creative jewish mom

Snowglobe Cookies With Royal Icing Make Great Winter Party Favors!

 

How about a big round of applause for my 15 year old daughter on her second attempt ever at royal icing, the outcome being these too adorable for words snowglobe snowman cookies! There is just something so wonderfully irresistible about royal icing, though since I'd rather not spend my creative time baking I'm more than happy to let my daughter have all the fun with this one. Since I'm there in any case I do get to live vicariously......though hoping we can figure out how to do this kind of thing without the huge time investment required, at least until we get to the top of the learning curve. We are learning all about royal icing and getting totally inspired to get really good at it from a lovely online cookine decorating class from brit and co, that I can recommend. Plus winter is a great time to spend learning something new, and especially something you can then use to spread joy all around.

The response when we served these cookies with desert this past shabbat was worth all the effort, though the Israeli born folks at the table aren't all that familiar with snow globes, so it was largely lost on them, nonetheless, the American guests appreciation was enough for the crowd. And as it turned out, we were in the middle of a huge storm, that even included a very nerve wracking power outage on Friday night, so the snowglobe theme fit right in.

A Visit To The Nahariya Boardwalk In The Winter!

Now that my 14 year old son is in sleep-away yeshiva high school in Nahariya he only comes home every other shabbat, which means that every other week we go to visit him. And I have to say I am certainly not complaining as it forces us to visit the Mediterranean Sea, and the drive across the North of the country heading west is indeed quite lovely. Yes it is true it is an hour there and an hour back, but staying connected with our son is of the utmost importance, and at times I feel so very fortunate that his yeshiva is located just ten minutes or so from my favorite stretch of Israeli Mediterranean coastline!

A few weeks ago we decided to check out the boardwalk in the center of Nahariya, a very lively place in the summer, and a very quiet place in the winter! I have to say, I always appreciate beaches much more when they are devoid of crowds, so just enjoying the stretches of sand and the hues of blue in the ocean was truly a treat. Wont you join me?

A Visit To Rosh HaNikra, Israel On The Mediterranean Coast

Once every two weeks or so, my husband and I drive about an hour west to visit our 14 year old son who is in sleep-away Yeshiva in Nahariya. Fortunately Nahariya happens to be on the Mediterranean, and so after years of being starved of the ocean views that I crave, I am now happy as can be, as each visit we generally go for a drive and visit a site somewhere in the vicinity. This time we decided to visti Rosh HaNikra, which is less than a 15 minute drive (10km/6 miles) from the Yeshiva, and one of my very favorite places in Israel.

Rosh HaNikra, "head of the grottos" is on the border between Israel and Lebanon, located on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. It is a white chalk cliff face which opens up into spectacular grottos which are accessible by a tram. i have actually never been on the Rosh HaNikra tram, known as a cable car to some, and hopefully we'll have the chance to do it in the future. This visit we just enjoyed the view and inspected the border, and with lovely cool and sunny weather it was a perfect little outing. Come join me for a little visit.......