Sara In Akko

But then there are those days when I think, "Why can't we make Arby's Curly Fries at home?" Or "How hard could it be to make Salsa Verde?"

The fries aren't actually very difficult to replicate with some simple spices we keep in the house, but as luck would have it the tomatillo is entirely inaccessible in the Middle East. *Tomatillo is a husked, sour, green, tomato like vegetable and it is the base for Salsa Verde.

When my 4 year old was hinting for a baking project the other day, I knew it was time to try something different. The impostor recipe for Aunt Annie's pretzels that I had come across seemed too promising to pass up.

The recipes can be found all over the web but they more or less all seem about the same. Here's what I used.

After I threw the yeast and sugar to proof in a bowl I walked away for a minute and by the time I returned to the kitchen, I knew this recipe was absolute gold. The brown sugar must be the secret because my entire kitchen smelled like Aunt Annie's Pretzels.

Not that I want my kitchen to smell like a mall foodcourt, but in this case it was a good sign.

Although the recipe I followed was rated a 4 out of 5 in difficulty, it seemed pretty straight forward and the soda/water bath before baking really made the difference in the pretzel texture.

My kids like Za'atar, lots of it on everything. So while the kids and spouse devoured their homemade mall style pretzels with a distinctly Israeli twist, I quietly made mine cinnamon and sugar and enjoyed the few minutes of peace in my kitchen.

This is a Curly Fry impostor recipe that I've used on everything from tiny potato wedges to sweet potato slices... it may not be exactly like those greasy deep-fried calorie explosions, but does make for a great quick way to spice up the nightly side-dish. If it just isn't the same without the long potato curls... here's the thingy that curls fries for you.

I'm working on a wedding present for someone with a slight "Autumn in the Country" bend.

The invitations came decorated with miniature maple leaf embellishments so in keeping with the theme, I'm thinking of Fall foliage.

The biggest problem with that line of thinking is that while the Midwest abounds with colorful leaves and the warm hues of the season, the Mediterranean is nearly without seasons and doesn't have those nice North American maples, oaks, pines and so on. So how do I get my hands on some genuine Fall efflorescence.

Not so long ago my life was not comprised of a husband, children, family business or blog.

At one point I lived in a large house in the city that housed a collection of eco-do-gooders. Conscious communists of the French variety (born into commune life, not self-declared), bicycle messengers, and the other city-dweller sorts of earthy young adults who drove bio-diesel burners or never drove at all. We had the kind of transient roommates that are best described as couch surfers who seemed to drift effortlessly through life without a mailing address.

Everyone held stable-ish jobs for 20-somethings. One was even the head of a large corporation's programing department. His paycheck certainly wasn't the reason he lived in a communal house.

Some of these roommates and transients belonged to the local bike gang. Not quite Hell's Angels. The gang's activities included rehabbing bicycles to become load bearing and be sent to Developing Nations, creating environmental awareness through the city with their rides that closed down major thoroughfares, creating found-art of everything and anything and....

Dumpster Diving... for food. Also known as Dumpster Dining.


Our home often hosted large dinners of coworkers from an environmental watch group that could reach up to 20+ people on any given weeknight. Rent plus utilities and normal groceries rarely accommodate feeding that many others in your home regularly. I won't describe the incredible amount of food large grocery networks are forced by law or policy to throw away daily or the steps they take to ensure that their food isn't accessible once tossed to the dumpster, but you can imagine that every item that does not sell from your local Whole Foods will eventually end up in their dumpsters out back.

If that food is fortunate, and willing hands are fortunate enough to reach it in time the food may end up on someone's plate as a perfectly good meal. This photo of the found food is taken from an interview with a few college-freegans in MN who seem to express the same sort of attitude as my former roommates.

I never ate a veggie gone bad, there was nothing on anyone's plate that had turned or soured. This was nourishment with intrinsic value both nutritionally and monetarily to our huge dinner tables. In fact, you'd be surprised at the way organic produce looks when finally given the heave ho from the aisles; wrapped, labeled, dated, edible. Most grocers even dispose of their expired items in a re-user friendly way quite naturally as each section takes care of their own clean-up, they bag and separate food items by department.

