Nice title, no? Has nothing to do with me or Pidgeon for that matter, but is exactly how I would describe what happened in and around Jerusalem since Thursday. It's 3:00 a.m. on Monday morning and I'm suffering from eating too much Purim junk. I usually stay away from sugar, but tonight after the Seuda was over, I just went hog wild over the mischloach manot and now I'm paying for it.
Silver lining - at least I have a blog to update between running to the bathroom. (was that an overshare?)
Purim started in Jerusalem on Thursday night, and for us it started Thursday when I spent the fast doing two things. 1) baking my last batch of chocolate cakes and then icing what I could (I ran out of powdered sugar mid way which left 8 cakes uniced) and 2) drawing and coloring in a gigantic Batman symbol for our car-turned-batmobile for Purim. By the time Megillah reading came around, I was slightly high from the black magic marker and ready to party.
We heard Megillah at Chovevei, which has a really nice and pretty quick reading, and then broke the fast with Pidgeon's parents. Leftover soba noodles and soup helped fill my stomach, and then we went home and made our quick transformation into Batman and Batwife. We had 2 Tel Aviv parties to go to and we were excited. We put the bat symbol on the car, drove up Emek Refaim (I drove because Batman's costume mask made visibility a bit difficult) and we stopped by Pidgeon's folks for a photo op. And then, we looked at the time and realized that the fast totally drained us and we drove home, took off our costumes, and went to bed.
Friday, I wasn't surprised to get calls from my Tel Avivian friends wondering what happened to us. I explained the situation and felt bad that we really didn't make it out there, and promised to make more of an effort next time. Anyway, we heard Megillah Friday morning at Pidgeon's grandparents house and then we drove back to the apartment so I could cook for Shabbos. We spent a quiet Shabbos together, just relaxing and reading, and then it was off to do my marathon cooking for the Seuda today as soon as Shabbos ended.
It was a joy to shop Saturday night at the SuperSol in Talpiot; the place was practically empty. We got everything we needed except some more powdered sugar, so I gave up on trying to ice the rest of the cakes and focused on cooking for Seuda this afternoon. I don't know how it happened but suddenly I realized that we were going to be 14 adults and 3 children for the meal! Fortunately, I called it for 4:00 p.m. which left us plenty of time to deliver our Mishloach Manot and get ready for the Seuda.
I spent Saturday night in the kitchen, making quinoa with mixed vegetables, a macaroni and meat, a corn kugel, a pumpkin pie and a cauliflower kugel. I learnt my lesson on doing everything myself, so I asked my sister-in-law to make some chicken, my friend Merav to bring some pita's, my brother-in-law to bring some hummus, techina and matboucha, Pidgeon's cousin and friend to bring some drinks, and Pidgeon's friend to bring us some dessert. It was the smartest thing I did, as it made preparation for the Seuda go much quicker. We were able to get to bed before 1:00 a.m. on Saturday night, which was great, because boy did we get an early morning wake up on Sunday morning!
Our next door neighbor's gardener showed up at 7:30 a.m. and started blowing leafs everywhere. Oh, and I haven't mentioned yet that it's freaking HOT in Israel these days as we're in the midst of a heat wave and we have no AC! Saturday night was manageable as there was a really great breeze, but tonight is unbearable! No air is moving at all, and the air is so dry that our lips and skins are flaking off. I've been spritzing myself with water and moisturizing at the same time just to find some relief.
Back to the events of today. As you can see, our theme this year was Cocktails and Burberry. We found these adorable Burberry bags at the paper good store in Har Nof and we filled them modestly with a chocolate cake with mocha icing, 2 chocolate bars, and a recipe for either (alcoholic) Irish Coffee, Mint Chocolate Martini, or a Chocolate Cake shot. Yum! I spent Saturday night assembling all of our bags and then tried to go through the list and map out our route for delivering everything today.
The early wake up call didn't help us any and somehow, we managed to oversleep and didn't get on the road to deliver our Mishloach Manot until Noon! Unfortunately, we had to shelve delivering 2 of our parcels because of the time. We quickly raced back to the apartment at 2:30 and Pidgeon helped me get everything ready. He was amazing and, without him, I never would have gotten everything done in time. I quickly made 2 huge bags of string beans with sauteed onions, an angel hair pasta salad with purple cabbage and an Israeli salad. At 4:00 p.m. on the dot, all the food was warmed and out on the table ready for our guests to arrive. We also made a drinks and dessert table, where people helped themselves to some good alcohols! Our guests left very happy, and Pidgeon was my brother-in-law's designated driver so he too got home okay.
I had a great time at the Seuda and, for the first time since we're married, Pidgeon played more of the host and I relaxed. It was great because I really got to enjoy myself and talk to everyone at the meal. I hope everyone had a good time too and I was thrilled when our clean up was extremely quick and easy! I will always defend serving on plastic with plastic utensils when we have more than 6 guests!
Needless to say, we were left with lots of Purim goodies and I spent the evening doing what my Mom used to do when we were little. Separation of goodies. I created a chocolate bar bag, a candy bag, and 3 boxes of baked goods. We also got 5 little bottles of grape juice/alcohol. I laid everything out in front of me and then just went to town as I filled each bag. I like baked goods, so I sampled some hamentaschen (raspberry! yumm!) and some honey roasted caramel nuts, etc. I don't remember how or when I stopped, but I definitely should have stopped much earlier than I did, otherwise I would be sleeping soundly right about now. Anyway, after my pig out session, I was so tired from the past three days that I just crawled into bed and relaxed. Pidgeon joined me pretty quickly and we watched some TV and just talked about how thankful we were that the 3 day Purim celebration was over. B"H, next year it won't be a three day holiday!
Well, it's now 4:00 a.m. and I'm going to try to get some sleep. Tomorrow is another early day!
Erev (or, rather, Boker) Tov from Baka!
1 comment:
Purim here in Karmiel was 3 days of pink costumes. I have only daughters...
I hope you had a hag sameach.
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