One of my favorite dishes to make in the winter is red cabbage salad. This lightly cooked dish is flavorful and warming.
Ingredients
1/2 red cabbage, chopped into small stick-like pieces
1 green apple, peeled and chopped
1/2 onion, red or yellow, chopped into small slices
1/2 orange
olive oil
1 tsp. fresh ginger root, chopped
In a wok-like saucepan, saute the onion in olive oil until translucent. Chop the apple into small cubes, discarding the core. Add the chopped ginger and chopped apple to the onions and saute for about five minutes. Add the chopped cabbage and squeeze the orange for its juice unto the cabbage mixture. Cook until the apples and cabbage are tender. Serve warm or room temperature.
Batya has a similar red cabbage dish posted on her site; hers includes a carrot. If you have made a similar dish, what variations have you tried?
Dates in Front of Palm Tree, watercolor on paper, 2011
Tuesday night and Wednesday this week is the Jewish holiday of Tu B’Shvat, the fifteenth of the month of Shvat. I like to refer to the day as a birthday party for the trees. One might think of Tu BeShevat as a Jewish Arbor Day. As it a much bigger deal in Israel than outside of Israel, I asked some of my blogger friends in Israel to tell a bit about the holiday. Here are the responses:
Hannah of A Mother in Israel wrote in an email two weeks ago: “It’s pouring here. Tu Beshevat is often wet and muddy, and the worst time of the year for planting trees!” She suggested I share this post she wrote for Green Prophet about this New Year for Trees. “The rabbis wanted to set a specific date during the agricultural season to begin counting the age of the tree. They chose one in the middle of the rainy season, when no one was likely to be planting. That way it would be easier to know whether the fruit, which almost always buds after Tu B’shvat, belonged to this year or to the previous one.” But the modern version does indeed include tree planting.
Julie of Israel Inspirations Art sent me a photo from her son’s nursery school Tu B’Shevat program. This is a cropped detail of one her son’s craft projects:
Mrs. S. of Our Shiputzim added (edited a bit on my part, apologies to Mrs. S. if I edited too much):
“According to the Talmud, it marks the beginning of the new agricultural year – which has halachic and practical significance for those of us who are fortunate to have fruit trees in our backyards – and in many schools, it marks the beginning of the spring semester.
Tu B’Shvat is also the day when kids across the country head outdoors and plant trees, and it’s the day when many families celebrate lovely Tu B’Shvat Seders.
But mainly, Tu B’Shvat is a time to appreciate Eretz Yisrael (the Land of Israel) and its myriad incredible blessings. Tu B’Shvat is a wonderful opportunity to stop and recognize all the amazing wonders which surround us here in Israel. “
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And this one is for the search engines: how many different ways can one spell Tu B’Shvat • Tu Beshevat • Tu Be Shevat • Tu B’Shevat •Too Be Shevat • Tu B’Shevat • Tu BiShevat • Tu BiShvat • Tu BShvat • Too Bi Shevat • Too B’Shvat
Three dogs on the Asbury Park boardwalk, summer 2011
When winter feels like it’s dragging on, I share with you a photo of three dogs on the Asbury Park boardwalk, taken sometime last summer. My daughter was working on a cover for a Cinquain poetry booklet for her class, and she wanted a dog to represent friendship. We were going to use this shot, but instead we chose a vertical image of one of the dogs standing up against his master.
On My Blog
Elsewhere in the Blogosphere
Hannah wrote a post on garnishes in cooking, and it inspires me to consider a series of posts photographing beautiful bits of food: a bowl of parsley, a dish of grated carrots, a plate of purplish red beets. The photograph series hasn’t happened, yet, but if I write it here, maybe I will proceed.
There is a review on Jewaicious of a book called Songs for the Butcher’s Daughter: “The primary character, Itsik Malpesh was born in Kishinev during the the Russian pogroms, to a well off family. The events of his birth, as told to him by his mother, are what has shaped his life, and shaped his perception on love. This novel is Itsik’s story, although it reads like a memoir that could be based on an actual person. “
Batya has a preview for next week’s big event: Tu B’Shvat.
