Week in Review

Consider this photo a little treat from me to you - a cookie favor bag! Wouldn't it be fun to get one of these when you were leaving a simcha - a nice snack for the way home or a bribe for your kids who were stuck at home while Imma and Abba partied? Or a nice addition to a welcome bag for your guests when you make a weekend simcha? A great thank you for everyone hosting your guests? Choose your flavors, your decoration, tie a little note on the top to say thanks for making this a special day... I think it's a cool idea!

I noticed that this week's entries sort of missed a lot of the week's goings on. On Sunday, we had a Rotter-Katsman barbeque to bid farewell to eating meat. A good and filling time was had by all, very little was leftover, and the little kids especially had a great time running around together, playing, and generally raising the decibel level in the neighborhood. After we got everything cleaned up, we started on the next project - it was our night for bringing coffee to the chayalim, so we had to get that ready and head out before we fell asleep ourselves. We got to the first machsom and found that it was much cooler there than it was by us. Mind you, this is five minutes from the house. We served everyone there, and they all seemed happy to be having a hot drink. Then we went to the second machsom, less than five minutes from our house and about eight minutes from our first stop, to discover that it was substantially hotter there and extremely muggy. Of course the chayalim there were unhappy that we had no ice pops or cold drinks for them (felt a little sheepish not to have thought of it), but they did happily accept the cookies. We were going to come back with cold stuff for them, but then a policeman brought some for them, so they told us not to bother but thank you very much. But all this just goes to show you how crazy and varied the climate is here - every five minutes of travel brings a climate change.

Monday brought Ariella's various appointments: speech therapy, pediatrician, and tutor, and we even managed to squeeze camp in there as well. Tuesday was Dani's dermatologist appointment, which was not a rousing success for our terrible patient. He will be returning there soon... Wednesday was Ariella's dental visit and Shana's optometrist visit - new contacts and a new prescription. Then was baking prep, a visit to the paper goods store, and more baking prep. In between we began our dairy odyssey, or as many are know to call it, the week of sauce and cheese.

Dani and Ariella went on a tiyul on Thursday to the Cholon Children's Museum. On Thursday morning, I reminded Ariella that she had to wear her camp t-shirt and hat because they were going on a trip. She wanted to know where they were headed, and I told her her, "Muzeon Hayeladim b'Cholon." She screwed up her face and said "We have to go through a chalon (window)?" Misunderstanding cleared up, she had a great time and said it was the best tiyul ever. Keep in mind when reading, all of her statements must be imagined in her little Israeli/Hungarian accent...

I spent Thursday in baking and baking and baking. I was kind of pleased with myself that I had organized well and plotted out everything I needed to do with some precision. I ended up getting to bed much earlier than I do on many normal Thursdays when I have only to produce five types of cookies and not ten, and do not have quite as many orders. Clearly, I work better when the degree of pressure is amped way up.

Friday morning was for cooking and packing up the trays. I sketched out configurations for each size and the variations, and Shana did an excellent job assembling them. I wrapped, she labeled, and we were good to go. The only minor snafu we had was when a customer came to pick up her trays and suddenly realized that she had forgotten that one had to be peanut-free, as they were going out to the home a a highly allergic young man. Fortunately, we had the supplies to put together a new platter, and all was well. After all, we aim to make people happy, not make them stop breathing. For such a customer, this was the platter:

This platter contained thin mint sandwiches, orange-cranberry-white chocolate cookies, molasses cream sandwiches, sugar cookie ganache sandwiches, whoopie pies, Mexican brownies, blueberry bars, and lemon bars.

This is the larger size of the fan favorites platter. Clockwise from the center: molasses cream sandwiches, Mexican brownies, orange-cranberry-white chocolate cookies, peanut butter bars, linzer cookies, blueberry bars, whoopie pies, lemon bars, and thin mint sandwiches.

I received good feedback, and didn't hear about any allergic reactions, so that's always nice...

Shabbat was pretty quiet. We made early Shabbat again this week, though I think that is a trend that will not last too much longer, maybe just a few more weeks. Three new families were welcomed to the neighborhood. After father-son learning (actually parent-child, but it's David and Dani who attend), David and I hung out in the park with Ariella for a while and chatted with the grown-ups who ventured out in the heat, while waiting for it to cool off a bit. When it did, we headed home for our fleishig seuda shlishit, and that was that. Tomorrow is another day, and I am sure there will be much to do. For now, have a shavua tov.

Dvora