My mother-in-law has a pomegranate tree growing outside her kitchen window. She can reach out of her window at any time and get a fresh pomegranate. I’m pretty jealous, even though I don’t like raw pomegranate that much. It just think it’s a cool novelty.

I was a vegetarian for about 15 years before I met my husband and fell off the wagon. Then he got all into animal rights and crap and stopped eating meat. And I’ve been reluctant to follow because chicken is tasty. Especially the pomegranate chicken we used to make together. Since he won’t eat it anymore, I haven’t had the heart to make it. (Once I tried to make it with a meat substitute, but it just wasn’t the same.) But I’ll share the recipe with you.

Be warned, this is not a food blog. I cook by smelling things and tasting things, so I’m not sharing with you an exact science that I perfected and wrote down. I’m just kind of guestimating. I’m also crap and following directions, which I’m sure pissed my friend off at the Saucy Southerner when I fucked up her fudge. (You mean I had to pay attention to the temperature? Sorry, P. I suck. But I was able to get it right after she held my hand, and I recommend everyone try her fudge. It’s delicious. Just follow the instructions.)

So here is pomegranate chicken (it’s a Persian thing):

• enough olive oil to fry things (I think I meant saute, not deep fry. This isn’t supposed to be a fried chicken thing. Plus, I think deep frying things in olive oil would be cost prohibitive.)
• about 1 1/2 pounds of boneless, skinless chicken breast cut into bite sized pieces
• 1 tablespoon cumin powder
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1 teaspoon tumermic
• 1/2 teaspoon ginger
• 1 onion chopped
• some ground-up walnuts (the original recipe called for walnuts, but I prefer almonds)
• pomegranate juice (maybe around a cup)
• a few plums cut up into bite sized pieces
• maybe some sugar depending on how sweet you want it

Brown chicken in oil and spices in some sort of cooking device (like a pot, large skillet, or a wok). Add onion and saute until clearish. Add plums. Add pomegranate juice. Add sugar to taste (or not at all). The sauce should be slightly thick and brownish in color. Serve over rice. (It’s really better than it sounds and doesn’t deserve to be described as “brownish.’) If you’re Persian, eat with raw onion (something I still think is gross).

Enjoy with Chicken with Plums.

Since I’m lying in bed sick with not much else to do, I’m subjecting you to a series of rambling posts.

Pomegranates are a traditional Tu B’Shevat food because it is one of the seven species listed in the Torah. It’s also an inside joke with my family. Basically, they are impossible to open or eat without making a pink mess everywhere and on your clothes, like from the Cat in the Hat Comes Back. And the pink mess stains. So E will open a pomegranate in his underwear. At least, he did before we had Q. Now he wears my frilly cat apron.

My sister recently renovated her kitchen. It looks beautiful. She got new marble counter tops, new appliances including a new fridge that is seriously probably bigger than my bathroom, new white cabinets, a new white sink with a funky faucet that turns on when you touch it, a new pale yellow coat of paint, new curtains. I think new everything other than a new stove and new floor. She’s also a little…concerned that her house always look perfect. (I’m trying not to say she’s uptight. I love my sister very much, but she and I are very different. I think she is too concerned about appearances, but she probably thinks I’m a slob.) I don’t know why someone concerned with perfection and things always looking nice would get white kitchen cabinets.

So my family goes to her house for a holiday meal (maybe Rosh Hashanah). My mom always tries to bring something to a family meal that E will like. It’s not that E’s a picky eater. It’s just that so many American foods are unfamiliar to him (or he just doesn’t like) and he’s a vegetarian. Other than that, he’s pretty open minded about food. And my mom just wants to make sure he feels included/represented gustatorially (is that a word?). So she brings an unopened pomegranate to my sister’s new kitchen and tells E “I brought you a pomegranate! Aren’t you going to open it so we all can share it! Don’t you like pomegranate? Doesn’t Q love pomegranate?” E looks around at my sister’s sparkling new kitchen and asks me why my mom hates him, my sister, my sister’s new kitchen, or some combination of the three.

