What I Was Thinking.

June 30, 2010: New York Snacks

 

I don't have a lot of time to blog, because the city is keeping me busy.  Well...I do have time, but I've been using it to either chill out,explore, or sleep.  So here's a bite-sized look at my time in New York so far.

 This past weekend was our Young Judea Year Course reunion weekend, held at my friend "Z"'s apartment in uptown Manhattan.  Some of us lived in New York, and others came in for the weekend from New Jersey, Maine, and Illinois.

We made samosas, chicken with pink "Ah-So" sauce, Israeli salad, cooked veggies, basmati rice, fresh fruit, and pie.

The 14 of us gathered around the little floating Shabbat candles and sang the Shabbat blessings.   I felt so happy and warm to have all of my friends together again, just doing our thing - talking, laughing, drinking, and relating to one another through our experiences and our Judaism.

                                The group.  Hooray for friends and food!

I don't smoke, but my friends smoked nargilah (hookah) until around 11:00 when we left to see a cult film called "The Room" (more on that in a later post).

I put a drink umbrella into the filter and took a picture. 

After storming out of  returning from "The Room" showing, we headed back to the apartment, where a few of us cleaned up the apartment and washed the dishes before bedtime.  Sleeping arrangements consisted of six people spooning on a futon, three on an air mattress, the host and his girlfriend in another room, and me and my friend "S" in the third room.  Everyone went to sleep around 4am. 

I woke up around 11:30, and most people were still asleep.  A little after noon the boys cooked "shakshuka," an Israeli breakfast of tomatoes, tomato paste, eggs, and other veggies.   They also brewed some strong Turkish coffee.  The boys claim that the protein and the serious dose of vitamin C in shakshuka is the ultimate hangover cure. 

I wouldn't know...but since I don't eat tomatoes, my friend "D" (pictured here) made me "moon over miami"/"rocky mountain toast"/"eggs in a basket"/toast with a cooked egg and cheese in the middle.  Yum.

Breakfast ended up being at, like, 3 in the afternoon.  In the evening we went to a fantastic comedy show at The Laugh Lounge in the East Village.  My friend "S" and I took pictures of graffiti and gingerly pulled artful stickers off of hydrants, lampposts, and bike racks.

We also encountered a bicycle that was coccooned in crocheted yarn - "S" had heard of this person before - instead of using spraypaint to graffiti, he/she crocheted over objects.  The bike was completely covered in pink and purple yarn.  Very impressive.  (I personally didn't take this picture, but this IS the bike we saw.) 


If I could crochet like this, I'd be done with the baby blanket I'm making in like, five days.

On Sunday, after some group drama and a little separation time, I and a couple of the Year Course boys went to the Manhattan Gay Pride Parade downtown.  It was...well, fabulous!  

Despite seeing some great drag, a color guard called the "Flaggots", Catholics that approve of homosexuality, and a man dressed as Jesus,this was my favorite part:

Congregation Simchat Torah, which had a huge, colorful float in the parade.

 

Keeping Pesach, Day 1.

I'm sick.  I started feeling sick during our last day in London.  It increased a little bit each day and I fought through it, until Tuesday when I was too sick to go to my first fencing class of the quarter.  And my first philosophy/probability class, which'll probably cost me.  So I stayed in bed, watched TV on the laptop, drank water and tea, and noshed. (<---the Yiddish word for "snacked.") A lot.  But I snacked healthier than usual.  Hmm...why?

For Eastern-European or "Ashkenazi" Jews like myself, forbidden foods include a category called "chometz."  Chometz is defined as any of the five grains - wheat, spelt, barley, oats, and rye - that came into contact with water for more than 18 minutes.  Basically, no bread, cookies, chips, cake...if people with gluten allergies can't eat it, most likely neither can I this week.  Also, no beer or alcohol that's brewed from wheat or grain.  My mom was happy to discover that her favorite vodka is brewed from potatoes.  Or something.

 

My sidebar about chometz.

 It's EVERYWHERE.  I went to a feminist meeting tonight at the new Ohio Union (which is super fancy and feels really unnecessary), and there was a giant platter of cookies on the table.  "Help yourself, there's a ton,"  I was told.  I was about to get up to get a cookie when my pesach alarm went off: no no no!  it's not kosher!  I sat back down.  A friend on my floor turned 20 today, and his mom sent him an enormous sheet cake - chocolate cake with chocolate icing.  Nope, can't eat that either.  Such a shame.

The other forbidden food group.

The other forbidden food group for Ashkenazi Jews is called "kitniyot," also known as "legumes."  Kitniyot includes rice, corn, soy beans, string beans, peas, lentils, peanuts, mustard, sesame seeds, and poppy seeds.  We don't eat it because a rabbi in the 13th century realized that it's often hard to distinguish between rice flour (kitniyot) and wheat flour (chometz).  Also, a rabbi in the 16th century states that grains may become mixed with kitniyot and a person might inadvertently eat chometz.

The good news: QUINOA IS KOSHER FOR PASSOVER! Quinoa is a lovely little grain that can be eaten cold or hot, though it must be cooked first.  It's very high in protein and great for vegetarians and vegans - it's as nutritious as soy without the side effect of increased estrogen.

all info comes from http://judaism.about.com/library/3_askrabbi_o/bl_simmons_passoverkosher.htm

My sidebar about kitniyot, and why my being sick ties into this:

Kitniyot is a frustrating one, and here's why:  there's corn bi-products in almost every processed food we eat.  Look at the label of a breakfast cereal, salad dressing, any and every candy, chewing gum, chocolate milk, juice...you get the point...

I'm Excited. Is it obvious?

Well, it will be obvious very soon.  This post is a little tribute to my unbelievably amazing family and the effort we constantly make to stay in touch, talk often, and get together AT LEAST once a year for my favorite secular holiday: Thanksgiving!

I spent Thanksgiving 2008 abroad, away from my immediate family.  It was the first time I'd experienced a Thanksgiving away from all fifteen of my cousins, not to mention Mom and Dad.  While Thanksgiving abroad was memorable, it was no Thanksgiving at home.  I'm so excited to spend this Thanksgiving with my family in the south- singing showtunes with the cousins, overstuffing ourselves on oyster stuffing, lounging in the beautiful weather, and laughing at our parents, asleep on couches as soon as the meal ends.  Our thanksgivings really turn into "Thank-a-Thons," because as a family, we have so much to be thankful for:

Though it caused them a great heartache to leave, my family was able to evacuate New Orleans in 2005 just days before the flood waters of hurricane Katrina ravaged their Lakewood South home.

<--Abby and I caught a dish in our Thanksgiving meal: Mahi Mahi, yummy yummy.

We'll welcome new members to our family: cousins  are bringing boyfriends and girlfriends, and the first among my cousins gets married four days before Thanksgiving.

INCREDIBLE food.  You can't beat a New Orleans-style Thanksgiving.  The pilgrims had shellfish at the first Thanksgiving, too, y'all!

See? My mom is giddy over the huge plates and the marshmallow-covered sweet potatoes!

And of course, we're all celebrating together.  Nothing beats spending time with family.  As Madeline and the other eleven little girls in the two straight lines say, "We love our bread, we love our butter, but most of all we love each other."

cousins and sisters playing around while the meal is cooking.  From left: Maddie Fireman, Marlana Fireman, Abby Botnick, and Molly B. Botnick.