I apologize in advance for ruining your diet. I made these for a “healthy” dessert last night when I was craving something chocolatey. Coconut’s a fruit, right?  Although individually they are not enough to ruin your diet, not being able to control yourself after eating just one might be. Ice cold balls of chewy coconut …

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My “take that, Martha!” cheese cake – breaking all the rules. Low-fat, no water bath, kinda high baking temp. It will all work out. Just don’t over mix and don’t over bake. The end! But this IS a soft (note cakey!), mildly indulgent, sweet and tangy cheese cake. Ohhh, cheese cake. How can I even …

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Leah Goldberg wrote: Perhaps only migrating birds know/ Suspended between earth and sky/The heartache of two homelands. After posting last week, I began worrying that I have been straying from my Jerusalem-inspired cooking and settling with recipes that are simply easy to make. This is probably because Trader Joe’s is at my beck and call, the onions …

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I hope you didn’t think I forgot about you! But moving from friend’s house to friend’s house and sleeping on an air mattress in this friend’s newly rented & empty apartment hasn’t really lent itself to a whole lot of cooking. Or enjoyment. In the last week, Adam and I have looked at 20+ apartments …

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A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that I might be posting erratically for the next couple of weeks, and since we’ve just begun our move up to San Francisco and we’re staying with friends, I don’t have much access to a kitchen and my warning to you has become true. Given that I will …

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I am writing to you now from Ben Gurion airport, all packed up and with one final bag of trail mix put together from my favorite spice shop in the shuk. When I go through Israeli airport security, my fiance, Adam, knows how much I usually love the interrogation and level of detail the security …

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Whenever something breaks in my apartment, I feel really bad calling my landlord and asking him to come down to fix it. Despite being jolly, helpful and never making me feel bad, I always feel guilty for disturbing him. When I dropped 10+ cups of dry rolled-oats behind my fridge the other day, and they …

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I hope my grandma isn’t following my blog. I’m scared what might happen if she finds out that after finally learning how to make khoresht fesenjan, a Persian delicacy, I went and turned it into a pizza sauce. When my fiance, Adam, first met my dad’s family at a Hannukah party, my uncle brought out …

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To quote Jonah Hill, yes, “You want these in and around your mouth.” No matter how much I profess my love for the markets here, nothing can substitute the convenience of Trader Joe’s. When I first moved abroad, I missed it every day. And when I went home for a short vacation, while eating our …

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I read somewhere that Basbousa, in Arabic, means “just a kiss.” So that’s cute. “Just a kiss cake.” It goes by many other names, as well, Namourah, Harisseh, Revani/Ravani and Sooji. If that’s any indication how delicious it is, lots of different countries have claimed it as their own. Basbousa is honestly one of the …

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