I wrote a post on how one might use Pinterest for a small business. I have ideas for this blog (meaning my Here in HP blog) regarding Pinterest: maybe Pinterest and the Parsha or the much more general Pinterest and fine art. I posted my cardinal watercolor on Pinterest, as this week’s parsha B’Shelach, we are taught to feed the birds.
Cardinal in my backyard: As Carver said the last time I posted this bright red bird, “Male cardinals are the flowers of winter.” This cardinal looks like he owns the place.
I saw two chickadees in my backyard last week. My, do these little birds jump about.
My daughter and I visited Donaldson Park on Sunday. There were many gulls hanging out by the pond; this one was swimming in the middle, apart from his buddies.
Near a slope of Donaldson Park many geese congregated.
This exposed tree trunk is on the edge of a brook on the border of Donaldson Park near the Meadows.
We just came back from a fun ski vacation at Stratton Mountain in Vermont. The skiing went well, despite the fluctuating ski conditions (rain one night) and up and down weather. My daughter now eagerly skis a longish trail on the side of the mountain called Lower Tamarack.
On the food front, finding food for us to eat for 3½ days is a bit of a struggle. This year, I packed various homemade food over the past two months that I had frozen in advance for vacation. The potato latkes from Chanukah, for example, were OK since I had packed little applesauce cups as well, so they had a nice condiment to go with them. Spaghetti pie (recipe in Honest Pretzels by Mollie Katzen), however, normally one of my daughter’s favorite dishes did not freeze and defrost nicely into a tasty dish. Most of it got thrown out, unfortunately. The homemade mushroom barley soup was a hit, but the prepared Tabatchnick’s frozen mushroom barley soup not as much. My kids normally like macaroni and pizza slices, but how many of those can one eat? Ditto for Streit’s canned minestrone soup – all my kids like that soup, but not for every meal. My family eagerly consumed leftover chicken soup last night when we got home.
For myself, I made brown rice in the crockpot two nights in a row (1 part rice to two parts water). I bought scallions and parsley in a supermarket right before we got to Stratton. Scallions are an improvement over bringing an onion and a knife and then ignoring the onion for the duration of the trip. You can cut scallions with a plastic knife, if necessary. Also, one year I brought lettuce on our winter trip, only to find it had frozen and wilted on the journey. Parsley holds up better in the winter weather. I’ve also learned to bring a few bags of frozen vegetables – easy to store, easy to prepare.
If you bring your own food on vacation, what tips do you have for storing, preparing or serving the food?
I finally figured out how to make a decent bowl of oatmeal. All you need:
1/2 cup steel cut oats (double for more)
1 cup of water (double for more)
Grind the oats – I use my coffee bean grinder. Soak the oats overnight (or longer). Cook for about twenty minutes in twice as much water as the measurement of the starting oats (so 1 cup of water if you started with 1/2 cup of oats). Stir every five minutes, more toward the end.
How do you like your oatmeal? I eat this straight, but my family members like oatmeal with maple syrup. Some people like a pat of butter or a teaspoon of cinnamon in their oats.
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Now I will tell you how I came about this version. A few years ago, my father decided steel cut oats would be a good to try, for nutrition reasons. We found it took about 40 minutes to cook, however, and it was still gritty. Then I was reading a book about fermenting grains, and I decided to soak mine. That helped, but they were still somewhat gritty. Finally, I read this post about a man who had healed his own cancerous tumors with a mixture of grains and seeds, including oats. He ground his first, and in the comments I found this note by Eileen Weaver: “One of the reasons this worked well was that the grains were soaked overnight, after being FRESHLY ground. The soaking activates the enzymes that would have sprouted the seeds/grains.The activated enzymes begin to convert the storage forms of protein/starch/minerals to active forms, and dramatically increase the vitamin content. All seeds, whatever form they are in are better for soaking because of this.” Eileen convinced me. I’ve been hooked ever since.
