Weekend Hospitality

This weekend marks my oldest son's nineteenth birthday.  He planned on having a small birthday party with his friends.  Surprisingly, the friends now have a life of their own and are not home for Shabbat.  I don't think this is in any way an indication of their friendship.  Instead, it is a statement of maturity.  After high school, the boys and girls leave the local community and begin to participate in the greater Israeli community.  Many of the girls are involved in Sherut Leumi, which places them in underprivileged neighborhoods across Israel.  The boys tend to go to a religious yeshiva for one or more years.  What ever they choose, its away from home.  Last weekend, most of the friends were here, but this weekend they are spread across Israel.  We'll have the party anyway and wish him the best. We placed one of our calling cards with Machon Gold this week.  We told them to call us if they ever run into trouble placing their girls for a weekend.  On thursday, a host up ...

This was a rough week.  We had a number of serious medical issues in our family and extended family this week.  So far, so good, but none of the problems are going to go away.  Our oldest came from from his yeshiva to be with us for Shabbat.  Adding to the general atmosphere, no-one called to come for Shabbat.  Must be a busy week at the seminaries and yeshivot.  A weekend without guests is very slow.... All is not lost and life goes on.  First, we were able to accept and invitation to Friday night dinner.  One of our neighbors has been trying for months to invite us, but its very hard when we have guests.  Tonight, we will get one of our infrequent chances to be guests instead of hosts. Another interesting development is that we accepted a border.  A young lady from our old home town of Pittsburgh made aliyah three weeks ago and is having a problem finding an appropriate place to live.  She arrived at a government absorption center and was placed in a room with a few other single fema...

Well that was interesting.  My Uncle Arthur was well known for collecting stray people at shul and bringing them home for Friday night dinner.  I have always thought that this was a very cool thing to do, but I've never had the chance.  Part of the problem is that you need to be in a place where people just drop in.  I've heard that one of the best places to pick up guests is in the old city of Jerusalem.  We live with the choices that we've made in life. On Friday evening, I arrived at Shul a few moments late.  One of my friends came over to me and asked if we could help with a couple of young men who were stuck on the yishuv without meals of a place to stay.  What could I say, but SURE, they are welcome at our house.  Another friend pointed out that they had an empty house (all the kids were away) and that we should let the boys stay at his house.  In the end, we compromised, they ate dinner at our house and then slept and stayed over at the other families house. Now this...

This is the first really cold weekend this year.  Its around 7-9 Celsius and will go down to about 4-5 this evening.  In the high 30's for the US readers.  I'm running late, so I will only note that we have three young ladies from somewhere staying with us.  I got their names (Rena, Dena and Naomi), but I havn't had a chance to interview them yet. Tomorrow is Tzippy's birthday and her whole family will be joining us for lunch. Parshat Bo Dinner - 13 Mushroom - vegetable - barley soup Beef in Wine sauce Madras Curry Pargiot Shabbat Chicken Mashed potatoes Swedish Cabbage and Apples Israeli Salad Candied Yams Lunch - 17 Chili Cajun Chicken Schnitzel Rice  Hot and Sour Cabbage Sautéed Zucchini Israeli Salad Stir Fried Potatoes, Pepper and Onions Have a safe and warm weekend!

I've been tardy recapping previous weekends. While it doesn't bother me that I can't recall if a particular recipe went over well, it does bother me that I did not get a chance to thank our guests.  So here's a quick recap of our guests over the past few weeks.  My digital camera was stolen, and our analog camera takes months from taking the picture to getting a print, so these will be sans-photo! We'll start with the Kav-Lchaim weekend of Dec 22, 2007.  We hosted two young boys, not more than 10 years old with Cerebral Palsy (CP).  They were assisted by two young ladies, Nava and Shir.  Both of the girls were in the midst of their year of community service (Sherut Leumi).  They were very dedicated to their charges.  We have plenty of beds in our house and so we set up two beds downstairs in a wheelchair accessible room for the boys. We also set up two beds on the third floor to give the girls some privacy.  So much for good intentions.  It seems that the boys were ...

I feel that we are finally back on track.  We had a really nice group of people over last week.  They must have told their friends because by Monday, we were asked to host three young ladies.  That's unusual as most people hold off until Tuesday or Wednesday to make weekend plans.  About the same time, we invited a local family over for lunch.  They are between 7 and 9 people, so Lunch will be full.  Dinner will be small (for us), only 10 people. This summer we made business cards for our house.  They have this blog address as well as our phone numbers and email addresses.  It seems that the cards are actually working, in that our guests are, for the most part, not coming from the regular "Anywhere in Israel" program.   Its word of mouth and it's very rewarding that people are willing to recommend us to their friends. Its been some time since I posted recipes, so today I'll add three that I just tried.  They all smell great. Shabbat Parshat Va'eira Dinner - 10...