St. Patrick’s Day is more fun to celebrate in New Orleans than Mardi Gras. There are fewer tourists, so that means a smaller crowd, a bunch of drunk guys ranging in age from 18-80 will kiss you on the cheek and give you a fake flower, and you get free cabbage! At the Irish Channel Parade, the people on the floats will throw you cabbage, potatoes, carrots, onions, and other things you need to make a stew. And sometimes boxes of Lucky Charms or Irish Spring soap. I think once I even got Ramen. I’m not sure how that’s Irish. The down side of this is usually that I end up with several heads of cabbage. I can really only eat so much of it. For some reason, when I’m there at the parade, I find myself screaming for more heads of cabbage and useless crap. Suddenly a string of beads or a poorly made stuffed animal becomes the most priceless thing in the world, and I would do anything to have it! I once had a barbie-type doll ripped out of my hands by a frat boy, almost kissed a total stranger for a rubber chicken, and traded a bottle of Chivas Regal for a coconut. Please! Give me that crap that I could just buy at the dollar store!

My husband likes to make an Israeli salad with our cabbages (or as he just calls it, salad). The salad is basically tomatoes, cucumbers, and red peppers cut up into tiny, tiny pieces, tossed with lemon juice, olive oil, and pepper. Depending on what we have (I guess thus becoming the gumbo of the Israeli/Jewish world), we also add cilantro, parsley, or onion. And, after St. Patrick’s Day, we add finely sliced cabbage.

What do you do with cabbage?

Amid the excitement of planning Q’s birthday party and them him getting the stomach flu, I forgot that today/tomorrow is Purim! Purim is my favorite Jewish holiday and my second favorite holiday of all time, followed only by Halloween. Like Halloween, on Purim (I just totally typed Putin there) we dress up and get goodies.

Israeli soldier all dressed up for Purim.

The most popular goodie is hamentashen, named after the bad guy of the Purim story (it’s one of those, they tried to kill us, we survived, let’s eat stories) and shaped like his three-cornered hat. The cookies are like a triangular tart filled with fruit or poppy, and I pretty much hate them. The dough is not sweet, and there is just too much of it. But in law school, I went to a hamentashen making party to be social, and the Hillel fellow, I guess he was lazy or something (and, as a side note, incredibly hot. Before law school, I wasn’t really attracted to Jews. Except for Oded Fehr, of course. But I think around then, in my mid-20s some sort of biological clock kicked in and told me I should be getting ready to settle down and if I wanted to marry someone similar to myself, I better start liking Jews. Prior to then, I had an extreme Arab/Middle Eastern fetish. And the joke is now that my husband is Mizrahi [Arab Jew] and also a self-hating Jew.), so he just brought a tube of sugar cookie dough and jam. They were very delicious, and I recommend you do that if trying to make hamentashen.

For adults, we are supposed to get so drunk we don’t know the difference between good and evil. Yes, there is a religious drinking game. We are supposed to drink and say “blessed be Mordechai, cursed be Haman” until we mess up.

I hope Q will be feeling well enough to do something Purimy today or tomorrow. Otherwise, it’s just watching Carebears and Curious George and cleaning up vomit. Though I suppose cleaning up vomit is a Purim activity itself.

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/infant-death-maimonides-hospital-linked-circumcision-article-1.1032432

Long story short, a baby got herpes from a mohel. Herpes can be fatal to an infant. Yes, mohels (sometimes) use their mouth during a circumcision. I’m not an intactivist, I just want people to know what they are doing before they do it. Yes, this is a really, really, really slight risk. (Same deal with the baby in the DC suburb who had the tip of his penis cut off during a routine circumcision at a hospital recently. And, of course, David Reimer.) At least, just tell the mohel not to use his mouth.

My husband and I love watching the Big Bang Theory, so a friend of mine showed me this with Mayim Bialik and I wanted to pass it along: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjDPteJvdQA My husband was not Ashkenazi enough to understand some of it.

(PSA for my non-Jewish readers: it’s a good deed/religious duty [mitzvah] to have sex, and it’s a double mitzvah to have sex on Friday night/Saturday.)

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.