Disgusting, but Fun, Desserts!

Well, it’s been a hectic couple of weeks. People have been very sweet about this whole lifecycle ritual thing, but I’m about ready for the attention to be off my personal life and back onto something communally interesting (actually, I was ready for that even before all this started up, so now I’m really ready for it.) The primary obstacle to elopement is that it’d be very difficult to find a feminist, halakhic Elvis in Vegas.

In any case, here’s my latest mini-obsession. It looks kind of disgusting, but in a way that really appeals to me:
DESSERT SUSHI! Evidently it’s been this phenomenon, and I’m the last one to notice. Figures.

Here’s the site that wins for aesthetics, I think: cake base for the rice, fruit roll-ups for seaweed and Sweedish Fish, Jawbreakers and other assorted goodies for the sushi itself:

Not Martha has a long list of other options, including cupcake sushi, ice cream sushi, rice crispy treat sushi, and the one I might actually try sometime soon, coconut-rice sushi with candied ginger or with fruit in the middle. I’m afraid that I can’t condone any use of Twinkees anywhere in any recipie, so that seems to knock a few others out of the running.

Just. No.

Just a Little More

We’re nearing the end of the time when Frum Barbie will be a topic of conversation on this blog, but I cannot resist sharing some of Jen’s latest amusements. Original post here.

ETA: Jen’s now put one Barbie up on eBay. Bidding lasts another 9 or so days–make your offer here.

Daf Yomi Shiur Barbie

Kriyat Torah Barbie

Hagbah Barbie

Vote, Baby, Vote!

Americans living abroad, you have no excuses.

Even if you didn’t get it together to request an absentee ballot or if, (like me) you actually did request one but it still hasn’t arrived–you can still vote using the downloadable Federal Write-In Absentee Ballot.

You should actually probably get on it soon, since it’ll take a while to arrive via mail.

Just remember to use your powers for good and not for evil.

More on Barbiegate

Dang, that picture of Barbie is absolutely making the rounds. It’s on BoingBoing today, on RitualWell, the DovBear post has almost 200 comments (many of them quite tiresome for me to read, debating whether or not women can lay tefillin or not and the like), it’s going to be printed in a couple of magazines, and has brought Jen a few solid business hits and a couple of more good inquiries, and was even the talk of Women of the Wall this morning.

One starts to think it might not be a bad business venture to print Barbie a full Shas. In any case, I hope tefillin Barbie brings yet even more bounty to her creator.

In other news, the new Encyclopedia Judaica is coming out in like a month, and I’ve contributed to it! Whoo!

Work is Its Own Cure (Except on the Days When It’s Its Own Disease)

Oof, Chapter Six is riddled with problems–not the least of which is that it’s wayy too long. But I can’t stand to look at it anymore and don’t know what I should be fixing, which means that it’s time to put it aside and work on something else for a while.

Here’s the current rough draft word tally:

45,429 / 80,000 (56.8%)

I have no idea if any of what I’m doing with this book is any good. Then again, there’s a mathematician at Hebrew U who wrote a little paper in his 20’s–at the time, he thought it was OK, nothing special, not nearly as deep enough a treatment of the issue as it could have been. Years later, he was pretty much of the same opinion. And it wound up being the work that won him a Nobel Prize (I think in economics). Even though my perspective on just-written work is the least trustworthy of all, my perspective generally is never going to be so hot.

Writers? This is why you need an editor. An honest, brutally honest one. That, and lots and lots of time–though I’ll never be fully objective, there are things that I thought were pure genius when I wrote them that make me cringe today, and things I wasn’t so impressed with at the time that today I think aren’t half bad. Also, Michael Cunningham is dead on when he says that six months after the fact, you can’t tell the difference between the days you felt you were channeling some great inspirational force and the days you just sat at the computer (canvas, piano, whatever) and managed to work only by sheer force of will, against all your better attempts at procrastonation. How it feels to do the work and how the work comes out don’t necessarily correlate.

Or, as Stephen King says, writing = butt + chair. So for me? Back to it.

(For those of you missing the title reference, it’s here.)

FAQ Re: This Past Week

It’s the “cranky feminist” edition of joyous announcements!

1. I’m not changing my name.

2. He’s not changing his name.

3. I think I know how I want to deal with the kinyan problem, but no, I’m not saying.

4. I’m thrilled to get hugs and mazel tovs but

5. Can we keep heterosexual privelige factor to a minimum?

6. (It’s the marriage, not the wedding, stupid.)

7. I dunno in which country we’re having it yet.

8. It’ll probably be pretty small and intimate, wherever it winds up being.

9. So please don’t be hurt re: guest list stuff. It’s so not personal. We’re not inviting hardly anybody, except, you know, my grandma.

10. Yes, we’re going to be back in the U.S. next year so that I can finish (God willing) rabbinical school.

11. No, I don’t know what happens after that.

12. There is no Number Twelve.

13. Even if I might not sound like it in this list, I’m actually really thrilled

14. and am SO going to paint my toenails sparkley silver for the occasion.

Maybe you didn’t even know that I was with somebody? Even though I’m the type that blogs about the silly mundania of my life, I’m still a fairly private person, in my way. Anyway, we’ve been together for two-ish years now and he’s wonderful, silly, loving, kind, brilliant, funny, and better to me than I probably deserve. I’m deeply smitten and extremely happy, which is all a girl could ask for.

There probably isn’t going to be a lot about him on the blog to come, but now maybe occasionally I’ll use first person plural instead of first person singular if I’m talking about, I dunno, something relevant.

