Pesach Seder Menus!

I love getting creative in the kitchen on Pesach.

Most of these recipes are not especially Kosher for Pesach, and since we all have our own customs in regard to what foods we do or do not eat, you can really custom makes these recipes to your liking by omitting or adding certain ingredients.

Click on each dish for the Recipes and have fun!

First Night Seder

Seared Ahi with Kula Greens

Cucumber Tomato Avocado Salad

Garden Vegetable Soup

Honey Balsamic Glazed Chicken

Roasted Carrots with Ginger and Orange  

Crispy Potato Leek Kugel

Italian Roasted Vegetables

Lemon Gelato

Coffee Meringues

Second Night Seder

Mahi-mahi Gefilte fish with mango jalapeno salsa

Apple Kale Cabbage Salad

Roasted Italian Sweet Potato Soup

Lemon Rosemary Roast Chicken

Italian Roast Potatoes 

Grilled Eggplant and Spinach 

Watermelon Sorbet

Happy Cooking!

Always,

Pre-Yom Kippur Easy Peasy Honey Cake

On the day before Yom Kippur it is customary to ask for and receive honey cake from someone—usually one’s mentor or parent.

One of the reasons given for this custom is that if it had been decreed, G‑d forbid, that during the year we should need to resort to a handout from others, the decree should be satisfied with this asking for food.

I received this recipe from a friend (thanks Rivky!) and tweaked it a bit which ended being the most delicious honey cake ever! It is super easy and moist- I hope you enjoy it!

Easy Peasy Honey Cake

1 box Duncan Hines Spice Cake mix

3 eggs

1/3 cup oil

3/4 cup Honey

1 cup Black Coffee

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Mix all ingredients together and bake for 30-35  minutes.

Enjoy and have a wonderful week!

 

More summer fun and some preps for the school year...

 Giant bubble fun... 

Mix 12 cups water, 1 cup dish soap, 1 cup corn starch and 2 Tbsp baking powder.

Let it sit for at least an hour. The longer you let it sit, the better the bubbles. Give it a good mix, get some fun bubble wands, sit back, relax, and let the kids have a ball:) 

Take a bunch of crayons, line them up on a piece of paper, tape them down. Get a hair dryer and blow close to crayons and watch it melt. Kids thought this was AWESOME. 

Now as a very proud New Yorker, and growing up in the city, my knowledge of gardening was very limited. A good friend of ours helped us plant a garden and the kids have been LOVING it. 

I love the fact that they can actually SEE where it comes from, hence when making a bracha, it makes sense. They see the tomatoes growing from the ground, hence, "ha-adama". It's a very cool, hands on approach to teach kids the correct blessings on foods as opposed to just coloring pictures of foods with the same bracha.

Here is our tomato plant. This tomato was picked and eaten by my daughter just seconds after I took this photo. 

 Our strawberry bush- this strawberry still needs a few more days, but these are the most amazing, sweetest strawberries you have ever tasted.

Our pineapple. Now you can understand why we say "ha-adama" on pineapple:)

Beets..

Now back in this post I began working on our continent boxes. It's a good thing mom and dad were world travelers before we met and got married and between my hubby and me we have a some great photos of ourselves from all over the world. 

I went through these photos and took out a bunch and put them in each continent box. The only continents we both didn't get to were Australia and Antarctica. The kids love seeing photos of us in these places, it makes it very real to them. 

Here is what we have so far, as I find things, I add them to the boxes:

~Israel~

(okay, Israel is not a continent, but it's our land so it deserves it's own box:)

* a map

* Take Me to the Holy Land (you can get it here)

* Personal photos of mom and dad in Israel

* Photos and pictures of various places and events that happened

*Israeli flag

* Miniature Menorah and Shekel and Silver Jerusalem

* Israeli Soldiers

* A police pin

* A Tanya printed in Israel

~Antarctica~

 * A book on Antarctica which I got here

* 2 books on Penguins

* A book I made with images I tore out of an issue of the National Geographic

* Photos of Jewish scientist David Wakil lighting the Menorah in Antarctica

*Some cute miniatures: scarf, hat, snow flake, iglue, sled. sweater. snowman and polar bears. I know we have some penguins somewhere, just have to find them:)

