Thanksgiving

The Scene:

Heading up my first Thanksgiving Feast ever and it just happens to be for 88 people.

The Cast:

Dan & Paula: JUC Cooks

Dr. Wright & Diane: JUC director & his wife who keeps everything running on-campus

Justin & Mandy: JUC Student Life Coordinators

Reggie & Vince: JUC Undergrad Students

Joyce: JUC professor's wife

Other helpers: JUC students and staff who setup, made desserts, and helped in the kitchen both with preparations and cleanup

The Turkey: our dinner: 2 whole turkeys, 10 turkey breasts

The Oven: the temperamental big ol' helper in the kitchen that requires lots of attention

Plot:

Thinking about cooking Thanksgiving dinner for 88 people was nothing less than terrifying.  But Diane, Justin and Mandy, Joyce, and Dan and I all met to talk about the details and that helped to calm me a bit.  It was decided that Diane, Joyce and Mandy would each make a batch of rolls, check.  Then Joyce said she could make the green bean casserole, check.  Diane would make the sweet potatoes, check.  And Mandy & Justin offered to help us with the turkeys, yay!  All that was left were the salads, smashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, and cranberry Sauce.  Dr. Wright had just returned from a trip to the States with lots of boxes of stuffing mix and gravy packets.  That would be a huge time saver.  So it seemed as though things would come together just fine.

                                                      Justin and Mandy stuffing the birds.

 

Reggie and the dancing drying lettuce

On Thursday, the day before our big meal (we had decided to have our feast on Friday in place of our normal Shabbat dinner), Reggie and Vince came up and cleaned potatoes and chopped lots and lots for us.  On Friday we started at 1pm washing and stuffing the turkeys.  We filled them with lots of aromatics - onions, apples, celery - and popped them in the oven.  We checked the temperature every 10 minutes to make sure it was hot enough but not too hot (we have an oven thermometer now, which was a lifesaver!).  After awhile the oven finally settled into an ok temperature.  It's pretty fickle.  If you leave it on temperature # 3 for an hour it might be at 350 or it might be at 500.  #1 and #2 might drop below 300 or they may stay above 400, so it takes a lot of working to keep things cooking at a good temperature.  The longer the oven is on, the hotter it gets.  We even had a big fan by the oven that we would blow into it when we needed it to cool down.  

 

Yay!  The turkey survived the oven!

               The decorated Thanksgiving tables seen from the steps leading up to the kitchen.

 Lots and lots of salads!  Lettuce, pears, feta, and candied walnuts topped with a balsamic vinaigrette.

The kitchen was full of help on Friday!  Chopping, plating, stirring.  We had lots of people pop in and help us.  It was great.  The smells were wonderful and we all enjoyed having our traditional feast.  After cleanup we went to the Wright's apartment for dessert.  There was pumpkin pie, pumpkin cheesecake, pumpkin bread, chocolate peanut butter pie, cookies, bars everything!  It was delicious.  We were appropriately stuffed by the end of the night.  We definitely could not have done it without all the help we got!  There were very little things that we could say we did all on our own, which is a nice place to be in at the end of a Thanksgiving meal.  

Reflections on Culture Shock

I don't journal often, but there have been times that I've dusted off the old notebook to help myself mentally process through things.  One of those times was December 12, 2005 after I got back from studying in Israel as an undergrad.  Here's a bit of what I wrote:

...I miss Jerusalem.  Being able to step out of our gate and walk through a great diversity of cultures in the Old City.  Going with a friend to get coffee in the New City.  Crossing the valley to go to Succot Hillel (a 24-hour prayer house).  I miss the crazy mix of people that always had me laughing and rolling my eyes at the same time.  Each with a unique way of looking at life and approaching you (God).  All of us learning together as we explored the land.  A place that I was so afraid of, people I couldn't understand, it is all so close to my heart now...  When uncomfortable becomes comfortable.  Then I'm asked to leave and be where comfortable has become uncomfortable.  Churches instead of mosques, Christmas music instead of the call to prayer, snow instead of rain, English instead of Hebrew or Arabic, set prices instead of bargaining, cars instead of walking, painted walls instead of stones, food instead of Margo's creations (the cook at the time), peace and quiet instead of the traffic and activity of the big city.  Yet Christ remains the same.  And so I cling to Him as my world changes around me...

