Everything-in-my-fridge Soup

Ingredients:

 

2 T olive oil

1 onion, chopped

2 carrots, chopped

florets of 3 medium broccoli heads, chopped into manageable pieces

4 medium-to-large light zucchinis, cut into chunks

1 large mushroom (or more if you have...)

3 cloves garlic, whole

salt and pepper to taste

cumin

ginger

paprika

dried mint

2 T lemon juice

1-2 T soy sauce

 

Directions:

 

In a large pot, sautee the onion in olive oil until clear. Add all other veggies and let them steam for a bit. Add the rest of the ingredients and enough water to cover the veggies. Cover the pot and let the soup simmer for as long as it takes for the veggies to get soft.

 

I like thick, creamy blended soups. This one's good even without cream. Wait for it to cool slightly and then blend it with a stick blender or mash it with a potato masher. Add a dollop of cream or sour cream if you like. Yummmmmm.

Something from 'Everything' (1)

From Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer (pp. 28-29):

A few days before the hero was to arrive, I inquired Father if I could go forth to America when I made to graduate from university. "No," he said. "But I want to," I informed him. "I do not care what you want," he said, and that is usually the end of the conversation, but it was not this time. "Why?" I asked. "Because what you want is not important to me, Shapka." "No," I said, "why is it that I cannot go forth to America after I graduate?" "If you want to know why you cannot go forth to America," he said, unclosing the refrigerator, investigating for food, "it is because Great-Grandfather was from Odessa, and Grandfather was from Odessa, and Father, me, was from Odessa, and your boys will be from Odessa. Also, you are going to toil at Heritage Touring when you are graduated. It is a necessary employment, premium enough for Grandfather, premium enough for me, and premium enough for you." "But what if it is not what I desire?" I said. "What if I do not want to toil at Heritage Touring, but instead toil someplace where I can do something unordinary, and make very much currency instead of just a petite amount? What if I do not want my boys to grow up here, but instead to grow up someplace superior, with superior things, and more things? What if I have girls?" Father removed three pieces of ice from the refrigerator, closed the refrigerator, and punched me. "Put these on your face," he said, giving the ice to me, "so you do not look terrible and manufacture a disaster in Lvov." This was the end of the conversation. I should have been smarter.

Harry Potter and the Aisle of Chairs

. . . Evening approaches . . .

When we got to the theater, the machines that spit out movie tickets with a single swipe of the credit card through weren't working, so we had to wait in line anyway... but at least we knew (or were hopeful) we had seats.

And we did, in fact, get great aisle seats - a treat if you're the type who likes to pop out for a drink, popcorn or the restroom. The minute we sat down, however, an old lady with a walker came in with her granddaughter (we had both uttered heartfelt "awwwww"s when we saw them waiting in line together).

[Before I continue, a brief description of the movie theater: there are 10 rows of, say, 20 chairs and one aisle down one side. This is typical of Israeli movie theaters. Also, not directly related to the seating plan but possibly indirectly related to it: there is always an intermission during the movie. Doesn't matter which movie or how long. Intermission will always, always come jarringly in the middle of a word, split a sentence, collapse the height of suspense with that flickering smattering of letters, numbers and lines that signals the end of the reel. It's possible that intermission is a necessary thing here given the 30-odd people buried deep inside their rows with no aisle on the horizon and no way out over the scrunched-up knees of the other 17 potentially griping, booing viewers whose views would be obstructed by potential bathroom-goers. Also important to keep in mind: seating is assigned, assisted by unhelpful ushers who obstruct the aisle stairs so that you can't avoid tripping down them in the dark.]

Now we had the grandma and the granddaughter and the walker, trying to reach - from the single aisle - seat number 17 of 20. Which you knew was going to be impossible. So a kind young couple at the end of their row gave up their aisle seats ... and then, because they had a baby and a stroller and needed another aisle seat, we (also young and kind, though not a couple) gave up ours. Only to discover that we were expected to take the grandma's seats way inside.

