Knife Skills

Imagine my surprise when I returned to the kitchen from changing Batya's diaper to find Shira standing on a dining room chair at the counter holding half an orange in one hand and a knife in the other. (The orange was whole when I left.) Need I say I crossed the length of our kitchen in record time?

Lately Shira has been moving anything she can find into the kitchen to help her get into the upper cabinets. She has dished out cereal and lollipops to her sisters, offered the juice boxes and come to me with bags of pasta for dinner. Aba has threatened to put the kitchen gate back up, but I don't think that is the answer. For one thing, I'm in there a lot and they like to help me clean and cook. This is why I'm working on moving my desk or freezer out of the kitchen so that I can move in a short work surface for them. So I work at keeping an eye on her, listening for the tell-tale sound of furniture being moved and I'm busy decluttering and finding homes for everything.

My first instinct was to take the knife away and screech at her. But she looked so proud as she told me that she was cutting the orange. So I told her that she was welcome to cut things but she had to have Ima or Aba there to help until she got really good at it because she could hurt herself. At this point she shows me her finger and a very shallow cut and tells me it hurts. (It was one of those papercut types of cuts on the side of her index finger.)

I made her get off the chair and use the stool. Then I told her that we only cut on the board. Next we positioned the orange half on the board and we cut the orange into wedges. I kept my hands over hers to stop her, but let her do the cutting. Whenever she got to the point where her fingers were in danger I stopped her and, keeping her hands and the knife as they were, I showed her that if she continued she would cut herself. Then we corrected our grips and continued.

She ended up cutting two oranges into 4 pieces each. At the very end Batya came in and wanted to cut, too. I told her tomorrow so I guess I know what snack we'll be having. We plated our oranges and had them with dinner and I bandaged up Shira's finger.

Later I was Kmart and came across a package of four tiny paring knives. I purchased them and put away all of my knives. (They used to hang on a magnetic wall rack.) The paring knives will go up next week (pushed to the end so they are harder to get, but still out).

Needless to say there are no pictures of this experience. I'm hoping to get Aba to take a picture sometime, but he is a bit freaked out about it so I don't know.

First Haircut Pictures

Overheard

The girls were playing in the bedroom while I reorganized the bathroom closet. Chaya has my book light open and is talking on it like a phone. She sees me and does that thing where you pull the mouthpiece of the phone back to talk to someone in person.

C: I talking to my grandpa.
Me: You are?
C: Yeah. (Goes back to talking on the phone.)
B: (Reaching for the "phone".) I want to talk to my grandpa.
C: Noooo! I talking to MY grandpa. You talk to your grandpa later. Shira talk to her grandpa later. I talk to MY grandpa now.

Quick Update

Well, its been a while since I posted but things have been hectic around here and still are. So, this is a quick update followed hopefully by uploading of a couple pictures. But never fear because NaBloPoMo is right around the corner so you will hear more than enough posts from me.

I've been busy getting the last of the stuff ready for our trip. A couple last-minute orders of warm clothing and travel toys and soon I will be getting everything packed up and ready.

I've also been trying to declutter and reorganize stuff. I know I won't get too much done right now, but I'm trying to get a bit done before my big December purge.

I've figuring out Hannukah gifts for the girls. I'm thinking baby gear for Batya, but I'm not sure about Chaya or Shira. I'm also trying to plan our chesed project. My two ideas are to collect food for the food pantry or to "adopt" a needy family. I know that at 2 years 8 months the girls won't fully understand it, but they are understanding the idea of giving tzedakah before we do certain things or when buying groceries so I definitely want to do something.

Knitting wise I've almost finished Batya's Joseph and I've got a nice swatch for Aba's Cambridge Jacket. I swatched Pearl Buck and it is okay so I'm going to give it a try on smaller needles to see if I prefer it.

Scrapbooking wise I've started taking a digital scrapbooking class and hope to start scrapbooking more.

Housing wise it looks like we will be here through the end on 2009. So a lot of those little things I've been holding off on around here thinking we would move soon will get done. (Can anyone say spackel?)

I think that is about it. I have some pictures of the girls' new haircuts but I need to hunt down the card reader. It was a bit of an unpleasant experience, but I'm getting over it and I've fixed Chaya's hair. Shira's looks better with some decent styling and I know it will grow back.

I guess this isn't too quick on an update, huh?

Some Dishes from Rosh haShannah

Before candle lighting I was able to snap a couple pictures of simanim and some salads. I was hurrying so some pictures are a bit blurry. Sorry.

Chard with a few halved pear tomatoes for color. This is one of those dishes I'm attmepting to replicate but never get it just right. Aba's safta a"h used to make a chard dish. I made it once and it was "just like safta's" but since then I havent' been able to replicate it. I'm pretty sure this is the recipe I originally used, but there is just *something* missing.

Blackeyed peas tossed with the standard olive oil/lemon juice/salt/pepper/garlic/parsley dressing. I also added some red onion.

Selek. The girls were so confused because I usually get yellow beets, but I wasn't able to make it to the farmer's market on Wednesday. We asked if they wanted selek and they said no, they wanted "that one" pointing at the red beets.


Cedarline makes a yummy chickpea salad that I've been working at replicating. Again, soooooo close but just not there yet. I didn't put the edamame in it and the spices are off. I just might have to pick up another package of it and season mine when they are side-by-side.

Matbucha and pomegranate. If anyone has a chance to cacth the Good Eats episode on pomegranates, you have to watch it just for the part on getting the arils out without them exploding. I peeled nine of them and not a speck of red. (I'm pretty sure it is in this half of the show.)


Carrots. Notice where someone was slipping carrots off the dish? My girls attack salads. You would think I don't feed them.


I didn't plan it this way, but we ended up with five fish heads. Aba was kind of grossed out by it. The girls were just confused because the rest of the fish was gone.


I got some raw honey from Marshall's Honey (LOVE Local Harvest!) and put three different kinds into Moroccan tea cups to serve. We had Wild West, orange blossom and Napa Valley wildflower. All were yummy but I love the richness of the Wild West.


Another Local Harvest find, I got the kahlal dates from Pato's Dream and hung them in the kitchen to ripen. Some are still yellow, crunchy and tart and others are so sweet it isn't funny. I bought 5 pounds and still have a fair amount left. Needless to say around July I will start haunting their site to get updates on the new crop.

This dish was wonderful! It is butternut squash that is baked with just a bit of water. While that is going on, you saute some onion, garlic, olive oil, cinnamon and honey until it is almost a confit. Then you spread the onions on the gourd and top with plumped raisins and bake a bit longer.


I'm really bummed that I forgot to get a picture of the cake. The girls are into birthday cakes so I kept telling them that it was the world's birthday. i made a yellow cake with chocolate frosting and then sat the girls down with some big star-shaped non-pareils and they decorated it. They had a blast and the cake was cute and delicious.