the positive result came in the morning, and I was informed that I would be contacted. After a few hours of that I decided to cut the waiting and call my doctor. Unavailable and unresponsive until now. Then I called the coviv emergency number. That’s when I was told that I had a few more hours to get the paxlovid and they’ll call.
so i sit by the phone, remembering when i was afraid it was too late to get a date, and what luck that i have friends.
july 11, 2022 – day 3 Read Post »
i posted this a few years ago, but it comforted me today, and I haven’t figured out how to link to it, so I’m reposting it:
Karen Alkalay-Gut
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(What is the point of this recipe? When you ask a person of the previous generation how to make something, the person doesn’t start giving you exact quantities – not because they are hiding something, but because the big job is to obtain appropriate ingredients. “You got a carrot? Put it in! A nice celery root? Add it. You don’t have it? Use what you’ve got!) Parsley, leeks, green vegetables – what could it hurt?
So here’s what you do to make chicken soup just like my mother used to.
1. You go to the chicken yard and look at the chickens.
2. You pick a healthy-looking chicken and watch it. Is it walking around all right? Is it eating? Does it fit in with the other chickens?
3. You take your selected chicken to the shochet. You don’t have it sent, because the selection could get mixed up with another chicken. You want to be sure it’s your chicken. You grab the chicken by the feet, or, if you’re a fine schmecker you get a servant to put it in a basket and carry it for you.
4. Next to the shochet there should be a chicken-plucker who will not only pluck the chicken but will burn what is left of the feathers on his Bunsen burner.
5. You take the chicken back to the shochet to get the head removed.
6. You take the chicken home, and make sure there is no blood in the neck veins.
7. You open up the chicken and examine it. Is every organ in place, is it whole, is it clean? If not you have to bring it to the Rabbi to see if it is kosher.
8. You examine the organs and the unlaid eggs to be put into the soup and put them aside.
9. You rinse the chicken thoroughly, feeling with your fingers if everything is smooth.
10. You salt the chicken with coarse salt.
11. You place your chicken on a slatted wooden board and lean the board on the inside of the sink
12. You wait up to an hour for the blood to drip into the sink.
14. You take out the breast and put the rest of the chicken (excluding the liver and the other innards except for the eggs) in the pot with water, some carrots and celery, and a little salt and bring to a boil. (Remember how much you salted the chicken to kasher it – so be careful with the salt).
15. Once the chicken boils, you have to watch as the scum on the top gathers, and skim it off. This can be done at least three times and you should be watching standing up next to the stove because, as my mother said: the soup of a cook who sits on her behind – stinks.
16. Let it simmer an hour or so, or whenever you’re ready, but make sure it doesn’t boil.
17. In the meantime, make the noodles (a bretl lokshen)
a. Knead the noodle dough (flour and water and maybe an egg) on the kitchen table
b. Roll out the dough so that it covers the table.
c. Sharpen knife.
d. Slice the dough into noodles.
e. Cook the noodles in boiling water.
18. Let the soup cool.
19. Take the chicken out of the soup to be broiled so it looks as tempting as the breast you are about to broil.
20. Put noodles into individual plates
21. Add heated soup
22. serve
23. Enjoy!
reposting chicken soup Read Post »
Certain that Jewish cooking wouls alleviate my symptoms, I ordered our lunch from Keton on Dizengoff at 1, and saw that the charge immediately came off my card. But the food didn’t arrive, After a few hours (2 1/2), following a few complaints, an elderly man showed up with the food still edibly warm.
I think it did make a difference – the heltzl, the tsimmes, the cholent, the chopped liver, chicken soup, spaezele, knishes, goulash, and the rest. And such big portions!
To my knowledge Keton is the only place left to get Jewish food in Israel. And I’ve almost stopped cooking that stuff entirely. But it really is good.
Kasha may be the best of the bunch – overcooked, lightly salted, with shmaltz – you can’t get a better dish. Oh, yeah, you can call it buckwheat, and cook it with olive oil and onions and vegetables, but it’s still kasha, and it still fills your stomach with a good feeling. People say it’s too rich for the hot climate, but I could feel every grain attacking individual Corona viruses, improving my mood with each bite.
And don’t get me started on chopped liver.
jewish cooking -july 10, 2022 Read Post »
the pcr test took less than 5 minutes, 10 minutes to get there and 10 minutes back. But then I wanted old fashioned chicken soup and chopped liver and helzel to comfort me. Sure that this food cures corona, I ordered from Kiton – three hours ago – and it hasn’t arrived.
I’m beginning to think that the paxlovid will make it to my door before the chicken soup comes.
covid – july 10, 2022 Read Post »
The morning was usual – a saturday morning massage, pancakes, picked up a sick kid at the amusement park and dropped him off at home – and then I began to feel achey. We went to visit friends but by 5 I was running a fever. Cancelled my plans to see Dara Barnat and Sabine Huyhn reading at the Little Prince, to see my friend, to do everything – and began making a list of people with whom I’ve been in contact for the past days.
I was shivering and running cold and hot and coughing and sneezing. Took all the medications I could find and then took a COVID test. It was negative.
So I’m simply sick.
Fever – july 9, 2022 Read Post »
I’ve been enjoying this newsletter from Deep Shtetl. Check it out.
interesting Analysis – Read Post »
We were privileged today to visit The Children’s Home, a therapeutic center in the hills ofI Jerusalem.
It’s a home for young people who have not been done well by society. Maybe their parents are in prison, or they’ve been raped in the family, or they were adopted from Russia from alcoholic mothers, or they have committed crimes, or whatever. But here they are treated with love and comfort – whether they are Jewish, Christian or Muslim.
And I got to meet the counselors and the children, the organizers and the counselors – and I got to grill them. They told me they try to help the kids get themselves together – without the use of drugs unless necessary – and with constant supervision and love.
It seemed like a dream to me – When I was in college I spent many many hours with unhappy children, problematic children. I would take a kid that talked to no one out in a little sailboat, and after a few hours, I’d report back to the shrink what was bothering him. The psychiatrist in charge would tell me how to help, what to say, what to do – and I’d do it. And it worked.
So I know the methods in this place save souls. And I’m happy about giving money to keep this place functioning.
If I were you, I’d help these kids as well. Check out their website: https://www.childrenshome.org.il/Jerusalem_Hills_Childrens_Home.
children’s Home -july 8, 2022 Read Post »
End of year celebrations continue – Not only did I blow all my recent earnings from lectures and appearances on Lancome today, but I think I’ve already blown my entire monthly pension this month on restaurants. Tonight was particularly celebratory – with birthdays and grandchildren and graduations – at a restaurant where nothing familiar was on the menu and everyone had to figure out what to order from scratch. For example, I usually like to order familiar foods – say – kebab – and then I know what I’m getting. But at Pastel, everything is local but put together in a new and strange way – sweet and bitter and sour and sharp. And the kids actually liked it!
So even though I’ve been depressed all day that I can’t get things together at the English Writers’ Association, and I had to cancel the event I’d planned on the 27th, I began to think that mixing things up might be a good idea – that things may work out even better that way.
The idea that ‘this too shall pass’ made me think that the depression of an old friend and the complete discombobulation of some of my ex-students and younger friends are not the same thing. My old friend may or may not be over the hill, but those younger people will continue on to have much better lives than what we’re having now.
pastel – July 7, 2022 Read Post »