My life is long since removed from these re-purposed dinner tables. Here in Akko, there are not any alternative bike gangs running around screaming for the environment, or groups of youths jumping into dumpsters to rescue high quality organic produce that has sat for it's one day in the sun. There are no locks on our dumpsters to keep these alt-kids out.

But Akko is a terribly poor city. Our citizens are on average old and many live well under the poverty line even on government assistance. Many elderly collect bottles and cans from the receptacles for the tiny refund they can receive in the supermarkets. There are also quite a few salvagers who look for scrap out of the 40 year old electronics that are thrown to the curb. Although there are assistance organizations that take second-hand clothing for redistribution it is often most common for clothes to be left folded neatly in large bags and placed next to the dumpsters so someone in need might take these items quietly in the night without the shame of visiting an aid organization.

My home is directly behind the supermarket which, for comparisons, is roughly the size of a large American 7-11 with just 4 aisles. Our market opens at 7AM and by 8AM all of the cleaning of the produce aisle and the shipments for the new day have taken place. The old produce, often visibly rotten (high heat and high humidity are not the friends of such products) is brought out to the dumpster. By 8AM when I walk my daughter to preschool the entire back end of the market is covered with elderly waiting for this food to be disposed of so that they can toss it into their market carts to be taken home.

Today was the first day my 4 year old gave any serious notice to this matter. Although she is generally a very thoughtful and caring child she has learned from well intentioned adults that something unclean is labeled "foo dirty."

And so she began with her questioning, "Mama, isn't that a bad man? He is playing in the garbage. Foo. That's not nice."

My heart breaks a little every time I see someone's grandmother digging through our trash or someone's grandfather jumping in after the spoiled tomatoes but I had no idea how to explain in a Jewish and civilly responsible way to my child what she was witnessing.

Jewish law goes very far to explain that you are obligated to provide charity to others in need, even when you yourself are in need. Throughout Israel you will even notice that people do not throw out bread, it is left in the open for the poor to take. And overall, that while you are to provide for others in need, you must grant people their self respect which sometimes means allowing them to do what is necessary to survive. Slipping someone a few bucks to go into the market and buy food might seem like a reasonable action to the untrained bystander, but that very action might take away the person's dignity in accepting charity.

And so today I have to prepare myself for a talk with a four year old about the facts of life, that people in her city do go hungry and that people who look like her grandparents often wait for food to be thrown in a dumpster so they can feed their families. I know that this is true of other major cities, even in the lucrative suburbs of my youth, but here our poverty is apparent and should be confronted head on. Even if that means starting with my own children.

This is a short documentary called Meet the Freegans
Britain has become serious about reducing food waste in the home, great for conservation ideas

Easier than it sounds. Actually this project was much easier than most. Especially if you have a background in high school or community theater set construction.

Once the inspiration hit me, the start to finish time was roughly 2 hours, drying time for paint included.


So here's what you'll need:

-Canvas or other heavy scrap fabric you may having lying around the house
* measures at least as wide as a DOORWAY your kids can play in (hall or doorway) and a tiny bit taller than your tallest child.
-Pencil/scissors
-Paint- acrylic, craft, fabric, again anything goes.
-Scrap craft felt or other fabric for embellishing and creating hoops.
-1 Expandable shower curtain rod that will fit your doorway.

Directions:

Measure roughly how high you want the window opening on the castle the mark it in pencil near the center. Folding in half lengthwise cut a symmetric window opening based on your rough sketch of the window shape.

Then get to painting. I outlined the lines of stones in a dark grey and later rounded out the shapes with light grey and a bit of mossy green for some depth.

After some drying time I added in vines, thorns, birds and flowers. When you're satisfied with your castle, let the paint dry (the paint will give the canvas a nice stiff finish)

Attach loops to the top of the castle. You could use ribbon or fabric ties, anything that will allow you to hang your castle over the shower rod. Either a few quick stitches or pull out the glue gun (or stapler, whichever you happen to have on hand).

