Parking Karma

It's not easy finding a parking in this town. Here in Israel, the concept of employee parking versus customer parking is just unheard of.
If you go to say, Target in the States, all the employees park in the back leaving plenty of space up front for the customers.
It's true, we don't have a lot of space here in Ra'anana. There are no 10 minute parking spots and of course no drive thru's. A store is lucky if it has even a few parking spaces in front of it and there is only one free municipal lot in the whole city.
So WHY oh WHY do the employees and owners of said shops park in the front?


The Situation on Brandeiss Street
There are exactly 7 shops on Brandeiss and approximately 14 parking spots. The owner of the frame shop parks both his black hummer (the wife's car) and his motor bike in front of the shop taking up 2 spaces. The art supply shop takes up an additional 2 spaces with their over sized truck. Avi, the hairdresser uses up one space, and Keren my nail lady is constantly calling the moked to complain about the frame shop guy, cause he parks where she wants to. I assume that the t-shirt shop dude and the photo shop park out front, but I am not sure. Out of the 14 available spots, 2 being handicaps, at least 7 are taken up by the owners of the stores!!!!!!!


So what about us customers?
What are we supposed to do? OK, so Keren IS the best nail lady in the world, but is she worth the angst? If you are lucky enough to actually find a spot on this Brandeis, its a total miracle and you may as well stay put for a few days. I usually end up parking outside Hamashbir. I refuse to pay 10 shekels a minute to park in the Maccabi building, but if I buy 50 shekels worth of merchandise at Meatland, I get the 1 hour free.

I think that from now on, I should just shop at the mall (or Ikea- plenty of parking there)

Shut-up, I'm Beautiful

I just got back from the Sinai, where I spent the week relaxing, re-birthing and finding myself.What is re-birthing you ask?
Good question. Rebirthing (I did this in the sea) "reminds us of our original state in our mother's womb and is a primal connection to life." Honestly, it does sound like bobba meisers, but it was really really cool. You sort of breathe like you are in labor and I suppose the build up of oxygen causes you to go into some sort of very relaxed state. Nitza, who is a healer and very wise, held me in the water and did whatever it is that healers do.
Don't laugh, I felt awesome afterward, totally calm and happy.

The seminar was run by an incredible woman, Maya Sela who is a past life therapist and metaksheret.
As it was Tu 'B Av (the Israeli version of Valentines day- minus the chocolates and commercialism) this was a LOVE seminar. The main purpose was to learn to love ourselves first, before we can really love others. We did Moon Meditations (there was a perfectly full moon), communed with our love angel, learned about intimacy through touch and smell, wrote love letters to our bodies, and other wacky stuff. And I loved every single minute. Turns out that my soul mate is Ayelet- a young kibbutznikit who teaches yoga and fixed my back by doing Reiki. S'trues god. It is incredible to me how much space self critical negative messages take up in our minds.
So- angry, resentful and ugly Jo JUST HAD TO GO.

I hung out on the beach all day long, drinking diet cokes and chatting with the little Bedouin girls who try very hard to sell you their bracelets, scarves etc. The truth is that they all have exactly the same stuff, but me being me, had to buy one from each of them. You all should know that I actually hate the beach. All that sand- Ugh. And the heat, usually not for me, but I cannot wait to go back down there.
It was magical. (and the Shakra Mikveh in the Red Sea was really cleansing.)

We stayed in a little stone cabin on the beach (private and air-conditioned I will have y'know)
The food was great. They actually bake their own bread, best I have ever had. Maya and the group go down there every month and so they know the staff really well. Hishem, (Edge) the kiosk guy/gopher/guy who knows everything, Prince (not sure what he does, but seems like everything, and Chef the manager run the place and smoke a shit load of Nargilla. They are really awesome guys.



