Three Squash, watercolor on paper by Leora Wenger, 2009
Welcome to the Kosher Cooking Carnival, the Tishrei (Jewish month, the first one, the one with many holidays like Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur, Sukkot and more) edition. Thank you, Batya, for managing this blog carnival.
What’s for Dinner?
Chunky Tomato Soup with Rice by Frugal and Kosher is beloved by her son – I bet other kids and adults will enjoy this recipe as well.
Rivki Silver participated in a Rosh Hashana blog party and made a super salad. Hannah Katsman of Cooking Manager was also part of the blog party – she presented one of my favorite of her recipes, the marinated beet salad.
Whether you call this banana bread or banana cake, it is a favorite dessert in our family. When I buy too many bananas and at least two brown ones are sitting on a shelf, it is time to make the banana cake.
Ingredients
2 (or 3) ripe bananas
1 cup sugar (I used white sugar, but you can try brown)
1/2 cup applesauce
1/4 canola oil
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. baking powder
2 cups flour
2 eggs
optional: cinnamon and/or chocolate chips
Mix eggs, banana and sugar until creamy. Add oil, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Mix in the flour last. Add to a baking pan, and bake for 45 minutes to one hour at 350°.
It’s probably a good idea to store this cake in the refrigerator.
Mount Greylock in the Berkshires has a lot of goldenrod on top of the mountain. And many happy butterflies are enjoying themselves.
We also visited The Mount in the Berkshires, where Edith Wharton lived for a while with her husband (before she divorced him) and his dogs. There is a pet cemetery near the garden that has lots of tidy flowers, many of which are butterfly-friendly, like this butterfly bush. The Whartons allowed their dogs to sit at their fancy dining table along with distinguished guests (is that natural? as this is Nature Notes).
We saw this red mushroom besides the trail that we climbed to the top of Mount Greylock.
When you reach the top of Mount Greylock in the Berkshire Mountains, you are rewarded with lovely views. It looks a bit like a puzzle, the Mount Greylock views below and across (one can see more mountains in the distance).
If you climb this tower on the top of Mount Greylock, you see even more views. My husband and two sons climbed to the top. My daughter and I wandered around below, looking down at the landscape.
There is an inscription in honor of soldiers at the base of the Mount Greylock tower. You can also find two quotes from Henry David Thoreau at the top of Mount Greylock. Supposedly, he too as some point in the 19th century climbed this mountain.
I don’t know who the man in the yellow shirt is, but he added a nice contrast to the scene of the lake or pond below the mountain.
Need refreshment? There is a little cafe in the Bascomb Lodge at the top of Mount Greylock.
At the entrance to the Bascomb Lodge is a butterfly garden. I’ll save my butterfly shots for another post. There are also butterfly-friendly flowers all over the top of Mount Greylock.
On the way down the mountain, we took the Overview Trail. I was hoping for several scenic views on the trail, but we were only rewarded with this one scenic vista looking west.
We just came back from a trip to the Berkshire Mountains in western Massachusetts. One day we climbed Mount Greylock (the highest mountain in the Berkshires). Toward the top we came across this cabin and pond. The trail is part of the Appalachian Trail that spans the mountains of eastern United States. We only hiked a tiny portion of the trail. In fact, we didn’t even climb the entire mountain. We parked at the top of the CCC Dynamite Trail, walked on Sperry Road to the Deer Trail, then took the Hopper Trail to the A.T. or Appalachian Trail. On the way back we took the Overlook Trail to the Hopper Trail. The Overlook Trail really only has one good scenic vista, so my daughter didn’t think it was worth the extra half mile.
Way back in January, my daughter and I went for a walk on the Meadows trail near Donaldson Park. The trail was cleared back in 2006, and it is a nice stroll through the woods. I like this photo and wanted to share it; it looks a bit like the branches of the raspberry bushes in my backyard. It was a snow-less winter in New Jersey, and I think this photo reflects that sort of empty brownness that we had instead.
I haven’t been able to get into nature much recently myself (other than my yard), as I’ve been taking care of my father who is 82 and has needed a lot of help lately. We are working on getting him a new living situation. Balancing work and my regular family duties with this has taken a lot of my time and energy.
One of the benefits of living in a small town like Highland Park, New Jersey are the events like the recent one for National Night Out. Night Out in Highland Park was celebrated with booths, balloons and fun activities for kids.
It was cool to watch kids scampering up this climbing tower.
There were announcers in the back calling out names of various winners of prizes. Local businesses had donated the prizes.
My favorite part of the evening was the dunking booth. Later in the evening, after I had left, the person sitting in the dunking booth was Mayor Gary Minkoff, but I had already gone home by then. One of my friends said her son managed to dunk Mayor Gary on his first throw. Great shot!
The fire trucks were fun to view. I’m not sure how to show this image – horizontally or vertically. Looks like it really belongs at an angle.
Does your area have local events? What kinds? Which ones do you enjoy most?
I visited the Piscataway end of Johnson Park at the end of July. It was a super hot day (there are a lot of those this summer), but I enjoyed taking shots of the trees in the distance.
When I got to the edge of the Raritan River that borders the park, I noticed you could see the Delaware & Raritan Canal on the other side. I thought: aha! that would be good subject matter for a post. Maybe it will get a little less hot, and I’ll go to take some photos of the canal itself. You can see from the three people on this canal photo that the canal is a fun place to hike and bike. There’s a lot of history behind the canal, constructed in 1834, that went all the way from New Brunswick (that’s this end of the canal) to Trenton, which is close to Philadelphia.
These geese are regular residents of Johnson Park.
One friend thought I was vegan because I only post pareve recipes on my blog. I do have this one recipe for chicken stuffing, but in an effort to prove that I do eat chicken I wrote up one of my favorite chicken recipes. It is a stir-fry of chicken, ginger and cabbage. Last week was the Nine Days, and observant Jews do not eat meat or chicken during this period of mourning (mourning the loss of the Temple in Jerusalem and many other sad events in Jewish history, such as the massacre in York in 1190 C.E.). My children were very happy to resume eating meat on Monday (nahamu, nahumu– comfort, as the saying goes), and we have had this chicken dish twice this week (as well as other carnivorous goodies). I had leftover chicken I needed to use up – this is a delicious way to deal with the leftover chicken problem.
Chicken, Ginger and Cabbage Ingredients
Three to four pieces of leftover chicken, taken off the bone and chopped into bite-sized pieces
1 Tbsp. virgin coconut oil
1 Tbsp. chopped ginger root
1/2 head of cabbage, chopped (I use savoy cabbage)
1 tsp. tamari (or soy sauce) or to taste
Optional: bits of chopped kale
1 large fry pan or wok
Cut up the chicken into pieces. Put the coconut oil in the pan and warm it up. Add the chicken, then the chopped ginger and stir. Chop the cabbage and add to the pan. Add tamari sauce. If you like, sprinkle a few cut pieces of kale as well. Cook until cabbage is tender. Serve on a bed of brown rice, though my daughter who doesn’t like rice eats it straight. My son who doesn’t care for the cabbage picks out the chicken. I have been known to pick away at the cabbage, leaving the chicken for others.
