I Am Large, I Contain Multitudes

In recent years we have occasionally had seder for the 3 of us at home, but this year we had first-night seder for 10 - mostly Mr Y's non-Jewish bandmates, who are all lovely smart interested people, plus my synagogue friend David from the next town over, with his two no-longer-so-little kids (9 and 6 now, though they're still tiny compared to my towering 10yo). So we had a kids' table in the kitchen and 7 adults around the dining table, which is just about as full as we can get without starting to feel crowded. Ms. A was amazing at entertaining the kids and helping them find snacks, everyone enjoyed the matzah ball soup and overnight brisket to the fullest, and we were done by about 9:30pm, with still enough energy to do one load of dishes before we sacked out.

Thursday (second night) we went to the potluck community seder at the Other Shul, which we have attended before but not recently. It's a 90-person affair, of whom I only know maybe 20 (alas, my friend the rabbi was out of town with family, which was apparently a bone of some contention in the community, but that's another story). We sat with another young family, so Ms. A got to work her magic with the littles again. The seder portion was under half an hour (!), but it was nice to be able to sit back and not have to handle anything. They did hand me a reading as soon as I walked in the door, which actually felt nice to know they know me well enough to trust me. :-)

Sunday we had my mom over for what passes for Easter dinner. I had gotten a lamb roast at Costco for the occasion, and way too much chocolate, and I made parsley potatoes and green beans almondine and Rakott Krumpli. This last is a casserole recipe that my mother's family inherited from my Hungarian great-grandmother as simply "potatoes and eggs"; apparently the traditional Hungarian version also involves pork sausage, but the Hungarian Jewish community makes it with just potatoes, eggs, and sour cream (with a layer of butter for good measure). Just one more data point in the "crypto-Jewish" theory of the Rosenberg side of the family.

My mom showed up about 12:45, shortly after church. We hadn't really set a firm time for her to come over, and I was just thinking about taking a nap when she rang the bell, but I tried to rally myself to the table and be a good hostess. Apparently I didn't do a very good job, because she chased me upstairs to take a nap after all ("I'll just lie down on the couch too! Go rest!"), so I came back 2 hours later feeling miles better, and we had a good afternoon and early (for us) dinner.

Kiddo has been on break all last week and yesterday, but had to go to school today, matzah lunch in hand lovingly packed by Mama. Now just 3 more school/work days until pizza night!

One of the best things etrace regularly does for me is roast me a chicken (over a bed of vegetables) every Friday night for Shabbat dinner. He's refined his technique over the past 3 years until he has it pretty much perfected. Which means it's kind of a pain in the ass relative to the "throw it in a pan and turn on the oven" I used to do, but he does it because he loves me, and it is fantastic. And while I love everything we do Friday evening -- lighting candles with Aria, opening a bottle of wine to go with dinner -- my hands-down favorite moment of the whole week is sitting down and pulling the beautifully roasted skin off my piece. NOM.

Hilariously: A few weeks ago he made a roast beef on some other weeknight, using the same pan he roasts the chicken in. And when it was done and Aria saw it resting on the counter under a sheet of tinfoil, she said "Candle time! Candle time!" No, lovey, I know it looks a lot like a chicken, but it's Tuesday!

Shul friends D (the lawyer) and R (also a lawyer) passed along some toys to us last weekend that their youngest grandchildren had officially outgrown... one of them being a little wooden Shabbat set: pretend candles, wine cup, and bread board with two loaves of challah "slices". I thought, Aria will get a kick out of the first two, but it's too bad I never make challah! Maybe I should get in the habit, just so she can have the full experience. Anyway, but we'll try them out tonight and see how it goes.

Shabbat shalom, y'all.

Heavens defend me from ever being one of those proudly-incompetent "LOL I let my husband handle that" women.

However... it is at times wonderfully strange and reassuring to find myself partnered with one of the few people in the world genuinely more smart and capable than I am.

This insight brought to you by the pizza I tried to make on the baking stone the other night, where a confluence of factors* meant I hadn't a prayer of sliding the thing off the peel onto the hot stone, in any condition. When I came and fetched the experienced pizza-peeler, he immediately came up with four or five different approaches to try... a couple of which I wouldn't have thought of at all, none of which I had thought of yet, and at least two of which were needed in combination to do the trick. No condescension, no panic. Just "okay, let's see what we can do with this."

A small example, but it made me feel well taken care of. :-)

* The previously frozen (homemade) dough was too wet and sticky; I stretched it out too thin; I hadn't put down enough cornmeal (especially around the edges) despite using twice as much as on the previous attempt; and I then put on too many heavy toppings (spinach, mushrooms, and turkey sausage -- I didn't regret that choice a bit).

10 goals from 2012 ( cf. original list: LJ | DW )
( A mixed bag, but overall, progress was made. )

10+ additional achievements of 2012:
( It was actually a good and stabilizing year for me, despite the ongoing crises in the world at large. )
11. ... And, oh yeah, turned 40 and had an awesome celebration to mark it.

10 goals for 2013:
( Some that build on last year's, and some new ones. )

Wishing all of us a year of physical health, emotional growth, and spiritual abundance.

So about this low-carb thing I mentioned in passing the other day.

Yeah. I started last week -- I was going to say Sunday night, when I had my 7-hour crazy bus ride, but since that was on the heels of fabulous waffles and cinnamon rolls from brunch, I suppose that really means it was Monday. So, just over a week now. justom was going to be away the rest of that week, through Thursday, and I felt like that was a good time to be experimenting (not the only possible time, but a good time).

( why? )
( how? )
( findings, to date? )

No, I don't expect to do this forever, but I feel like I should give it a solid couple of weeks before deciding anything further.

But right now I'm finishing a lunch consisting of a bed of lettuce (including beet and radish greens), a can of tuna, half a cucumber, and half an avocado -- dressed with sesame seeds and a little Bragg's Healthy Vinaigrette. What's not to love??