yum

jason found a rack of ribs on manager's special at kroger this weekend. so he made them for dinner tonight. add some mashed sweet potatoes and homemade coleslaw and you've got yourself quite a delicious meal. a perfect end to a rather long monday.

one of the many reasons i am thankful for my husband. 

Yummy Pasta Sala

i love cooking. i especially love cooking easy meals that the whole family can enjoy. and it is an even more added bonus when said meals are semi-healthy. like the pasta salad that i made for dinner tonight.

i used to think of pasta salad as being a side dish. but, if you make enough of it, it makes a pretty great meal. especially if you load it up with fresh veggies, throw in some tuna - you have a well-rounded meal in one dish. one dish that you can make ahead of time, like when your kids are napping, thus avoiding the pre-dinner meltdown that happens anytime that you humungous, food loving child sees you preparing something. and i love the dressing. it's a good change from just mayo or italian dressing. it's got a nice mix of flavors, but it isn't too crazy, so kids will like it. at least mine do. and that's saying something.

so here you go. it's so simple. what you need is:

*one box of pasta (i use whole wheat, but you don't have to)

*raw veggies of your choice. tonight, i used broccoli, celery, carrots, orange peppers, grape tomatoes, and olives. and yes, i know olives are not a raw veggie. other veggies you could use would be red and green peppers, cauliflower, green onions, or red onions.

dressing:

*1/2 cup of may

*1/4 cup of ranch dressing

*3 T of milk

*2 T red wine vinigar

*1 T minced dried onion

*1/2 t seasoned salt

*1/4 teaspoon garlic powder

*1/4 teaspoon black pepper

*1/4 teaspoon dried parsley

*1/4 teaspoon (or a little squirt) mustard

cook the pasta. while it is cooking, chop the veggies. i like them to be really small, but you could use big chunks that's how you like it. i use about equal parts veggies to cooked noodles. i know - this is a very precise, helpful recipe, huh?

when you're done chopping, mix up the dressing. just put all of the ingredients in a bowl and mix it up. pretty simple.

once the pasta is cooked, drain it and rinse it with cold water. you want to cool it down quite a bit before adding the veggies so that they don't cook at all. one of the best things about this dish is the contrast between the crunchy veggies and the soft noodles.

add the dressing to the noodles, mix it all around, until they are all nice and coated. at this point, i take some of the noodles out for my kids. i'm not that mom. you know, the one that makes two different dinners every night. but, i've tried giving them this before and they are not fans of the raw veggies and dinner was a disaster. which i understand. it's hard to chew, especially when you don't have all of your teeth. so whole wheat noodles with a little dressing and a few olives sprinkled it, with a side of cooked green beans isn't a bad meal. and it is a way that i can easily make them dinner that is still good for them without making a whole other meal. we still get to eat as a family and they still eat (sort of) what jason and i are eating.

so once i take out their noodles, i add all the veggies to the noodles and dressing and mix it all together. throw it in the fridge and wait for dinner time. i add some tuna to jason's, but not mine. and there you have a complete meal in one dish - veggies, grains, protein, and yumminess (which is definitely an essential ingredient to a well-balanced meal).

don't you wish you lived at my house....

i love saturdays.

yummy breakfast.

cute boy, self-decorated

funny faces.

family dinner

i have this thing about family dinners. in my mind, they are a great idea. they are a time for us all to sit down together, jason and i can talk about our day, hiba can tell funny stories, matthias can throw food on the ground. you know, special moments like that.

in reality, they usually end with me yelling at hiba and/or matthias and on the brink of yelling at jason. the kids don't like my cooking, i have to feed matthias the whole time so my food is cold by the time i eat it, hiba whines about everything from the food being to spicy (aka having any flavor at all) to where we set her napkin down. the meal is usually ended by matthias throwing his half-eaten plate of food on the ground. by the end of the meal, i am usually convince that home-cooked meals are over-rated, goldfish for dinner could be a balanced meal, and eating in front of the tv is the best idea in the world.

but not tonight. tonight, we had a successful family dinner. i'm trying not to get too excited about it, because i'm sure tomorrow will more closely resemble the paragraph above. but tonight, it was a success.

i made spaghetti and meatballs, french bread, and fresh green beans. hiba actually ate the spaghetti, mostly by herself, and completely with no fits. she tried the green beans, which she very over-dramatically told us she didn't like, but hey - she tried them. and she didn't fuss the whole time.

