Weekend Hospitality

Nice week.  I hit the triple 16 birthday.  Now I feel older.  Hard to believe I've been around this long, but I am reminded of it at work every day.  I'm definitely the grampa of the group. The other new of the week is that the Hebrew University finally agreed that I had fulfilled all of the requirements for a Phd.  It took them more than 10 months to review my thesis, which would have been painful if I hadn't been working already.  So with that past me, I am now recognized as a Doctor of Philosophy.  Of course, my diploma will not arrive until the graduation ceremony next May! I had fun in the kitchen today.  We are trying our one course meals for Friday night.  We usually have a smaller number of guests for dinner, so its nicer to have a simple meal.  I started out thinking about a soup and ended up making Yellow Curry Chicken (see recipe below).  Then a friend brought over some mushroom barley soup, so we'll use a s...

Holy readers, it's been almost three months since my last post.  I've been working at a new job and finding balance in my life.   Many thanks to a few readers for pestering me to keep writing.  I do appreciate the motivational help. My wife suggested that we try for a very simple meal on Friday night instead of the full blown orgies of epicurean wonders that I usually attempt.  We tried it last weekend and we will try it again tonight.  We are aiming at single bowl meal with soup, salad and a starch.  It is surprising how filling a few bowls of soup are and we really don't need all the fancy  calories twice on Shabbat. With the beginning of the school year, we also begin to invite families once again for Shabbat lunch.  This weekend, we have a reasonable size group of 18.  Four of them are below 10, but still, its a crowd. Both the chicken recipes come from a cookbook called "The Spicy Food Lover's Bible".  It has relativ...

This weekend marks a new beginning for me.  I've taken a new position as CTO of a young start-up. Sunday is my first day and I'm really excited about the opportunity.  Its like they said in the movie Full Metal Jacket: "Travel to exotic, distant lands (Tel-Aviv), meet exciting, unusual people, (my new cohorts and team members) and make the coolest, fastest product in the market!"  Ok, so I took a little liberty with the quote, but I'm still stoked! This weekend, we celebrate the passing of Passover.  Bring on the noodle, bread and flour based products. Shabbat Parshat Kedoshim Dinner - 7 Chicken Soup Spaghetti and Meatballs Zucchini Curry Green Beans Lunch - 11 Deli Roll Corned Beef Roasted Yams Israeli Salad Rice

Ah, more meat, more potatoes.  A real man's holiday and it lasts 7 days!  What could be better expect perhaps additional cholesterol medication. Not many guests for this weekend.  Dinner is 10 and lunch will be our basic 7.  I usually cook Atkin's friendly dishes, so passover is not a big deal.  On the other hand, I also serve starches as sides and that's much harder. Here's something fun to do. I use a real lamb shank for the seder plate.  We don't eat it that night, but we do present it as a remembrance of the holiday service more than 2000 years ago.  (That's a really long time).  So what do with the shank once the seder is over?  Today, I sliced the meat off the bone, cut zucchini and onions on a mandolin and stir fried it all together.  It smells wonderful and will taste great tonight. My wife has a tradition of making parve ice cream on Pessach.  We all enjoy it as dessert after our meals.  This year, she experiment...

This week has been cleaning week.  One of my responsibilities is the oven and stovetop.  It took me about 6 hours this years to get it clean, but I am very proud of how sparkling clean it is.  Amazing what good chemicals will do to stainless steel. Our house is ready for passover. This weekend we are each kosher for pesach food, but with the addition of kitniyot.  So, be prepared and awed by my pre-passover menu!  It a bit short because we are eating a friends for lunch. Here is the recipe for Meatballs and Zucchini the way I made it today. 2 kilo zucchini, cubed (1/2 inch cubes) 6 cloves garlic (halved) 1 large onion diced 1 kilo ground meat 3 eggs Parsley 1 tsp oregano ground pepper, salt Salt the cubed zucchini in a colander and let sit for at 30 minutes.  Wash the zucchini and let sit. In a pot, add 2-3 Tbsp oil, and brown the garlic.  Remove from the oil and add the onion.  Saute until soft.  Add the zucchini and cook cove...

