I was going through photos of family for our upcoming celebration of my son’s bar-mitzvah, and I found this one of the road on the way to the Kinneret in Northern Israel. So in honor of my cousin who lives near here and said he is sorry but “he won’t be in the neighborhood” for the bar-mitzvah, here’s the photo.

Some Images on My Blog in the past few weeks

  

  

Some Posts on My Blog in the past few weeks

• Favorite Books from Childhood
• Grandmother and Grandson
• Berry Cashew Pudding
• Jewish Film Festival Challenge

Elsewhere in the Blogosphere

Reluctant Veggie educates about nightshades and remarks “it makes perfect sense that the food we put into our body has a direct impact on how our body performs. or, rather, how it doesn’t perform. and yet, most doctors have no clue. or would rather treat the symptom versus finding the root cause.”

Ilana-Davita had blogger’s block, but yet she managed to write an elucidating post about Bereshit.

Mimi posted a scrumptious photo of her Moroccan fish.

Why press a salad? According to macrobiotics, a pressed salad makes the vegetables easier to digest. It is a way of preparing the vegetables without any cooking.

At first I thought I would need to buy a salad presser to press a salad, but then after an email from Klara convincing me to try putting a heavy bowl on top of the salad I came up with this homemade version of pressing:

How to Press a Salad

Gather up some vegetables. Here are a few suggestions:

• kale, chopped or torn into pieces
• cucumber, sliced (my understanding is peel if it is not organic, you can leave peel on if organic)
• radishes, sliced (they will be less sharp after pressing)
• lettuce, torn in pieces
• sweet onion, chopped
• parsley, basil or another fresh herb

Put your vegetables on a plate. Sprinkle with sea salt (or whatever salt you have). You can put on some apple cider or rice vinegar, too, according to some recipes (I just use salt). Put whatever heavy objects you need on top of the vegetables for an hour or two or three. The vegetables should soften and release some water, too. You can rinse off the salt and drain any excess water.

Lemon juice might be tasty as an addition, too. Enjoy.

The definition of a pressed salad, from Changing Seasons Macrobiotic Cookbook, by Aveline Kushi and Wendy Esko:

“Very thinly sliced or shredded fresh vegetables, combined with a pickling agent such as sea salt, umeboshi, grain vinegar, or shoyu, and placed in a special pickle press. In the pickling process, many of the enzymes and vitamins are retained while the vegetables become easier to digest.”

This was going to be an upbeat post. I am very excited to announce that Batya will be hosting the next JPIX edition, the summer review edition. But before I say more about JPIX, I would like to add a prayer for RivkA bat Tirzel (the “bat Tirzel” means she is the daughter of Tirzel; in Jewish tradition one prays for someone’s health with the mother’s name). You can read her post about her unexpected diagnosis. She is a strong woman and has blogged a lot about her cancer diagnosis, treatment and support group.

So if you want to participate in the September 8 edition of JPIX, the blog carnival of Jewish photobloggers, please submit your post using this blogcarnival.com form. Finally, if you are not a photoblogger but you have a great photo to submit, you can open an account on Flickr or some other free web photo showcase and submit the Flickr (or whatever platform you use) link. You can submit photos on any theme, but especially welcome are any that celebrate summer.

On My Blog

Today’s Flowers: Grape Hyacinths and Creeping Phlox
Watery Wednesday at Sandy Hook
Sky Watch at Sandy Hook
Nature Notes: A Pictorial View of Sandy Hook

A Month of Modern Jewish Holidays

Delicious Pickled Radish

What is RT? (I’ll give you the answer now: it’s Re-Tweet! More on Twitter in future posts)

Upcoming in Highland Park: The Highland Park Public Library is once again having a book sale! (and my neighbors put a lot of energy into putting this together, so three cheers for them. You’ve seen their red bud, magnolia and dogwood trees on my blog). It’s the same weekend as the Annual Street Fair, which is on May 17. If you live in Central New Jersey, you can donate books from May 11 to 14.

Elsewhere on the Web

Coach Lisa on Payment vs. Exposure
From the article:

Some of you get paid to speak; others hope to get paid one day. One thing that we all face as paid speakers is the issue of payment vs. exposure. That is, we will be invited to speak pro bono, or will be offered less than our usual rate, and we’ll have to decide if it’s worth it to take less money in order to get exposure or visibility…only a few of my pro bono speaking engagements have paid off in clients or future speaking engagements. Read the rest.

How to Build Natural Immunity against Swine Flu

Rabbi Yoseph Breuer: the Rav of Frankfurt and Washington Heights (via G6)

Klara gave me this simple recipe two months ago. Since then, I have made it at least 5 times. There are only two ingredients: red radishes and umeboshi paste. Since many of you are going to say, What’s umeboshi paste? Where can I get it? I did a little research. In Highland Park, Anna’s Health Food Store sells this delicious condiment. Others in the U.S. can buy it at your local health food store. Eden makes umeboshi paste with an O-K kosher supervision. Here are some store locations in France that may sell umeboshi paste. Klara tells me there is a health food store in Ma’aleh Adumim (Israel), and the owner delivers in Jerusalem once a week. Feel free to add other locations in the comments.

Why use umeboshi paste? Not only does it taste good, it is also healing. Here’s one site on umeboshi: “Modern day diets tend to create acid conditions within the blood which is more likely to cause illnesses. The strong alkalising effect of umeboshi can help to counteract modern day excesses, including alcohol. ” More here.

Ingredients

• a bunch of radishes, nice red round ones
• 1-2 cups of water (depends on how many radishes)
• 3 Tbsp. umeboshi paste

Slice all the radishes. Bring water to boil with ume paste. Turn down flame, add radishes, simmer covered for 20 minutes or until radishes are tender.

Another version: After boiling the ume paste in water for ten minutes, pour over radishes and let sit for about an hour. (Note: this is the more “proper” version, which is the pickling method. My cooking version is OK, but not as healthful as leaving the radishes in the ume paste broth. I’ll try pickling method tomorrow).

All the radishes get nice and pink and have a lovely flavor, lose sharpness.

You may drain when pickles ready(optional). When they are room temperature, put them in the refrigerator.

The Kosher Cooking Carnival #41 is up at A Mother In Israel. Bravo to Mom on a job well-done. It’s easy to read and well-organized. And there’s lots of recipes for next year’s Pesach (a few that one can try now, like Vegetable Lasagna).

A note on the new logo: it’s by Pesky Settler. Thank you for putting in the time and energy to do the logo. Every time I see it, I will start singing the part of the song Yom Zeh Mechubad with that phrase: “Meat and fish and other delicacies…”

Unfortunately, it also reminds me that many people (probably myself included, although who knows how much is too much?) eat too much meat. If we just eat meat on Shabbat, is that a good amount of moderation? I have these growing children, two of whom (the youngest and the oldest) seem to crave meat. So we had hamburgers last night (I mostly ate a lot of chicken vegetable soup, brown rice and broccoli). For more on the topic of plants vs. animal products, read a book by Michael Pollan. Or visit the blog of Phiya Kushi. On the other hand, Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats
has a different philosophy, stating on its back cover: “Your body needs old-fashioned animal fats New-fangled polyunsaturated oils can be bad for you Modern whole grain products can cause health problems…”

Personally, I like the macrobiotic approach. In moderation. Except to follow it, one has to spend a lot of time cooking. So I cook a few macrobiotic dishes on Fridays. Radishes and umeboshi paste coming soon to this blog (next week).