My Favorite Cake - recipe to follow ... next Friday

Certain traditions from my 10 years in Israel remain with me still. One of them is the "need" for a Sabbath cake or Ugat Shabat ("u-GAT sha-BAT" in Hebrew). In Jerusalem, when shops shut down for the Sabbath day of rest, life takes on a different pace. What do you do when stores are closed and there are no buses? You visit friends, of course. And because no observant Jew would use the telephone on the Sabbath, you can just drop in on friends, unannounced, as my younger son and I did on a recent trip to Israel. And the food you will be offered (as we were offered), as you sit and chat, is Ugat Shabat. Although my weekends are not the same here, they don't seem complete without a simple Sabbath cake.














There is no set recipe for Ugat Shabat. Often it is a sponge cake or honey cake.

My favorite is a marble cake my family loves. Baked in a bundt pan, it tastes good uniced, with a cup of tea or coffee. A scoop of ice cream can be served with it if desired. It was given to me by my friend Pearl, from Kibbutz Hazorea. Perhaps I'll write about Pearl sometime. I have been thinking about her today, as I often do when I take out her recipe...

Maybe that is reason enough for friends to share recipes with each other more often!

First You Eat With Your Eyes...

My class was having a potluck lunch at school, immigrant students all bringing food from their native countries. As we admired one particularly attractive platter, one student - a young lady from Iraq - commented: First you eat with your eyes, then with your mouth.

What does that mean? I asked.

It's a proverb in my country. It means that food has to look appetizing or we won't want to eat it, she replied.

I thought of that proverb on a recent weekend in Toronto. Some food set before me was so attractive, I almost didn't want to spoil its beauty by eating it. I had heard of latte art - then I had a cup at Balzac Cafe in Liberty Village















Amazingly, the flower design on the coffee remained intact till the very end.
Here is another type of art: A bowl of cake and fruit served at the home of a friend.















They both looked almost too good to eat- but I did succumb - and they tasted great too!

"Life is a Series of New Beginnings"

I don't make New Year's Resolutions anymore - they're too hard to keep.

But this year I did make a secret promise to myself: I decided to empty my freezer and pantry - to use up all the food - and begin afresh, once it's all cleared out.

I've made some headway. You probably wouldn't know it as my cupboards are still jam-packed with food. As I look at them I wonder...

How many kinds of hot chocolate or honey do we really need?


So I'm clearing it out, using it up... day by day.

Sometimes I wonder how we got into this situation. This food stockpiling habit didn't occur overnight.

It began at a different stage of life when we needed food for five bag lunches a day - as well as ingredients for quick suppers for five at night. Having a lot on hand seemed a good idea then. A necessity, in fact. At that time I was following some helpful advice: Buy 2 of everything to avoid running out at a critical time.

Bulk buying was great - for that stage of life. But old habits die hard.

Our needs are different now: there are no bag lunches, and meals are smaller. I've come to a new beginning. It has just taken me a while to realize it.

So, after many years of accumulating, I'm doing a cupboard cleanse! And it does feel good!

Life is a series of new beginnings - but sometimes it takes a while to figure it out.

For Knitters Only!

Sometimes I feel like a certain knitter in a Youtube animation - a woman who spends most of the story sitting and knitting...

I have been knitting a scarf for more than a year. I call it my Waiting Scarf.

I take it along whenever I expect to have to sit and wait a while, like in doctors' offices, at airports or on trains.

Originally I bought some variegated yarn to make a pair of socks. I was new to sock knitting and I liked the color, so I bought a lot, not knowing how much I'd need.

After the socks were finished, I didn't know what to do with the rest... until I discovered a lovely knit pattern for a Shadow Shawl, and decided to try "shadow knitting" (alternating 2 rows of variegated and 2 rows of dark yarn) If you alternate between knitting and purling rows - knit 2 in one color, then purl 2 in the other - the dark looks like a shadow of the variegated rows. Here is what my scarf looks like today.... It's not finished yet.















