creative jewish mom

Today Is The Day To Bake Shlissel Key Shaped Challah!

In preparation for the first Shabbos after Passover, many Jewish women (mostly of Eastern European descent) have the lovely custom of baking challahs in the shape of keys, or baking challah with a key placed under the loaves or in the pan. I've done all of these versions, but have settled on the idea of making the challahs in the actual shape of a key, as you can guess!

I am rushing to clean up the kitchen and still do some more household tasks, but I had to share these photos with you, in case you too will grab some moments of precious time for this fabulous custom. And if you'd like to learn more about the Jewish women's mitzvah of "taking challah", there's plenty of info out there, or drop me a line!

You can see my previous attempts here, and learn more about the custom here, enjoy! Gotta run, shabbat shalom, hope to have a few moments to photograph them after baking!

I took this photo with my nine year old dressed in his shabbos best just as he was running out, and am posting this photo now, after the key challahs were devoured and a beautiful shabbos has come to an end, Shavua Tov !

P.S: Key shaped challahs are quite fragile at the neck, so handle carefully or they can break easily. Good thing I made two, this is the one that survived intact!

Moroccan Mofleta: The First "Bread" After Passover!

Here in Israel, Passover ended last night, and just as soon as we were able to wash all the dishes and pack up all the pots and kitchen items that we use only on Passover, we headed over to a neighbor for a festive post-Passover Moroccan get together called a mimouna. In order to host a party of this kind at one's home directly after the holiday one first of all needs to be very efficient in the kitchen, and one needs a few extra pairs of hands!

So when I arrived at my friend's home, I was relieved to see that there were four women working quickly to prepare the mimouna treat, according to the above recipe, which is called mofleta. Mofleta is eaten with honey, butter and preserves, and it is prepared with such dedication each year as the first leavened product after Passover, as it brings blessings into the home. It was so much fun watching my Canadian born friends (who all speak English, French, Hebrew and some even a Jewish dialect of Moroccan Arabic!) of Moroccan decent slaving away with joy, and I have to say, these were the most delicious mofleta I have ever tasted! They prepared 5 kilos worth of mofleta, and were already thinking about next year, with a goal of 8 kilos worth! 

Photo above: Mofleta dough is made, shaped into small balls, (the ones in the photo were, I was told shaped by a helper who really didn't know what she was doing.....they should be much more ball shaped) and then then each ball is pushed into the shape of a very thin pancake with the hands, and lots and lots of oil to aid in the process. Oil on the hands, oil on the counter, a plate of oil ready and waiting! This was the detail that I hadn't quite understood when watching mofleta preparation years ago, and so when I prepared mofleta myself I used a rolling pin, horrors of horrors! Next time I'll do it the right way (maybe, if I can bring myself to use all that oil!)

Photos above: On the left, one places the rolled out mofleta onto a stack of mofleta that have already been baked and are left in the pan. On the right, one then flips over the whole stack such that the raw mofleta will now be on the bottom!

Got it? If not, don't worry, just get yourself invited to a mimouna sometime, or try to learn from someone who really knows! For a recipe in English, see my previous post here, in which I actually used whole wheat flour instead of the traditional white flour, which you may prefer. Enjoy, and feel free to ask questions if you have them!

Chocolate Almond Matzo Bark!

Chocolate almond matzo bark — a fabulous solution for using up all the little bits of nuts and things left over from after a week of Passover, while making a delicious treat! With the last day of the holiday just a few hours away, I'm rushing as usual to finish up my cooking, but had to share this one with you all, as it's so simple and delicious....of course you don't have to add the matzo, or the coconut, and maybe you have some raisins or craisins, or hazelnuts, which would be great too!

Just melt a few 100g bars of dark chocolate in a double boiler, and pour over the mix you've made with chopped nuts, matzo etc. Sprinkle coconut on top and put in the fridge or freezer to cool.

Chag Sameach!

The Light At The End Of The (Pesach) Tunnel

A few days ago as I was working in the kitchen as part of our extensive and exhausting preparations for Pesach, I looked out the window and saw this gorgeous site. Of course, I ran to grab my camera so that I could share this message with you: to appreciate the light, you must first experience darkness!  

And that my friends is the universal message of Passover, as well as the idea that one way to truly appreciate the holiday is to not only work like a slave in ridding ourselves physcially and spiritually of leavened products, (which represent an inflated ego) but to also work on ridding ourselves of all the things to which we are slaves!

So, in my own personal effort to do just that, I'll share with you all one of the things to which I'm a slave, and for which I suffer greatly now as we clean and organize the whole house from top to bottom in preparation for Passover. Here goes! Can you guess?

