This ones for you, Spencer

A friend of mine recently requested a mention on my blog, [see title] so as he shlepped up north to see us I have granted his request.  Things have not really changed since we lived in Bushey, we still lie about how many miles we live from wherever people are coming from, otherwise they don’t come. It seems Jews have a worldwide fear of driving North. Anyway we love having guests over, especially people that play with our kids so if you are ever in the holy land, drop us a visit. We might even give you a real english (non-cream) tea.

Life has been fairly quiet up in Karmiel, my patience with the Matnas finally ran out after I slammed the phone down on the rude receptionist yesterday (then bumped into her in the supermarket this morning – ouch) andyway I have a written a letter to the Mayor complaining about the treatment we have received there. Now we wait. There is often a reluctance by new olim to enter into these debates as everybody knows that customer service is not a high priority in Israel, and if you can’t do anything then why get cross? You can’t do anything – right? WRONG. A fellow oleh friend of ours has recently set up a fabulous website where we can all have a good old whinge about the service we receive, and make sure nobody else goes back to these cursed places. And if the service is great, we can rave about it. So the next time I have a bad experience, I will be flashing a card with the website – “you think it doesn’t matter that you have been rude to us? Well there are 100,000 people on this website, and trust me NONE of them will ever be eating in your restaurant/shopping in your store/coming to your matnas ever again….” Can’t wait.

[see http://www.cheeseleweeze.com/ ]

Jojo has now started speaking beautifully, and in an effort to help him learn his english words (or just to keep him amused) we spend a lot of time pointing and naming objects.  He can even use adjectives now, but this unfortunately backfired on Husband in shul recently when Jojo loudly and merrily pointed out the “Big Clock! Big Clock!” during the amidah. 

Trouble is he can’t say the letter “L”. 

You may remember a while back I mentioned an inspired version of shepherds pie, [Israeli style] that I tasted at a mates house. Well, I saw a cookery programme whilst waiting at the doctor the other day (why do all mums have to justify watching daytime tv???) and I saw some bloke making another version. I presume he was a chef, but the sound was off and I was relying on the subtitles so he could have been anyone. Anyway he showed this girl how to make the ideal “bologneise”, then he cooked some couscous, spread this over a casserole dish, covered it with the bolognaise, sprinkled pine nuts on top and baked it for about a half hour or so. He then made some tehina, in the usual way, took the casserole out of the oven and spread the tehina on top. Then sprinkled on more pine nuts and baked it a few minutes more. He cut it into slices and it looked just like a pie. Served with Israeli salad. I can’t decide if this is truly disgusting or inspired.

PLEASE VOTE:

Sounds delicious

Could work

Truly disgusting

THANKS!