rough week.

March 26 8:19pm. waiting for the margarita to ware off before going to the ice rink.
there's a fancy mexican restaurant just down the street from us. we always complained that their food is a bit too expensive (for what you get) and the beer list is.. well.. there is no beer list. we recently discovered, however, that they make pretty damn good margaritas (thanks O'briens!) -- for what they lack in beer, they make up with taquila.... anyway, we went there after work for light dinner and a margarita, which was very good.
later on i drove to the ice rink. i decided to try ice skating again - used to do it a lot when i was in highschool (i admit, i was never very good, but i tried really hard). i figured it would be a good workout (which it is!) and also fun enough to make me do it on a regular basis. the place is open for public only a few hours a week (most of the time they have classes (chugim) and ice-hockey practices.)
12:27am. pretty much destroyed and going to bed.
ice skating was very intense and all my muscles hurt. especially my legs...

March 27 10:15am. still pretty much destroyed.
my legs are still sore from all that skating... i guess... i figured i was just going to complain all day.
despite being sore, i went to have dinner with a friend and then to pick up our pottery stuff from the pottery studio. i totally didn't expect it to be ready, since the guy who runs the place is very easy-going. he would make a good spaniard on siesta time.
that night i started feeling a bit of an itch in my throat... :(

March 28. i realize i might have the thing that's been going around lately :(.
some people in the department came down with something. maybe not the same thing, but im pretty sure i got it too... i made the mistake of going to work anyway, although all i wanted was to crawl back in bed. ben took me home early, and i started feeling a bit better, so we decided to not cancel our dinner plans with the new neighbors. (we had sushi and talked too much). after dinner, they came by to see our apartment - they live just below us, but they set up their place completely different then us. they also have tons more stuff, cause they used to live in the suburbs. despite my many hints they wouldn't go away, until eventually i said that i need to lay down.

March 29. sore throat and an ugly cough.
ben is my angel and he takes care of me :]

Yesterday. still sick. blahhhh.
feeling really bad. spent the day on the couch under a dawn blanket, and was too miserable to even play super mario. before going to bed (at 10) i had a shot of liqueur instead of cough syrup (alcohol is one of the active ingredients in syrup, and i don't want the antihistamines that much, so figured it might be just as well).

Today. my butt is sore from sleeping so long and sitting on the couch. i was just reading my emails when i spilled coffee all over the home-computer keyboard. luckily it wasn't the laptop. the keyboard was filled with (pretty good) coffee, the carpet was stained, and everything was just a mess. now we need to get a new keyboard... and make more coffee.

i'm still feeling sick, but i think i'm finally getting better. i got to. cause i'm sick of being sick!!!

pottery pics

my pots are back from pottery class!

Beer and Science

Some Czech ornithologist recently published a study that correlates the consumption of beer with scientific output:

"According to the study, published in February in Oikos, a highly respected scientific journal, the more beer a scientist drinks, the less likely the scientist is to publish a paper or to have a paper cited by another researcher, a measure of a paper’s quality and importance. (...read more)"

i was happy when a friend sent me a link with a response to this (worrying!) study. as a beer consumer AND a scientist, i think it's worrying enough that beer is fattening, you don't need to add to it the stress that comes from not being able to publish your work. the combination of overweight, alcohol and stress may induce heart problems. and who needs that?!?
in short, it says -

"careful reading and analysis of the original published work led to an easy debunking of the silly notion reported in the press that somehow beer drinking was bad for scientific performance. (...read more)"

Cheers!!

wtf?!?!?

there's a commercial for cheetos that's been running on tv lately. in short, the girl on the commercial gets even with someone by putting cheetos in her clean white laundry in the dryer.

i always thought it's mean, and the commercial itself isn't very funny, but whatever.

today, someone must have taken that commercial literally. i went down to the building laundry room (to put a dent in the heap of laundry we have accumulated) and some poor neighbor (let's call him George) was there taking care of his laundry. there's usually very little conversation with the neighbors, mainly we comment about this or that machine being broken. but poor George skipped the chit-chat, and told me that someone (another neighbor!) had put mustard in the drier with all of George's white sheets.
i couldn't close my moth for a good half minute, i was so shocked! apparently the mean neighbor was retaliating for having his dry clothes put on the table when he was late getting his stuff out of the drier. i'm still kinda shocked that somebody would do that.
poor George had to throw all the load away.. he couldn't get the stains out.

bumm(p)er

we had someone bump into us from behind on lakeshore the other day. it was
just a bumper-to-bumper thing, some paint scratched off the
plastic bumper. we pulled over to the side to exchange details, and
the guy pretended to be following us, but at the last minute he
bailed and drove away. how rude!!!

