Martha of the Moshav

Due to popular demand, here are some recipes from our successful little shindig. The things that got the most rave reviews, as well as not having any leftovers, were this wheatberry salad and a spinach pie type thing.

The wheatberry salad is a greek type thing and it's damn good. You make it like a casserole and just dump everything in an ovenproof dish, and then you can eat it hot, cold, room temperature, whatever. The original recipe is for Greek Basmati Rice, the recipe is from Dreena Burton's "Vive le Vegan," Arsenal Pulp Press, 2004. I personally found the recipe through this blog. I substituted wheatberries for the rice and followed the rest of the recipe exactly. It worked perfectly, just know that the wheatberries take a lot longer to cook than the rice. I think it might of taken over two hours once it was in the oven. Well worth it though.

GREEK BASMATI RICE

(Preparation 1 hour 30 minutes, 10 minutes active)
1 1/2 cups brown basmati rice
3 1/4 cups water
1 cup red onion, diced
1 1/4 cups tomatoes, chopped, seeds removed
2 medium-large cloves garlic, minced
2 1/2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, plus additional for drizzling
2 1/2 tablespoons lemon juice
2 teaspoons dried oregano
3/4 teaspoon salt
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
1/2 to 3/4 cup pitted Kalamata olives
1 1/2 to 2 tablespoons chopped fresh mint
1/3 to 1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley
Lemon wedges
Preheat the oven to 400 F.

In a lightly oiled deep casserole dish, combine all ingredients except the olives, mint and parsley. Stir to mix well. Cover and bake 60 to 65 minutes.

Stir in the olives, cover and bake another 10 to 15 minutes, or until the rice is tender and all liquid has been absorbed.

Remove the dish from the oven and stir in the mint and parsley. Drizzle with olive oil and a squeeze of fresh lemon juice.

Makes 4 to 6 servings.


The second hit was a spinach pie thing. I took this recipe from epicurious and tweaked it a bit because I don't like fennel and I don't do phyllo dough. I also left out a couple of the details like the breadcrumbs because I really didn't think it was necessary (the recipes on epicurious can sometimes be a little um, metuchkamim, or nitpicky to say the least). Instead of the fennel I sauted some defrosted, drained, spinach. For the dough, I rolled out some frozen puff pastry, draped it over the springform pan with a decent amount hanging over the edges. Then I poured the filling in and brought the hanging parts back over the top. In the end it had a rustic, pouffy, gallette type look. It was really good, like a big spinach pie crossed with a bourekas. Yes bourekas is singular, bourekasim is plural. Just like brakes and brakesim. Heh.

Ok. Now this Martha must go to bed, as demonstrated by the above impromptu hebrew lesson. I just finished making a strawberry pie. Strawberries are now five shekels a kilo in the shuk! My lord, that's about 60 cents a pound. We bought 4 kilos, and froze most of them to use for E's smoothie cravings. I managed to save a bunch and make a pie. Now I am tired. Enjoy the recipes everyone.

Resurfacing

The Sheva Brachot that we threw for our friends who were married last week went amazingly, really. The couple themselves are very special people who don't always believe that they have the great friends that they have, and when they do, they don't always believe that they deserve them. For this reason it was really important as well as difficult to throw this little shindig for them. They deserved it so much, but after all of the work and stress I put into it I don't think my fragile self could have handled it if they still didn't appreciate how much we cared about them. Does that make sense?

Anyway. It all went great. I ended up cooking for an entire day because I was too exhausted to go to work after we got home rediculously late from their actual wedding. People actually loved the food as well. Alot of times all of our friends here eat my food but never really say much about it. I think it's because for them it's a little wierd/gourmetish/ethnicish. But people actually asked for recipes, it really made me feel good because my cooking is really close to my heart.

After everyone ate we did an alternative sheva brachot where everyone was supposed to give the couple a wish for their marriage or talk about the couple themselves. It started out slowly, but by the end a lot of people had said some really meaningful stuff. It was a real accomplishment because it was a relatively large group of people. Then we went around and read the actual brachot.

It was a great compliment to the wedding itself. Intimate love after the huge more formal love of the actual event. I feel good about it. Plus the couple really felt good about it and themselves as well.