When you are satisfied with your castle, hang it up. Invite hours of princess story telling, dragon slaying, Monty Python joke telling fun into your house.

None of the materials I used needed to be purchased, they were just things around the house. Whether you have 4 girls that dream of purple pony castles or boys that make moats and drawbridges out of their dinner, you can make something that fits your family or even have older children help you.

(This was created as part of a birthday gift and done in the secret of my nighttime crafting hours) Pictures of castle in play-use to follow.

CHECK BACK SOON: This castle tutorial becomes a Pretend Pastry Shop with real (felt) pastries!

Back in 2008 it seemed like everyone had at least started to hear about the dangers of chemicals leeching into our kids' food through their bottles, sippy cups, cereal bowls and more. Europe had done away with the sale of baby products containing BPA and America was pulling items from the shelves as quickly as manufacturers could capitalize on the new trend demanding "BPA-Free" labeling.

Since I had returned to work from the birth of my second child I had become a dairy production line and the bottles to match the pump were kind of prerequisite.

I had seen the reports and checked the site of the manufacturer of my extensive baby bottle collection. The site explained that throughout the European market and the US the company had voluntarily removed products found to be harmful immediately in lieu of waiting for local legislation to catch up to science. So the solution was simple, replace the bottles switch out the pump, move on.

Right?

Not entirely. Upon closer inspection of the available product line I saw lots of new shippments on shelves of our local drugstores and markets all from my brand. But I noticed that not a one of the new packages had new labeling or even a post production sticker to mark that these were BPA-free (safe) products. There were new brands that seemed to have popped up overnight that could proudly proclaim that they were in fact BPA-free. At every store I asked the pharmacist and sales associates "Are these the new bottles WITHOUT BPA?" At everystore I was given a vague and totally unsatisfying answer, "Yes these are the new bottles from the company."

Why could nobody look me in the eye and proclaim these were the BPA-Free products that are safe for your children? Needless to say, I didn't buy a single one of these bottles. There was something hallow in the answers I was receiving and I was not pacified by these empty promises.

After much inspection and hounding of the UK company's local importers I turned up some shocking replies to my search for safe bottles.

When the rest of Europe and the US demanded that these products be pulled from shelves for what was perceived as an apparent threat for European and American babies, the Middle East was receiving the rejected shipments for local sale.

Yes, that's rights. When baby bottles were determined to cause toxic leeching into babies milk and formula, all the recalled shipments to Europe and the US were packed up and shipped to other nations throughout the Developing World with slow legislation and lax safety laws.

I don't know if I will ever be in a position to use bottles again for another child. But I can say very certainly that despite my usually brand-loyal consumerism, I will never trust this company again.

Immediately following this bottle incident I went into a house-wide plastic cleaning frenzy. The entire bottle collection- gone. Tupperware and saved food containers- out. Questionable toys- no more.

We strive to keep a plastic free house and it feels pretty darn good.

This post over at Blogher reminded me how angry I still am at this company in particular.

And this is a pretty good summery of BPA, what it is and why you should think twice about the convenience of plastics from a water appreciation site out of South Africa. The graphic "The BPA in You" is from their website which works for the promotion and appreciation of safe drinking water.

After three years of sitting dormant, buried under the kitchen mayhem and clutter of three home moves, I finally dragged that huge metal paperweight out and made use of it. I was a bit disappointed that the results were so simple, so quick and effortless. I had avoided the much wanted pasta machine for so long because I had built up an image of how terribly difficult and messy pasta making would be. Clearly it was no more trouble than of my other home projects.


It's not really a magic recipe but more like guidelines for getting your dough to work:

I used a 1:1 ratio of flour to egg for the first batch, kneading more flour into the dough as required by the extreme humidity of our area.

If it sticks, you need more flour. If it won't cut, you need more flour.

Let your pasta dry thoroughly and when ready to cook, toss it in a pan of boiling, salted water (I usually add a t ouch of olive oil to avoid the stickiness). When your pasta floats and is tender, it's ready.