Because my life is very busy, and I'm always rushing to clean up, I have the practice of stuffing the supplies from a crafting project into a box or into a bag and putting it on the floor in my studio, and closing the door. Well after months of this kind of practice, we have to call the room a store room as opposed to an office or studio! And believe me, it gets really really out of hand, such that no one execept my family ever sees the room!

Phew, now that I've spilled the beans, maybe this will be the year to stop being a slave to all my craft stuff and the recycled containers and the stuff that the neighbors unload on me, and more and more......oh and the supplies to make centerpieces and packages for Purim and bridal chairs, together with past craft projects......and the mementos from my childhood and travels, and more and more.....!

Fortunately, Pesach is also about hope. So it is my true hope that this will be a year in which we will all be free from slavery, free from those things which prevent us from being our very best selves, and a year in which we can bask in the light of freedom. Amen!

Passover Kid's Craft: Seder Pillowcases!

Kid's can easily whip up these Passover seder pillowcases  while you're busy finishing up (hopefully!) your preparations for the holiday! I sure wish I had some extra time myself to draw some fun pictures on pillowcases, but it looks like I'll have to leave that up to my kids.....still so much to do!

At the Passover seder, while drinking each of the four cups of wine (grapejuice) we recline, so pillows are in order, and certainly make the seder special! The hebrew in the photo above says layil ha'seder, meaning "seder night."

You'll Need:

• fabric pens or crayons
• a pencil
• pillowcases
• a piece of cardboard to put inside the pillowcase

How To: First draw your idea on the pillowcase in pencil, and additionally, it's highly recommended to do a small rendering of your idea on a piece of paper, though I can't say I could convince my kids to do it! Go over the pencil lines with fabric pens, set with heat as directed by the manufacturer, and enjoy at the Passover seder(s). 

My kids have been making these fun pillowcases for a few years now,(you can see our previous pillowcases here), so we even have a small collection of them, which is so much fun to look at as the years go by! Here's to more family crafting traditions!

Passover Craft: Wine Goblet Decorations From Recycled Plastic!

These fun wine goblet ornaments for Passover were not made from just any plastic, but rather from extra plastic lids that I found floating around while cleaning out my cabinets for Passover! And I'll be honest, I actually blogged about using plastic lids for making crafting shapes two years ago, though never got around to sharing the results of my little crafting endeavor! As I was attempting to start cleaning out my studio, I came across these ornaments that I hung on our dining room table chandelier two years ago, and of course had to share them with you! 

Yes, dear readers, Passover isn't just about matzo, it also happens to be about wine (grape juice), as we drink four cups during the seder at specific points in the telling of the Jewish people's exodus from Egypt. So decorations depicting the four cups of wine is perfect!

You'll Need:

• plastic food container lids, like from ice cream for example, which are usually blank on the under side
• good sharp scissors
• puff paint or bead paint, in applicator bottles (tulip)

How To:

Draw your shape on a piece of cardboard, cut it out and trace around it to transfer your design to the plastic. Apply designs with puff paint, and add additional decorative elements such as sequins and beads if desired. Do be aware that plastic is not necessarily the greatest base for making long lasting items with kid safe glue, as things tend not to stick so well, but that's okay, just handle with care, and enjoy!

A Roundup Of Delicious Passover Recipes!

Above: Beet Salad With Almonds And Chives, find the recipe here from Joy of Kosher 

I'll have to admit, I've been too busy cleaning and organizing to think about actually cooking, and since we'll be going to family for the Seder, I really don't need to be thinking about cooking now anyway, phew. Okay, I do have to have a rough idea of what we'll be eating other than matzo for the next week, as I do need to do some grocery shopping, but my husband informed me that we're going to be doing barbeque all week, which means all I have to do is prepare a salad! Don't be too jealous, this is a first, I'm usually happily cooking up a storm! But it just so happens that we raised a lamb at a friend's farm, and now our freezer is full of lamb that is really at it's best on the barbeque, and no complaints from me!

Okay, enough babble, I still have so much to do, but I did take some time to look at some of my favorite sites for some recipes for Passover that might be of interest to you. Of course there really are tons of great recipes out there on sites like gourmet kosher cooking, and the jewish hostess, and joy of kosher cooking, it's just that for the sake of great visual content I had to choose recipes that had great photos too! So here's a few of my favorites, and if you go to the New York times links, jot down the recipes if they look good to you, since you're only allowed to view ten free articles a month.

