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Quiet on the eastern front, excitement in the west

Our house is very quiet this weekend.  We were invited out for dinner, and we have no guests for lunch!  Oh the travesty!  We will just have to make do with our own company.  Its clear and bright outside with highs in the mid eighties (around 30 for the metric crowd).

In the west (Cleveland to be exact), my brother's son is celebrating his bar-mitzvah this weekend.  Great excitement, many guests and highs in the low 60's (low teens).  Most of the US family will be there to cheer him on as he reads from the torah, gives a short speech and eats tons of good food.   I'm sorry to miss it.

On the cooking front, I went out to see Julie and Julia with my wife and our friends this week.  I really enjoyed the movie.  Julia Child was a larger than life person and the movie captures that quality.  The food scenes were great and I even learned something (mushrooms brown better when you don't crowd them).

So, this weekend, I only made one meal.  Meatloaf for the wife, stuffed chicken breasts for me.  The meatloaf contains nice browned onions and mushrooms (thanks julia), lots of parsley and a cup of red wine.  It smells great.

The chicken breasts started life in my refrigerator as schnitzel, flattened breasts split in half.  I (my son), pounded them thiner using a rubber mallet.  Be careful not to pound too thin, as the meat just falls apart.  Then I made a stuffing of sautéed mushrooms, browed onions (see a theme here?), rice and chives from our garden.  I sautéed the rice with another cup of red wine until the wine was absorbed.  The color and flavor were really nice.  Put a couple of tablespoons of stuffing in each chicken breast and roll them up nicely.  Brown and place in a covered over-proof dish with some chicken soup.  Cook covered for 30-40 minutes.  They look wonderful, the wine gives the stuffing some color and the browned chicken outside looks very nice.

Add some roasted fennel, sautéed cabbage, plain rice and an israeli salad and we have way too much food for just the 7 of us.

Oh well, we'll be thinking of my nephew and our family in the US of A.

Shabbat Parshat Vayeira
Lunch - 7
Meat loaf
Stuffed Chicken
Roasted Fennel
Sautéed Cabbage
Rice
Israeli Salad
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