I started this weekend cooking with the following:  1 Kg ground beef  3 Kg Chicken thighs and drumsticks  2 small salami  1 beef chuck labeled Filet M'dume (2 Kg) The challenge: Make dinner for 8 and lunch for 14.  Use beef at both meals. I love cookbooks.  Today, I used Mark Bittman's best recipes in the world.  One of the nice features of this book is that recipes are marked "Make Ahead" and "Serve Cold/Room Temperature".  So, three recipes this week.   Chicken Teriyaki (pg. 317), a simple way to make chicken with a sweet soy sauce. Chicken Escabeche (pg. 294), warm chicken in a sauce.  This one looks strange.  Its backwards.  First you cook the chicken, then add the marinade, then serve it at room temperature.  I'll let you know if it works. Beef Daube (pg 384), a nice simple beef stew.  Since its for Shabbat lunch, I drained the sauce and will serve it for dinner. For the ground beef, I made a mexic...

The holiday's approach and I am in transition.  I will be finishing my Phd within the next month (god and advisors willing) and I'm looking for a new gig.  The search is going to be challenging given the current market state, but I have confidence that I'll find something cool and exciting to do.  To my future employers, I look forward to working with you! This weekend is once again a relatively quiet one.  Very small dinner and close friends for lunch.  Our kiddush tomorrow is in honor of my chavruta's 50th wedding anniversary.  That is one serious achievement and I wish them another 50 years of happiness. Shabbat Parshat Ki-Tavo Dinner - 5 to 7 depending on two women's plans for the evening Chicken Soup Coq au vin - pargiot in wine sauce (from the joy of cooking) Noodles Garlic Green Beans Cookies for Dessert Lunch - 13 Specialty Challot (by Y) Corned Beef Beef and Cabbage Coca-Cola chicken - 1 cup cola, 1 cup ketchup, bake Rice Israeli...

I have an unfortunate propensity to develop a cold after traveling to the US for any length of time.  My wife believes it is because I sit on the airplane for too many hours.  I think that there is something to that, since the enclosed space is perfect for the transfer of germs.  Regardless of how it happens, I arrived back from the US and promptly fell under the spell of a head cold.  At least I think its a head cold so far.  Bummer. On better news, we have guests from Cleveland this weekend.  My nephew is still here and will be joined by three young ladies; My cousin's daughter, An old friends daughter and someone we have yet to meet.  Other than that, we have no other planned guests.  My son and his wife will join us for lunch, but that's not guests, that's family. Shabbat Parshat Eikev Dinner - 11 Onion Soup with Homemade Beef Stock Hamburgers Au Poivre Chicken and Garlic Rice Brussels Sprouts Lunch - 13 Corned Beef Roast Chicken Tr...

Slow, fast, slow, fast.  You never know how a weekend is going to shape up until it happens.  For most of this week, we thought that we would have a very small crowd, with just our immediate family.  Then, all at once, the tsunami hit.   My sister is staying over with two of her kids and one of our nephews from the US. For lunch, we invited a family of 6 and got 8, plus one friend whose family is away for the summer at camp.  So 19 for lunch.  Arghh, but its good to have company. Shabbat Parshat Bamidbar Dinner - 10 Chicken soup Beef Burgundy Roast Chicken Streamed Broccoli Roasted Asparagus Sweet Potato Pie (from my sister!) Lunch - 19 Stuffed turkey breast (mushroom and apple stuffing) Beef and Cabbage Prepared Shnitzel Roast Potatoes Green Beans Roast Acorn Squash with Cumin and paprika Israeli Salad

We are slowing down for summer.  This weekend, we have only one guest and we are eating out for dinner.  Our lunch table will be 7 people.  I'm not sure what we will do.  7 is so small that we usually finish within 30 minutes.  We will try and find a way to make the meal last longer. Shabbat Parshat Matot Dinner - eating out Beef Pot Pie (similar to this recipe ) Lunch - 7 Corned Beef Chicken Wings Roast Tomatoes Green Salad Rice Seudat Shlishit -  many  Stuffed baby eggplants Noodles