Now it was getting awkward because the movie was starting (for once we did get there early, but, sadly, we missed all previews due to this game of musical chairs that was feeling less and less altruistically charming as the opening credits started rolling). Grandma was still standing in the aisle, granddaughter was trying to fold up the walker, the lights kept going on and off and we were stuck standing on the aisle trying to figure out where to sit in a theater filled to capacity. Which put us in a good position to ask the ushers to keep the lights on long enough for the lady to find her seat. And could they please restart the movie so we could all watch it from the beginning? No, we can't restart the movie. No, we can't even pause the movie. And we can't turn the lights on to help an 80-year-old get settled because the entire roomful of audience is in the grips of anticipatory psychosis and we can't take the booing.

Grandma finally found her seat as flames and doom (and brooms? I don't know, I was trying not to trip down the stairs) roared across the screen, but there was no chance we were going to get past her (and her walker) to seats number 17 and 18. The audience was locked in a single silent stare and to break it would have been to invite disaster. There were five seats available in the center of the theater so even though the ushers were still insisting it was fully booked, we just sat ourselves down and put our knees up and ...

... Wouldn't you know it, a whole family of kids came traipsing in and we couldn't bear to split them up - after all , they did have tickets. So we got up again, this time with a plan that had to work. We figured we'd ask for tickets to the next show, two hours later, and just look around the mall until then. But the manager insisted that show was also sold out (and fast, I might add: When scavenging for tickets earlier, I noted many empty seats during all showings) and offered us tickets for any other day that month.

Now, it is complicated for me to arrange to go out at night, since I work at night, even more so to reschedule with another person. And we really had a hankering for this movie. So we took the proffered plastic chairs sat on the aisle stairs. After we got over being annoyed and selfrighteous, it was pretty cool - we didn't have anyone in front of us, we had easy access during intermission, and nobody put their feet up on our backs. It turned out to be a prime location.

A side note on noise and the Israeli movie theater:

The silence during Harry Potter was rare for this kind, or any kind, of Israeli audience. Ordinarily, the teenagers talk, all cellphones ring, and everyone else makes noise shushing them. How odd, then, and hysterical, to hear how this audience wanted absolute silence ... the quiet was reverent, focused, awed. In Israel!

There were two exceptions. But really, only two.

There was a crying infant. It belonged to the couple who took our seat. Their other 3 kids were quiet. And probably more than a little scared. Taking your entire family to see a movie is a wonderful and beautiful thing. But did the 4-month-old really need to see You-Know-Who? I'd've cried too.

And toward the end of the movie, I was thinking how amazing (and bloggable) it was that not a single phone had rung during the entire movie, when suddenly, a phone started ringing ... and kept ringing ... and then ...

... there were the few isolated beeps of a message.

Dammed if you do

Having come across the following sentence, which seemed - with the exception of one little word - relatively straightforward, I was stumped:

The prohibition of Leviticus 22.28 banning the slaughter of a dam and its young on the same day applies to both father and mother, whereas the rabbis (the majority) hold that it applies solely to the mother (B.T. Hul. 78b). (From The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls, p.811.)

What, exactly, is a dam? A typoed lamb? Sure, except that lambs are the young in question. A quick search yielded the following answer from answers.com:

dam2 (dăm) n.
(Abbr. d.) A female parent. Used of a four-legged animal.
Archaic. A mother.

Never heard of such a thing? Never even come across it, not in a New York Times crossword puzzle, 6th grade research project, the odd piece of trivia?

Turns out the word isn't as far-fetched as it appears. Its usage is, at best, esoteric, but its lineage is legit, stemming from Middle English dam - dame, lady, mother. See for yourself.

First blog. Really.

Work is calling, as is the bathroom, but the tik tik of the keys calls louder. Oh yes, even louder than the managing editor. Or the news editor.

But apparently the battery has the final word. So i'm off.