Chometz

I went to buy noodles on Wednesday so I could bake the last Yerushalmi kugel before Pesach. Instead of going to my Rami Levy, I decided to change things up a little and go to an Osher Ad in Yerushalayim. In addition to shaking up my routine, that would also give me a chance to buy a few more things for Pesach that we haven't found at Rami Levy.

I arrived at Osher Ad at 9:58 and was pleased to find a reasonable (though not great) parking spot with minimal trouble. I got a cart, walked toward the entrance, and... stood in line. Right, Osher Ad doesn't open until 10, so they unlock their doors  at 10. Luckily, I was closer to the exit than the entrance when the doors opened, so I missed the traffic jam at their first aisle, where the seasonal sale items are.

I got my handful of Pesach items, but the store had been rearranged to the point that I couldn't find the regular noodles, although I saw many varieties of Pesachdik noodles. So I found an employee and asked, full of polite confidence and wry humor, "Excuse me, do you have any chometzdik noodles?" The man looked at me with a combination of horror and amusement. "No lady, this store is kosher for Pesach!"

Well, it's a good thing I hadn't waited till Thursday. I went to another store and grabbed three of the last five bags of kugel noodles that had been thrown in aisle 7 with the rest of the miscellaneous Chometz. Sheesh.

It Begins

Husbinator did the first round of Pesach shopping today, buying all disposables and most of the dry goods. He said it was great: being a Monday over two weeks before Pesach, the store was relatively empty and there was no one ahead of him in the checkout line. "Everyone who was there had an overflowing cart, though. We were all doing the same thing."

Newsletter

The ladies in my shul started a periodical, and the first edition came out a week or two before Purim. Having turned into a community-spirited person at some unknown time, I made sure both to contribute a recipe (Ema II's Kahlua recipe, which I painstakingly translated to Hebrew) and actually read the thing.

To my recollection, this is the first community publication that I have ever really enjoyed. I guessed that since it's published entirely in Hebrew, I can't get snobby over grammatical errors and inelegant sentence structure. Husbinator opined that I like it because it's entirely devoid of pretense. Both are likely true, but it also turns out that this is not, in fact, a wholly amateur publication: Mrs. Barzilai's mother is a professional editor, and she goes over all of the articles before printing.

So American

One of our friends in the Yishuv gave us ideal mishloach manot this Purim: cute, easy, and delicious. She filled cute little straw cups filled with milk and taped on three Lotus cookies. Like I said: cute, easy, and delicious.

Another one of my friends, Gila, saw the cup and exclaimed over its cuteness, so I told her just how great it is really was. Gila responded, "The people who gave this out are American, aren't they?"
"Yes, how did you kn--. Oh, my Gosh. Milk and cookies is an American thing, isn't it? Yes, it is. An Israeli friend gave out a tea and cookies package."

Gila nodded, trying to be nice, but her body language clearly indicated just how weird she finds the milk and cookie pairing.

This is in direct contrast to my manager, who had no qualms about letting me know how gross peanut butter and jelly are together. Which was fair, since I was busy telling her she clearly ate it wrong the one time she tried it, because only crazy people don't like peanut butter and jelly. I mean, they're made for each other! (For the record, she didn't eat it wrong. I convinced her to try it again, and she just doesn't like PB&J. She likes peanut butter, and she likes jelly. Just not together. I'm having trouble processing this.)

New Skill

The other day, BSM came home from preschool with a treat: a drink in a foil pouch. These are a staple of Israeli childhood, so I wasn't overly surprised to see it. I was, however, slightly stymied. These drinks seem to be the equivalent of Capri Sun drinks, which we never had growing up. Presumably they weren't kosher. 

In any event, I was lacking critical experience in opening this thing. It doesn't exactly seem trivial to stab a liquid-filled foil pouch with a cheap plastic straw and succeed in both piercing the pouch and not having the drink explode everywhere. 

I recall seeing this done by stabbing the bottom of the pouch, as opposed to its side, but I had foolishly convinced BSM to drink this thing during dinner. Thus, I had the added constraint of the opened pouch having to be able to balance on the table. And foolish I may be, but I am not so foolish as to even suggest that BSM drink his sugar water from a cup. 

After thinking about it during the first half of BSM's dinner, I finally solved this little riddle. It may be cheating, it may be lame, but I don't care. By using a toothpick, you can easily create a controlled opening exactly where you want, and then pop the straw right in. Ha.