Fringe it Up, Yo

There’s a new listserv starting up for discussion of women and time-bound mitzvot. If you’re interested, you can check it out here.

Andy Goldsworthy Interlude

In honor of Parshat Bereishit.

I Took My Bread Out Dancing

Around 7 tonight I went over to a friend’s house so that she could show me how to make challah. I’ve never made it before, and it’s time, and she’s been doing it every week for years. Of course, I showed up, and we got talking, and then there was a last-minute trip to the store for yeast that wasn’t past its usability, and then there were kids in and out, and then finally we did it. It’s really not that complicated, i was kind of surprised. But grateful to have an old hand there to show me that yes, you really do need to add that much flour, or how to knead in a way that’s easier, or whatever.

By the time we finished all this, it was 10:30pm or so, and I was due at the Boogie, where a) I’d promised friends I’d meet them and b) I could feel the sirens beckoning me to shake a tail feather. But what, I wasn’t going to get to taste my first-ever challah?? So, after separating out the tithe from the dough, we took me a bread-sized chunk of dough and put it in a tinfoil pan, covered it with a paper towel, and I took my challah to the Boogie to rise.

I got to the Boogie–it was most excellent fun, lots of drums and stupid American pop and Israeli classics from the 80’s and an electronic version of some Bluegrass song that merged somehow into a remix of “V’samachta v’hagecha” and some other stuff. Anyway, I danced my tush off and my dough rose, quietly, on a speaker in the corner, tucked away and protected by my jacket. After a few hours I snuck over there, punched down the dough and kneaded it for a little bit, then braided it and returned to dancing.

I got home a little while ago–the thing has risen impressively, and is now in the oven. It’s almost 3am here, I’m REALLY ready for bed, but it should only be a few more minutes. I hope it came out OK! I’m sorry that I couldn’t have sat through the whole process with my friend–did I let it rise enough? Did I knead it enough the second time? I’ll only know tomorrow, when I get to taste the thing.

In any case, here’s the recipe. According to my friend (who is a rabbi), these amounts give you enough that you should be permitted to tithe and make the blessing over it–I don’t remember what the minimum is, please check yourself and don’t take my word for it. This makes a lot of bread (my friend has 5 kids and guests over every Shabbos, plus sometimes they give challot away). Anyway, in a very large bowl (like large salad bowl):

5 cups lukewarm water
1 cup sugar (stir it into the water)
then add 1 packet yeast until it bubbles (um, looks like it’s got jacuzzi jets coming from the bottom–not surface bubbles, but a process in the water itself)
then stir in: 1 cup oil (canola is good for no noticable taste)
6 eggs, beaten
1 cup honey (less if you don’t like sweet challot)
2 tbs salt
Then, add the flour, slowly, stirring as you go. It’s something in the neighborhood of 5 lbs (again, you’ll have to look up the exact amount you need in order to tithe–this is not a psok halakha).. basically, until the dough stops being sticky and becomes something you can work with. No sticky dough!

THen knead the dough for something like 18-20 min (easier if you do it in half or thirds–less dough to work with). Put it in a nice ball shape, leave it somewhere warmish with a towel over it for a couple of hours, and when it’s doubled in size, punch it down and knead it some more. Then tithe and bless (if you’re baking with enough flour to do so), separate it out into individual loaves, and braid them, or make them animal shapes or whatever you want, and then let them rise again. After it’s doubled in size again, bake it until it sounds kind of hollow when you knock on its little challah shell and it seems to be bread. (We’re getting there, I just checked the oven again.)

Expert challah bakers, anything to add or correct from this?

In other news, the tefillin Barbie that Jen (not me! Jen!) made has been making some serious rounds on the internet, it seems, kind of ironically described in a number of places as “Barbie dressed up for Simchat Torah” (because I included her in my first post-hag report–silly people, read the dang post) and credited to me. Now, this is wrong not only because it was not my Barbie, but duh, Barbie is frum enough to know that one doesn’t wear tefillin on Yom Tov! So of course now the internet thinks I’m an idiot–which is fine–and that Barbie doesn’t know basic halakha, which really, really bothers me.

Baruch Oseh Niflaot

Evidently a monument preservation org is staging a poll for the “new 7 wonders of the world.” They’ve narrowed it down to 21, and you can vote online for your favorite list.

All I have to say is, the Sydney Opera House??? I don’t think so. Not next to Stonehenge, Petra and Easter Island. I mean come on.

Though I’m old-fashioned, still sorry that I’ll never know what the hanging gardens of Bavel really looked like.

In any case, the 21 finalists for the New Seven Wonders of the World, alphabetically:

1 Acropolis, Athens, Greece

2 Alhambra, Granada, Spain

3 Angkor Wat temple, Cambodia

4 Chichen Itza Aztec site, Yucatan, Mexico

5 Christ the Redeemer, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

6 Colosseum, Rome

7 Easter Island Statues, Chile

8 Eiffel Tower, Paris

9 Great Wall, China

10 Hagia Sophia church, Istanbul, Turkey

11 Kyomizu Temple, Kyoto, Japan

12 Kremlin/St.Basil’s, Moscow

13 Machu Picchu, Peru

14 Neuschwanstein Castle, Fussen, Germany

15 Petra ancient city, Jordan

16 Pyramids of Giza, Egypt

17 Statue of Liberty, New York

18 Stonehenge, Amesbury, United Kingdom

19 Sydney Opera House, Australia

20 Taj Mahal, Agra, India

21 Timbuktu city, Mali

You can vote here, if you want.