More Than Four Sides

Category: Food & Drink

  • Marmite memories…

    OK, does the name Marmite mean anything to you? For many Americans, at least, Marmite doesn’t mean anything, but in the UK, Marmite generates passionate responses – as the advertising campaign says “Love it. Hate it. Just don’t forget it.” I think I probably first had Marmite as an infant in England…we then moved to…

  • Spring Break in a Pandemic during Passover

    Spring Break in a Pandemic during Passover

    It’s April 1, which carries a less-than-fun memory for me, although as the years pass, the pain of April 1, 2016 has been replaced by more optimism and hope that I might have imagined possible. In those five years, I’ve bought a house, changed jobs, gained a second synagogue community and seem to be doing…

  • Getting healthy

    A lot of people who know me – actually, just about everyone – has commented on my weight recently. I lost 30 lbs, thanks to my health coach, Robin Katcoff, and Take Shape for Life.

  • About that New Good Habit…

    Two weeks ago, I hoped that I might regularly bake bread for my family.  Well, the following Sunday turned out to be a very long and exhausting day, and I didn’t get around to baking bread. But this past Sunday, I managed to do it, and the result looked like this: My first batch, I…

  • Resuming a good old habit

    When my daughter was small, her dad and I baked all our own bread. We were a bit on the sanctimonious, vegetarian, natural ingredients, unprocessed, home-cooked food bandwagon.  We probably irritated some of our friends.  I know we got on the nerves of some of our family! Our main cookbooks, for many years were Mollie Katzen’s…

  • Do these look like keys?

       I read this week about the tradition of Schissel Challah, a loaf baked in the shape of a key, or with an actual key baked into it, served on the first Shabbat after Passover.  Here’s one link, with explanations.  And here’s another link, with better explanations. I’m afraid my keys don’t look much like…

  • Shopping kosher

    Today is the first shabbat after passover. We’ll enjoy challah again (although with a crazy week at work and at home, I didn’t manage to bake). When we started keeping strictly Kosher in our home, shopping got simplified, because there are whole areas of the store that one avoids (no pork products, no shellfish, and…

  • Cheese…mmmmm!

    “Cheese is milk that gets around.”  The Whole Fromage, pg 49. I do love cheese, but not as much, I think, as a young woman of my acquaintance who is the daughter of a friend of mine.  The first time I really got to know her was at a showing of a film she had…

  • Tending the garden

    Carrots, after thinning. Ahhhhhh, room to grow! You, lettuces, will get thinned out tomorrow!!

  • Still pondering mortality…

    This morning continued a theme which has been running strong for 5-yo J for the past two days, but, I realize, thanks to this blog, that its been a theme for the whole month, starting with this post – death, and most particularly, what to make of the death of one’s parents. But, I’m not…