river green

on saturday we went to see them dye the river green. it's a chicago st Patrick's day tradition, and it was awesome!!
we went down to the river with the O'brians (ben's collage friends) and had lots of fun taking lots of pictures.
i'll post some more pictures later on, but here's one to whet the appetite:


(the green stuff behind us is the chicago river, duh)

more pictures here!

chicago st patrick's day 2008

Israeli dinner, part II

what is israeli food? that's a hard question.
falafel? hummus? shawarma? --> egiptian, lebanese, turkish... take your pick.
i dont think there is such a concept, 'israeli food'. groing up, israeli food meant whatever my friends' grandmothers would cook for us. my best friend's grandma was from poland, so she would cook shnitzel and mashed potatoes (not nearly as good as my mom's current recipe!), chicken soup with noodles... my other friend was yamanite, and at her place i learned to eat jachnun with lots of tongue-burning schug. my iraki friends at the university brought their mothers' delicacies like maamul and kube with okra.
and of course, falafel, hummus, thina, finely chopped salad with lemon and olive oil, which is standard in any 'mizrachit' (=eastern) restaurant, followed by grilled meats from chicken liver through steaks.

and everything is stirred and cooked in the israeli melting pot. each ethnicity had perfected their cuisine to be the best of the best, as competition has always been a part of the israeli character. the statement 'my mama's food is better than your mama's food' had to be backed up by evidence.

i think the israeli food is the best in the world, because of that. as the hebrew saying goes, 'kinat sofrim tarbe chochma' - jealousy among scholars increases wisdom; it's not only 'jewith iraki food' or 'jewith eastern-european food' or 'jewith morocan food'. it evolved through years and years of trial and error and the dedication of everybody's grandmas to make the best tasting food, from sometimes the cheapest ingredients or the only available ingredients.

so for dinner, i decided to bring a little bit of this culinary world to the table.
as appetizers, some 'pizuchim', black and white (sunflower pumpkin seeds, respectively), stuffed vine leaves, good syrian olives, 'osem' canned pickles i found at the store, and a bag of bamba that was hiding at the far end of one of the cupboards.
the most israeli thing for me is the freshly chopped salad, with olive oil and lemon. hummus and tehini pastes go without saying. i'm making them from scratch, as it's impossible to find good salads like these at stores here.
a first for me (because i don't like eggplants), i'm making 'chatzilim be-thina', eggplant+tehini dip.
when i say 'i don't like eggplants' to an israeli, it's allways followed by an amazed expression, and 'what?> how can you not like eggplants? there are like 50 different things you can make from them, and these foods taste so different!'
that's true. eggplants are cheap (in israel) so our grandmas found all sorts of different ways to make tasty foods from them. there's even an eggplant salad that tastes like chopped liver, from the depression times when meat was scarce and portioned, and liver was only for a fortunate few.
i try to like eggplants, i really do. i keep tasting until it works.

for the main event, a big pot with 'memulaim' - stuffed vegetables. veggies are the main ingredient in the israeli kitchen, because vegetables are cheap.
i miss cheap vegetables!

the memulaim are found in all ethnicities, from poland to irak to marocco. i'm adding some iraki kubbe balls to the pot (i made them a couple of weeks ago and have a bunch frozen) and the whole thing is going to swim in thick tomato sauce. mmmmmmm.

a couple of salads and perssian rice with fresh herbs and pine nuts (inspired by my mom's signature rice, although she's not perssian) will complete the picture.

for dessert, one very israeli thing (that ben likes, but i don't really) is Krembo.
it's basically egg-white whipped cream, on top of a cookie, glazed with chocolate. it's sold everywhere in israel during the winter (instead of ice cream; cause of course you can't eat ice cream in the winter, or you will catch a cold!! but really because you don't want it to spoil in the hot non-conditioned israeli summer)
i made a home version of it (only the finest ingredients!!) and curious to see what the local gang thinks of it (and will they eat it from the top or from the bottom??)

admittedly, this menu is a bit more on the middle-eastern side rather than eastern-european side, but i guess i can always make chicken soup with kneidalach for passover :)

p.s.
i hope i inherited some of my grandmother's cooking genes. her memulaim are mouth watering just thinking of :) she always thinks of me and cooks things that make me happy, and i think of her a lot when i cook, especially when stuffing all sorts of things !! i can't believe how much patience she has, some of those foods i mentioned are a lot of work. i miss you safta!

me and a friend