I see this as the prelude of more summer parties to come. The crazy dog has really kept us from having large groups of people over, but it was ok. She was relegated to the side of the house until she got used to the idea of having all of the people in the house. Then we let her in, she sniffed around a bit and charmed the pants off people. Who would have guessed.

Summer is in the air.

Pictures

Right now work has picked up pace a little bit. This is good. I have a couple of projects to work on as well as some english editing for some people. The best part is I think I also have someone who is going to pay me for my more artistic projects. I hope it continues.

This week we have a wedding for one of E's good friends. Then we decided that we wanted to do a sheva brachot for them at our house as well. After a couple gets married they are supposed to say seven blessings after a meal for seven days after the wedding. You need a meal and ten men (in our case women and men) in order to do this so the sheva brachot become a bit of a production. I'm kind of excited, it gives me an opportunity to be Martha Stewart of the Moshav, but also a bit overwhelmed. It's going to be dairy, and I'm making a couple quiches, and then salad type stuff, and dessert. Anybody have any good recipes they want to share? Stuff to make ahead and then stick in the fridge for a couple of days. Help would be appreciated. I'll let you know how it goes. We're going to have it on our giant balcony, it should be nice. I just hope the doggie lets all of these strange people in the house without eating them, it's not her strong suit.

And here are some pictures from our Pesach extravaganza. Late, but good none the less.
















Our first seder, came out pretty nicely if I do say so myself.
















This is what my sister and the puppy were doing while we slaved away.
















Me and E with a plastic cow at Yotvata. No, I'm not pregnant, it's just the shirt. It's damn comfy too.




















Me in the mountains by the Dead Sea.

Random Roundup

It's been busy here in the Land of the Pomegranates. Tuesday was Yom Hazikaron (Israeli Memorial Day). It's a very serious day here, nothing like the Memorial day in the US with shopping and barbeques. I don't know if it was the somber atmosphere or my hormones but I was hit with a serious bought of the crazies. Just really depressed for no reason, It was the same kind of feeling that I had when I was on birth control pills. Even though I've been off of them for a while now (guess why I stopped), I still get residual waves here and there. At least I can tell the difference now.

So, back to the story. While there were no barbeques on Memorial Day, by dusk people were already cleaning off the grills for Independence Day which immediately followed Tuesday night through Wednesday. I must say, we had a very good time. Tuesday night we went Israeli Dancing (my husband and I both dance, we met dancing in the US) at the city hall which was quite fun. It's such a great atmosphere there, it's a lot of people who have never danced before mixed in with lots of regulars so it dilutes the pretentiousness factor substantially. We got to watch the downtown fireworks from the square. Then we made our way home at about one am through the very alive city that on regular nights doesn't stay up much past 10.

The next day we met up with E's whole family for a barbeque. But people here don't just barbeque in their backyard for Independence day. They have to drive around for hours and stake out a piece of parkland to barbeque on. So finding a place to hang out that is not in the middle of nowhere that is not over run with families is a little difficult, to put it lightly. E did a smashing job and found us a gorgeous spot in an area about a half hour away from us, great view, different from our normal surroundings, gorgeous weather (though E didn't have much to do with that ), and only a few nice neighbors sitting in the general vicinity.

One of the families there was bedouin. They were really cute and nice, young couple, 6 little kids, spoke really good hebrew (though I think one of the reasons they were so open with us was because E spoke to them in Arabic first). They invited us to drink some tea while we waited for the rest of our family to arrive. We were talking, and it turns out they were also waiting for family to arrive for a barbeque, they were planning on grilling a goat. I thought this sounded pretty reasonable. We bring steak, they bring goat. It's a cultural thing. Until I realized that these cultural differences reached a little farther than I first realized. We bring steak in a cooler, while they bring the goat on a leash. Oh my gosh. After the initial shock of hearing the goat as it got out of the car, I thought it was pretty funny. No refrigeration required. I must admit, I did not go watch the proceedings. I'm sure they had a nice barbeque though.

Today we're back at work. Tonight we are going to the funeral for E's sandak (godfather) who passed away a couple of days ago. Not so much fun. Then we're picking up a family friend who is staying with us for Shabbat. Fun, but I don't think I'm going to be alone with E ever again. Sigh. Shabbat Shalom everyone.