Cooking and more cooking

 
Normally I make simple meals during the week and just cook an elaborate meal for Shabbat. Last night dear friends were coming for dinner----and I had to make a big SOMETHING for a potluck this weekend.  My husband spoke longingly of the dish I had made for Shavuot of blintz filling baked between layers of noodle dough. So, yesterday I made two big pans of THAT as well as a smaller pan for dinner.

I also cooked cod served with salsa ( because too much white food on our white  plates looks just plain sad) and a big green salad. Today I ate the leftovers for lunch. Here it is all cold. I ate it out of the storage containers. It was an excellent lunch (and an even better dinner).

It was a challah baking week.

I was nearly out of flour so I went to Costco earlier in the week to stock up.  If you bake bread this is an excellent flour. It took me years to be brave enough to buy it. After all, where am I supposed to store a 25lb bag of flour in my apartment without attracting mice?

I decant the flour into gallon sized plastic bags. When my youngest lived at home it was often a task that I asked him to do. He detested it. I think of him (and his complaints) every time decant the flour into reasonable sized portions.

I discovered that the task is made a little easier if you cut the big flour bag down  as you empty it of flour.

With that task completed and all of the flour put away either in the big plastic sealed bin in the back room or on the shelf in the pantry. It was time to get to work making challah.

It's pretty warm in the apartment so our loaves rose a bit overenthusiastically.

I thought that I was making eight smallish loaves but instead I made eight  big ones.

I also made another batch of  chicken stuffed with dried limes.

I put four into each chicken. I realized after I finished cooking the chicken that last time I had presoaked the limes in hot water for a few minutes before stuffing them into the chickens.

These look like two very glamorous looking chickens.

Many years ago I bought this roll of two inch elastic for five dollars. It was one of the best five dollars I have ever spent.

I have a nickel allergy and can't wear normal watch bands. Every couple of months I thread a length of elastic through the watch buckle pins and sew up the ends. The ribs on the elastic look like grosgrain. The whole task takes about fifteen minutes and I no longer get welts on my wrists from metal watch band buckles. I like that the result looks elegant.

Yes, I have enough to last me for the rest of my life.

The weather has been kind of unbearable for the past several days. I have mostly stayed indoors. The sky outside of my window has looked sickly. The worst of the heatwave has broken.

The sky is bright and clear and one can actually breathe outside.

I had lost one of my hearing aids two weekends ago. Luckily my replacement arrive at my audiologist's yesterday.  On my way home I saw an excellent bit of fire-escape shadow.

If like me, you grew up playing in the gardens of John Adams's house, you learn that one of the most lovely smells in the world is that of boxwood.

It isn't showy like roses but it always makes me happy. Perhaps the boxwoods planted at the adams mansion are particularly fragrant but I always stop to smell the boxwoods in my neighborhood.

There was just a hint of the boxwoody perfume on this bush which was next to these trumpety blooms.

I still need to make salad and tidy up before Shabbat dinner.

As  my dear Texas friends say, "Shabbat Shalom Y'all!"