Well, I can assure you that I most thoroughly adjusted back into life in the States.  So now I'm back to adjusting into this culture again.  It's been interesting to see what is different now that I am not a student and in lots of other ways at a different point in life as I was back then.  I think for Dan and I we've had to not only adjust to the cultures in Israel, but also back into the culture of a college.  After being out of college for 3 years, having a place of our own, and learning a new pattern in life, it really is quite different to be back in this environment.  We have an endless supply of social interaction, plenty of people to play games with at any time that we'd like, lots and lots of fun to be had.  But it also can distract me when I don't take the time away to think, read, or pray.  I've found that I've come to like quiet activities - crafting, reading, even housework.  So we're learning that balance again.  If we want to be busy here, we definitely can be!  But it is harder to spend a day "at home" when your kitchen serves 50 and you eat 3 meals a day with the community.  So the quiet times take more work to create.

I also grew to like America.  When I was in college I was out of sorts with the US.  I think I was feeling too sheltered at school and in the Midwest.  Many of the people around me looked and acted like I did.  When I came to Jerusalem I found so many different worldviews and people all around us who thought and acted different than I did.  It opened a world to explore that I hadn't touched before.  But living in Chicago (although still in the Midwest) the last three years showed me that the US has more to offer than I thought.  I met people who challenged my thinking in the way they viewed things.  There was more diversity around me - which brought with it great places to eat and lots of possibilities for seeing more of the world in the city in which I was living.  So now I miss America and continuing our little life and ministry there.  I do feel like God is using us here, but I'm glad that I also feel that we had a place in Chicago.

It feels a lot different than I expected to take a year out of our normal life to be here.  On the one hand it's kind of a care-free time with lots to see and do.  That's what I expected it to be like - just a big adventure that I loved every minute of.  On the other hand I find myself wanting to move right along with our life as it was and I think about when we get home a lot.  I miss our friends and family and just normal life in America.  Then I feel guilty for not loving every minute of my time here because I know it's a once in a lifetime kind of thing.  But there's a lot of the daily grind in our work, so it's not going to be blue skies and butterflies all the time.  There are a lot of challenges with the culture, the people, the systems of doing things (or even more the lack of systems) that make our days difficult.  I hold onto knowing that God led us here - we both agreed this is what  we should do, so it wasn't just me seeking an adventure.  I trust my husband and I know that he walks with the Lord.  That helps me to know that the hardships will be used to strengthen us and prepare us for the life ahead of us.  I also know that when I'm settled back in at home and we're working and caring for a house and someday starting a family and life is kind of mundane and normal, I'll know that we did this and be very glad that we did.  I would have always wondered what it would have been like to take this year away and serve in Jerusalem.  We'll come home with great experiences and important life lessons.  These are the things I think about when I get homesick.   





 

The Past Month

Hey guys!

I'm really behind on posting on here and just don't know what of all the things that have happened in the last month to write about.  So instead of trying to summarize one event, I decided I should just write a list of some of the things that we've done since I last posted on Septemeber 24th.

