Before we came to Israel Debbie and I had been in touch with an Israeli artists group. Many of them were not close to where we were staying but most of them said that they should be at the artists’ street market on Fridays on Nahalat Binyamin. Our plan was to get there this Friday (Feb 2) and buy directly from the artists. The market had been cancelled the prior Friday due to the torrential rains. Although there was a chance of rain per the forecast, the morning was clear and not cold. We couldn’t head out in the morning as we needed to get our laundry at noon. We slept late, ate a leisurely breakfast in the hotel, and then sat about reading and writing for awhile.
When we walked out of the hotel and crossed the street, I heard a man call “hello ladies”. Cynic that I am the thoughts that crossed my mind was (1) someone trying to pick us up or (2) someone trying to beg us for money (Must be the inherited New Yorker gene in me). I turned to see the caller and realized after a moment’s delay that it was STEVE!! Steve had been with us week 1 at the Tel Hashomer base but had gone down to Be’er Sheva this past week. He’s renting an AirB&B for 2 months in the same area as our hotel. It was such fun to run into him on the street, as if we all belonged there. :). We chatted for a bit and he headed off to eat and we headed off for our laundry.
After dropping off the laundry we headed back towards Carmel market – Nahalat Binyamin is the street adjacent to the market. The Nahalat Binyamin Arts & Crafts Fair is the largest in Israel but is only opens Tuesdays and Fridays. There are normally 200 artists lining the street. We were hopeful that many of them would be there this week, especially some of the artists with whom we’d been chatting via FB.
Unfortunately, despite the clear skies and the relatively pleasant temperature, there were perhaps only 10 artists who had set up their booths. :( The good news is that Debbie and I both managed to find things that appealed to us. Perhaps I should be grateful that there were only 10 stands. *grin* We both had great chats with the artists who WERE there, who assured us that we needed to come back for the full street experience.
That area seemed to be equivalent to NYC’s garment district. There were stores with gorgeous (and very risque) gowns, stores with bolts of fabric, or ribbons, or hats. It was a delight to the eyes! We wanted to stop and have something to drink and people watch but nearly every cafe we passed was full. We finally found one with open tables but we were informed that they were no longer seating folks because they close at 16:00. We were told they’d reopen at 18:00 but we didn’t feel like hanging about for 2 hours, so we walked back to the hotel.
We thought we’d try another Thai restaurant for dinner. The search turned up a Thai restaurant that looked to be just about 2 blocks from us along the promenade. I clicked on the website but couldn’t find it. We decided to walk over anyway since it was not that far away. Well, we walked quite a bit and finally resorted to using our phones to find it. We didn’t find the restaurant but we found where we thought it might be in warm beach weather – directly ON the beach under the promenade. At that point we decided to head back to Tandoori Lands End for Indian food. It was now approaching 8pm on a Friday evening – prime dining time in Tel Aviv. Tandoori was full, but we were told we could be seated at the bar. That was fine with us!
We sat down and our wonderful waiter from the previous week came by and said “I know you!” :) He recommended dishes for us to try and took very good care of us. We were amused by the glass cleaning device at the bar. My husband says it was not a new device – it’s been around for awhile. We liked it anyway. :) We also had a chat with the nice gentleman seated next to us at the bar. He was also amused by the glass cleaner. It ended up being a lovely dinner and evening and we walked back to the hotel. Once there we figured out that we had walked over 7 miles that day. No wonder we were ready for sleep!!
Food preparation was going to take 4 days – Saturday through Tuesday. I do have two refrigerators, and the new one is HUGE, but even so – I had a LOT of food to store both before preparation and after. Where does all that food fit?
I wasn’t too worried about the falcon returning nor the roving gangs of deer, but we also have raccoons (known for their dexterity with locked receptacles), ground hogs, squirrels, skunks and cats. It would take a little thought and prevention to use the deck.
