Dinner Brag

[eema.gray]

For the first time in several weeks, both my babies are down for the night before midnight.  Yalda's three month growth spurt lasted close to two weeks.  And instead of enjoying a couple hours hands free, I'm feeling guilty that I'm not attending to one of them right now.

Yeled is transitioning to a toddler bed this week.  He loves playing in it but shrieks horribly when it's time to sleep.  I think it's mostly the change in routine - most toddlers are very attached to their routines.  I suspect he's getting second year molars too.  He seems to have a preference for soft foods and has been striking out at us a lot more the last day or two.  He's had lots of time outs in his room as a result, which isn't helping the mommy guilt at all.

Yesterday was Tu B'Shevet (the 15th of Shevet), the new year for the trees.  The one day festival is a relic of the Temple system, relating to the various tithes that are separated from produce grown in the Holy Land. These tithes differ from year to year in the seven-year Shemittah cycle; the point at which a budding fruit is considered to belong to the next year of the cycle is the 15th of Shevat.  (Chabad.org)  We don't have tithes on fruit trees today but the festival continues to be observed; re interpreted as a time to reflect on the verse "man is a tree of the field (Deut 20:19) and other parts of Torah in which make human/botanical comparisons.  Since the founding of modern Israel, it's become a tradition to plant trees on this day.  There are five fruits traditionally eaten on Tu B'Shevet, dates, figs, pomegranites, grapes, and olives, the trees that, in the Middle East, bear their fruit earliest in the season.  Well, in this country, the only one of those five that somewhere close to in season and not horribly expensive is olives.  So, for the first time ever, I made stuffed chicken breast, using olives.

We had chicken stuffed with oil cured olives, dry bread, fresh ground cumin and corriander, and chilie powder, tomato raita, and chop salad.  It was one of my better meals.  Raitas are Indian yogurt based salads; this one flavored plain yogurt with white pepper and salt and fried mustard seed and serrano chili pepper.  It was spectacular.  I didn't really follow a recipe for the stuffed chicken but I did run the stuffing through a food grinder to smooth it out and make it easy to put into the chicken.  And chop salad is pretty much self explanatory.  Chop salads don't usually have leaves in them and I like to use cilantro and lime juice in mine rather than the mint and lemon juice that are more traditional.

[AverageJosey1]

Feb. 1, 2010 at 9:32 AM

I like reading your journals because I always learn something new :)  I don't know a lot about your faith and traditions, but it's so interesting to read about.  Thanks for sharing!  (plus, your recipes and cooking skills always intrigue me too!)  Good luck with the little ones, we all need a little guiltless relaxation & sleep......hope you find it!