Allaire Workshop in Sepia
The sign at bottom reads:
“Ten Digits When We Start Ten Digits When We Depart”
For more sepia scenes, visit:
Leora
Mushroom Barley Soup
Ah, autumn. A wonderful time to review one’s soup recipes.
I originally learned how to make mushroom barley soup from Mollie Katzen’s Moosewood Cookbook. Here is my current one-pot recipe, which I prepare now by heart without consulting Mollie:
Ingredients
- Mushrooms
- 1 onion
- 1/2 cup barley
- Flavoring: I use a tsp. of miso. You can also use soy sauce and/or 1 tsp. of red wine.
- Salt and pepper to taste
- Water
- Olive oil to cover bottom of pan
Many optional ingredients:
- Root vegetables: chopped carrots, parsnip, and/or turnip
- Garlic clove
- Chopped celery
- Chopped ginger root
- Green leafy vegetables: chopped kale or collards
- Herbs, fresh or dry: dill, oregano, thyme
- Shiitake mushrooms: make the soup all the more healthful and flavorful by using shiitake mushrooms
Preparing the Soup
Saute the chopped onion in a bit of olive oil at the bottom of a large pot. When the onion turns translucent, add the barley. Add more than enough water to cover the barley – about one inch higher in the pot. Cook for about 1/2 hour until the barley is almost tender. Add pepper and salt to taste. Add optional ingredients of carrots, other root vegetables, garlic and celery; add the mushrooms. Pour in one cup more of water. Cook until the vegetables are tender. Add optional kale, dill, other herbs and/or other fast cooking greens. Add soy sauce or miso to give the soup taste. Serve warm.
Coming soon (next week?): a list of soup recipes from around the blogosphere. Also, some suggested soup ingredients. If you have a favorite soup recipe that is on a blog, feel free to leave the link in the comments (thanks to Mrs. S., who last week did just that).
Should Women Vote?
Yesterday we had the fun of visiting Allaire State Park in Farmingdale, New Jersey, including the historic village and the train ride. The historic village featured Election Day 1836 – should women get the vote? The man without a hat was arguing with the women suffragettes to his right that that was a ridiculous notion.
The actors played their roles with great oomph and and in an impromptu fashion – they talked directly to the audience (there was no stage, and we were part of the show). The boy on the right was handing out blue ballots for his party, and he handed them only to the men in our party (my husband and a friend), but not to the women. I joked that I could influence my husband’s vote by telling him for whom to vote. My daughter and her friend, however, wanted the pink ballot party to win, no matter what the agenda, so they kept sneaking into the building to cast ballots for the pink party. They succeeded once or twice, but they also got caught and got a good “scolding” – all in good fun.
I wasn’t allowed to photograph the insides of the Allaire Village buildings – too bad, there was a lot of good history. We took the short train ride near the village at the end of our day. I’ll post the train another day, but here’s a great ghoulish guy at the train stop. He’s just there around Halloween time, have no fear.
For more photos with a little red or a lot of red, visit Ruby Tuesday:
Look and Tell Drawing
Welcome back to another round of What Do You See? Here is a drawing my daughter did on Thursday, and with her permission, I ask you, what’s in the drawing?
Have fun with this.
Review with Autumn Leaves
On My Blog
Famous Journeys – Thanks to all who participated.
Elsewhere in the Blogosphere
- Some fall foliage favorites: Ellie Vellie, EG Wow!, Rambling Woods, Carletta
- Can someone remind me to put this “sukkah decoration” in JPIX, the Jewish Photobloggers Blog Carnival?
- And I’ve started to put up some posts on my new tech blog, such as this one on 6 Ways to Learn jQuery. Please send your technically-oriented or small business minded friends (or yourself, if you wish to be) to my posts. In general, I’m looking for topic ideas for that blog. I tend to be a perfectionist about what I post, so you may not see me posting often in the beginning, but I’m hoping inspiration will allow me to post at least once a week.
