My summer of frugal living (1 week of recipes and ideas)

Long story short: Me + Budget = big mess. So here’s my new tactic: I spend money no more than once a day, and if I spend more than a certain amount at one time, then I don’t spend for two days in a row.

That’s it. If I pay a bill, I spend no more money that day.
For example, yesterday I got my haircut. I’m sure it’s gorgeous. I went with my girl, who was climbing the walls (literally) by the time we were done, so I couldn’t get it styled and last night I slept in wet hair. Next month, when I get around to styling it, I’ll love it.

Day before yesterday I put money on the metro card. Day before that, I bought a book from a friend whose press is in danger of going bankrupt.

Groceries? So far, not this week. I’ve been using all the food in the cupboard and fridge (and garden)—you know, that stuff you have but never eat? You don’t realize how much stuff you have in your cupboard from one Pesach to the next (and by “you” I mean “me.”)

Thursday night I went shopping.
Friday: I made vegetarian fajitas for a family with a new baby.
*pan fry slices of portabella mushroom/carrots/zucchini/onions (you can do the mushrooms in your leftover wine).
*Puree black beans with garlic, cumin, cilantro, salt and pepper
*cook brown rice
*use whole wheat wraps

from the leftover vegetables, I made Pizza for the weekend at the beach:
dough: 3 ½ cups flour, 1/3 cup olive oil, 1 cup warm water, I package yeast, dash of salt, teaspoon honey or molasses.
Knead, let rise twice, roll out.

I made one pizza with goat cheese, mushrooms, onions,
other pizzas I used garden tomatoes & broccoli. Also garden basil.

Weekend at the beach: CAMP outside. Just make sure you bring bug spray. (it’s way cheaper than therapy AND lodging. I don’t feel cranky anymore, and it’s nice to sleep to the sound of frogs).

Monday Eggplant/Tomato stir fry
Garden swap with a friend: Onions, tomatoes, baby eggplant, peppers. Stirfry well, puree, serve over brown rice.

Tue. Tofu, broccoli and garden tomatoes.

Evening snack: white bean dip & vegetables
white beans, pureed with garlic, lemon or lime juice, olive oil, salt.
I served it with celery and carrots and garden tomatoes.

That night I had girlfriends over for a
clothing swap
I’d also done a clothing swap at work the week before.
Now I’ve got chagim clothes, new work clothes, and the satisfaction of knowing people I love are wearing the fabulous things I bought but never wore, or will never be able to wear again. It’s great for accessories and shoes, too.

Wednesday—I was going to make oatmeal and espresso for breakfast. But since my espresso pot exploded this morning (you really should never forget to put in that little screen. Did you know that two servings of coffee can cover two rooms, floor, ceiling, walls, with a fine spray of grinds? Oh well, I can toss the sodden calendar. There’s only one more month on it anyway) my girlfriend who is spending the rest of the week with us, apartment hunting, bought some pastries and coffee. I’m not sure if I’ll count that as my having spent.

Tonight I’m doing salmon croquettes from those cans of salmon I never want to see darken my cabinets again, with celery, egg, shallots and matzoh meal.
remoulade—mix a little wasabi and chili paste in mayonnaise with lemon juice.

When I’m tired of water, coffee and tea I make Ginger-aide
cut fresh ginger into little pieces and pour boiling water over it. Steep for a couple of hours with honey (to taste). Serve cold.

Bon courage!

Teach a man to fish and he'll fish for a lifetime...

Give a man a fish and he will eat for a meal.

Teach a man to fish and he will fish for a lifetime.

(Chinese proverb)

The highest form of charity is to help sustain a person before they become impoverished by offering a substantial gift in a dignified manner, or by extending a suitable loan, or by helping them find employment or establish themselves in business so as to make it unnecessary for them to become dependent on others.

(Maimonides' 8th level of giving tzedakah)

Wonders will never cease. We have decided as a family -- ok, my almost 4 year old didn't get a vote -- that we want to eliminate red meat from our at home diet. We won't buy it or cook it, but will eat it "out". So we're trying to eat more fish.

