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?
Monday, June 28, 2010
Thursday, May 20, 2010
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?).
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
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!
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!
Saturday, March 27, 2010
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?
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?
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