I have to say, that this seminar was way more than 80%. Dana who organized it did an almost perfect job. My only issue is that coffee was only served at breakfast so the rest we had to buy from Edge (Now a buddy of mine on Facebook :-). Next time I will do what the old timers did and that is to borrow BPO/BSO's gazia- they will just have to deal with it. After the psychic wedding meditation, I realized that- Yes, I am beautiful. Inside and out. Oh, and I love myself too. Whew. I cannot wait to do it all again.

How to Screw up Granny Omi's Nut Tart

A guest post by me on www.blackpetero.blogspot.com

Petero's mom, Granny Omi, makes the best nut tart in the world. It's famous- Just ask anyone in Port Elizabeth. It is creamy, crunchy and toffee like all at once. The nuts are perfectly toasted and are a wonderful textural contrast to the fudgy filling.

A few weeks back, petero decided that he would bake/cook a different recipe for his Friday blog post. As we all know, The man is just (slightly obsessive-) so he takes this kind of commitment very seriously. Even though we are married 22 years we nearly divorced last week over the biscotti.
So petero calls Granny Omi yesterday and asks if it would be ok to post her secret recipe to his blog. "Ok"- says she, (once it was established that it was really him on the phone and not Arnie) "As long as no one in Houston see it!!!!!" Hmmm.

Well, I don't know how he did it, but he totally managed to mess up this perfect tart royally. Looks yummy in the picture, but the proof is in the pudding. (photo: before baking)
Directions:
Make a very sweet pastry using flour, a huge amount of butter, a lot of sugar, one egg, baking powder and 1 tsp of vanilla essence.

Filling:
It's really important that you mis-measure the sugar and double the butter. The almonds should be raw cause god forbid, they actually over cook. Melt the sugar and butter together, add the nuts and boil gently for 5 mins. Definitely do not cook the caramel for longer than the 5 minutes. Add vanilla and pour into pre-baked pastry shell. Instead of a standard pie dish, make sure to use a pyrex that is too small and much too deep. Then bake it for 9 minutes less than the recipe calls for. (30 minutes, but it was overflowing apparently, hence the cutting of the time)
Cut into a nice wedge, and enjoy with a cup of strong coffee (to cut the sweetness)

My darling, I love you, but please, please, stop this Friday cooking obsession. Life is just too short to eat bad nut tarts.

Hummus

Yesterday, Aziza taught me how to make Hummus. Aziza (Im Ibrahim) lives in an Arab village a bit North of us called Kalanswa. She has like 11 kids, the youngest being 10 and also a bunch of grandkids. Every Thursday, she teaches me to cook Arab food (I think she thinks I am a bit useless at cooking) but so far we have made: awesome cauliflower patties, rice with pine nuts, eggplant and tehina salad, a bunch of other salatim (the red pepper one blew our heads off it was so spicy) as well as the tabouleh that I posted last week. Next week we are doing Shakshuka. Am learning a bit of Arabic in the process, whachta whactha. Of course, bare in mind that there are no accurate amounts to anything.


Ingredients
1/2 kilo dry chick peas. Soak overnight.
500 grams good tehina (we used what I had at home and she was NOT impressed- so buy some with Arabic on the bottle)
5 cloves of garlic or more if you like
Juice of 4 lemons, or more if you like
A small handful of salt. (looked like at least 3 Tbsp, I kid you not)
A tablespoon of baking powder- Apparently this helps them to cook fast. (Some people soak the beans with bicarb of soda and or cook them using soda water)


Method
Cook chickpeas with the baking powder for around 45 minutes, in pressure cooker, till the chickpeas are really really soft. Let cool a while.

Add the tehina (a whole bottle), peeled garlic cloves, salt, lemon juice and stir. At this point you can take about a cup out and set aside. Its called musabacha, and is served as a garnish on top of the hummus.

In food processor, process the whole mixture really well, in two batches until super smooth.
Adjust the seasoning



Serve with good olive oil drizzled on top, hot paprika, the musabacha and chopped parsley. I didn't have parsley and we forgot to save that cup of Musabacha so they are not in the picture.
(Check out that huge pita Aravi)