Don’t you just love it when everything comes together and works out as if it were planned?  That’s how I felt today when (as usual at the end of the week) I was stuck with only a handful of things left in the fridge and not a whole lot of time and energy to put […]

This is one of our favorite dinner dishes.  It seems like a million years ago now, I was looking for something easy for dinner and found  this recipe.  I cannot, for the life of me, remember now where I found it, but we loved it so much that for a while there, I cooked it […]

My mom used to make this beautiful chicken meatball soup. It literally had nothing else but meatballs and broth.  Broth was light golden in color and clear as crystal, and meatballs were very soft, yet never falling apart. She used short grain rice to give meatballs extra body, and shredded carrots and onions for added […]

If cooking were a religion, the soupmaking would, no doubt, be one of its greatest sacred rites.  Soup is a quest for perfection, a mystical transformational and peacemaking ritual through which ingredients, different in color, texture, density and flavor are compelled to slowly reveal their essence, enrich one another, and enter the state of harmony.

End of work week dinners are tricky.  There aren’t that many things left in a fridge.  In addition, I feel particularly lazy on Friday nights, looking for any excuse to get out of laboring in the kitchen.  As a result, more often than not we end up waiting in line at some restaurant to get […]

Every time I pass perfectly flat triangular brisket slabs in a store,  my inner Jew wakes up from a deep sleep and starts with the questions. “When are you gonna start cooking like a good Jewish girl?”  “Where are the Gefilte Fish and Latkes?”  “Why aren’t you making Mandlech for your chicken soup any more, […]

Sweet summers of my childhood… Windows wide open day and night, you can see and hear everyone in our courtyard.  Tidy neighbor lady has already washed a truckload of family laundry, and bright white sheets are stretched on ropes for drying outside our kitchen window… Life is good, life is lazy, and I can smell what everyone’s […]