He took a look at the 
It looks so EASY but it is incredibly time consuming. This is where my sister was beyond compare. She sat there at my dining room table slicing and arranging all the crudite. She took home the skewers, the cheese, the basil, the dressing, and the tomatoes and skewered food all through the football game (had her team WON, I’d be putting in a mention of that. But alas, neither of us had winning bowl games this year. 😦 ). Not only did she do all of that labor-intensive work on Monday, she came early Tuesday to help assemble the asian salad cups and other dishes. 
Monday was the night I had to utilize the deck for more cold storage. We’d cooked the turkey on Monday so that we could slice it on Tuesday. The wonton cups were made. The cookies I was baking were made (salted tahini chocolate chip cookies). The fruit skewers were done. The crudite cups were assembled. I got out one of my plastic storage bins from the renovation – used to pack up our lives for 6 months 🙂 – and began creating layers within the bin. I made sure to lash down and protect the bin from raccoons once I put it outside. 
I did come home and did a bit more preparation – baking the shortbread cookies and rolling out the quiche dough. I was still awake at midnight to hear the fireworks across the river. The sky was completely overcast so all I could see were the clouds lit by the explosions. Somewhere around 1 am I made it to bed although I make no claims about actually falling asleep. 🙂 My brain was still churning and my bad leg joints had begun to complain. Ah yes, running full throttle!
Along with a few other folk, we’d get together at my house for dinner and watch the ball drop. Then a few years ago some of us began murmuring about being too tired to stay up til midnight. I remember one year where I think 3 of the females were actually asleep on couches and chairs after dinner – we had to wake them before midnight. *grin* NOT ME. But you knew that. A few years ago I made an “executive decision” – I moved our get-together to New Year’s Day, called it Brunch/Lunch and invited a few more people. It was still a relatively small crowd and we did still have New Year’s Eve with a small handful of folk (who could stay awake, or at least attempted to make it to midnight). 
Once I drew up the invitation list, I saw I had around 60 people on the list. I’ve posted pictures of the inside of my house and you should know that it would be an extremely tight squeeze to fit 60 people on my first floor without removing furniture – even WITH removing furniture. I think the only time I’ve hosted that many simultaneously was for my son’s 
And that would be just for having the bridge club over to play bridge (12 people there for a specific purpose eating only munchies, coffee & dessert), long before this day and age when everyone has some food preference and/or allergy. So I make my list: gluten-free, diabetic, kosher, vegetarian, no alcohol, following the keto diet, on a lose-weight diet. Apparently I also have someone who does not eat nightshade but I didn’t know that until she was there and checking ingredients. Once I have the food restrictions, I begin on my menu. There must be enough food that all of those people will have a CHOICE of something to eat. I don’t want to have a pile of carrot sticks to hand out and say “here – you can eat this”. 🙂 (Do carrots have nightshade??? Something new to learn and consider.)
Paring the menu down to the selected dishes is the next step. The dish has to fit the mood, fit my loose kashrut standards (no pork, no shellfish, no mixing meat & dairy in one dish) and be tasty. For this party I decided that other than my main courses (turkey, quiche, bagels/lox/cream cheese), all the other dishes had to be new and different – NOT like my other party menus. 🙂 And that meant – turn to the internet and browse!!!
That title is both a wish and a description. I wish you and yours a happy healthy new year to come. And I am overcome with emotion from my wonderfully happy new year’s day brunch yesterday. I don’t even know where to start to tell you about it – it is such a whirlwind of activity and emotion hosting an open house for family and friends. I do know one thing for sure, however, that I have to tell you – and will say repeatedly – I could never have done it without my sister’s help. She and her husband and my husband worked and prepped and cooked and baked and cleaned through the 4 days it took to match this party to my hopes and expectations. 🙂 But of the 3 of them it was my sister who put in hours doing a lot of the manual labor and tedious tasks while I bustled about on more glamorous endeavors. My sister was my rock. Best Sister Ever.
