Some days you have to eat cake. I don’t really like cake, so some days I have to eat scotchmallows from See’s Candies. Yesterday was one of those days. I drove to the mall to go shopping and eat candy but almost everything I tried on looked ugly. Or didn’t fit. I felt sad. My …
Because oatmeal is really depressing. I’m, like, super particular about my morning food. I have eaten the same smoothie every morning for the last three years. Every now and then, I won’t want to clean the blender and I’ll pour a bowl of granola, but I get kinda bent out of shape if I don’t have …
Minimalism is in. And, anyways, it feels good to say no. It has been a slow stroll into 2014 for me. I’ve neglected my gmail account. I’ve turned my text alert off. I’ve forgotten my log in password for my school’s website, and heaven help me if I can recall my locker code tomorrow morning. …
Some weekends remind us how far we’ve come. Half of the time, I grew up in a Splenda house. A non-fat milk, sugar-free chocolate, ten-calorie popsicle, crazy-fiber-muffins-for-breakfast-make-for-super-embarrassing-drives-to-school kind of house. The other half of the time I spent eating cantaloupe for dessert. Cantaloupe or Jell-o with whipped cream. Cantaloupe is what you eat when you’d …
This year, I want to play the long game. Rosh HaShanah never really meant much to me. We didn’t celebrate it as a kid, and it wasn’t until I was 24 years old and living in Israel that I even discovered people had Rosh HaShanah seders. I was terrified at that table with Adam’s …
I am asleep but my heart is awake. Two years ago, I packed up my clothes, emptied my cabinets, and crossed the long, marbled hallway into Ben Gurion airport. I sat alone at my gate, eyes welling with tears, and I wrote a post about leaving Israel. When the plane took off, I said a …
Cooking in someone else’s home is hard. You don’t know which knife is the best. You’re uncharacteristically clean. You’re unsure whether you can just rinse a cup that was only, sorta, kinda used or if you really have to use soap. The burners never get hot fast enough, the oven gets hot too quickly, and …
What are you thankful for? That you can make it to all of your kids’ sports games? That you have a job? That you have good health? I have a lot to be thankful for this week. Our vet found a rare tick hidden on this little guy’s body that paralyzed and nearly killed him. But …
Everyone’s on a juice cleanse. I wanted to make a fruit salad this week because it’s fruit, and there’s no reason not to be accommodating (though I’d rather accommodate with real food than liquid). I thought about a Middle Eastern one with a rose water and honey syrup and some thick and creamy Greek …
There was an article last week in the NY Times called “The ‘Busy’ Trap” that I thought was perfectly insightful. Now, a week later, it’s just sort of haunting me. The author wrote: “Busyness serves as a kind of existential reassurance, a hedge against emptiness; obviously your life cannot possibly be silly or trivial …
my jerusalem kitchen 