I'm tired of cooking boring food with no flavor.  Or more exactly, I'm tired of the flavors that I have been using.  This weekend presented an opportunity to experiment.  We are having a friend from off the community with 3 of their daughters, the youngest of which is 16.  In addition, a number of community friends are dropping by for meals.  Its all adults, so I can try out less usual flavor combinations. The cookbooks that I used are in the side panel.  They are old friends and are usually good for ideas or techniques.  My menu approach is like a game show.  I take a look at what my wife has provided for us in the freezer and refrigerator.  Then I make up a menu using more or less what's available.  Sometimes, I skip an item, but that's life. So, today, I started with two whole chickens, two packages of beef medallions, a package of stew meat and a package of deboned chicken breasts.  My first thought was to make Goulash. ...

Just when we thought the end of the school year meant the end of our big shabbat meals, comes this shabbat with a full house.  First, we have a friend of our youngest staying with us while his parents are away on a trip.  Then, my sister is visiting with three of her children!  They too will be staying at our house for the weekend.   One of my sons is away, so our base number is six.  Thus, dinner will be a modest 10. Lunch is another story.  Start with these 10.  Add my married son and his wife.  Add a friend and his son who are coming over because the electricity was turned off in their house.  Add two families that we invited, one with three kids and one with two.  Total 23! In case you havn't gotten the message yet, we love company on weekends.  Hence the name of the blog!  I can only hope that we have the honor of company for many years to come. On the food side, lots of dishes because of the quantities.  No biggie...

This is the last weekend for most seminaries catering to foreign students in Israel.  The kids need to go back home to work at summer camps that start in mid-june.  We had a nice year, but not a particularly busy one with respect to american students.  Ok, so were were busy with a bar-mitzva and an wedding that put a serious cramp in our ability to host guests.  May next year be easier with more new friends. This weekend, we attempted to invite a family over for lunch, only to be invited to their house instead.  They are readers of this blog and have told me that the restaurant wings recipe is one of their favorites.  They would not even let me bring anything!  Oh well, I'm sure it will be a wonderful meals with friends. We have two young ladies staying with us this shabbat.  One of them visited our house for shabbat three years ago as a high school student.  Now she is back in seminary and has decided to spend one of her last weekends o...

My previous post told the story of this weekend, but this blog is also about food.  Here is what we are having this weekend.  We were invited out for lunch, so dinner is the only real meal. Shabbat Parshat Emor Dinner - 15 Oriental Potato Soup Beef Daube Shabbat Chicken Twice baked potatoes Artichokes and Dip Spicy Green Beans Israeli Salsa A Beef Daube is beef marinaded in beer, wine or stock with garlic and spices.  The whole mess is then cooked as a stew.  I used Murphy's Stout. It smells very nice! The spicy green beans is a variant of this recipe , intended for spinach.  We had some spinach and I was intending on making the spinach version, but my wife preempted my attempt with a recipe for spinach dip.  Oh well, it works very nice for green beans! 1 package frozen cut green beans 2 Tbs oil 2 large onions, sliced 4 cloves garlic, minced 1 tsp dried ginger 1 tsp cumin seeds 1/2 tsp ground cumin 1/2 tsp ground coriander 1/2 tsp ground tumeri...

We have guests this weekend!  Two girls from a seminary and two men from Jerusalem.  The girls found us through out business cards.  The men were invited by my wife.  She knows one of them from a course that she is taking this year.  Add to that a few friends from the community, and we have a nice number of guests for the weekend. I seem to be on an India kick.  I just finished reading Six suspects by Kikas Swarup.  Vikas wrote Q&A which was made in to the movie Slumdog Millionaire.  The book provides a window into Indian life.  I don't know if I would recommend this book as a novel.  It meanders all over the place and includes some sections which are just too unreal.  But, it certainly gets you "into" India. To continue my India theme, I made saffron rice.  This is the first time that I have used saffron, and I do like the taste and color.  I saw a nice YouTube video about making saffron rice.  The chef sugge...

