This Morning I Washed My Face In Rain Water

The alarm went off at the usual time because even though this is still a holiday the children have their synagogue youth trip today. I lay there trying to regain consciousness and heard a car drive past - accompanied by what sounded like splashing puddles!

Yes, it definitely felt colder. Yes, my ears did seem to be hearing a pit-pat of raindrops. I took a deep breath. OMG was that the smell of damp earth?

I forced my eyelids up, grappled for my glasses on the bedside table, and rushed to the window. A flip of the shutters showed the tarmac outside to be a dark, WET, grey!!

I threw on some clothes and dashed outside, nearly slipping on the wet entranceway. This was no stray cloud sprinkling a few drops of rain on its journey across our bright blue horizon.

grey clouds

The sky is grey with clouds, there is thunder rumbling in the background, and I can even hear the faint wa-wa of distant car alarms brought to life by the thunder and a violent cackle of lightening that my son claims woke him up.

grey vista

Now I sit by my computer with the window wide open, inhaling the delicious fragrance of rain soaked Israel and cooled by a chilly breeze that makes my skin tingle with the anticipation of winter.

Puddles!

Baking Buns

I thought I would start the season by blogging about the return to school. But so many other bloggers seem to have had the same idea and this year has been relatively sane if a little busy for us.

As we glide towards the end of September and Rosh Hashanah I am, as usual, totally fed up with the heat. I feel sick most of the time and have non-specific food cravings (basically, I crave anything but what I am actually eating)
My very sweet GP diagnosed it as 'an allergy to the Israeli Summer' and thinks the cause is psychological rather than a dietary deficiency. At least Goldstar makes me feel better and the Doc approved it as a treatment!

However, with a job and children to look after consuming large amounts of beer during the day is not an option and if I can't have beer baked goods make a decent substitute.
Unfortunately, our friendly local baker has moved his bakery to a location at the entrance to Shlomi, not within a distance I fancy walking in this heat. Over priced, over sweet synthetic cakes from the supermarket just don't do it for me.

So, during a momentary lapse of reason, in the middle of +30C temperatures I decided it would be a good idea to use up some ripe plums by making Marzipan Plum Buns
There was a major problem - The recipe involves yeast dough.

Now I am fine at baking basic bread and have even purchased a
Kenwood Patissier to aid me in my endeavours. However I never seem to have the time or patience for bread and can rarely roll it thin enough for cakes and cookies, resulting in an item that is all bread and little filling.


The rolling seems to be more successful if I make bread while annoyed. The kneading and knocking back take on the function of a punch bag. But I have to be rather intensely irritated for my bad humour to last through the hour of waiting for the dough to rise and I'm concerned that if my children only get to eat baked goods when their mother is feeling belligerent they will be scarred by some irreversible childhood trauma. - Do I really want them to hyperventilate whenever they encounter a doughnut?

So I was in a relatively pleasant mood when I made the dough and left it to rise. Then I stoned the plums and soaked them in wine. Once the dough had risen, I drained the plums. They were already suspiciously soft and I began to have my first serious doubts.
I was not reassured when I tried to 'stuff' them with pieces of marzipan and even the slightest squeeze turned the fruit flesh into puree.
Determined not to be defeated I knocked back the dough and divided it into sections.

Now I will be the first to admit that I am a failure at measuring by eye - size, weight, length, speed - I do not have the foggiest.
Luckily uneven portions are not a problem in this household where we all have slightly different appetites, but it can leave to more than a slightly hotchpotch effect when I am baking things in batches.

Such considerations aside I divided the dough as evenly as possible, rolled out each section, popped the marzipan stuffed plum on to the dough, and tried to massage it back into a bun shape.

This is where everything came unstuck - literally. The plums were so soft and wet they slid around on the dough which refuse to stick to itself. When I gently tried to shape the dough plum juice leaked out everywhere.

Eventually I had to fold the dough over the plum filling and pinch the edges into adhesion.

The doughy disaster cooked up quite quickly though most of the plum juice leaked out without making any attempt to soak into the dough and impart some flavour. Worst of all when I finally tasted the buns the marzipan, my main reason for endeavouring to bake these buns, was non-existent.