Interpretation of Jerusalem with figures and pomegranate, painting by Anna Abramzon
I “met” the artist Anna Abramzon when she followed me on Twitter recently. I took one look at her Twitter background (good reason to spend time on one’s Twitter background, especially if you are in a design/graphic/visual profession), and I thought, oh, this is lovely line work and color! So I clicked on her website, enjoyed her portfolio, and here she is, agreeing to an interview on my blog.
1) When did you realize you wanted to be an artist?
I don’t really remember a time before wanting to be an artist, it was always just kind of a given. My earliest childhood memories are of turning on my parents’ record player (that’s what we had in the Soviet Union in the 80’s!) and spending every morning listening to records and drawing for hours before the rest of the family woke up. Throughout my childhood my parents really encouraged and fostered my love for art. They saw that this was definitely my calling, so they sent me to classes, found me private tutors and exposed me to amazing artists from a young age. It was a natural progression from that to where I am now. When I was graduating high school I didn’t even apply to regular universities, only art schools, there was no doubt in my mind.
2) How have you used social media (Facebook, blog, Twitter) to promote your art?
I love social media! It has really changed my day to day life in an amazing way. I am totally fascinated by the new dialogues and relationships that social media opens and I am constantly discovering new sources of inspiration online. There are all these new channels open to artists now, it’s such an exciting time. I post new art on my facebook page (facebook.com/AnnaAbramzonStudio) and I share things on twitter (@AAartStudio) and my website (www.AnnaAbramzon.com) all the time. I also occasionally have free art giveaways and special discounts for my FB fans and Twitter followers.
3) When did you start doing Jewish art? Ketubot?
I was always an artist and a very proud, active Jew, but I had a hard time merging the two identities. As an artist I longed to paint about my passions, including my love for Israel and my Jewish identity, but painting scenes of Tel Aviv or Jews praying at the kotel just didn’t excite me. I struggled a lot with this in art school. While I wanted my art to speak honestly about who I am, I was also wary of becoming cliché or cheesy. After college I moved to Israel where I lived for four years. In Israel I found myself drenched in “Jewishness” every single day. In Israel being a Jew is so easy and inherent that you no longer really have to think about it. Ironically it was this immersion which finally allowed me to gain enough distance and perspective to be able to paint about being Jewish while staying away from overplayed, obvious imagery. It was also there in Israel that I met and married my husband. We had one of those uber intense, passionate love stories that would have made cynical art student Anna gag a few years prior. Naturally I wanted to channel all these new found lovey dovey romantic feelings into art as well. That’s how I got the idea to paint our ketubah, our wedding invitation and pretty much everything else that could possibly be painted for a wedding. After our wedding, other people started asking me to create ketubot for them. I found that people were coming to me specifically because I was not a typical ketubah artist. My work always was and remains quite figurative, which is not what people usually expect from Judaica and I think that was the appeal… that I came from a different background with a different vision, which allows me to create a contemporary, modern twist while maintaining the beauty, colors and and symbolism of traditional of Judaica. Be sure to visit Anna’s new site of ketubot.
4) What is your favorite part of being an artist?
I am never bored.
5) Where do you look for inspiration?
I have so many artists who inspire me! Some of my favorites are: Egon Schiele, Lucian Freud, Francesco Clemente, Goya, and Noshitomo Nara and I am often inspired by my favorite authors as well, I am a huge book nerd.
6) What are the hard parts of being an artist?
It never stops… it’s a job you can’t leave at the studio. Sometimes I’ll be having coffee with a girlfriend and I’ll think “Oh man, if I could just focus on this moment and stop drawing her in my head!!!!”
7) Can you talk a little about Valley of the Ghosts – it seems to be a comic strip about life in the Ukraine for a Jew. Is this autobiographical?