I had  big plans for today. I was going to get traditional Tu B’shevat foods like nuts and fruits and arrange them so prettily and take a picture to show you guys. I was going to get white and red grape juice (my husband doesn’t drink and I can’t drink a bottle on my own) and take pictures of it mixing. I was going to plant our dying holiday tree. Instead, I have the flu or something like it.

Happy new year, trees!

(Happy birthday, me.)

I’m anti-circ. I don’t think I’m an intactivist. I believe that education, not legislation, is the best way to get people to change. I believe that we need to educate the practice out of existence and that criminalizing it will only make the behavior more dangerous. I feel this way about female circumcision too. Start the firestorm.

I get that the AIDS rate is lower among circumcised men, but I can’t get behind a movement that thinks it’s easier to mutilate a baby than it to teach men to wear a condom. This gets my back up: http://www.monitor.co.ug/News/World/-/688340/1319384/-/120xdup/-/ (Just like it’s easier to teach kids to avoid pedophile priests than it is to teach priests not to rape: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=105×7204035) Never mind that circumcision hasn’t been shown to have an affect on other things transmitted by sex. And never mind that being circumcised won’t prevent a gay man from getting AIDS (oh, right, it’s illegal to be gay in Africa anyway http://www.newstatesman.com/human-rights/2009/11/sexual-gay-uganda-bill-person). As long as we appease the Catholic Church by keeping penises out of condoms and in the vaginas of raped virgins, where they belong. http://www.scienceinafrica.co.za/2002/april/virgin.htm (I know, I know. One of these things is not like the other. I’m in a pissy mood for other reasons too.)

A lot of times I feel the need to explain to people, my husband’s not an asshole, he’s Israeli. I think politeness and niceties vary by culture. I met another woman with an Israeli husband, and she could relate. She told me that before she and her husband go on double dates, she has to remind him not to make any one cry. I have not met my friend’s husband, but if I understand correctly, he is not sabra, so apparently being what Americans call rude is something you get with your Israeli passport.

Sabra is the fruit of a particular cactus. It is spiny on the outside and supposed to be sweet inside. As applied to a person, it’s a Jew born in Israel. They are supposed to be prickly on the outside but nice to their friends. This makes no sense to me. Everyone is nice to their friends. That’s why they are called friends.

After spending some time in Israel with a 23-24 month old, however, I maybe have started to understand sabra. I think it means aggressively nice. E and I were about to board a train, and I was pushing Q in his stroller. The train came, and a woman pushed a head of me. I thought it was pretty rude to push ahead of a woman with a stroller. What was her goddamned hurry? The train wouldn’t leave until we were all on board anyway. Then she grabbed the front of my stroller and helped me lift it up the few steps between the platform and the train itself. She pushed ahead of people, shoving others out of her way, to help a stranger get on the train.

On that same train ride, Q was pretty fussy. He was tired and crying, and I was trying my best to calm him using Dr. Karp’s techniques. The man sitting on the other side of the aisle started to yell at us. While it’s true that almost anything said in Hebrew sounds like yelling and it sounds like an angry language generally, but this guy was actually yelling at us, and not in a “I have to speak loudly to be overheard” sort of way. I asked E what he said, and he told me “let the baby cry! I don’t care! It’s ok!”

I realized now that I forgot to show you all a picture of my family’s “holiday tree.” After much debate, E and I decided that we would buy and decorate a holiday tree. E didn’t want to at first, but I explained to him that it’s something my family always did growing up and that it’s a pagan tradition not strictly a Christian thing and that Jewish Russians do it. So we came to a compromise: we would buy a small live tree or shrub to keep inside for the winter holiday and then plant it on Tu B’shevat. Tu B’shevat is the new year for trees (there are four new yearseseses in Judaism).  You can read more about it here if you want: http://www.jewfaq.org/holiday8.htm Basically, in modern times, you eat fruit and nuts and plant a tree. You also drink four glasses of wine.