There is a lovely (and clean) fish shop around the corner from our apartment. I like it, it's a little off the beaten path, and it doesn't stink of old fish. And they keep the kosher fishes separate from those other treif ones. I thought it would be a fun treat for me to take my son over to to our neighborhood fishery to pick out fish for dinner. He adores lox, and knows that salmon is pink, and I hoped that this participation in the shopping might lead to participating in the eating, thereby diversifying his fruit-cheese-yogurt-challah diet.

So we walked in. Not a huge store but he was fascinated...by the lobsters in the tank, of course. We walked by the display case, and he asked all the names of the fish (except for "EMA! That's SALMON!!!"). Loved the idea of a fish called branzini - don't even know if it's kosher - or tilapia, they sound so funny. Each fish seemed more interesting than the next.

Then we got to the whole fish section. Basically, there's a bin, about adult-waist high, filled with ice and dead fish. You don't want me to pull any punches, right? They're dead. Glassy eyed. Ick. And wouldn't you know it, darling boy runs right over, climbs up on a milk crate and starts poking their eyes. Picks one up. Starts swinging it by the tail. I nearly passed out. He picked out his own fish, a whole shiny red snapper, and solemnly handed it to the fish man to be cleaned and gutted. He carried it home, where Abba had frantically spent the last 20 minutes searching for a whole fish recipe that didn't take too long. He even helped prepare it by sprinkling salt and pepper on it and watching while it sat in the pan.

I was expecting that to be IT. But no!
Turns out that he loves red snapper. He ate at least 6-7 bites, which seems like a lot to me. He couldn't stop talking about it and wanted to do it again the next day.

It is apparently true that if you involve your children in the shopping, selection and preparation of food, they'll eat it. I was a complete skeptic, but now I have a kid who eats red snapper. Let's see if it holds for other things; snapping the ends off of asparagus didn't get him to eat that, but it was helpful. I'll keep trying...this made it well worth the effort. It is not just the example of eating it around a table with others who are eating the same thing. I helped to provide my son with a tool (and an appreciation) for enjoying the process of getting food on a plate, and involving him in the process and enabling him to have a voice in the choice empowers him. Participating in the cooking was nice too, although there is still flour on the kitchen floor. It's just as empowering as the choice between the red shirt and the green shirt; it's a false choice (we were having fish for dinner, after all) but he perceived that he had a voice in the decision too.

I wonder what it would be like if we always thought of food preparation for our families like this; how can we involve our children in the process, and how can we ourselves be closer to the process. Maybe all our children will learn to love kale. OK, maybe not, but you might be able to substitute red snapper for a Dr. Prager's Fishy once or twice.

Shabbat Recipe: Yemenite Step Honey Rosemary Chicken

Just in case you have no time to cook for Shabbat, here is my very favorite recipe that takes about half an hour TOTAL work time and cook time.

The Yemenite Step was a fabulous restaurant on Yoel Solomon in Jerusalem, just off the midrachov. It had been closed for some time, and I don't think it has reopened, so really this is their honey rosemary chicken of blessed memory. I discovered the Yemenite Step in a search for date-worthy restaurants during my junior year of college at Hebrew U, and logged many hours there with my then unrequited love, now my husband. This chicken has special memories for me. And I have cooked it a zillion times, getting raves each time.

In the dorms at Hebrew U, there weren't any ovens, so all chicken had to be pan fried. Hence, this recipe, perfected in the Reznick dorms, and with a very forgiving procedure.


Honey (8-10 oz or so, or whatever you have left in the bottle)
Fresh rosemary (sprigs, torn off a bush near a dorm because it grows like weeds in Israel--oh wait, you may have to go to the grocery store)
Some olive oil (depending on how much you like to use for cooking, this can be done with Pam too)
About 8 chicken breasts (preferably from Machane Yehudah--just kidding)

Tomatoes and Cucumbers


Dice the chicken breast into smallish pieces.
Heat up a frying pan with some olive oil in it.
Put in the chicken and fry it up a bit.
After a minute or two, when the chicken is losing its' translucency, add some honey, maybe 3 tbsp or a short pour.
Strip a full sprig of rosemary and add the leaves to the liquid at the bottom of the pan,
Keep stirfrying the chicken in the oil/honey mixture.
Keep pouring on the honey.
Cook until it's finished. You may want to cut open a larger piece of chicken to check for done-ness.

Garnish with more sprigs of rosemary and tomatoes and cucumbers in slices.

Obviously, you can scale back the ingredients if you want to make fewer chicken breasts for fewer people. Or increase if you're having a ton of company.

I imagine this would taste nice with some rice, or better, mallawach (but that would require a lot more work).

Shabbat shalom!


Here's a link to an article from the New York Times that has a description of the Yemenite Step.

Red-hot Chili paste and other domestic Channukah Miracles

My baby LOVES Chanukah—When I light she claps her hands and waves hello to the flames. She dances to the blessings. Well, to be fair, she also loves the lights of printers, radios, elevators, bus brakes, and pedestrian crossing signals. Why wouldn’t she like Chanukah lights?

So I was hanging out with my two-toothed wonder, waving at the candles and eating latkes with chipotle salsa, cilantro and a squeeze of lime, when she parked herself at my knees and opened her mouth. No, it wasn’t a yawn or a “Mr.-Brown-Can-Moo,-Can-You?” noise. I was seeing my daughter’s mouth voluntarily open for food.

I gave her a bit of tomato. She made the “this-is-disgusting,-give-me-more” face. I ended up feeding her the entire bowl of salsa. Without a bib. Not a drop landed outside her mouth or on her clothes or in her fists. She stood at my knees the whole time.

This is the child who acts as if she’s dying if she sees a spoon approaching her from any angle with anything but applesauce on it. This is the child it takes 45 minutes to get six spoons of anything into her mouth and swallowed. If they made painter smocks for infants, I'd have one for her, because she looks like a Jackson Pollock canvas when she's done eating, normally.

I further discovered, through the course of this miraculous week, she likes barbeque flavor, herb de Provence, and vinaigrette. Eats better from chopsticks than from her spoon. And she’ll eat anything as long as it’ mixed with enough marinara sauce.

Heck, she’s been crawling around the apartment with a Clementine, lemon or lime pressed against her gums ever since citrus season started.

I do feel like an idiot. I had been treating her as if, because she had no teeth, she had no taste buds. And obviously, baby’s got standards.

Have you ever actually tasted baby food? I have. It’s just awful. Especially those jars of lentils and rice, or peas. Really, everything but the applesauce is terrible. They don’t smell too good either.

Well, when I was pregnant I did go through an industrial-sized jar of neon-red Korean chili paste, and a couple jars of schug, so maybe it’s comfort food to her.

Slightly less miraculously, I found a furnished apartment in Tel-Aviv for the spring—I’ll be teaching there for a semester—that is only slightly too expensive for me. A lovely Bauhaus.

A girlfriend urbanely reminded me, “you do realize that 99% of Tel Aviv is Bauhaus? and really neglected Bauhaus at that, sadly. Tel Aviv needs to be queer eyed -- it needs a total reality TV makeover.”

Well, that may be true of 99% of Tel Aviv, but MY building is owned by N. who has, indeed, renovated the entire building.

He’s thoughtful, too. When I mentioned I needed a quiet apartment because I had a baby, N. produced a baby bed. AND a changing table. Without asking. For free. Wonder if he can get me a breast pump? It feels indelicate to ask, though.

Spitting it Out Would Get the Same Message Across with a Lot Less Mess

Decorum should have dictated that I show some modicum of dismay over the fact my 10-month-old daughter was eating off the floor at someone else’s house. More specifically, she was eating scraps her playmate, after licking all over them, mashing them, and dissecting them, threw from her high chair. After all, we were eating with people who didn’t know us well.

