What Better to Be on a Cold Winter's Day...

... than hot and sour (in a tasty way!)

This is a quick, home-cooked hack that took 20 min from start to finish, including clean-up & putting away the rest of the groceries. It's insanely delicious and the store-bought cheats make it a perfect last-minute pantry meal.

Hot & Sour Butternut Lentil Soup

1 box Trader Joe's Low-Sodium Organic Butternut Squash Soup

1 cup cooked lentils

1/2 bag Trader Joe's Organic Tuscan Kale, chopped

1 small onion

Garlic, fresh minced or powdered

Italian Blend dry herb mix

Salt, pepper, Tabasco

Pickled jalapenos

Tangy drizzle: jalapeno juice, rice vinegar, hot chili oil/sriracha/more Tabasco

Lime wedges

1. Saute onion & garlic til golden brown.

2. Add lentils & herb mix; be sure to salt well & add pepper last.

3. Once that mix is brown & toasty, add the box of soup; bring to a bubble, reduce to simmer.

4. Add chopped kale & continue cooking until just before the intoxicating smell sends you diving into the hot pot.

5. Ladle into a bowl; garnish with chopped jalapenos & a drizzle of the tang; serve with the lemon for extra pucker. If you want to get crazy, top with chopped parsley & toasted walnuts.

Shabbat Salatim

Jerusalem, G-d's Holy City, sits atop a mountain in the middle of a desert. No matter how hard the sun beats down, the air in the shade is nice & cool, and most of these stone houses do a great job of insulating their inhabitants from the heat. That is, until you add a פלטה (plata) blech and the temperature inside rises as quickly as your Shabbat meal warms. So what to do when it gets too hot for חמים (Chamim) hot meals?

Part of the beauty of a vegetarian/vegan diet is the bounty of filling dishes available for cold consumption. In the spirit of Shabbat, while sticking to my diet (a post about that to come, I'm sure) & at the request of my clean-eating omnivore rabbi back in NY, I present y'all with this week's שבת סלטים (Shabbat salatim) Shabbos salads.

1. Roasted cauliflower florets & eggplant cubes, tossed with grated carrots, thinly sliced red onion, & coated in Mama's take on Goddess Dressing (base: tehina, apple cider vinegar, soy sauce, garlic, parsley; mixed w/ hummus for added "creaminess.")

2. Fresh green salad of lettuce, cucumber, radish, fennel, & parsley.

3. Kholrabi (an amazing veggie cross b/t an apple & a radish that even Bubs the Picky Eater enjoys!) & chick peas tossed w/ rice wine vinegar & mint.

4. Grated beets & carrots with garlic, lemon juice, parsley & golden raisins.

The Free-Time Fallacy

In last week's parsha, Bo בא, G-d gives the Hebrew slaves the first commandment that signifies their becoming a nation: He instructs them (and us) how to keep His calendar & establishes the observance of Rosh Chodesh ראש חודש, the new month.  With His directive, Hashem gives Am Yisrael "free" time & instruction on how best to use it.  Slaves are held accountable for their owners' time; free people for their own; G-d's Chosen People for His.


Parents fall into a unique category; adults free to set their own schedule, concerned with observing G-d's Holy Commandments, suddenly slaves to the wills & wants of their young children.  They can either train their babies to follow a schedule, or let them set their own need-based rhythm.  Both methods lay waste to the free-time fallacy of adulthood, with the former seeming more demanding, grueling, & unnatural than the latter.  Babies are creatures of nature - instinctive, self-driven respondents of whatever need is prevalent at the moment.  Is it fair to expect them to be self-sufficient before their time (and to assume we, the adults, know when that time is?)  Until they can master object permanence, self-feeding & soothing, and understand "Now it's time to..."; until they can soak up their parents nurture & adapt their nature to the world around them, should we try to force a square peg in a round hole?


I find that whenever I get frustrated with Bubs about his schedule, it's because I'm projecting adult expectations onto my six-month old son.  Our best days are those when we get out at some point, eat at some point, and leave the rest to how he's doing (how long he naps, how well he plays, how hungry he is.)  There may be a lot of down time, but it's by no means wasted.

Mentsch tracht, Gott lacht

41 weeks 3 days, making me officially 10 days overdue.

If the doctors who had been telling me that natural conception would never happen could be so easily proven wrong, then why would I think to put any faith in their calculated due date, even if the math was pretty convincing?  All of the waiting & worrying ultimately didn't matter - the due date came & went without so much as an inkling that Baby would show.  I should have known better.

John Lennon said, "Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans."  Likewise, Woody Allen suggested that, "If you want to make G-d laugh, tell Him your plans."  Both make for popular yearbook quotes, but there's a deeper wisdom to such pop philosophy.  Psalm 33 teaches us in verse 10: "ה' הפיר עצת גוים, הניא מחשבות עמים" (Hashem hayfir atzat goyim, hayni machshavot amim) G-d annuls the counsels of nations, He thwarts the plans of men.  From this we are reminded that what happens is not up to us - for all that we may design, it's ultimately in the hands of the Divine.

The future rarely plays out as we anticipated or hoped or planned.  Regardless of how much we plot & scheme & calculate, the end result is far less controllable than we'd like to believe.  That isn't to say that we can't behave in a manner which might best influence a situation's eventual outcome; but it's crucial to recognize that more often than not, we simply have to keep calm & carry on.  Trying to manipulate anything beyond our own behavior is like trying to tell the wind which way to blow.

The Waiting is the Hardest Part

My doctor confirmed at my 39 week check-up today that, aside from Peanut being "on the biggish side" (whatever that means!), none of the indicators are indicating he'll be coming out soon.  That's not to say that he won't be on time, just that it's unlikely he'll be early.  Considering he's due next Friday & my mom's coming in next Wednesday, this should be good news.  But the anxious worrier in me fears that if he's too late, Mommy could very well miss the bris & precious days with the baby she's coming all this way to see.

When it came time to schedule our next appointment, my doctor said, "Now, in two weeks," to which I quickly interjected, "I shouldn't be pregnant anymore."  He looked up at me with a heavy smile and responded, "תהיי סבלנית" (t'heyee savlanit) be patient, and continued to explain the past-date plan.  The situation is out of my control - Peanut will come when he's good & ready, not before or after, but בזמנו (bizmano) in his time - all I need to be is patient.

We're taught from a very young age that patience, the act of being tolerant of an unwanted situation, is a virtue.  The Hebrew word סבלנות (savlanut) patience, shares its root letters ס.ב.ל with the verb לסבול (lisbol), which means both to tolerate and to suffer.  This correlation suggests that being patient is in no way expected to be an easy task; in fact, Hebrew recognizes just how insufferable patience can be, especially when the situation is beyond our control.

Say, waiting to go into labour.

Despite their common root, to tolerate & to suffer are opposing concepts - you either suffer through something or soldier through it.  What could be the driving force that connects them?  Patience, the adjective that shares their common base.  Perhaps HaShem, through His holy language Hebrew, is alluding to the relief that patience can bring to circumstances beyond the pale.  When there's nothing more we can do, when we have exhausted every option, when the only thing left is to sit around & wait, doing so with the aforementioned virtuous patience might not make time pass more quickly, but it will certainly make it all the more tolerable.