Happy New Year....is it Fall yet?

So in honor of the arrival of fall I have decided to give my blog a little face lift. Maybe it will inspire me to write more....maybe not. It certainly doesn't feel quite like fall here, yet....but I am anxiously awaiting it's arrival. Fall is indeed my favorite time of the year and I must say I got completely spoiled last year with the fabulous cool autumn weather and the vibrant colorful change of leaves in the beautiful Pacific Northwest. I hold a special place in my heart for Oregon and while I do not expect the fall here to be that spectacular, I am curious to see what it is like. Although we may just miss most of it as we will be in the US in just a couple short weeks. Which won't be half bad either as I find the fall in NM to be quite pleasant indeed.

So as I anxiously await the arrival of cooler weather and the changing of the leaves I find myself almost willing the seasons to change. I whipped up some green chile chicken soup because Phil was watching NFL football on TV (he is lucky enough to get some games here), and what marks the arrival of the Fall better than good ol' American Football and what better way to celebrate than with a steaming bowl of soup? Which of course we had to turn on the AC to fully enjoy because it's just not right to be eating your soup in a warm muggy apartment. I'm ashamed to admit it but yes, I have been leaving the AC on longer just so I will get cold and have to put on sweats and a long sleeve shirt. It gives me the "illusion" that the season has begun to change. And yes, I know, cranking up the AC is absolutely not "green" of me and I do apologize to our dear Mother Earth. But I think that the fact that our water is solar heated makes up for that just a little bit? No?

So the past couple days have been filled with lots of cooking and therefore insane amounts of eating. Nothing unusual about that except that this time I took pictures and made a special Jewish treat in honor of Rosh Hashanah. First, you may remember from a previous post that I have been trying to perfect my calzone making skills. Before we moved to Oregon I was not about to spend time making pizza dough from scratch after a nine hour workday, a 2 and half hour commute and an hour long work out, but as soon as I had some time to invest in it, I found that it is not only quite fun but also delicious. And at some point in there I decided to try tackling a made from scratch calzone, which can be quite time consuming let me tell ya' and not to mention quite disastrous too. So I've never had one not taste good, it's more been a struggle to perfect the aesthetics and make it look good too. You know what they say right? You eat with your eyes first. So I have to say that I have gotten much better with my technique and Phil no longer has to listen to me bitch and moan and scream at my misbehaving dough that refuses to do what I ask of it. I've learned finally how to successfully assemble the calzone and more importantly to transfer the calzone to a very hot pre-heated pizza stone without having it fall apart on me and ruin my careful assembly and without burning my fingers on the screamin' hot stone. As I can sometimes be a wee bit of a perfectionist in the kitchen, it's nice to finally have them looking as good as they taste. In any case, I whipped up a couple calzones the other night and they were so beautiful (and tasty) that I have to toot my own horn a little and bore you with pictures. And you thought this was going to be a blog about living in Israel! Ha! Fooled ya'.

Tasty looking, no?

So the morning after my calzone baking event, I found myself unable to sleep at about 4 o'clock in the morning. I've always had a tendency to be a bit of an insomniac especially when under stress or during times when I have had an erratic schedule. Clearly, as an Israeli housewife I have significantly less stress in my life now than I did say a couple years ago. So what was my problem you ask? For some reason I woke up and my mind was going crazy and I was freaking out about what I am going to do in a year and a half when we return home to the US. Basically my mind was going like this....Oh, my gosh, what am I going to do? Am I going to go back to school? Can we afford for me to go back to school? Where are we going to live? Will I be able to find a job? Will I have to go back to being an overworked lab rat at that job I hated so much and that gave me migraines? Will we have kids? Can I go to school and have a baby at the same time? Can we afford for me to go to school and have a baby at the same time? Holy cow, I'll be like 31 by then! Well, we have to have kids then because I will be getting too old already. But what will I do? Will I work or go to school or stay home? And on and on and over and over my crazy mind went, and thus I was completely awake and unable to settle back into the nice slumber I had been in before my 4 AM panic attack hit me. So what did I decide to do to get my mind off all these scary unanswerable questions? Why I got up to bake of course! Duh.

So we were invited to a BBQ for Rosh Hashanah (the beginning of the Jewish New Year) at a friends house later that day and I had been instructed to bring side dishes. Phil and I had decided on a green salad and baked beans (sans bacon because well, it is Rosh Hashanah and even those who don't keep Kosher are avoiding pork on the holidays). But of course I wanted to bake something and had been trying to decide what for a couple of days. Of course Phil wanted me to make something chocolate (in his opinion if it ain't chocolate, it ain't worth it) so I had contemplated making chocolate chip cookies but then a very intriguing recipe popped up in my inbox. My sister-in-law found a recipe for an apple cinnamon challah that you drizzle with honey that she was curious about and thought I might enjoy. So of course this seemed like the perfect time to try it since apples and honey are traditional foods for Rosh Hashanah and of course challah is a traditional Jewish food. So since I was awake and had the time (because of rising time I needed at least 4 hours to attempt this recipe!) I figured what the hell....let's give it a try. So from about 5:30 in the morning to about noon I was busy in the kitchen mixing, kneading, measuring, chopping and baking as I prepared my three dishes for the BBQ. And how did the challah turn out you ask? Well, see for yourself......

My attempt at being a good Jewish housewife.

And I am happy to report that it was very well received at the BBQ although I'm not quite sure if they understood that is was actually challah. They kept calling it cake and as it certainly doesn't look like traditional braided challah I suppose I can see why they were confused. This one was actually made like monkey bread or bubble bread and thus I think it threw everybody for a loop. But they all loved it so what the hell do I care what they called it anyway?!?!? So for my sister-in-law who wanted to know if the mess and time were worth the recipe I think I would have to say, Yes! The time is mostly idle time spent waiting and wondering if your dough is rising and the mess, well, I've made messes bigger than that just making Phil breakfast before. (Although a perfectionist I am also very, very messy in the kitchen. Especially in such a small space.)

So anyway, the BBQ was on our friend's rooftop balcony and there was good food and good people. Actually, it was very interesting how different the BBQ was from a BBQ you might expect in the US. Meaning it was actually a fairly healthy BBQ with lots of fresh home made dishes. Not a bag of potato chips or a bottle of Hidden Valley Ranch in sight. Not that I am dogging on potato chips because I do indeed happen to love them and it's scary how many I can actually eat especially if they are Kettle Chips but I am absolutely dogging on Hidden Valley Ranch because I think it's nasty how so many people feel the need to dip everything they eat in it. Overall it was a refreshing change of pace from the heavily processed, calorie laden, swimming in mayonnaise types of food you would normally find at such an affair. Instead we enjoyed fresh pita with hummus (you can't do anything in Israel without pita and hummus....I'm sure that's written in the Torah somewhere!), several fresh salads with fresh homemade dressings, vegetarian baked beans (still good sans bacon but come on....doesn't bacon make everything better?), tabbouleh (except ours didn't look quite like that....maybe it was something else?), a wild rice salad, and some expertly grilled chicken and lamb. Of course we stuffed ourselves silly and came home in a food induced coma and then proceeded to pass out for a nap. I had been up since 4 am after all!

So Phil is off from work again today and we are taking it easy as usual. I suppose if we had gotten up at a decent hour that we might have gone out somewhere except that Phil has been on the computer/phone ever since he woke up with one of those "computer chip"emergencies again. *Sigh*, can't even get the holiday off without being bothered.