This plate was actually full a few minutes before the photo was taken

I have to admit that although I was disappointed with the results of my baking my daughter and husband were more appreciative. They consumed quite a quantity before I remembered to take a photograph and in the evening my husband begged me to hide them after he had already eaten half a dozen

Winter is the time for knitting

It has been raining not stop all day long. My husband even brought home photo of the hail that fell where he works.

Perfect weather for winter pursuits .... like knitting. I wait eagerly all year for the cooler weather. Impatience to start knitting is probably part of the reason I get so irritable when Winter takes in time in getting here.

This year I decided to knit some baby items for a friends' newborn granddaughter and got a little carried away with the 'bite-size' fun of baby bootees.

They only take an evening to whip up. Problem is they take almost as long to sew together!

Finally I convinced myself I must face the music, or rather the bootees, and, after several failed attempts, I have one finished bootee.

one finished bootee

one more to go

The pattern is Saartje's Bootees. The first free pattern on the right-hand side of the page.

Shake, Rattle and Roll

As if this little corner of the world doesn't suffer from enough man-made excitements today we were at nature's mercy.

The week started with and increase in temperate which caused an increase in my irritability (I mean really, too hot for jeans in mid-November - Who wouldn't find their temper more than a little strained?)

Last night with a crack or thunder and a flash of lightening the heavens opened, soaking my laundry before I could rush out and haul it in off the line.

The storm has rolled around the skies all day (as my laundry rolls around inside the dryer) thought there was a slight respite when my daughter and I made our way out of the house to her ballet lesson. As we waited at the bus stop, the storm rumbled back into position overhead turning the road and the drainage ditches into a raging torrent. I was trying to reassure my daughter that we weren't in mortal danger when the man keeping us company under the bus shelter informed me that on a beach only a few miles from us a fisherman had been stuck by lightening and killed.

Although I have felt the earthquakes on previous occasions, it was probably due to the storm that I didn't feel anything this morning.

My daughter was running around outside at break so she also didn't feel it but her friends did and the teachers called them together to explained what was happening.

The epicentre was in the Dead Sea. But they weren't large quakes.

However, we are on the Syrian African rift and the news tonight was full of scare stories of what will happen when the 'Big One' hits.

Starting the Stormy Season with a Bang

I am surrounded by blinking lights and my computer has just rebooted - yes we have experienced the first storm-induced electricity cut of the season!

Yesterday I awoke to a cool, clear morning but after a while the temperature began to climb and by mid-morning the Hamsin was in full swing. My lips felt dry and sore, I suffered from a constant thirst and my skin felt like it was being slowly baked. The trees sway like the prelude to a tropical storm but the wind is hot and instead of refreshing you, it sucks all the moisture from your body.

We went out last night and the wind cooled a little making it bearable through the car window but at midnight I was still able to walk outside wearing a sleeve-less shirt.

This morning was still warm but the sky was dark with storm clouds and at about 6:15 am the rumbling started. A few minutes later a flash of light jumped in the corner of my eye - lightening. The rain started, gently at first but then there was streak of brilliant white slicing through the sky to touch Matzuba and with a crack the skies opened. I rushed out to let the cold, fat drops fall on me but it was so cold I had to take shelter.

I dialled Dearest's number to see if it was raining near him but with another crack all the lights went out and the cordless phone went dead. Suddenly I remembered my laundry drying on the line. It was soaked and the rain was pounding down so hard I could hardly pull the clothes off the line without getting soaked myself.
My husband asked why I cut off the phone call. 'It wasn't me it was the lightening. I am in the middle of a thunderstorm.' He was amazed - up near him all was dry and quiet.

I am shivering with cold now so I have fetched a jacket and closed the windows on the side of the apartment where the wind is blowing the rain in through the nets.

After a few minutes the rain weakens and within half hour it is all over the cloud has moved on and the temperatures are climbing back up to normal. I stand outside and inhale the lovely sweet smell of rain-washed earth.

Snow

My husband just phoned me to tell me it is snowing where he works!

It has been very cold all day and has rained a lot here in Shlomi. My children actually wore hats and scarves to school this morning as well as taking their umbrellas and thick coats.