• September 30th: Dan's birthday.  Rampart walk around the Old City of Jerusalem and a delicious dinner at Focaccia topped off with the most wonderful Hot Chocolate Cake for dessert.
• October 8th: awake for 24 hours traveling back to the United States for Brad & Dana's wedding.  Bonus: all you can watch movies/tvs on Canada Air.  Felt sick from watching so much :)
• October 9th: Moore family bike ride to Council Grounds, ice cream, good food all day.
• October 10th: Seeing friends at Bible Pres., Adam & Meg Francour's wedding, seeing Fred, Virginia and Lewis.
• October 11th: Virginia's birthday!  Good Lewis time, lunch at Epic with Fred & Virginia, Sushi for dinner at the Madison Moore's with Jeff & Carla joining us.
• October 13th-14th: Merrill time.  Lunch at the Checkered Churn with Sue J., wedding preparations and hang out time with Brad and Dana, board games, phone conversations with friends and family.
• October 15th: Rehearsal and rehearsal dinner at the Candlewick B&B
• October 16th: Brad and Dana's Wedding day!  Beautiful ceremony at Bible Pres. followed by dinner and dance at the Grand Theater banquet hall.  Fun time had by all, so excited for the newly wed couple!
• October 17th: Trip to Chicago with Chris Cimino.  Wonderful time catching up with friends in Chicago, attending small group Bible study.
• October 18th: Breakfast at Ann Sather's with our friend Robyn, picking up last few wanted items from America, long haul back to Jerusalem.
• October 23-26th: Field study to Galilee.  Saw so many ancient sites, beautiful places, so much green, stayed in Kibbutz owned resort village cottage place.  Good trip, so exhausted by the end.
• October 28th: visited the Renaissance festival in the Christian Quarter of the Old City.  Highlight were the girls dancing with fire - batons, swords etc.

Dan's birthday happy face.

Lewis at 3 1/2 months with Grandpa.

Rehearsal.  We didn't take any pictures ourselves the day of, we were too busy having a good time!

On a boat on the Sea of Galilee - beautiful morning.

Kitchen Excitement

Last night was quite the night.  We decided to make Chicken Parmesan with the Chicken Schnitzel patties that are of plentiful supply here.  That went well - put the chicken in the oven and then added a piece of cheese on top.  We don't actually have Parmesan... but that's ok :)  We made Marinara sauce and noodles to go with the chicken.  It came out well!  When the Schnitzel was just about done our helper, Tamer, went to close the lower bottom door to the oven and lost his hold on it and let it drop.  The door fell right off.  The same thing happened a few weeks ago to our morning/lunch cook (wow, it's been long enough to say a few weeks and it still falls within the time we've been here!).  He opened the door without oven mitts, found it too hot and let go and the force of the heavy door falling caused the little loop that holds it on to break and the door fell.  When that originally happened our Campus Manager maintenance all around kind of guy welded it back together.  I guess the welding wasn't strong enough because the door is off again!  Here's our sad ol' oven with just 3 temperature settings, except now the bottom door is missing again.

  

But do not worry, that is not the end of our night's excitement.  So we had no lower oven door, but everything was baked anyway and it still worked as a place to keep things warm.  Dan and I served the students as we normally do until 6:30 when we take our own meal and either Tamer serves or everyone can serve themselves.  When we came back up after eating there was a strange smell in the air.  Tamer was in the back of the kitchen washing dishes and asked Dan if he smelled something and said his eyes were watering from the smoke in the air.  So the three of us tried to smell out and find what was smoking.  It smelled strange, almost electrical rather than a normal fire.  We couldn't see anything smoking, but it was obviously in the air.  So Tamer called William, the campus manager, and he told him to turn off the power since it could be something electrical and there is a main power something or other in the kitchen.  So Tamer shut off the power to the entire campus.  The whole place was black.  It's funny how quickly people just adjust to the power going off.  A few people found candles that they lit, others found flashlights right away and started to come up to find out what happened.  Some students started a game of Sardines.  We had to wait for awhile before William made it back to campus.  In that time we also had gotten our flashlights and I wiped down all the tables in the dark and then started putting away leftovers by the light of my flashlight.  William came and Dr. Wright also came to the kitchen to see what was going on and if help was needed.  They discovered the source of the smoke - the dryer.  There is a washer and dryer in the kitchen for the towels, rags, and apron/smocks.  It had been filled with the kitchen smocks and towels, perhaps overfilled, and the clothes caught on fire.  I didn't actually see the result, but I heard that they were inside the dryer smoldering.  The rank smell was the plastic parts of the dryer burning.  The guys pulled the dryer outside, hosed off the inside, pulled the clothes out and hosed them off too.  We are glad it wasn't an electrical problem and that there were no other issues resulting from it.  I had heard that you're not supposed the leave the dryer on when you're not home, now I know that's a real concern! 

