice!

The next one I'd like to talk about is "matanot la'evyonim" - the mitzvah of giving gifts to poor people. This is where the majority of my Purim budget goes. This year, we did a pantry challenge a few weeks ago and earmarked the money we hadn't spent on groceries as our matanot la'evyonim money, but obviously you can give less than this. You need not give a week's worth of grocery money. Enough to pay for a meal is usually considered sufficient, and you can even give gifts of food! However, we decided that this, for us, is what we wanted to focus on, so we chose to give extra and I would encourage all of you to do the same!

The next mitzvah I want to discuss is mishloach manot - sending gifts of food to friends.

As I've said in the past, the mishloach manot practice seems to have gotten out of hand in many places. 

Some people seem to enjoy making elaborate and fancy (and expensive) mishloach manot, and other people feel pressured to keep up with the Cohens, and make elaborate and expensive and numerous gift baskets, spending lots of time and money doing so. And if you are one of the people who can do this and it is not a source of stress for you, go for it. But if it is, and especially if it gets in the way of your matanot la'evyonim observance, it's time to re-evaluate.

Our community has a "lottery-style" drawing - everyone who chooses to particpate is assigned one family to give mishloach manot to. Now, that mishloach manot is expected to be NICE - i.e. food that can be used for a seudah, not junk and candy. So we'll be doing that. In addition, we will probably choose a few other people to give mishloach manot to, and we make some extras to give to random people who are working, mostly because the kids really like to go around in their costumes and deliver little packages. BUT we have opted out of junk - we now give a baked or cooked item, and a fruit, tied up in some sort of recycled packaging, with homemade "happy purim" labels. These do not have to be expensive at all. I've minimized to the point where I have, at times, simply put a muffin and an orange in a bag with a note. Other times I've gone a little further and included a homemade bread instead of the muffin. Either way, they are still mishloach manot, and perfectly good ones!

Personally, I'd prefer a small mishloach manot with something real in it over a basketful of candy any day. The last number of years, we've had to debate what to do with the candy we've received... Do we Give it away or Throw it away, that is the question?

What do you do, if you don't eat candy, with the junk you receive?

P.S. Next post about Purim, I'll write about the fourth mitzvah - the seudah (Purim meal). Stay tuned! (Find it here)