Growing Up Creative

Celebrating Shavuot with family and friends

This is how:
Dress up in white
Pack up a picnic basket with delicious dairy spread (including moms cheese cake)
Call up some close friends and family
Find a green spot
Pick up some flowers
Make flower crowns with your children (the old fashion way).
Enjoy a special day outside with family and friends.

^{The Seamstress flower crown}

How to make a flower crown: (3 different ways)

The old school way
You will need:
An ivy branch
Additional flowers
String/ wire/ pipe cleaners

How to:

1. Pick up a branch of ivy
2. Shape into a circle, large enough to fit on the person’s head, and tie with some string or wire. 
3. If you use a branch with flowers like jasmine, this would be it for you; otherwise you may add some flowers around the branch by tying them with string or wire .

The low-tech way (I dare you)
You will need:
25 flowers with about 5 inches of stem (dandelions or daisies are perfect for that)

How to:

1. Gather 25 flowers; make sure that the stems are about 4 to 5 inches long so they can be tied easily.
2. Make a slit in the stem about a 1/4-inch long through the middle of each flower stem. This should be 2 inches below the head of the flowers. Use your fingernail to do this or you can use a sharp knife. 
3. Slip the end of a flower's stem through the slit you have made and pull it until you get to the head of the flower. Repeat with the next flower. Keep going in this manner until you've made a chain of flowers long enough to make a crown. Make sure you measure before you finish it off.
4. Weave the ends of the chain to form a ring. Insert each end through slits in the stems to secure it.

The Seamstress way
You will need:
Approximately 25 flowers (this works best with flowers that have petals that are connected and that get separated easily from the stem. Don’t worry; every other flower is like that)
An embroidery thread
Thick rounded needle

How to:

1. Gather the flowers.
2. Separate the crown of the flower from the sepal/ stem.
3. String thread through the center of the flower. Continue with the next flower until the string of flowers is long enough for a crown.
4. Tie ends. 

For great memories
Happy Shavuot everyone

My moms cheese cake

Jewish holidays are all about food, don’t you think? One of my truly favorite is Shavuot. I just love anything cheese, especially my mom’s cheese cake. It is the kind of cake you eat with a spoon straight from the pan. I am very stingy about sharing that cake, but I will gladly share the recipe (see below).

It was not until my uncle invited us to a barbecue on Shavuot that I started wondering about the tradition of eating dairy on Shavuot. I was a bit puzzled with the offer I must say. Looking for an answer, I was not surprised to find several different explanations (you know what they say 10 Jewish people, 100 different Opinions). The practical explanation for eating dairy originated when the Jewish people received the Torah at Mount Sinai on Shavuot; which included instructions for how to slaughter and prepare meat for eating. Until then, the Jews had not followed these laws, therefore all their meat including the cooking pots were now considered "not kosher". Since the revelation of Mount Sinai occurred on Sabbath, when slaughter and cooking is prohibited, the only option the Jewish people had was to eat dairy; and I am thankful for that…as for the barbecue proposal, I have also learned that on the holiday of Shavuot, a two-loaf bread offering was brought in the Temple. To commemorate this, we eat two meals on Shavuot, first a dairy meal, and then, after a short interruption, we eat the traditional holiday meat-meal. I guess I will also be barbecuing this year…

For other explanations follow this link

My moms cheese cake:

Preheat oven to 350 °F / 180 °C

Mix all the following ingredients in a bowl:
750 grm / 1.5 lb soft cheese*
200 grm/ 8 ounce Sour cream
6 spoons self rising flour
6 spoons vanilla instant pudding (the powder) usually makes one pack
5 egg yolks
2 spoons of oil

In a separate bowl:
Beat 5 egg whites gradually and add 2/3 cup of sugar till mixture is firm. Fold egg white mixture gently in to the cheese mixture.

Pour mixture into an oiled pan, place pan in a bigger pan filled with water (keeps the cake moist while baking), place in oven

Bake for about 1 hour
Cake is ready when it is firm yet fluffy; make sure you get a golden brown color on top. (My mom always burns it a bit…my favorite part of the cake)
Turn off oven and leave cake inside to cool down.

*soft cheese can be farmer’s cheese, or light fluffy cream cheese. The best is to use the Israeli soft white cheese by Tnuva or Strauss (Ski) can be found in any local Israeli/ kosher market.

get the spoons ready...

If you have any other MUST Shavuot recipes, please share.

bed time story turns good fortune

I was trying to get five cheerful and overexcited kids to sleep, Zoe, Ori and 3 of their cousins,  all camping in their grandparents living room. Yonatan was insisting I should make up a bedtime story, and I was going for the challenge. I knew we were going to visit Beit Govrin caves in the morning (located in the Judea desert not too far from Jerusalem, hundreds of man made caves rich with history dated back approximately 2500 years). I have decided to use the caves as the background for my story. I needed something to start with and that’s all I could think of. I ended the story with 12 lost stones carved by a young girl made of soft chalk shaped like a heart. After a good night sleep, they all woke up determined to find those stones. I was a little stressed (well, not really stressed but already thinking of a story that will explain the disappearance of those stones) I don’t remember ever visiting the caves, but being a little familiar with the area I figured that most likely the local stone is chalk and a heart is an easy shape to imagine. I can’t tell you how relieved I was when they found not one but three heart shaped stones. The story wasn’t that great, but the legend was now real and that’s all they could talk about. We got really lucky that day, not only for finding those stones but also for getting to Beit Govrin on the World Migratory Bird Day without even knowing a day like that existed. We watched 3 Ciconias being released back to nature after getting treated for injuries on their path of travel to warm climate (It was very emotional, I was holding back the tears watching those birds being released back to nature), we solved riddles, watched a movie about the dangers awaiting to migrating birds, made some birds from recycled materials, and all in an amazing setting surrounded by thousands of years of history, breathtaking landscape, and family…Great fortune indeed.

^{heart shape chalk stone found in Beit Govrin.}

^{one of the Bell Caves in Beit Govrin}

^{a Ciconia before being released back to nature}

Spending time listening to music

Life seems so busy nowadays that listening to music for the sake of listening to music without doing at list 2 more things at the same time seems luxurious. It is not that long ago that I used to do just that; go to a record store, spend at least an hour browsing for a new record, go back to my apartment, pour my self a glass of cheap red wine and JUST listen. I see that same pleasure in Zoe’s eyes (minus the wine) when she Is JUST listening to music (even if it’s the High School Musical 2 sound track), doing nothing else but immersing herself with sounds of her choice, detached from everything else around her.

^{Zoe listening to music on the train from Haifa to Rehovot}