Famous Journeys
Can you think of any famous journeys? I asked some friends, and we came up with these:
- Journey of the Children of Israel from Egypt through the desert to the Land of Israel
- Travels of Christopher Columbus
- Explorations of Magellan, Sir Francis Drake, Lewis and Clark
- Donner Party
- The band Journey
- The Travels of Benjamin of Tudela
- Man’s travel to the Moon
- Other space expeditions, like the tragic Challenger trip
- Journey to the Center of the Earth
- Exodus by Leon Uris
- Marco Polo, Jacques Cartier, Vasco de Gama, Captain Cook
- Commute to New York City every day
- Odysseus, Jason
- Hegira, the flight of Muhammad from Mecca to Medina in 622 A.D
- A Fantastic Voyage, The Fantastic Journey (I had to look these up)
- Byrd, Peary, Scott and Amundsen: journey to the Poles
- Laura Ingalls Wilder – journey through the places she lived in the U.S.
- Dorothy’s journey to Oz (and back to Kansas)
- Bilbo’s and Frodo’s journeys in Middle Earth
- Finding parking in New Brunswick, New Jersey
- On the Road, by Jack Kerouac
- Midnight Ride of Paul Revere
- After 1948 many Jews fled Muslim countries – most went to Israel, some to France and to the U.S.
- Journey of the 12 spies into the Land of Canaan/Israel
- Around the World in 80 Days, Jules Verne
- Pilgrims travel to America (as did later many others from Europe and elsewhere)
- Lady Godiva’s 11th century ride through Coventry to protest her husband’s excessive taxation of his subjects
In this week’s parsha of Lech Lecha, God tells Avram (he is not yet Avraham) to go forth from the land of his birth and travel to another land. According to the commentator Rashi, one is liable to lose three things by journeying: a trip can inhibit the birth of children, decrease one’s wealth and lessen one’s fame (lose one’s reputation). So God blesses Avram accordingly so he will have many children, wealth and he will become a great nation (fame).
So do any of the famous journeys we mention fit into the three categories mentioned by Rashi? As a loss or as a gain? Can you think of any other well-known journeys? Do people lose children, wealth or reputation on these journeys? Or do they gain them?
Last year I wrote about Oaks, Terebinths or Plains.
Ilana-Davita writes about a spiritual journey for man and an individual relationship between man and God.
Thursday Challenge: Cloths
At Cold Spring Historic Village in Cape May, New Jersey, you can watch women spin wool and weave cloth.
This week’s Thursday Challenge theme is CLOTHS (Colorful, Unusually, Fashionable, Komonos, Sari, Suits,…).
Rapunzel in Metuchen, New Jersey
My daughter, her friend, her friend’s mom and I had the pleasure of attending the play Rapunzel at the Forum Theatre in Metuchen, New Jersey. When you attend a play at the Forum, you are in for a treat. The actors talked directly to us from the stage; in the second half of the show, they went through the aisles of the audience. Some of the play was narrated, and much of it was bursts of creative song. I had a feeling when the witch showed up, she was not going to be all that scary. Indeed, by the end, she was one of the good guys (and there were only four actors, so they were all good guys). Here’s a photo of the witch signing her autograph outside the theater for my daughter:
My daughter thought the prince was the funniest actor, the way he reacted to the witch. Here’s a line from one of his songs, when he is bemoaning his poor luck as a prince: “Never come with a dragon – I only come with a cold.” At one point he pretends to be the witch, and my daughter thought that was SO funny! I found Simon, his valet, was amusing and versatile in the many roles he played (he’s in the top photo as a hairdresser).
Looks like the next children’s play at the Forum is The Three Little Pigs. You can fan the Forum Theatre on Facebook to keep up with their events.
Mimi Hosts Kosher Cooking Carnival
Hungry? Not sure what to cook? Head over to the Kosher Cooking Carnival #46 hosted by Mimi. Enjoy this month’s recipes, and while you are there, check out Mimi’s blog – she has many tasty recipes that she shares, and she sometimes has posts of cultural life in Israel or her trips within the country.
Red Murals at Historic Village
It’s fun to revisit one’s summer vacation when autumn is in full swing. Here are murals from a house in Historic Cold Spring Village in Cape May, New Jersey.
The murals were not painted in the 18th or 19th centuries, the periods the village is supposed to represent, but in the 1990’s by an artist who decided to depict what she thought life was like during those periods.
Maybe this is supposed to be the mural painter, teleported back in time? The village is fun and friendly, though our visit did have its anachronistic moments, like when the tour guide’s cell phone rang when she was explaining the layout of the old schoolhouse.
For more photos with a little or a lot of red, visit Ruby Tuesday: