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)

House MD, Molecular Gastronomy and the Man in Black

This a hugely long rambling guest post of mine off The 80% Blog-


I have been considering for a while now whether to write my own blog cause most of the time, I end up just commenting on blackpetero’s blog. I seem to find myself constantly having to defend myself against his incessant ravings about 80% this and 20% that. I never quite know where I fall on his scale, probably somewhere in the high seventy’s I think, otherwise he wouldn’t be able to complain about me. But that’s ok, I figured it was time to make fun of him for a change and boy do I have a story for ya’ll.

Today I was sitting in Dr. B’s office waiting for blacksono to get his pre army checkup- ugh, don’t say anything, we are not thinking about that now, and there was a really interesting article in Newsweek about Heston Blumenthal, 3 star Michelin chef and culinary alchemist. The man is brilliant, and both blacksono and I agree that we want to be him when we grow up. His restaurant The Fat Duck has garnered more awards than anything and his incredibly weird Tasting Menu features items such as Snail Pudding and Egg and Bacon Ice Cream.

While discussing Heston’s show and the fact that one cannot enjoy food if ones sense of smell is impaired, I was reminded of the time blackpetero had his Nasal Polyps Removed. (This runs in his family, he could not smell anything before the op. I have the actual video of the surgery, but will not gross you out).

So there he was first night post op, with a couple of tampax stuck up his nose. Petero had downed who knows how much Vicodin to help with the horrendous pain. I am told it’s one of the more painful surgeries. The following morning, a bleary-eyed BPO mentions to me that he just “might have bought something off the shopping channel”! huh? naaah!
Now this was such a ridiculous notion. Anyone who knows him knows that that would NEVER happen. For god sake, he doesn’t let me even watch that channel, being the compulsive shopper that I am. So I forgot about it and life in sunny California went on. For a couple of weeks.

A knock on the door and the local UPS dude delivers a huge goddam box from, you guessed it, The Shopping Channel. Totally fascinated, I opened the box and found it contained The Megaknife Set - 256 assorted knives ordered right off the Red Neck Knife Show.
This incredible set included 46 Jack Knives (surgical steel with rubberized handles), 4 sets of TacOps tactical folding knives (the EXACT knife that SWAT uses), 9 navy seals aqua ops folding knives (the exact ones used in Iraq) a variety of Bowie knives, Apache knives, slip-not skinners, and there may have been a katana or two. $9000 worth of knives apparently.
Here is a live blooper clip which is funny as hell and a clip called Redneck Confederate Knife Show, in which Boone and O’Dell argue about the type of wood on the knives and threaten to kill the employee who misnamed the knives.

I did luckily find the following actual transcript of one of their programs off Front Page News that I wanted to copy and paste in its entirety cause its so freaking hilarious, but instead will give you the link to check out yourself. http://www.somethingawful.com/d/news/knife-show-on.php
You have to read it, you won't be sorry!!!

I never get tired of teasing Petero about this cause I am the one who usually fucks up. I don’t know if there is a moral to this story ( maybe don’t take narcotics and then watch infomercials at 3am) but after reading the above transcripts, I just wanna go out and buy bowie knives

Obsessive Dictator Disorder

A guest blog by me from Blackpetero's The 80% blog

I suspect strongly Blackpetero (BPO) has O.D.D (obsessive dictator disorder) and I will share with you today my reasoning.

It all started with Remote Control Airplanes. The garage was turned into a workshop and bpo spent a couple of years building and flying RC planes. He did a beautiful job and was really good at it. Then he moved on to making furniture and buying old tools. Must have spent the next 10 years going to flea markets all over Texas and California buying ancient planers and other tools of the trade. He did a wonderful job and built up quite a collection. I got some awesome wooden boxes, a couple of tables and a set of Adirondack outside furniture. Beautiful. The single malt scotch collections, music, books and audio books are still ongoing and of course guitar making. I am really proud of him.
Please see www.powguitars.com for a step-by-step guide on how to make classical, Spanish and Les Paul electric guitars.
Back to the workshop:There is a particular place for every single screwdriver, nail, dibble & jig. And he knows exactly where everything is. Of course when blackfamilyo need something, (cause the rest of the house is insanely untidy) we go down to the workroom (bomb shelter) and oi va voi if it is not put back in exactly the same place as before. He will know. It’s uncanny. ugh.

So where is the problem you say, what’s your issue? Wellll the guy is obsessive. The real problem is that I share a closet with him. Here is a photo of bpo’s side of the cupboard.


Please note the color of every single item in there. Please also note the black sock back hanging up. He ties his socks together and they get washed in the bag, like on a kibbutz, cause he doesn’t trust me with the laundry. (He is totally right, I suck at laundry, but still…) I was considering putting in a photo of his undies and sock drawer, also all black, but thought that was going a bit too far. (bpo does own one white running shirt for night time plus white running shoes, cause he cannot find good ones in black but that's as far as his tolerance for non black items go.)

Last week we had a major calamity in the house o'black-o. The black Nike running shorts were nowhere to be found!!!! The moaning and wailing was not believable. Of course it was “my fault”, cause I suck at laundry but I contend that how can you possibly find anything in a closet like that? It’s all fucking black. It all looks the same. It is all the same. It’s insane. No worries dear reader, the shorts showed up (of course- I think he is just going blind or something) somewhere on the shelf and all is calm again in the blackhousehold-o. I miss you. come homeeeeeeeeeee."