My husband works in a factory in Tefen a modern industrial park. It is on top of a small mountain and colder than here due to the elevation. He has been enjoying the cold all week and regaling me daily with stories of the fog.

I just told him to keep an eye on the bus driver as the descent from Tefen is quite steep on a deceptively curvy road where everyone drives too fast. (I once worked in Tefen and depending on the driver the descent from work could easily become a white knuckle-ride in addition to the ear-popping altitude changes)

My children have just arrived home with a friend. The friend had gloveless, and therefore frozen, hands so I have already supplied them with mugs of hot tea. (Not proper English tea, mind you. This is the weak Israeli stuff, hardly distinguishable from coloured water as far as I am concerned but the preferred liquid warming agent for Israeli children. Personally I prefer Earl Grey)

Seems my children spent playtime dodging hailstones and my daughter claims one nearly hit her in the eye.
In England I think I only once experienced hail and the stones were tiny - just larger than rice grains. In Israel we have hail at least once every winter and last year my daughter and I got caught out in a storm where the stones were the size of golf balls. We had to take shelter under a canvas awing and it was quite terrifying.
It started off as a normal hail storm but the torrent got stronger and stronger and the hailstones got larger and lager. Every time we thought the downpour was weakening it gained renewed strength and the force of the storm increased. It about half an hour and by the time it was safe to venture out the pavement was so thoroughly covered in hailstones we have to cautiously skate along on the top. We couldn't push our feet through to the pavement and just trying caused us to loose our balanced on the hard, slippery hail.

My husband says that the snow near him isn't settling but the news reports say there should be snow on the Golan at the weeked (Did you know Israel actually has a skiing resort?) so maybe we will be making a trip.

ES

Sharav!

We spent yesterday trapped in the house with all the windows shut. However this time we were not sheltering from katyushas but from the weather.
Outside there was a sharav (a heat wave) heralding the change of seasons, the harsh death rattle of summer as it yields to winter.

As the heat inside became intolerable I turned on the air conditioning but after a while it was unequal to the challenge so I turned it off again.
When I ventured out of doors the heat smacked straight into me. The thin, brittle air roasted my skin and a gentle breezed was transformed into an oven blast.
After only a couple of minutes outdoors the house felt refreshingly cool, a sanctuary from the torment outside.

By nightfall our swollen skin was aching and we were nagged by a constant thirst. The darkness didn’t bring a respite from the heat rather humidity which stuck to us as we walked from synagogue.

Sleeping was a trial as we tossed and turned trying to find a cool patch on the sheets and the most effective angle from the ventilator. Eventually it was too tiring trying to sleep so I got up to read and potter round the house. The children were also restless, taking turns in our bed, on the sofa and even on the floor.

Eventually about 9am we felt a cool breeze through the window and we opened it wider to take full advantage. By 10am the breeze had gained force and was jiggling the pictures on the wall, cooling our feverish skin.
We turned our faces to enjoy it before the strengthening sun warmed the air again towards midday.

ES

First Rain

On Friday morning as I was preparing the Rosh Hashanah meal my daughter yelled ‘It’s raining!’
I dashed outside but the few drops had already fallen and had hardly left their mark on the parched pavement. I returned to the kitchen.

A couple of minutes later my daughter was yelling again. ‘It’s raining – really raining’.
She was right, it was really raining. Not the usual first sprinkle of water – a few fat, dusty drops that splash on the ground and evaporate again before we can register their presence. It was raining, raining hard, pouring with rain.

I stood outside and my daughter joined me as I held out my arms to experience the liquid blessing on my bare skin.
I phoned my husband and held the phone skywards for him to hear the rain.

After only a minute I was actually wet and went to stand under the roof of our entrance ocasionally poking out my head to feel the rain on my scalp. My daughter rushed back into the flat for an umbrella and Wellingtons then she paraded up and down our road.

Soon there were puddles on the ground and after just a few minutes our whole roadwas an inch-deep puddle such that we had to step back from the pavement as a car past incautiously fast throwing up a spectacular spray.

Our neighbour came home with his holiday groceries and smiled indulgently at our wild antics and when the wind and pushed the rain cloud from over our heads I too continued preparing for the New Year holiday.

ES