If you have found yourself fruitlessly searching for romaine or iceberg lettuce at your local grocer, you are not alone. Faced with a shortage due to a dry growing season in California, followed by a virus that killed off a lot of the remaining lettuce crop, lettuce is in very limited supply and prices for the leafy greens have tripled. But there is no need to eschew your daily five…
As we traversed the streets of the Geulah neighborhood of Jerusalem at 9:30 in the evening, the sidewalks teemed with shoppers accompanied by excited children and sleeping babies, everyone enjoying the cooler evening air. Welcome back Israel after a two-year Covid hiatus. With my cell phone clutched tightly to my ear, I listened attentively as my son gave me careful and detailed instructions directing me to his favorite bookstore in…
According to the New York Times, more than 750 flights with at least one stop in the United States were canceled this past holiday weekend as the Omicron variant of the coronavirus sidelined crews during one of the year’s busiest times for travel. In New Jersey, lines at Covid testing centers are hours long putting a further crimp in the plans of travelers (sigh). It’s time for a getaway to…
After a two year Covid hiatus, we were privileged to join our children and their families for the last four days of Chanukah. Candle lighting was beautiful as each family member lit their own menorah. The flames danced and flickered in the darkness while we joined in singing Ma’oz Tzur, the Jewish liturgical poem or piyyut, celebrating our spiritual deliverance from our enemies. On Sunday we celebrated with a family…
My mother tasted a banana for the first time, as an eight-year-old girl in Paris, shortly after the end of the Second World War. The precious fruit was a gift from her uncle who was serving in the American army, and who decided to pay a call on the French branch of the family before returning home. Mom was perplexed by this new fruit, not realizing that she had to…
I dipped my spoon into a bowl of creamy, smooth mushroom soup and savored the rich umami flavor as it glided over my tongue. I tore off a small piece of crunchy multigrain bread, a house specialty, and gazed around the room. It was lunchtime and the restaurant was hopping. Friends catching up with each other, businessmen meeting, mothers and daughters laughing over the latest antics of precious children (who…
Attending to the myriad of details that accompany a shalom zachar, the gathering celebrating the arrival of a Jewish baby boy on the first Friday night after his birth, is very exciting. Tables and chairs are dragged into the dining room from their hidden storage places, older siblings very generously offer to test the candy platters purchased for the event, and neighbors and friends drop by with plates of homemade…
“I’m strong to the finish ’cause I eats me spinach.” With these immortal words, Popeye tears open a can of spinach, acquires superhuman strength, overcomes his nemesis Bluto and wins the undying devotion of his girlfriend Olive Oyl, that is, until the next cartoon. As a four-year-old fan of the plucky sailor, I asked my mother to buy a can of spinach but she demurred. “I don’t think you’ll like…
I scanned the leaden grey skies for a ray of sunshine, fruitlessly. Welcome to Toronto in December. The dull ceiling of clouds glowering above my head reflected my mood; it was time to go shopping for a treat. I was looking forward to the arrival of a new crop of blood oranges at my local fruit store. Strictly a winter fruit, my stash had been depleted months ago. I left…
This past Sunday morning, if you happened to see me face down on the ice at our neighborhood outdoor skating rink, rest assured, I was not in the middle of a sun salutation yoga pose. I was not even examining the whorls in the ice for evidence of fossils. The only fossil at the rink that day was lying on the ice. Last week I bought a pair of ice…