Eight Crazy Nights

I can see that you all have been looking for me, but I have been making myself scarce lately. It was not my intention, but time just keeps slipping away. Excuses, excuses, it's just revolting, I know. Chanuka was very nice, if uneventful. Once we recovered from the shul dinner, we headed to Yerushalayim for the Rotter annual Chanuka scavenger hunt and Chanuka party. After zooming around the neighborhood to find our clues, we finished up with ice cream cake and headed home for more fun. Aviva and Josh and family came out for a Chanuka dinner, and everyone had a good time. I even photographed the quiches I made (one "Italian" vegetable and one onion), because I was oddly and unreasonably pleased with how they came out. I think I now have more pictures of food than of my children.

Tuesday was a slow day - Ayelet spent the day in Yerushalayim with Carmi. After shopping and lunching with Ariel, they went with Savta and Tzivia to an interesting exhibit of clocks at the Islamic Museum. Shana worked on her giant term paper, Dani hung out with Pacey and babysat, and I took Ariella shopping for Shabbat clothes. We had time to make latkes for dinner, and I will happily say they came out great - definitely better than the ones I made for Shabbat. And look, Shana caught the ridiculous photography bug and snapped a picture of the beautiful potato pancakes.

Wednesday was our sojourn into the center of Yerushalayim. We tried to get to the Kotel, but found it impossible to get close enough in the drizzly weather. We headed into town instead, had falafel, and started walking toward the Shuk. After a few stops at various stores, we made it there and stocked up on sugary necessities. We returned to town, had Katzefet, topped it off with a latte (it was cool and damp out, so the frozen yogurt had to be topped off with hot coffee!), and headed home. Thursday was ceramics day, then baking and Shabbat prep. This week's platters included chocolate cream dreidel sandwiches, ginger crinkles, chocolate cherry brownies, black and white cookies, honey pecan squares, linzer stars, and fondant covered dreidel sugar cookies.Because you can't really see the detail on the dreidels in this shot, I am adding a close-up.
I hope you can see the imprints on the fondant a little more clearly here - they were so cute! And surprisingly, they were actually tasty, though I will openly admit that these are vanity cookies, and not on the platter because of their fabulous flavor profile.

On Friday we headed to Har Nof for a family Shabbaton. We brought cookies to celebrate the holiday. The little kids all made lots of noise and ran wild, but happily so. Just 25 hours later, the Festival of Lights was over, and so was vacation. Packing up backpacks was the order of the evening, and heading to sleep at a normal hour. So long, time off! Welcome back, order, schedules, and waking up too early...

Dvora

And now, for a quick quiz, tell me why this platter looks so much better than the picture above...The other one had the yummy addition, but the visual image is way better here. Weird, right?