Anyway, so for Christmanukkah, we bought a rosemary plant shaped like a traditional Christmas tree from Home Depot. It smelled wonderful, but it died from lack of sun. I guess we didn’t think this thing through. So I guess next Tuesday we’ll plan the corpse of a rosemary bush in our yard.

It has nothing to do with religion or parenting, but I had to share my excitement! I just got my copy of the 2Cellos CD in the mail today. Squee! I love the pictures of them doing cello face. If you have not heard them, go listen now: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7pbkf6-ScY

Q is getting into super heroes, which I think is awesome. I wish I were geeky enough to fully appreciate this, but sadly, all I know of super heroes comes from the more recent movies, in particular X-Men. Q seems to really like Spiderman, and I started watching a cartoon from the 1980s with him. Much to my delight, Bobby Drake, AKA Iceman from X-Men, was also in it! I don’t know why Q likes him and runs around screaming Iceman, but I think I have an affinity for him because, like me, he’s Jewish Catholic. At least, he is according to this site: http://www.adherents.com/lit/comics/Iceman.html.

And I just have to note my amazement at this database. http://www.adherents.com/lit/comics/comic_book_religion.html Wow. That is truly dedication to religious diversity and comic books!

Israelis cannot wait in line. Ever. Every line in Israel is just some sort of mess to get to wherever it is they want to be–the cashier at the grocery store, the bank teller, the turnstile to get to whatever, on board a bus or train. It’s a pushing mess that I’m always afraid will turn into a the Who concert (I feel as though there were too many articles in that sentence). So I don’t know if it’s that E just doesn’t want to wait in line or if it he is actually incapable of recognizing that a line exists. I think it might be genetic.

The other day the three of us were at a fair at the synagogue and Q wanted to go in the bouncy obstacle course. There was an adult standing in front of the two entrances of the bouncy obstacle course facing two rows of children, one row in front of each entrance. Now to me, the man in front of the entrance and the children standing patiently in front of him indicate a line that we must wait in to gain admission to the bouncy obstacle course. Not to E. Or he just totally didn’t notice the man and the rows of excited children. He walked right up to one entrance and tried to shove Q through it. The man in front told him there was a line and only two kids could enter at a time for safety reasons, and E and Q went to the end of the line and waited their turn. Q then went in the bouncy obstacle course, up the slope, down the slide, through the pillars, under the wall, and out the other side.

As is frequent with toddlers, Q wanted to go again and again. But going again meant he had to wait in line, something that he hated deep in his genetic makeup. There was also a bouncy castle, but Q didn’t like that so much. There were too many kids in there that were bigger than him and could knock him over. But in the bouncy obstacle course, the line and the man in the front controlled the number of kids inside at any given time. So after a few turns through, Q’s genes must have figured out that he could just climb up the slope and go down the slide and bounce around the pillars for as long as he wanted rather than continue through to the end of the course leading eventually to the back of the line again. Even better, most of the time he was bouncing alone, as all the other kids were trying to race through the course. And so, while I waited for him to come out at the end of the course, like a good American mother who teaches patience and taking turns, Q bounced around the inside of the obstacle course, while his Israeli father cheered him on. Way to beat the system.

Last night I received definitive proof that Q’s abilities in Hebrew have surpassed my own. I was cleaning up after dinner and Q asked me for his matanah. Q usually likes to “help” me clean, either by using his toy broom to scatter piles of dirt before I can sweep them up, throwing folded and sorted laundry back into the basket, or unloading groceries into the trash can. So every household chore becomes a race–can I clean x before Q undoes all my work? So when he asked me for his matanah I assumed he meant his matatay, which means broom in Hebrew. So I gave him his broom and he gave me and his broom a look of utter disgust, as in how dare I ask him to clean up?

This morning, when we were opening Chrismanukkah presents, I understood my error and Q’s disgust. Q didn’t want him broom last night. Matanah means gift. So when Q told me he wanted to open his holiday presents, I told him to clean the floor.