Jesse cooked; Aliza tried to cook

Last you heard from us, we were busy ringing in 5769 with some epic Boloco.

For the sake of this blog, let's call 5769 "the lost year." What with the whirlwind (nay tornadic) lifestyle of my first year teaching, it was a culinary (and otherwise) blur. From my survival to this point today, I can deduce that we must have eaten food. Probably at regular intervals. Jesse cooked. I looked. I recall even sometimes making rice.

Today, out of the fog (at least metaphorically, though still deeply entrenched in the San Francisco weather patterns), I am proud to say that my teaching skills have improved significantly enough to have time to write. And, more importantly, my cooking skills have improved insignificantly enough to still make this interesting.

A few key cooking attempts and not-complete-failures of 5769:

1. I made cookies for my students for Halloween. Having successfully baked chocolate chip cookies many a time, I thought, "Ha! This should not be so bad! They will be so happy!" But just like grading papers for 130 students, baking cookies for as many young hungermachines was a problem of scale. What is easy when you're dealing with 30 or 40 is painful in the triple digits. The cookies came out ok, though I had to borrow baking materials from my neighbors and it took several hours just to rotate in the baking pans. It took students about 5 seconds to eat them, 4 seconds to show gratitude, and 1 second to return to pre-cookie-reception state. Sort of like when they read the comments on their papers that took my hours to write. MORAL OF STORY: In your first year of teaching, nothing is fun. Not even baking cookies.

2. I made cauliflower cakes. I always enjoyed them when my grandmother would make them when I was a kid, so when I purchased a beautiful cauliflower at the farmer's market, I emailed her for the recipe. She kindly sent the recipe, (with a warning that it would be easier if I could just watch her make it) and I did my best to follow it. My favorite part is when you change the water you're cooking it in to avoid getting gas from eating them. One might think, cauliflower! Healthy! Right? Well you can't spell caulIfLOwer without oil. A lot of it. The cauliflower looked like this before I sucked all health benefits out of them:


Then they looked like this when I was done:Tasty, eh? Eh. (This picture was the best of the batches...) I think I'll stick with Grandma Nelly making them, and cover my eyes when I watch how much oil goes in.
MORAL OF STORY: When your Grandmother says it might be better to watch her do it first, believe her. Or, don't destroy a perfectly good cauliflower.

3. So the other day I was making an omelet for myself. I was spatula-ing it with my right hand and holding a piece of gouda cheese in my left hand, waiting to put the cheese in the egg. With some poor spatulation, I managed to destroy the shape of the egg, and make it unfit to put in a piece of cheese. Thinking quickly on my feet, the omelet became scrambled eggs and I just ate the piece of cheese while the eggs finished cooking. MORAL OF STORY: It's all the same in your stomach, right?

BUT NOW IT IS THE NEW YEAR! Time to start fresh! I began Rosh Hashana by successfully cutting an apple and dipping it in honey.




oh, and I also made kugel:

Haha Jesse! Now you look! And, last night, I COOKED DINNER FOR MARIANNE AND DAVID. AND IT WAS EDIBLE. (Though they cooked the cous cous while I showered).

5770--Change is gonna come, IN MY KITCHEN!