lentils in a jar turned upside-down so the water drains
I’ve been enjoying learning how to sprout brown lentils. I’m thinking of sprouting broccoli seeds next.
Equipment
1 mason jar
1 screen lid (I bought this green Sprouting Strainer Lid from Amazon)
Ingredients
1/2 cup brown lentils
1 cup water
Place the lentils in the jar and screw on the screen lid. Let the lentils soak for about 12 hours. After that, drain and rinse out the lentils every 6-8 hours (I confess, I sometimes waited 24 though not on purpose and the lentils were fine). You drain the lentils into the sink and then rinse the lentils. You turn the jar upside down unto a plate and let it drain again. Repeat in about 8 hours. The lentils are ready when they sprout little tails (in about 3 days). You can then store them in the refrigerator. They will last for at least one week.
I covered the lentils with a sock to keep them out of the light. Most of the recipes seemed to suggest this is not necessary, so I left the sock out of the post. Here was one simple post I found that talked about sprouting in general.
Last Sunday my daughter and I went to the dog park in Donaldson Park. She wanted to see the dogs, and I was happy to see the sunset. Donaldson Park is on the other side of Highland Park from where we live, and it is right next to the Raritan River. You can park right near the dog parks.
There is a dog park (a large caged in area) for little dogs and one for big dogs. There were a lot more big dogs. They romp around and play games with each other. My daughter was following the interactions carefully.
I enjoyed the oranges, reds, yellows of the sunset. The steeple you see is across the Raritan River in New Brunswick.
Judaica Gallery, broken window - photo taken December 1, 2011 Where were you in November 1938? Most of us weren’t born yet, but the mother of someone who spoke Tuesday night at Highland Park’s Borough Council meeting was in Vienna and witnessed the real Kristalnacht. The shattering of glass in Jewish storefronts in Highland Park terrified her, and as it did for many of us, the quick actions of the Highland Park police (in conjunction with New Brunswick police and Rutgers police) in arresting the culprit brought relief.
It did have a healing effect, the Borough Council meeting, at least I thought so. Elsie-Foster Dublin, councilwoman, led the meeting, and at one point she talked about how when the African American community had problems, Rabbi Malomet had sent her a helpful email. Now, when the Jewish community was upset by an incident, Rabbi Malomet again sent her a calming email. Several Jewish community members, including Rabbi Luban and Rabbi Kaufman, expressed their thanks to the police department for their swift action. And the police commissioner (who was thrilled with all the praise) was sure to point out that Rabbi Kaminetsky had come by the police department that day to find out how the police were doing (I think he operates as a chaplain for the police). And the meeting wasn’t just about the broken glass incident – one person who lives near Raritan Avenue has a terrible problem with noise and someone else has problems with broken sidewalks. The usual small town fare.
There was someone sitting next to me who appeared to be a journalist, as he was taking copious notes. I didn’t take any – my purpose in writing this post is just to say thank you to those who make this a nice community.
We served corn bread on Thanksgiving, and as I talked about doing in my previous corn bread post, I finally put together the corn bread recipe for preparation and consumption by the general blog public.
Ingredients
Oil to cover the pan
Dry ingredients:
2 cups white flour
1 1/2 cups cornmeal
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
Wet ingredients:
1 cup oat milk (or rice milk or almond milk)
3/4 cup applesauce (you can try a full cup or even more – my previous version of this cake, without measuring applesauce, was moister than this one)
2 eggs
1/4 cup maple syrup
1/4 cup sugar (you can add more maple syrup instead, if you want)
Mix all the dry ingredients in one bowl. Mix the wet ones in another bowl. Preheat oven to 350°. Grease a pan – I used a tube pan this time, because my last one was quite moist. With 3/4 cup applesauce, a regular baking pan should be fine, though it will probably take longer to bake the middle than the sides. Mix all the ingredients together and pout into the pan. Bake for 30-35 minutes.
Question: is it hard to obtain maple syrup where you live? You might try molasses, but it will then be a different sort of result, darker and with molasses-like flavor.
• • •
Upcoming recipes for this blog – I finally took photos of the sprouting process, so I hope to post about sprouting lentils soon. As Chanukah is coming, I have two diametrically opposed blog post ideas: 1) sufganiyot – doughnuts recipe AND 2) a group post (meaning your participation) about salad dressing with olive oil, for those of us who wish to partake in a food way of the miracle of oil and would prefer not to consume mass quantities of fried food in order to do so.
red carnation blooms in a backyard
A red carnation: nice to have a warm fall photo to grace the top of my blog after this week’s upsetting local news (I just updated that post with a well-written letter by Mayor Steve Nolan – “All people who respect the rights of their neighbors will always be welcome in this town”). I won’t have much time on Monday to post (I will be busy with a work project), but I am planning to submit this pretty flower to Ruby Tuesday.
Photo by Mason Resnick: Smashed window of Park Place in Highland Park, New Jersey
Yesterday a friend posted online that she had just finished reading The Book Thief and then she discovered five Jewish businesses in Highland Park had their windows smashed overnight. Shortly thereafter Mason Resnick posted these Kristalnacht like photos on Facebook. The end of the story was a disturbed individual was arrested.
