Friday, July 4, 2008

Happy 4th from Our Mongal to Yours!



This is our Mongal. Well, it's our one-time-only Mongal, and for 12 shekel (about $4) we were able to make a mini BBQ feast for dinner last night. Pidgeon surprised me cause I've been a bit down lately, and since Thursday night is HIS night to cook, we decided to pick up the Mongal at the Supermarket and some steakburgers and hotdogs, and have our own little Independence Day dinner. It was a lot of fun and these ready to use mini BBQ's are fantastic. All you have to do is light them up and then drop your meat onto the grate. It took about 5 minutes to cook my lamb hotdogs and a bit longer to cook the burgers since I like my meat well-done.

Meanwhile, I finally understand what people mean when they talk about pregnant women cravings. I have only been craving meat. Well, actually, I crave flesh. I just want to tear into a steak, a big turkey leg, an entire rotisserie chicken, and great, big juicy all beef hotdogs with ALL the trimmings. This baby is a carnivore - just like its parents - and only time will tell how the baby will eat their meat. Rare, like Pidgeon. Or very well done, like me. I can't wait to find out!

I  guess my cravings could be worse. I could be dying for some food that I absolutely cannot find in Israel and that would be pretty bad. I have been waking up though, in the middle of the night, absolutely starving. I woke up the other night at 3:00 a.m. and was really hungry, but since I'm trying not to do the whole middle of the night uncontrollable eating thing, I logged onto the computer and IMed with some of my friends in the States. Bless them. Had no one been online, I might have raided the fridge. 

Today, I'm doing my usual pre-Shabbos cooking thing. I leave everything to the last minute, so I had to cook two entire meals today. Fortunately, my menu was pretty simple, and I decided it was about time Pidgeon and I shelved the whole traditional Ashkenazi Shabbos meal and went with something a bit more, well, provincial. So, for dinner tonight, we're having meatballs and whole wheat spaghetti with roasted broccoli on the side. Dessert, if we're still awake, will probably be watermellon. As for Shabbos lunch, I wanted to go super simple, so I grilled some spiced chicken cutlets, sauteed fennel and onions, baked spicy sweet potato fries and will make a noodle salad with spicy peanut sauce out of the leftover spaghetti from dinner tonight. Super simple. Where does it say that a Shabbos meal needs to have gfilta fish and potato kugel? Although, I would love to figure out how to make a good potato kugel. Hmm, one day, maybe. But for now, I'm all about the meatballs and spaghetti.

We're planning on a very low key weekend, which will be nice. I'm hoping to get up in time tomorrow to make it to shul, since I've been really lazy lately. As for next week, who knows. I'm in final countdown until the end of school. I have four weeks left and believe me, with this heat, I'm looking forward to not having to shlep each week to Ramat Gan!

Shabbat Shalom from Baka!

Happy Fourth of July!

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