Mea Culpa.  I didn't post last friday before shabbat started.  The days are longer and brighter and I spent the morning cleaning up and driving car-pool.  My youngest broke his glasses.  He was wearing his backup pair, but needed both a checkup and a new pair that was not totally bent out of shape.   Strangely enough, his prescription has changed and his backup pair is only about 1/3 of the strength he needs to see the blackboard at school.  Oh well, one new pair coming up. We had an unusual experience with our guests.  Two young ladies had called to stay with us for shabbat.  On Friday morning, they called for directions; what bus should they take, and where should they get on in Jerusalem.  One of my sons explained the details and told them that the last bus leaves between 3 and 4 in the afternoon.  They arrived just as the last bus had left the station.  The only option left was to take a taxi which costs about 140 NIS ($37). ...

The holidays are over.  Give a cheer and a sigh.  Its back to the regular scheduled programs; school, work and guests.  We have seminary guests again for the first time in many months.  Life is good. Holiday's are usually cause for weight gain.   There are more major feasts and the food is traditionally richer.  This holiday, both I and my wife lost weight.   My wife follows a very low-carb diet, so most of my cooking avoids sugars and starches.  Passover food was good, but not sweet.  I love Matza and butter, but perhaps matza is less fattening than bread.  Whatever the reason, I'm very happy with our post holiday status. We have two girls from seminary this weekend for both meals and a cousin and her family for lunch tomorrow.  One of my sons is off to a school weekend.  Nice smallish meals (for us). The shabbat days are longer now that the clock has changes to daylight savings time.  As a result, we now need to fe...

All is well and we are returning to our regular scheduled programs. One family is eating with us for friday night dinner and we are alone (my God!) for lunch. I'm looking forward to the rest and relaxation that shabbat gives us. I'm also looking forward to playing the new board games that we now have (Galaxy trucker, Agricola and Dominion). On the food side, we are cooking sides for a friend of ours who is bed ridden. Somehow she torn a muscle in her leg and is now bed ridden for a few weeks. Her friends have arranged for meals to be delivered for shabbat. Shabbat Parshat Ki Tisha Dinner - 13 Garlic Chicken Vegetable soup Red Curry Beef Roast Chicken Lentils braised in wine Corn Relish Rice Lunch - 7 (how do you cook for only 7?) Spinach Meatloaf Prepared Shnitzel Artichokes Left-over sides Green Salad

Its a wonderful day outside. Sunny, in the mid seventies (low 20's).    This week was interesting.  My boys are growing up and moving to their own rhythms.   One son went to visit a yeshiva on Monday evening.  He got back on Friday.  It is very nice to know that they can take care of themselves!   Two boys went on school trips and came back exhausted but happy.  My army son is on extended leave of absence and will now be looking for a temporary job until school starts this fall.  Oh, and we got report cards.  Some good, others less good.  To each his own. This weekend, we were invited out once again for a meal.  This time it is dinner.  No problem, we over compensated by inviting friends for lunch.    One family is preparing for a Bar-mitzva next weekend and they are totally stressed out.  Another just got over a back food allergy.  The third family is just fine and is coming to keep us company!...

Since the week before Thanksgiving, we have had non-regular shabbatot.  Sometimes because my wife was running an event, sometimes because we were under the weather, and sometimes because we were invited out.  I enjoy going to other peoples houses for meals, but it means that we cannot have sleep-over guests at our house. So, this is a regular shabbat.  No events, no meals out, only one person slightly ill, and four sleep-over guests. We have two gentlemen from Torat Moshe and two women from Shalavim.   We have one extra guest this evening, who had a grandchild today at 9am.  She pulled an all-nighter, so I'm not sure how awake/aware she is going to be at dinner. There is a Sheva Bracha meal this shabbat to which we are not invited.  The hosts asks if I would make a corned beef, and of course I agreed.  To my usually excellent corned beef, I make a glaze of brown sugar, powered ginger, dried mustard and soy sauce.  Too bad I had to sent it away...