Salmon cakes with tropical fruit salsa, recipe here from Joy of Kosher

Five Charoset Recipes From Around The World, recipe here from Joy of Kosher

Fresh Fava Bean Soup, For The Sephardic Passover kitchen, from The New York Times

Non dairy flan from The New York Times, and Almond Lemon Macaroons from The New York Times

Okay, gotta run, all this food is making me hungry, and at a time like this there just isn't time to be thinking about food! Well except to help you think about food! Have a wonderful and fulfilling Passover holiday!

Monster Ketchup For The Ten Plagues

Here is it, the simplest monster party idea ever, monster ketchup, and right now it's all about monster ketchup for the Passover Seder, you know for the plague of dam (blood)! Most of us don't have time for more than a ten minute craft at this point, so this one's perfect, and if you buy some new ketchup for Passover with a bottle that's covered in a label, so simply tear off the label and get to work. 

I'd keep this monster ketchup idea as a surprise for the seder personally if I were you, since it's sure to get the kids excited! And of course they'll have lots of fun using it all week long, or however long it lasts! And if this isn't quite your idea something you'd like on your Passover table, so keep this idea under your hat for a summer bar-b-que!

You'll Need:

• a bottle or two of red ketchup bottles with plastic labels that are easily removable
• a permanent marker or paint pen
• a tiny bit of monster imagination

Now of course, you could take my idea one step further and glue on some hair and some feet/claws of some sort or even do the face in pieces of cut paper, but it's really not necessary! And if you're looking for some more ten plagues ideas, so take a look at my ten plagues placards from last year, or any of the other crafts in my Passover archives. 

Simple Origami Jumping Frogs For Passover

Origami frogs, namely simple origami jumping frogs, that you and the kids can make in just a few minutes each, are the perfect craft for the Passover seder. And of course they'd work very nicely with the origami pyramids I posted about last week! Teach the kids how to make them, and then let them make a small army of little frogs to throw everywhere during the plagues portion of the seder. Sounds fun to me! And these frogs may even jump (or do somersaults as mine did!) just a bit when you press down on the fold just above their rear legs, which makes this craft just a bit more exciting.

You'll Need:

• green paper, the large dark green frog was made with an A4 sheet, which is a nice size, though is too heavy to jump, you'll need rectangles, not classic origami squares 
• red or neon any color paper for tongues (optional)
• markers, I used black and gel pens
• this tutorial for folding your little froggy friends

Have fun with this one, I'm off to spend the rest of the day cleaning and organizing and maybe teaching my kids this craft....my daughter has already spotted it and is ready to go, so I imagine your kids may feel the same. And at this point, they'd probably rather craft than clean right? A fair trade off I'd say!

How To Remove Old Wine Stains

Photo from here.

I just had to share this with you my friends, this story of a little Purim miracle that occurred in my home the night before Purim, and that may very well be of great use to you after the Passover seder! It goes like this: my husband has a traditional Moroccan robe that he bought last year to wear on Purim. One of our beloved guests spilled wine all over the front of the garment, and given that it's creamy yellow stripes and of unknown fabric content I just didn't know what to do! So not so surprisingly, that robe sat in the closet for a full year, until I got up the courage to look for a solution. And low and behold, I found it! Yes indeed, I was able to successfully remove all of the wine stains, and now know how to remove the new stains that happened this year. Honestly I couldn't believe it myself!

You'll Need:

• hydrogen peroxide (mai chamsan in Hebrew), available in Israel at your local pharmacy in small bottles, about 10 shekels a bottle
• liquid dish soap
• a spray bottle
• an old toothbrush

How To:

Fill your spray bottle with a solution of 1 cup water with 1/2 cup hydrogen peroxide, and then add a little bit of liquid dish soap. Spray the solution directly on the stain, and stand by as the stain disappears. Use an old toothbrush to gently scrub the stain if necessary. Depending on the type of fabric and size of stain, you may have to spray and wait several times, even over the course of several hours, but do keep an eye on the garment to make sure the hydrogen peroxide isn't acting as a bleaching agent.  I did not have this problem, but it can happen, so don't leave your garment unattended! And incidentally, after treating and removing the spots, wash your garments immediately.

Apparently, this process doesn’t actually remove the wine from your garment, rather it removes the color from the wine such that the stain becomes invisible! And I read that this formula works well on any organic stains, so try it on coffee stains, chocolate stains, tea stains, you name it. I have some clothes with mold stains on them (don't ask....) so I'm going to try this method for that too!

And last of all, one of the really great things about this little tip is that if someone spills wine at your next party you don't have to be a frantic hostess and worry about treating the stain immediately. That does seem like a sure way to make everyone a little uncomfortable don't you think? Just smile and say "don't worry, I'll take care of it later!" I do wish there were more simple solutions to all of life's little spills, don't you?