Introduction to the Kitchen

Hello to everyone from Jerusalem!

I know that is not new news... We have been here for two weeks tomorrow.  I don't know if any of you can relate, but I've felt like I needed some time to settle in and get a bit more comfortable before talking about it too much.   That phase has passed and now I will begin to share :)  Of course I still might get distracted and have long breaks between posts.  But that's to be expected, I suppose.

Anyway!  Onto the good stuff, right?  (I know, right?)
We have done and seen a lot, but for now I will mostly talk about the cooking and daily stuff since that is what the title is about.  I don't have a lot of pictures of the kitchen yet, so stay tuned for that.  A few things that we noticed first about the kitchen:
1. Oven temperature choices are 1, 2, and 3.
2. There is an abundance of chickpeas (even though we buy our hummus), olives, pickles, water chestnuts, and okra.
3.  The pots are really heavy :)
4.  There isn't much for measuring/weighing large quantities, we end up doing a lot of estimating.
5.  Everything is in Hebrew, some things have English also.  Time to learn our Hebrew alphabet!

There are between 50 and 60 people at a normal dinner.  I'm still not entirely sure how many students there are exactly.  There are also a few staff members who live on-campus who join us for dinner.  We have cooked 9 meals now, so we're pretty much experts ;)  Ok, not really.  But we do feel like we've learned a lot since our first meal on August 27th.

Speaking of our first meal, here's a little story.  Dan and I decided to make spaghetti for our welcome meal for the students when they arrived on that Friday.  We would serve it with garlic pita (pita is the bread of choice here) and a fresh salad.  So I looked up a spaghetti sauce recipe in my huge cookbook (it took up half my carry-on!) and we multiplied it to feed 60.  First we didn't have enough canned tomatoes and had to try to figure something out with tomato paste instead (that pretty much threw following a recipe out the window), then we had to guess how much spaghetti noodles we were making since the bag wasn't in English.  Well, we ended up making WAY too many noodles.  We had lots and lots of leftovers and felt really silly about that.  But what can you do?  It was only our first time.  A few days later we made some more sauce (since our last batch was a bit shy), layered the noodles with some cheese and stuck it in the oven to create a spaghetti bake.  It was a huge hit and I think that might be the primary way we serve spaghetti here from now on :)  It seemed to retain the moisture better, too.  So that was our first night at work.  I was really stressed and worried about everything.  I've been that way on other nights as well, but so far everything has worked out ok.  We've been 5 minutes late with dinner only twice :D

And just for proof that we're actually here...

And here are the students eating some food we didn't cook:

Dan & Paula went to London Part 2

Paula also practiced her skills in London.  Here she worked hard to become a London Crane.

Their last morning in London they had delicious Pannenkoeken (large crepes, basically).  Yummy!

And here's the London Eye:

They had a super time in London!  

Thank you to the Voges for their generous hospitality.  It was a great trip and the perfect stop on the way to Israel!

Dan & Paula went to London

They saw lots of cool things like Parliament & Big Ben (well, they didn't actually see the bell), Westminster Abbey, St. Paul's, Tower of London, Parks, more buildings, Twinings Tea Shop store, visited with a few of Dan's friends, and enjoyed lots of different food.  They mostly got around by The Tube, by bus, and lots and lots of walking.  But a few times they were able to ride bikes with the new bike share program.

Some things are different in London.  This is a men's bathroom at a lovely park called Hampstead Heath.

One day they went to Dover and admired the Castle.  "I want to live here" Paula said.

Dan also liked the castle and was able to see some places there that he hadn't when he was there 5 years ago.

