Freaky Friday

I can't actually believe I have time to sit down and write this.

This week is my son's birthday and so I have invited all the family to Kabalat Shabbat.

The family includes my parents who celebrate Kabalat Shabbat every week with a meal which we share with them, either at our house or at theirs, a couple of times a month.

The family also include my in-laws. The ma and pa in-law who are extremely secular and rarely celebrate Shabbat or in fact any Jewish festival, and the bro-in-law plus roommate who rarely eat anything but rice and lentils unless someone else is cooking.

Despite the differences, all are appreciative of my cooking and extol the delights of the various dishes I provide. Which is enough of a boost to my ego to make it all worthwhile.

Also since the purchase of a decent oven these family meals have been relatively easy as I just have to plonk seasoned chicken on the oven tray, set the timer and voila!

For once I have kept to my plan of organisation and by last night I had the birthday cake prepared as well as the home baked challah. In addition, the cabbage salad and spiced carrots were waiting patiently at the bottom of the fridge.

I was left with only the chocolate mousse to prepare and a ton of potatoes to peel.

Due to the shmitta year vegetable prices are already ready rising so instead of spending hours hacking expensive cucumbers and tomatoes into the tiny pieces required for an Israel salad I opted for frozen broccoli.

The Mediterranean diet is all very well but a girl brought up on curly kale and brussel sprouts does yearn for the occasional green vegetable. Even the cabbage in Israel is white.

Friday looked to be a pleasant day. In addition to my relatively light workload the hubby announced he was taking the day off work.

Technically Israel has a 5-day working week from Sunday to Thursday. Nevertheless, everybody we know works half day on a Friday. If my husband takes the work's bus he gets home around 2pm which gives him time to eat lunch, take a nap and shower before we leave for synagogue at 5pm.

Having him at home all day is a luxury, he can pop into town for last minute shopping, lend a helping hand with the cleaning and generally keep me company as I prepare the house for Shabbat.

Unfortunately, he came home last night with high colour and dopey eyes. By this morning he was feeling infinitely grottier and almost had a temperature. He slept late but at one point got fed up with being in bed and went out to do a little shopping.

He returned so exhausted he crawled straight back into bed and didn't surface until 2:30pm when he wandered into the kitchen in search of food.

As much as I appreciate sandwiches, I didn't feel they were appropriate nourishment for a sick man so I removed him from the kitchen and prepared some noodles. The eating of which exhausted him and he is now dozing yet again , this time on the sofa.

Of course, crazy woman that I am, I didn't feel that even the additional work of tidying and cleaning the house unaided and taking care of a sick hubby was quite enough to keep me occupied so I decided to make meatballs with peas which has recently become a favourite, especially with the hubby.

Despite tempting the fates they must have been on my side. I managed to roll the meatballs without great chucks of mince sticking to my hands, I managed to fry them without creating an impromptu burnt sacrifice and I even managed to remove them from pan to plate without too many disintegrating all over the kitchen floor.

The same luck pervaded my other cooking and housecleaning endeavours so having determinedly resisted the temptations of the internet, a comfy bed and my knitting all morning I had a prepared meal and a clean house by 2pm.

Now I am going to wrap a present and take a nap before we assess just how my poor sick spouse is going to handle the rest of the evening.