Food is important but if you don’t have great friends who like to come out and meet and greet each other, you aren’t going to have a good time. I have to say that I am extremely fortunate in my friends. Everyone socializes and talks to folks they might not have met before. There was a lot of laughing and conversation and hugging and handshaking. My friends come with their happiness on high and share it around. I loved getting to see everyone and chat and to see them all having fun together. This party was billed as both a new year’s day party and a ‘come see the new kitchen’ party. *grin* More on that another day.
*grin* The upside of the warm weather was being able to set up the deck so folks could be outside and enjoying the sun! 
Last night we threw our last party with our old kitchen. It was Memorial Day weekend, always a great time to throw a BBQ. We had several reasons, however, to throw a party. Our wonderful next-door neighbors are moving down (back) to Florida. They will be gone by mid-June. All of us in the neighborhood are heart-broken that they are leaving. We love them, we’ve had such good times together, it was a wonderful, wonderful relationship. I decided that we needed to do a good, fun send-off to remind them how much they like us all and that they would need to come back and visit. (I already have a promise of a return for our Passover seder. 🙂 ) When I first proposed the Bye-bye BBQ I thought that we’d have already lost our kitchen – that we’d be doing this kitchen-free. I’m very happy that we still had a kitchen to do food preparation.
That was the second “last hurrah” – bye-bye to the kitchen. For 34 years we’ve been entertaining, throwing parties, feeding people all from this kitchen and breakfast room. Okay – I’m exaggerating. The breakfast room and deck are only 28 years old. Putting that addition on the house was a true life changer. When we do BBQs, drinks and appetizers are out on the deck and the dinner selections are in the breakfast room. I probably should have taken some pictures of that last night – we had a MOUNTAIN of ribs. 🙂 And LOTS of non-meat sides because we have a fair number of vegetarians in our gathering. 
Yet another reason for the BBQ was my brother-in-law’s birthday. He, like our guests of honor neighbors, is carnivorous so we decided on beef ribs. My sister has a membership in a fantastic warehouse called “Restaurant Depot”. It has every and anything a restaurant/food vendor would want/need. My brother-in-law and I went there on Friday to get the ribs. It’s probably not a good idea to let the 2 of us do this sort of adventure without a chaperone because we both believe that more food is better. No – more than more. We came home with about 30 pounds of beef ribs. But that’s fine, because in 3 days, we’re not going to have a kitchen, no stove, and we’re going to still need to eat. Leftovers!!!! I know some people HATE leftovers but I love them. Leftovers mean I don’t have to cook or prepare something. My husband is the real chef in the family (I bake) and he did a great dry rub on the ribs. For good measure we tossed in some chicken dogs and veggie burgers. 
We had sugar free cheesecake and sugar free pound cake with fresh fruit and whipped cream for those needing SF, and we had sugar full cheesecake and sugar full ice cream cake for those wanting that good old sugar hit. The appetizers were delicious also. I’ll also give a little mention to the fact that I nearly lost my husband last night. As in permanently. One of my guests brought a home-made keto dessert (she’s very big on all sorts of healthy diets) and I’m not really sure what these things were, but they were sugar free. So she gave 2 to my husband who, of course, ate them. I only found out after the fact when I heard her describing the ingredients which included macadamia nuts. I said – don’t give any to him because he is highly allergic to macadamia nuts. Which is when I heard he’d already eaten them. Everyone joked about it and teased him and her, but the truth is – he was somewhat sick from them last night. 2 little tiny doses but enough for him to have a reaction. 
Eighteen of us on the deck – chairs and space enough for everyone, although I will admit there was a tight squeeze in one corner. I had the chance to show everyone the plans for the renovation, and got to show off the now-famous upstairs hall door (you remember – an essential piece for 
Today, however, is designated as “pack up the kitchen and breakfast room day”. Tomorrow is probably the same thing. We are working out a plan for how/when to move cat paraphernalia upstairs in preparation for The Great Incarceration. We are trying to determine in advance where we will put all the boxed up kitchen ‘stuff’. We have a lot of stuff. Where did all this stuff come from? Do we NEED all this stuff????
Ahuva's Blog 