But somethings hadn't changed much...

At the end of the day Paula was surprised by finding Candy Floss (Cotton Candy) at a local carnival in town.  What could be better than that?!

Back in London Dan practiced his Shakespeare at the Globe Theater.

Wisconsin

The last 2 weeks have been spent visiting with family and friends in Wisconsin.  We started our trip with a stop in Madison to see Fred, Virginia, and the newest member to the Moore family, Lewis.  Then we unpacked the truck in Merrill with the help of Dad & Mom Moore and our friend Ben.  We had that truck packed very, very tight!  The next day we left for a camping trip up near lake Superior at Pattison State Park.  We got back from that last Thursday and have spent the rest of the time catching up with our friends in Merrill, visiting grandparents, a day trip to Camp Forest Springs to see Brad & Dana and other people we knew from working there ourselves, and seeing my family when they came up this weekend.  Joy just returned from a mission trip to Europe.  I'll be in London just a few days after she left there!  Here are some pictures of what we've been upto.  We leave tomorrow for our week in London tomorrow evening.  We're excited!

Pictures of JUC

A few people have asked about pictures of where we'll be living.  So here are a few pictures  of the Jerusalem University College (JUC) campus from the last time I was in Israel.

This is a picture of the school taken from a park across the valley. 

The door on the left was my door last time I was there.  I shared the room with 3 other girls.  It opens upto the the beautiful gardens where they grow flowers, grapes, and pomegranates.  The picture on the right is looking down at the garden side of campus from the roof top - which is a great place to watch the sunset!  The stairs going up lead to the dining room then another set of stairs go upto the kitchen.

This is the kitchen where we will spend a lot of our days. The back room has more of the equipment, but this is the only picture I have of it right now.  You'll be seeing lots of the kitchen in the future, though :)

And of course we can't forget the serving line (this must have been taken during breakfast) where the students will be wowed by our delicious meals!  Or at least be fed by them...

I hope you enjoyed this little mini tour.  There is much more to see of the campus, but this will do for now.  We have 3 weeks left to pack up all our things and move out of our apartment.  Then we'll head to Merrill for 2 weeks before flying out.  It's nice to take it in steps.

Vanishing Furniture

Our apartment is emptying fast!  Last weekend April & Jason came to pick up a number of pieces of furniture.  Then yesterday my parents took a pile of boxes and some more furniture.  It's strange to see all of the gaps in the apartment and our choices in places to sit are dwindling fast!  But we both find it less overwhelming to think of packing up all our stuff with more if it gone already and it will leave less work for us to do at the end of July.  So thank you to my family for your help!

The volunteer visa applications are in.  Now we have to wait for them to be processed.  The hope is that in about a month we'll be able to pick up our visas in Chicago.  We can stay in Israel for about 3 months as tourists, so the visas would give us permission for the whole year without any trouble.  Hopefully everything goes smoothly with that.

Not a whole lot else to report on our plans.  Just lots of decisions as we choose what to pack to take with us, store, donate, or just throw away.  If you know me at all you'll know that decisions are not one of my strengths.  We've had some nice breaks from figuring all that out, though.  This weekend we got to meet our little nephew Lewis up in Madison.  We also saw Joy before she headed off for training for her mission trip and had time to visit with my parents.  Next weekend we're going to Houston, Texas for the 4th of July and to visit our friends Jeff & Melissa.  It's going to be hot!  But the summer heat up here has been preparing us :) 

Does anyone have any good packing or storing tips to share? 

Tickets!!

Dan & I got our tickets!  We are leaving on August 16th.  The best part?  We're spending a week in London!!  But hopefully it doesn't have the same effect on Dan as it did last time....