I will be visiting the Judaica Gallery today because I need to make a purchase for my daughter – at least those of us that are local can support the businesses that were targeted. Rutgers Hillel and Chabad in New Brunswick also were targeted with smashed glass, as well as the restaurant Maoz. The Highland Park businesses were Jerusalem Pizza, Park Place, Judaica Gallery, Trio Gifts and Jack’s Hardware. Maybe I should go buy some light bulbs at Jack’s.
A big thank you to the Highland Park police for their quick and decisive action regarding this crime.
Update: A Letter from Mayor Steve Nolan (it ends with: “As a community, we are much stronger than a pane of glass could ever be.” – bravo)
Update: An excerpt from a letter from Rutgers Hillel director Andrew Getrauer:
Wednesday morning at 2 AM a Jewish Rutgers student, very
involved in Hillel, was at the kosher Dunkin’ Donuts in Highland Park,
when a man approached him and started a conversation about Jewish
issues. He identified himself as Jewish. This deteriorated into a rant
where the man also declared himself a neo-Nazi and told the student he
should be in a camp and killed like his ancestors, and that he would
start a ‘second Kristalnacht.’ At this point the Dunkin Donuts staff
threw the man out of the store.
Wednesday morning Highland Park woke up to find 5 Jewish-owned
stores with windows broken; 2 Judaica stores, 2 kosher restaurants, and
a hardware store owned by an Orthodox man. A Jewish-owned falafel
restaurant in New Brunswick was also targeted. Hillel staff contacted
the student who had encountered the man at Dunkin Donuts and made sure
he was in touch with police. Hillel staff contacted the ADL and New
Brunswick police to help connect the dots between the various incidents.
There was wide spread anxiety throughout the local community, expressed
thru constant phone calls, emails, Facebook and twitter messages. To
give you a sense of the feeling at the time, people were calling it
“Kristalnacht in New Jersey.”
More details were reported in the Star Ledger, New Jersey Jewish News and other press.
Princeton University - East Pyne Building, detail of turret
Yesterday my eldest son and I went to visit Princeton. This was my third visit to Princeton this year. In the summer I took my daughter and her friend to the Princeton Art Museum. A few weeks ago I went for a conference – I was the NJSGC photographer for the day.
We went on a visit to Princeton University yesterday because my son is applying to colleges, and as he had the day off due to parent-teacher conferences, he decided he would like to visit Princeton. We arranged to meet my niece for lunch at the Center for Jewish Life. Having had a late-for-the-conference experience due to parking issues a few weeks ago, I now consider myself a Princeton parking expert, and we drove straight to Palmer Square Garage on Chambers Street. In the dripping wet we figured out where Clio Hall is, the place where the tour begins. The photos on top and bottom were taken in the sunny summer month of August – it did not look that bright in New Jersey yesterday, lots of rain. We did the tour (one other mother-son team joined us), and then we had the pleasure of my niece’s company at a kosher lunch at CJL. She seems to be enjoying Princeton, and I was pleased to hear she is taking French as one of her courses. She is the sister of the blogger in Norway.
So, now that I’ve left you with some of the details of my day, here’s some questions for you:
If you’ve had a child leave home, how did it feel to have the first one leave?
If you could apply to college now (all expenses paid), where would you go and what would you study?
I made this corn bread for Thanksgiving. I wanted a recipe with no dairy, and many of the conventional corn bread recipes had dairy in them. I decided at the last minute (OK, the last hour) that I had enough time to make the corn bread. So I opened a Moosewood cookbook (I think it was New Recipes from the Moosewood Restaurant – the first one not by Mollie Katzen) and converted the recipe. You will have to wait for the actual recipe – I needed to re-test it, because in my rush I didn’t measure and record ingredients. This corn bread without dairy came out moist and tasty – my previous attempts were rather dry. And here is the corn bread recipe.
Conversation from yesterday:
Me: I’m going to make the corn bread again in a week or two. Middle Son: Why? Me: So I can post it on my blog. Middle Son: Why can’t you post it now? Me: Because I need to measure the amounts. Middle Son: Can’t you just post it and let them figure out the amounts?
Fortunately, Middle Son is not in charge of posting recipe amounts to this blog.
If you would like some recipes now, I suggest you visit Batya’s newest Kosher Cooking Carnival.
sporting detailed sneakers with bright pink laces in the woods
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving: happy Thanksgiving to all those that celebrate. A nice excuse to post some sneakers in the woods.
Thank you to everyone who reads and/or comments on this blog. You are so appreciated!
I have been enjoying working on a project for a client that is done with responsive web design. This means it will look good on your desktop, tablet or browser. This blog is responsive – if you move your browser to be small and then big again, you should see what I mean.
I would love to post more creative works on this blog: for example, maybe I could do something interesting with those sneakers? A few months ago I started a project with roofs – I never got back to that one. Lots of starting and stopping. One could easily blame it on outside influences (work, family, laundry, the weather), but the creative process seems to be one that invites “stuckness.”
If you are looking for a Thanksgiving recipe, you might want to check out the Stuffed Squash Workshop.
I am thinking of stuffing my turkey tomorrow with rice, dried cranberries, celery and onion (maybe one egg to stick it together). Do you think it will work? Any suggestion?
Are you cooking this week? What is in the plans, cooking or otherwise?