No more mystery to the surprisingly heavy box that continues to move with us.

Next up Gnocchi!

Yes, I said bribe.

That is, the bribe I offered my daughter to relinquish all the dozens of Barbies and their Tupperware boxes full of accessories.

To be clear, these were my dolls as a child. I was a barbie fanatic. What can I say, she was magical. Those blond minions had been stored in my mothers home for years only to be discovered by my three year old on our last visit to the states.

Perhaps it is a bit hypocritical of me to say no to this seemingly harmless plastic plaything but I have been pretty rigid about plastic playthings in my home since day one. As a mother I can finally articulate what bothers me most.

Why does a small girl need a toy of a fully mature, albeit grossly disproportionate, developed woman?

I searched the crochet sites to find something that looked a little more age appropriate and found this great tutorial.

To be fair, the original doesn't look as crazy but it was my first full scale foray into amirugumi.

It took a while and the new "Dassi doll" has endless demands like new dresses, shoes and castles. The satisfaction of a pretend playmate who is age appropriate and created with love is worth all the extras Barbie will never have.

Where I grew up, the birthday ritual for a child was pretty straightforward. Generally there would be a birthday party with a handful of kids from your neighborhood Games, cake and gifts. Perhaps you throw in a family dinner later that week.

There was even a time when we were kids when you would get to bring special treats to your classmates. Something home-baked, loaded with sugar, decorated with care and that took away just enough time from class work to make all 24 classroom birthdays really special. I have heard that most American schools have done away with this ritual for all the same reasons we enjoyed them so much.

*Let me interrupt this little story with an important detail, although my family has lived in this city for a few years, for all intents and purposes, I am pretty foreign to my surroundings.

When my daughter started preschool last September, I wasn't concerned with what I thought was the standard operating procedure. Mom makes lovely hand written invites to all the girls in the preschool class, prepares cake and party games and waits for the guests to arrive.

Much to my surprise, 2 girls attended my daughters first kid birthday party. They had a lovely time and ate a ton of cake, but I was completely caught off guard.

So what do you do for an Israeli kids birthday party?

My daughters birthday was the first of the school year and I was later told by the surprised parents of other children that the correct thing to do is bring goody bags to the classroom, the kids sing and eat a store bought cake from a package (although plenty of sugar crosses into this preschool much to my chagrin, no food from a foreign and possibly not kosher kitchen can).

I chalk this up to a lesson learned and have been preparing goody bags for months, both in my head and in my craft room. This birthday, I'll be ready.

The Elmers glue batik tutorial is one of those brilliant ideas that made its rounds on all the superb mom-blogs recently. I finally had to give it a try for myself. I read through countless descriptions of how to get this project done right but it's pretty straightforward once you jump in. Simple enough for even your youngest crafters to help out.

The essentials are some white craft glue, cotton item to be dyed, and watered down acrylic paint.

Directions:

Paint out your design on your onesie or t-shirt using your glue and allow to dry completely. I recommend using a cut sheet of cardboard between the layers of the onesie to stop the glue from sticking the front to the back.

Once your glue has dried, you can start using your watered down acrylic paint to create any look you'd like. Remember that the colors will dry several shades lighter than they appear when wet.
When you've finished your painting, allow the paint to dry completely.

Rinse out your item in a basin of warm water. Once the item has been soaked, the blue should start pulling up, if not use a scrub brush to get the last bits of goo off.

Tips: I highly recommend washing the item before giving away as a gift or allowing children to wear their super new t-shirt. We don't use fabric softeners in our household but it might help soften the fabrics a bit.

Also, I found that with certain designs, the glue had to be pretty thickly applied to be absorbed by the shirt, if the glue is just sitting on top of the fabric it won't create that resist to the coloring and while you might have a super looking tie-dye item, it won't be batik.

I started this blog some months back as a facet of my job but mostly as a description of life around my neat little city. As luck would have it, I have found myself with more time to focus on my neat little family and what goes on around here in my home more specifically.

I hope to provide some tutorials of projects I've been working on and share some of my projects with anyone out there who's interested.