Mountain Man

We're excited about our stop in London!  I asked Dan where he'd like to take me and he rattled of a long enough list of places to keep us busy all week.  It will be fun to see where he was the semester I was in Israel.  With everything else to figure out, it will be great to have a vacation that requires no planning.  I married my tour guide ;)

There hasn't been a whole lot of cooking going on lately.  I've been leafing through cookbooks and we did try one Middle Eastern recipe, but that's about it!  We've been working lots and squeezing in other needed tasks (like getting tickets!).  Things are moving along now, though.  We have lots of things to figure out.  I will be working full-time a little bit longer, but I should have more time to work on this stuff soon.  Maybe then I'll miraculously feel confident about cooking for 70 people.  I told Dan yesterday that he should become an expert in carving meat - the butcher (a manly job, don't you think?).  

Confirmation with a twist!

Well, we have confirmation that they'd like us to come to JUC to cook.  The next step is buying a ticket, signing a volunteer form, and getting a volunteer visa.  That is all so official sounding it gets me excited!

Now for the twist....  We were originally told that we'd be cooking breakfast and lunch.  After trying that the last couple semesters, they've decided to switch it and now we'll be in charge of dinner!  The pressure is on.  This includes the Shabbat meal Friday night, a big deal on campus.  The tables and guests get a bit fancied up that night and the expectations are high.

But realizing that we sent him our resumes and there was nothing about being gourmet chefs, we trust that we'll be able to handle the responsibility.  A couple weeks ago Dan and I watched the movie Julie & Julia.  It was very enjoyable and has inspired me to work on actually learning how to cook.  So far I have learned mostly from watching and doing, which is the best way to learn most things.  But I thought taking a step back and actually doing some reading about cooking might be helpful.  There are three steps I'm planning to take (although step 2 will probably get mixed in with step 1 because I'm inspired and want to work on that now!)

1. Basic cooking skills. 
2. Mediterranean and Israeli cooking
3. Cooking for crowds

I have a couple of books out of the library for step 1:
How to Peel a Peach and 1001 other things every good cook needs to know by Perla Meyers and
Martha Stewart's Cooking School: Lessons and Recipes for the Home Cook by Martha Stewart with Sarah Carey

We tend to tease Martha in my family, but the book is quite helpful and has lots of pictures (which helps keep my attention).  My plan is to write down anything I want to pass onto Dan - either teaching him myself (one of the best ways to learn is to teach) or having him read sections that I find. 

Last night I did make a dish that I enjoyed in Israel.  Mujaddara (Poor Man's Dish) which is made with rice, lentils and carmelized onions.  We topped it with Jerusalem Salad and hummus.  It turned out well.  I have to work on taking pictures to make this blog more interesting for you!

Learning to Share the Kitchen

Dan and I are preparing to be volunteer cooks at Jerusalem University College for the coming school year.  One of the first tasks that we're beginning to work on is learning to cook together.  When we're there we'll be cooking for around 50 people for breakfast and 70 for lunch.  We will not be in charge of dinner but will be able to enjoy the cooking of a locally hired cook for that meal.  There's no exact way to practice for that size of a crowd in our little two bedroom apartment in Chicago...  but we can at least work on learning to cook our smaller meals together. 

I, for one, am finding out that this is a harder learning curve than I might have expected.  The first thing I discovered is that cooking with Dan isn't like cooking with my mom.  He needs a little bit more coaching than I'm accustomed to.  I should keep this in mind and realize that at this point I'm a bit more of the teacher in the kitchen.  But I don't exactly have the kind of patience it takes to be a good teacher.  Something to work on.  So I'm wondering if we should try a new approach.  Instead of jumping into cooking a weeknight meal together when I'm not only anxious to eat but the different steps can be time-sensitive in relation to each other, maybe we should work on what type of steps might go into a meal.  For example, I learned a good way to cut an onion that I could teach him.  From there we could move to other things that might be difficult to chop and chop, chop, chop!  The better we both are at chopping, the faster we'll be at making our meals.  If Dan does have a cooking specialty, however, it is in making breakfast and packing lunches!  And he's really good at washing dishes...


Do you have any suggestions for what meal preparation tasks we should work on next?