and matthias. he was amazing. i decided to skip the spaghetti and just cut up the meatballs for him. which he ate on his own (messy - yes, but still), and he at his green beans, and he dipped his bread pieces in the extra sauce on his plate. and the most amazing part - he ended dinner by taking a drink and calmly pushing his plate towards me and signing "all done". which he has NEVER done before. i almost didn't even know what to do.

tomorrow will probably be a family dinner filled with melt-downs, thrown food, and complaints, but hey - i have have tonight to hold on to.

bring on the meat

last night, jason and i went to a bbq at the house of some new friends. the dad runs a falafel shop down the street that we've eaten at a few times. last week, we went by to say hi and really talk to him for the first time and he was like, "so, when are you coming over to my house for a bbq?". this culture is great like that. you meet someone one time and you have them over to eat. and you really mean the invitations. because we said, "sure, we'd love to come sometime", and his response was, "yes, i know. when? today? tomorrow?". so we settled on thursday night.

this put jason and i in a bit of a pickle. thursday night we were taking the kids to mundo's, a pizza restaurant, for dinner. the pizza is really good there. i love it. but we knew that we would have more food shoved in front of us at the bbq than anyone would ever think of eating, so we shouldn't eat any pizza. but we did. jason was smart and at least only ate one piece. but when i finished my first piece, they brought a brand new, hot, cheesy pizza out and sat it right in front of me. so i ate another piece. i figured i had about two hours before i'd have to eat again, so i'd be ok. i was wrong.

we got to the house and abu mahmud was out grilling. they have a beautiful yard area with real grass and an arab style table...mattresses in a square with pillows all around and big sheet in the middle. it was so great. the weather was perfect. it's been hotter than heck the last few days, but yesterday it was cloudy and warm and it even rained a little bit. mostly just sprinkles off and on, but it was still rain. so we sat down and made ourselves at home.

abu mahmud handed us each a steak sandwich. they were probably only 6 oz. steaks, maybe a little bigger. and they were soooooo good. juicy, lots of flavor, fresh off the grill. i told him how good they were and he said that i shouldn't get too excited, this was just the appetizer. i laughed. but he was serious.

then they started bringing out the second appetizer. hummus, babaganoush, french fries, bread. there were two dishes of each, one for me and jason and one for everyone else. i was already getting full and i had no idea what was coming next, so i didn't eat. but then aida, the wife, shoved the fries in front of me and told me to eat them because they were hot and fresh. i offered her some and she declined because she'd just eaten an hour ago. well, so had i, but that excuse apparently doesn't work for guests. so jason and i picked slowly at the fries and hummus, hoping to not have to eat too much before the main course.

and then the main course arrived. his sons had left the meat that his shop, so they had to go back and get it. they came in carrying two buckets of food. yes, buckets. not big bowls or huge serving platters. buckets. abu mahmud started to put the chicken on the grill. it looked and smelled delicious. i think he cooked two chickens. and there were eight adults and four little kids eating. then came the kebabs. they cooked them as little meatball things. there were probably forty of those. and this is in addition to the steak appetizer that everyone has already had. and as if that wasn't enough food, he threw on a couple more steaks and then so kindly plopped them onto our plates before we could say anything.

so two steaks, one chicken breast, two chicken legs, one kebab, a handful of fries, and a spoonful of hummus later, i couldn't move or think about eating anything else. at this point, they were actually very un-arab and stopped putting food on our plate when we said we'd had enough. most places we've been, we've gotten at least one more serving at this point, especially jason. it was some of the best meat i've eaten since i've been here. and probably more meat i've eaten since i've been here.

we stayed for about another hour, talking about what we do, what we're doing next year, where their families are from, stories from america (abu mahmud has been there twice). it was a really fun evening and i hope we get to spend more time with them. aida, the wife, has offered to teach me how to cook arab food. i think i'm going over next weekend. they told us when we move to our new apartment, they can be our first guests and i can cook them an arab meal. they were such a fun family, very relaxed and welcoming, doing their best to make us feel at home and make our time here as good as it can be. also, they gave us ice cream, which was actually a normal texture and no toothpaste aftertaste, so we'll definitely stay friends with them.

Wer goin' tuh the hitchin'

Since we've been in Bethlehem, we've been told that we should go to a Muslim wedding if we get the chance. They are some great parties with dancing, TONS of food, and fun traditions. We were invited to one that took place last Thursday and Friday (by the family of the groom who we had met once) and decided not to pass the opportunity up. We made the right decision.