Usually I have to trick my daughter into opening her mouth when I want to sneak anything but applesauce and cheerios into her. I don’t hold her jaws closed until she swallows or anything. I just offer her a taste. She needs to keep tasting food—at least that’s what I read somewhere—and then someday she’ll magically like it.

Often she gags as if I were trying to poison her. She’ll make an excellent Shakespearean actress one day.

Now here she was voluntarily opening her mouth, placing the broccoli in, chewing (gumming) it and swallowing. When she saw me looking she grinned triumphantly and waved at us all. Naturally, I didn’t even feign shame.

The next day I made my girl broccoli, carrots, and mushy pasta, sat her in her chair, and handed them excitedly over. She gladly mashed them up and then examined her hand as if she’d just killed a mosquito and was looking at the blood.

I placed her on the ground and put the vegetables in a bowl. She picked up the bowl and dumped them out. I arranged them on a placemat on the floor. She lifted the placemat and shook them off. I placed them directly on the hardwood floor, and she ate one or two.

Placing her food directly on the floor doesn’t work all the time. Some days she just ignores it and goes for a dried leaf near the doorway or bit of paper under my desk.

Food tastes better if you must hunt for it, apparently. My mother has suggested I hide food so that she can “find” it, but I worry that I’ll forget where I put it. I mean, I do have a job, too, so, let’s face it, the housework suffers a bit.

Since she seems to vomit a lot after I’ve had cow milk—in cheese or even milk chocolate, I don’t want to give her yoghurt—which is one of the foods other mothers have suggested. Besides, why should I feed her another animal’s milk when I’ve got far more than enough for one child? I just worry that she should be eating more solids more regularly by now.

My daughter is a charming breastfeeder. She blows on my tummy after I finish nursing her the way I blow on her tummy after I change her diaper. When I’m not paying enough attention to her, she stops and grins up at me, until I laugh.

But solid foods!

I can just see it now, her first day of school. Snack time comes and she drops to the floor, takes apart her sandwich and spreads the filling across the floor.
Her teacher will ask: were you raised in a barn?
And she’ll say: What do you mean? This is how we eat at home.

The Yogurt Wars

The other day I stood in front of the yogurt display at Trader Joe's for 10 minutes--literally ten minutes--tormenting myself. Vanilla yogurt for my son or plain yogurt? Vanilla or plain? Or, more directly to the point, a reckless devil-may-care 30g of sugar for my infant son or a somber 15g?

After 10 minutes I decided to get over myself and just buy the yummy vanilla yogurt. Within five minutes I was back in front of the yogurt, making the switch to plain. Oy.

I felt relief at having made the healthier, less guilt-inducing choice, but I also felt ridiculous. Just the other day I was making fun of other mothers who were so proud that their children didn't enjoy those sugary fruit yogurts. "It's yogurt!" I said self righteously. "No one ever got obese from too much vanilla yogurt!" And yet...there I was. What gives?

You don't need a Phd in psychology to know that the relationship between mothers and food is deep and messy. I think it starts when you are handed a tiny newborn: feed him or he'll die they say. And then they weigh him every day for a week just to make sure that you're not screwing the whole thing up.

In the beginning, solid foods were fun. One exciting first after another. And then he turned nine months, and all of the sudden EVERYTHING was on the table.

This new phase is wonderful, but also scary. All of the sudden there truly are right and wrong answers, good and bad ways to do things. You are teaching a child how to eat--for life--and every sallow looking, fatigued, overweight adult reminds you of the heaviness of this responsibility.

Who made this so complicated for me? Was it my Jewish mother? No doubt--I wasn't allowed a piece of junky white bread until I was 18--but also maybe my Jewish fathers. Our tradition spends tractates--and books upon books--dealing with the complexities of Jewish eating. And we are taught to consider every morsel that goes into our mouths, what it means for our physical and spiritual lives, for our place in the community, our relationship with God.

As a mother, as a Jew, food is serious business. And this, I think, is why I wound up standing in front of the yogurt display for 10 minutes, checking heckshers, checking fat, checking sugar, paralyzed with indecision.