purim whiskey brownies

Whiskey Brownies:

4oz/ 1/2 cup oil or marge
3/4 cup (6oz) choc chips
3 large eggs
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/3 cup whiskey
1 cup flour
1/4 tsp salt

melt oil/marge & choc over a saucepan of water. set aside tocool to room temp.
mix eggs, sugar & vanilla together till smooth.
add choc mix, mix till well combined, then add whiskey. beat till smooth.
add flour & salt and mix gently till well combined.

bake in a 9"x9" pan for 20 minutes at 350F/180C.

note: you have to use decent quality whiskey. i've tried it with cheap whiskey, and the result is just nice brownies, but you can;t taste any whiskey flavour. also really, if you don;t like whiskey, you won;t like these.

a purim medley

Feb 18
thinks starting a school morning rush with 'transform girl into monkey' is asking a bit too much of a monday morning.


Feb 14

today the only strange thing was Y going to school wearing a lawrence of arabia white headdress for yom hakovah. nothing esle strange to re[port. thankfully.

Feb 13

today yc came home from school dressed as a tiger. and no signs on his back.

Feb 12

So i was talking to yc tonight before bed, about what to put in his mishlch manos for his friendies.
He said 'and dumdalmatian'. i said (understandably, i think) 'what?'
He repeated it, and i remembered that i had been reading the 101 dalmatians to M, so i said 'a dalmatian? you can;t eat a dalmatian'. he said 'oh. what is a dalmatian'. i told him it's a dog, and asked what he thought it was.
'i thought it was a kind of cat food'
--

 was a little surprised today to pass a boy riding a unicycle while pushing a buggy. to be honest, i'd have been surprised even if he wasn;t pushing a buggy. either he is extremely good at the unicycle, or his mother is extremely trusting. Or doesn;t know.

Feb 10

Totally astounded to pick yc up from schol today to find him dressed in yellow as a chinaman, with chinese moustache and slanty eyes drawn on in black, and a sign on his back saying 'asher bachar banu mikol hoamim'. here are hte front and back views.
politically correct we ain't

Feb9

SO also this week, Y & M both - separately - have a kind of bazaar at school where they can make a stall, on their own or with friends, and sell things they made or bought or sell crafts or creations etc.
So M has decided that she is doing it on her own (because she does not want to have to share the money), and having looked through my recipe books she is going to make chocolate covered caramelised salted popcorn.
Y is making it with friends. they were going to sell comics that they write themselves, but then he decided that people might not be willing to pay for them. so he said 'Well, Mummy, we may as well sell your choc chip cookies, since people do seem to like them'. damning with faint praise, indeed.

Feb 4

thinking about a theme to cook for purim seudah this year. maybe i should just take a cookbook and count 127 recipes and cook wahtever is the 127th one? i just suggested this to ben and he said it rather depends on what the 127th recipe is. i said that all depends on whether you believe that yad Hashem is guiding me or whether it is all chance.

--

Is loving adar here! So far the loud party with thumping music drifting down from up the hill is to celebrate rosh chodesh adar; as we were making havdalah, the neighbours came in wearing purim costumes and dancing in a conga line singing misheenichnas adar; M & Yc both have ot wear kachol v'lavan tomorrow (why?); and Y is happy that for hte next 2 weeks he does not have one normal day of school!

rum & raisin bars

Rum & Raisin bars
(recipe from the Fat Witch Cookbook - made by Amanda Bradley)
Ingredients:
½ cup light rum 2 large eggs
1 ¾ cups raisins (of any sort or combination) 1 tsp vanilla extract
4oz/1/2 cup butter/margarine/oil 11/2 cups plain flour
11/2 cups packed light brown sugar 1 tsp salt

Method:
Pour rum into a bowl and add the raisins. Stir well, then leave to soak for at least 6 hours or overnight.
Prepare a 9”x9” pan. Preheat the oven to 350F/180C
Cream butter/margarine/oil and sugar in a large bowl until smooth. Beat in eggs & vanilla and mix until well combined.
Measure flour and salt directly into the batter. Mix gently until no trace of dry ingredients remain.
Strain the rum-soaked raisins and mix in by hand.
Spread the batter evenly in the prepared pan. It will be very sticky!
Bake for 30 minutes (i bake for about 25 minutes) or until a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean (it won;t though, there are too many sticky raisins for it to get stuck into)

Just to confess again – i am a serial offender at departing from the instructions in recipes. I only ever make this with oil; i have been known to use different kinds of sugar if i run out of light brown sugar; and i have used about ½ a cup fewer raisins before due to a raisin shortage. So rest assured, this recipe is flexible. But always hard to cut, thanks to all the raisins.

headline 'contender for papacy accused of anti-semitism'. maybe it is the medieval historian in me, but i feel like this is not news.

today we had Brits, Americans & south africans at our shabbat lunch. when i told Y this beforehand, he said 'oh, so we'll have all 3 religions...i mean, um, you know'

Me: why is there a pile of books on the floor here?
YC: you mean the books i threw? i didn;t do it.

lentils of doom...

browsing for ethiopian recipes ,i found one which recommends that you make it with 'lentils of doom and cabbage of ostracism'.
this is all apparently entiely seriously meant, it is part of a long piece on serving suggestions. really it makes me more convinced that meat-eating is far safer.

of al the strange things...Yehuda just foud a turtle in our front garden! and there aren;t even any eagles in our area.
if the turtle starts talking to us i'm going to know who's scripting my life.

the theology of tights (divine denier)

finally and sadly ripped my last pair of tesco tights today, so went off to explore the (surprisingly rich) world of tights shopping in RBS. all the thights and other wqomens under-garments are in a separate room in bazaar strauss (natch). i did see a man giving a furtive look around before entering there. yes i'm sure that he was only there filling an order from his wife. so it turns out there is a very wide range of tights, knee highs and thigh highs (no garters), and in all shades of brown, beige, black and oh yes vomit-coloured-bullet-proof. it felt like the place to go if you ever wished to give a visual presentation explaining the different charedi schools and allegiances in rbs ("this over here is beis yaakov. 40 denier, navy. this one is bnos something something, 70 denier and cream. etc"). i wonder if anyone has ever tried that

superbowl?

Ben: 'they're funny these americans. however frum they are, they still like their superbowl'
me: 'what brought that on?'
Ben: '86-year-old rav in beitar'

Shabbat menucha

so something i have noticed about living in israel. everyone talks about the lack of a sunday, and how much they wish they had one, and to be honest i would also sometime s appreciate an few extra hours to pull things together after shabbat before plunging back into the thick of things. but one consequence i have realised of not having a sunday is that shabbat really is the day of rest. it is my only day of rest, it is our only family day of rest, and this has returned shabbat to its correct place as the calm in the midst of the storm.