How long do I plan to make it? Until I run out of the variegated or the dark blue.

But unlike the knitter in the animation, once it's done, I don't plan to quit! In fact, I have a lovely ball of variegated part-mohair sock yarn that I'm anxious to try!

Okay, now watch the film, The Last Knit. (I think any knitter will identify.)

Toronto's Liberty Village Neighborhood

Whenever I visit Toronto, I like to explore some neighborhood on foot. On my last visit, we wandered around King Street West, visiting Liberty Village, a former industrial area where old factory buildings are being converted into residential lofts and trendy shops.















After wandering through West Elm, an American home dec store similar to Ikea or Pottery Barn, we stopped for a sandwich and latte at Balzac a cafe located at the corner of Hanna and Liberty Streets, tucked away in a building called the Toy Factory.















Then down Queen Street West to The Workroom, a quilter's paradise.



















Here are some of fabrics sold at The Workroom hanging in embroidery hoops on the wall, and a cute thread display.















I bought some quilting fabric, of course. (Remember the Quilters' Motto: You can never have too much!)

Then we walked to a shop run by Virginia Johnson, a Toronto-born fashion textile designer and illustrator, and rummaged through her scrap bin for some fabric deals. (And bought a bag of scraps, of course!)















Finally, we stopped in at a bedding store called Kings and Queens where we found some cute little Japanese mugs.

All in all, a successful shopping day!

When Will Winter End?

Today is Groundhog Day - that time in winter when non-skiers like me look at all the snow outside - and wonder when spring will arrive...

Traditionally we look to this little animal, the groundhog, to tell us if winter is over now or if we can expect another six weeks of snow and cold. Today was a lovely day here in Ottawa! The weather hovered around the freezing mark as long as the sun was out. As you can see from the shadows in the picture, however, any little groundhog coming out of his burrow here today would see his shadow, turn around and go back to sleep for another six weeks. Or so the tradition goes. Spring, according to the groundhog theory, will come around mid-March.

In our family, we have another system for determining when winter will end. We count down the 100 days of winter, starting on December 1. According to the Hutchins' 100-Day Theory, winter begins on December 1 and ends 100 days later on March 10. (If it snows in October or November, is it winter? you might ask. Not according to the theory. Likewise, if it snows at the end of March, it's spring - not winter - snow.)

Terry has been counting down his 100 days for years, and I thought it was a random number. (As they say, behind any successful man is a surprised woman.) But then a friend asked him the obvious question that I never bothered to ask: How did you arrive at this theory?

Well, according to the stats on the Weather Network (Terry's favorite internet site), December 1 is the first day that the average daytime high temperature where we live is below freezing, and March 11 is the first day that the average daytime high temperature is above that mark! So those are the 100 days of winter! It's all so logical!

How accurate is Terry in predicting the end of snow and cold? Probably about as accurate as the groundhog, I'd say! But really, it doesn't matter how you predict when winter will end, the important thing is that once Groundhog Day (February 2) is here, there is an end in sight - or so we hope!

Whatever Doesn't Kill Me Makes Me Stronger

I found a quote that describes my life, one of my students, a young woman from Somalia, told me one day.

What is it? I asked.

What doesn't kill me makes me stronger, she replied, and went on to explain. I had to leave my country because of the war. I didn't get killed, like so many others did. I managed to escape to Italy. I had to learn Italian to live and work there - that made me stronger. Then Canada accepted my family as immigrants, and now I'm learning English and computers. It is making me stronger! This is the proverb that describes my life.

Armed with this attitude of becoming stronger, she went on to get her high school diploma, then a part-time job as a Walmart cashier. Before long, she was a full-time cashier, then the store's head cashier. Eventually, after completing an accounting program part-time at a local community college, she went on to a job in management.

How much easier it would be to deal with life's problems and setbacks, if we only had this young woman's attitude of viewing these bumps and roadblocks as opportunities for strengthening and growth.