Waste Not, Want Not

Yesterday I made some apple bread. This is the second time I have made apple bread while here, and it works fine cooked in a foil pan in my toaster oven.

The first time, I used olive oil, since it was the only oil I had, and I was too lazy to melt butter, so it tasted a bit olive-y or something, and I had no cinnamon to cover it up.
This time I used canola oil, which was much better. I also added the chopped rind (both the white and the yellow, which I simmered for 10 minutes in a little water and sugar) of one lemon (the innards of which had been used for lemon-water). It turned out to be a good apple-lemon cake/bread.
My recipe needs some improvement, like some vanilla or almond extract or cinnamon, but I'm not sure which of those goes with both apple And lemon.
But anyway it was satisfying knowing that I used the whole lemon and didn't throw any of it away. Except the seeds. Hmmm. I'll have to see if there's any use for the seeds. In the east they use them to kill worms. Or I could plant them, and have a nice little house plant.

Meshuga? (Crazy)

Hum-de-dum-de-dum
Nice weather today. Warm and breezy. Shall I do homework or just be lazy? Well, the usual answer is, first I'll study, then I'll be lazy. Or first I'll study, then I'll clean house. If there's any time left. Or first I'll study, then I'll make some apple bread. Which I haven't done. Or first I'll study, then I'll do mending or play the violin or do something interesting or fun. Which means I don't do much of anything that's interesting or fun. Except study, which sometimes is interesting, and is fun when I realize I actually learned something. At some point I'll say, Maspeek!!! Enough!!! But I've got too far to go to say that now.
Today is an exception, since I haven't posted in a while. First I'll post, then I'll fix supper, then I'll study. If I can stay awake long enough.

"A common mistake people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools."--Douglas Adams, whoever that is. (Google him..)

The Irish in me gets a good chuckle out of this one:
"We have always found the Irish a bit odd. They refuse to be English."
--Winston Churchill
The English in me just takes another sip of tea.

There are lots of sights to see here if we ever get around to them, but for now I am quite happy with the ones we have seen and I put this picture on my desktop.


I'm looking forward to coming home. It'll be fun to see everyone. And fun to drive my own car and I'll have to buy some shoes and run around and do this and that and find out what I'm missing and then tear myself away and that'll be hard but oh well at least life isn't boring. Well, boring if you study all day, but not boring when you think about being here today and there tomorrow and nothing goes according to plan, well not my plan anyway, so there's no such thing as settling down and getting comfortable which may not be a good idea anyway, and when you write posts you don't have to worry about run-ons and dangling modifiers and you can just run-on and dangle anywhere you want. All that being easier when the weather is good and it's warm and sunny and your feet don't hurt for the moment and there's no deadlines you have to meet except the ones you make for yourself which you can miss as often as you feel like. And if you don't feel like it you can drive yourself crazy but what's the point, except when you have OCD that IS the point. It might be fun to work a jigsaw puzzle with Elijah. Well, I'd better go. Yellala, bye! (That's what they say here.)

May

I never was a writer. I just keep this blog up as a sort of contact with y'all back home, and anyone else who is interested. I've haven't done anything special lately, like playing violin with Sam. I don't even practice. Life is just same-o, same-o. If it weren't for going to Ulpan, it would be pretty boring. But I l-o-v-e going to Ulpan.
There are about 22 students, when they all show up, and we're all in the same boat, meaning we're trying to learn as much as we can as fast as we can. Which probably stimulates the teacher to talk more, and faster, and throw in extra words that we can't possibly memorize fast enough. If we'd all play dumb, she'd have to slow down. Or maybe not, since we have to finish the book one way or another. Today the teacher passed out a bunch of different pictures and we were supposed to discuss (in Hebrew, of course) with each other what we thought the people in the pictures were saying or thinking. Such as: a silhouette of two people arguing angrily, or another of two people with their backs to each other like they were refusing to speak to each other. Or one of three people talking together while a fourth is off to the side with her arms folded frowning at them. Or one of a man getting off a plane with several bags and trying to manage several small children. Or a woman looking upward with her hands on her hat. Or a woman with a mischievous look about to pour water on the face of a man who is snoring. Or a baby with a surprised look on his face. Or a woman underneath a desk with computers and wires all around. She looked like she could have been thinking, "This is a really big problem," or "What a hopeless mess!" or, "Do I dare plug this into this?" Or, "I think I need someone to help."

Somewhere along the line I picked up the Russian word for blanket and the French word for beach. This has the tendency to become addicting.

I think stone walls look nice with flowers in front of them. Or flowers look nice with a stone wall behind them.



I am not a city person at heart, but I must say that I can't imagine a better city than Jerusalem to live in.