Thursday night we showed up around 9, and the party had been going for a couple hours already. The makeshift stage that was set up in the groom's neighborhood was full of young men dancing to LOUD Arabic music. The groom was up on someones shoulders, and all the other dancers had formed a circle around him. Then we showed up.

Immediately, Sarah was escorted by some of the ladies to the place where they were gathered (you can read about that at her blog) and Jesse and I were coaxed/pushed onto the dance floor. Some man with a shepherd's crook came over, and made all the dancers except for Jesse, Myself, and our two partners squat down on the ground, while we danced in the middle of the circle they formed. Yes it felt awkward, and yes it was awesome. None of the songs that we danced to had any specific steps that we had to learn, the basic requirements to dance like an Arab man at a wedding are as follows.

1. Extend your arms to the sides, lift them until they are slightly above your head and move your shoulders to the rhythm.

2. Let your chest (rather than your hips) lead your dance.

3. Get really close to the man you are dancing with (this was also a bit awkward for me, but it was fine once I got over my American desire for personal space).

4. Do your best to move with the rhythm, but it is not required.

5. Make a lot of noise, smile, and don't get in the way of whoever is supposed to be the center of attention. (which turned out to be the foreigners for most of the night)

(In order to fully appreciate the video below, be sure that you have the sound on your computer and watch until the end. The end is the best part)




At one point, a song with English words came on over the speakers. Neither Jesse nor I had ever heard this song before, but apparently it was assumed that we would know how to dance to it. ALL of the other guys squatted in a circle around us, and Jesse and I showed them how to dance to the song. I had lost all my feelings of awkwardness or shyness by this point, or I would be repeating the familiar refrain. It helped that most of the guys assumed that whatever I did was right, since it was obviously an American song that we were dancing to.

We ended up spending about 1.5 or 2 hours there that night, and the next both my legs and my shoulders were quite sore. I was worried that there would be more dancing the next night, on the second night of the wedding.

When we showed up on Friday night, the stage was gone, as were most of the people. Apparently the feast and ceremony had been earlier in the day, so we had missed that part. But the family of the groom knew that we would be coming late, so they stuck around and waited for us.

As we sat and visited, they told us that they had prepared 150 kilos of meat and 50 kilos of bread for the wedding feast (in addition to a heck of a lot of rice). They brought a huge platter of mensaf (rice with yogurt, peanuts, and lamb meat) out to us. One that was probably fit for about 8 or 9 Americans to eat (there were 4 people eating).

Let me set the scene. Sami, Jesse, Sarah and I are sitting on plastic chairs in the middle of the room. 10 members of the grooms family are sitting on the bed, on the steps, or on chairs elsewhere in the room, facing us. This enormous platter of food is in front of us, the four of us are eating off the same platter, and all of the family is eyeing us with every bite, looking for hints of whether or not we are enjoying the food. (it was great food by the way). In addition to watching us, the family members are encouraging/directing us to eat more and more and more and more.

One thing that we probably have mentioned before: Arab people are very hospitable, and in Arab culture, it is also polite to refuse hospitality. (e.g. when someone offers you tea, food, or gift, you should refuse a couple of times before relenting). This creates some awkward moments when you really don't want something. . .

On this night, I did not want to eat any more mensaf. I had probably consumed 2 times as much as I eat at a normal meal, mostly very heavy lamb meat and rice, and I was feeling a bit bloated and almost queasy. However, they decided it was a good time to bring out more meat (which Sarah decided to put in front of me). I really was wondering where the best place to go would be, in case I need to eject the contents of my stomach, as I gulped down the last few bites of meat. Mercifully, the lady of the house realized I was bit uncomfortable (I think the gurgling sounds gave me away) and told me I didn't need to eat any more if I didn't want to.

We sat around for a while longer, and the man of the house grabbed my arm and directed me to put on his keffiyeh and his shalwar so we could take some pictures. His wife also gave Sarah one of her robes and a head covering to wear. We posed against the wall while they oohed and awed over us, and while Sami and Jesse took pictures for us.

Despite all my complaining about sore arms, sore legs, awkwardness, and overeating, we had an incredible time. The two nights we spent with this family were some of the most fun nights that we have had since we've been in Bethlehem. Free advice for anyone who lives in an Arab country: go to a Muslim wedding if you get the chance.