Valley of the Ghosts is a work in progress… it’s a very long term project that I have been coming back to for a few years now. It’s a graphic novel about a group of new immigrants in Israel. It’s a compilation of stories based on actual people I knew, and it is partly autobiographical as well. The title “Valley of the Ghosts” is a translation of “Emek Refaim” in Hebrew, which is the name of the street I lived on in Jerusalem.
8) You do a variety of artwork, from comics to caricatures to paintings – what is your favorite medium or style?
That’s a hard question… it would definitely be between figure/portrait painting in watercolor and comics. They are just so different… figure paintings and portraits allow me to express emotions really organically, while comics allow me to articulate thoughts in a much more tangent way. It’s really two different languages but there is quite a bit of overlap as well, because it’s two parallel ways of creating a narrative… I think I need to keep mixing things up and developing all my different styles in order to grow as an artist.
Thank you so much, Anna, for this wonderful interview.
If you liked this interview, perhaps you will enjoy one of these related posts:
Coming Soon: Interview with an artist who illustrates ketubot (Jewish marriage contracts), draws comics, paints figures and is working on a graphic novel on new immigrants to Israel.
Gary Minkoff is Affirmed as the new Mayor of Highland Park
On Tuesday night Highland Park, New Jersey was sworn in affirmed – Mayor Gary Minkoff. I say affirmed because when past mayor now freeholder James Polos (on the left in the photo) said to Gary, do you solemnly swear, Gary corrected him and said “affirm.” I suspect this is for religious reasons, as Jews have strict rules about when we can “swear.”
Elsie Foster-Dublin, Councilperson and Steve Nolan, former Mayor
When Elsie Foster-Dublin (above left) was sworn in, she clearly said, I “solemnly swear.” Outgoing mayor Steve Nolan is pictured on the right. Twice in the evening he got a standing ovation for his work as mayor.
“I promise I will have everyone out of here by Friday.”
Thus began Gary as he gave an (acceptance?) speech on Tuesday night. And thus I will state that I can’t repeat everything everyone said that night, but I want to summarize a few of the annual reports. Another point about Gary (you can find him selling cheesecake on this post – he is multi-talented; and marching in the Memorial Day Parade here) is he likes to tell jokes, to be personable, to make people feel comfortable. It should be interesting having him as our mayor.
A few highlights of the Annual Reports
Each councilperson talked about their areas, and I will state briefly some highlights. Padriac Millet: Padriac talked about Raritan Avenue area improvements, such as rain gardens (? not sure what they are but we will find out) and living room areas (glass tiles, benches, lampposts, streetscape) and 75 new trees. There were also new regulations such as curb rules that caused delays in construction. Elsie Foster-Dublin: After twelve years there is finally a traffic light at the corner of Duclos Lane. The Senior Center has some great programs, including Chinese. Because of budget cuts, Sunday hours have been eliminated at the Senior Center. The library has shown an increase in programs and may be receiving new fiber optic connection (I remember how slow my connection became as I gave my recent talk about Facebook). Jon Erickson: Jon oversees the Highland Park Environmental Commission, Shade Tree Committee and Public Works. Highland Park now recycles once per week, and from this, the borough earns $35 per week (did I get that right? That doesn’t sound like a lot). One can now recycle pizza boxes and rigid plastics like laundry baskets. He also mentioned some Meadows trails repairs. Gayle Britt Mittler: Gayle talked about all the wonderful volunteers she has on her committees, like the Health and Welfare and the Board of Health. An anti-fracking resolution was passed by the Board of Health. The Human Relations Commission and the Food Pantry were also active; the Food Pantry may soon be able to stock meat in addition to the current soups and vegetables.
A bit of Gary’s remarks
Gary Minkoff talked about how Highland Park, Michigan had to remove street lights because of budget cuts, but Highland Park, New Jersey has managed financially, with budget cuts, even in these difficult economic times. Gary made it clear that he is a product of the public schools, and he supports the public schools. He also thanked the first responders (police, fire, first aid squad), mentioned a possible business breakfast and teen advisory council, and he said, we need focus. We can’t do anything without focus.
And with that, class is dismissed from reading this long post.