Ethiopians, Soldiers, and Turks

All right. Three more stories from Eilat:

1. While staying at the Shelter (the name of our hostel), a man I did not know came up to me and asked me to play backgammon with him. I told him that I was not very good, and that he would have to remind me of the rules, but that I'd love to play. He said he wasn't very good either and that it would be fun. One of those things was a lie, one was the truth.

Backgammon is popular game in the Arab world, so I can reasonably be expected to lose when playing against an Arab man. Also, the game was invented by the Turks, so I would be even more expected to lose to a Turkish man when playing him. Finally, I have only played the game with Fro 3 times.

Really, I thought that backgammon was a game of luck, but it was as if I was playing chess against Bobby Fischer. Bobby could tell me all the hints and tips he wanted, he could even tell me what moves to make half the time, but he would still destroy me like Tyson destroyed Peter McNeely. However, I am proud to be able to say that I played backgammon with a Turk.

2. We have a guidebook for Israel and the Palestinian Territories that is about 6 years old. This leads us to some places that no longer exist. For example, we tried to find a pub near the hostel section of town in Eilat, but couldn't find it anywhere. Across the street from where we were trying to go, there was a small bar with music blaring out if it. We decided to wander in, and fortune smiled upon us.

It turned out to be a restaurant/bar run by Ethiopian Jews. There was only one other white guy in the place and I think he was the owner or the manager or something. Our first night in the place, we had just eaten dinner, but one of the Ethiopian men literally forced food into our mouths (when I say literally, I mean it. I held the food in his hand, refused to let me take it with my hand, and forced it into my mouth). It was great, but we were so full that there was not way we could eat more than one bite. Sarah couldn't even handle that much. She made me eat most of hers.

The next night, we went back to the same place for dinner. The food was really intense, and it made a very powerful impression on my stomach. I am used to eating Arab food, which is no light fare, and this still felt incredible heavy. It was also bursting with flavor. As we ate, the Ethiopians watched and corrected our eating style, and interrupted us every two or three bites to ask if we liked the food. It was really fun.

After we had finished eating, the music really started cranking, and one particularly gregarious man (the one who had forced food into our mouths the night before) convinced us to get up a dance in the middle of the restaurant with him and some of the other men. So there we were, three white folks from the US, dancing in between the tables at an Ethiopian restaurant to some sort of music that sounded like a mix between Busta Rhymes, Tribal Beats, and Raffi. (Alright, everything will be alright, we can make it/ Alright, everything will be alright, we can make it).

We were there for about 2.5 hours, and we only left because the hostel had a curfew. When we tried to leave, the other patrons of the restaurant tried every trick in the book to keep us there. I ended up arguing with them in the street on our way out, trying to convince them that we really had to leave, or else we would be locked out of our hostel.

As we were arguing, one of the men ran into the bar (I knew where he was going) and came running out with a beer for each of us to walk back to the hostel with. (This is allowed in Israel). Finally, we were able to leave . . . But I am sure we will be back, God willing.

3. One morning, Jesse, Som, and I got up early to hike in the Negev. We took a bus out to the spot where the trail began, but we could not get a bus back after we were finished with the hike. We decided to hitch back. As we were walking, we came across a checkpoint that was manned by Israeli soldiers. They stopped every car heading back to Eilat, and asked if they would give us a ride. They first promised to find a car full of beautiful, single girls, but later we convinced them that we would be happy to ride back with anybody that would give us a ride.

Jesse and Som got a ride fairly early on, but there were only two seats, so I waited with the Soldiers for another 45 minutes or so. They offered me water, coke, sunflower seeds, and cookies. They asked me what music I liked and tried to give me their Ipod to use, and they constantly tried to make sure that I was as comfortable as possible.

At one point, a soldier who was stationed a little bit away from the check point began to sing "Good Morning Beautiful" by Steve Holy, followed by "You'll Be In My Heart." (The Phil Collins song from Tarzan). The other soldiers started making requests, and even put in my request for some Cat Stevens, but apparently, his Ipod was only stocked with cheesy love songs in English.

My perspective and attitude toward Israeli solders (as people) has really been impacted by this encounter. It was the first time I have interacted with soldiers who did not have reason to suspect or be frustrated with me.

The enduring image of this trip may indeed be dancing in the Ethiopian restaurant. I know that I will never get that song out of my head, and I pray that I will be able to return to that place. Israel is quite a unique place. The blend of cultures, religions, and languages makes it so that it would take a long time to grow bored with it. That wasn't a sales pitch, by the way. It's just the way it is.