~Asia~

* Russian money

* Photos of my husband in Russia

* Photos of famous Rabbi's from Russia as well as Yeshiva boys learning in Yeshiva's in Russia

* Book on Asia

* Photos of Thailand and China

* A Tanya printed in Jordan

* Miniatures of 2 Asian people and a fan

(my husband spent time in India, we are trying to dig up those photos:)

~Europe~

* Book on Europe

* Photos of mom and dad in various countries in Europe

* Photos of Menorah lightings around Europe

* Tanya printed in Italy and France

* A Picture Book of Anne Frank which you can get here, with photos of mom at the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam

* Book on Raoul Wallenberg, he helped the Jews in WW2

I have Australia, Africa, North and South America and will post photos when I get a chance.

The nice thing is that you can just keep adding things as you find them.

The kids LOVE the continent boxes. They can take one and sit down and go through the photos, play with the miniatures, read the books, and all the while learning so much. I hope to make some more boxes like these but in other subjects. 

And on one last note, some wise words from my dear father-in-law...

Wishing you a good week and an easy fast,

Always, 

Hamantashen!!!

Afterthe past 2 days rain ordeal, I really prepared for today to be pretty much the same thing. But to my surprise and joy, we woke up to clear blue skies!!! So in the afternoon, the kids took a trip with Daddy while mommy baked away~ I was really in the Hamantash zone... check out some of the cool Hamantashen that emerged from my oven:

Potato Knishe Hamantashen (using Puff pastry)

Spinach Knishe Hamantashen (using Puff pastry)

Spanish Olive, Tomato and Garlic Hamantashen (using Puff pastry)

Dates and Cinnamon Hamantashen

Butterscotch Hamantashen

Pineapple Coconut Macadamia nut Hamantashen

Red Velvet Hamantashen

Here is my go-to Hamantashen Recipe that I use every year for Hamantshen with a savory filling. For the Red Velvet, I just used a Red Velvet cake mix instead of the Yellow cake mix and went according to the same recipe. For the non savory Hamatashen, I use Puff pastry with all different fillings.

Its all about creativity! Would love to hear some cool Hamantashen ideas that you came up with~

Happy Purim!

Easy Yummy Hamantashen Recipe

I make this every year and people LOVE it and ALWAYS ask for the recipe... hope you enjoy it too!

Soft Hamantashen Recipe:

1 Box Yellow Cake Mix

1 cup flour

2 eggs, beaten

2 tablespoons water

Filling of your choice*

Directions:

1- Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

2- Spray cookie sheet with cookie spray.

3- In a large mixing bowl combine flour and cake mix.

4- Stir in water and eggs until a stiff dough forms.

5- On a lightly floured surface, roll dough out to 1/8 inch.

6- Cut into 2-3 inch circles, I use the top of a drinking glass dipped in flour before cutting.

7- Place dough 2 inches apart on cooking sheet.

8- Place a teaspoon of filling in the center of each circle.

9- Fold the sides in to form three corners (triangle).

10- Bake for 10 minutes or until golden brown.

11- Cool for 2 minutes on cookie sheets and remove to wire racks to cool completely.

*I took plain macadamia nuts, poured melted chocolate chips over them and mixed them in a bowl. I then place the nuts covered in chocolate on a cookie sheet by the teaspoon full and froze them like cookies. Once frozen, I used each "chocolate mac nut cookie" as a filler for the hamantashen- Chocolate Macadamia Nut Hamantashen- YUM!

Adorable Lulav and Etrog Cookies and Sukkah Craft

How cute is this?

We made a basic sugar cookie recipe- divided it in half and added yellow food coloring to the one half and green to the other- just keep adding food coloring until you get a nice desired color.

We then took the green dough and made Lulavs with the hadas and aravos and the rings, then with the yellow dough made etrogs. We baked them and ate them in the Sukkah- the kids loved it. They loved mixing them, shaping them, watching them bake and then eating them!

Here the recipe we used, but you can use any sugar cookie recipe:

• 2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 cup butter, softened
• 1 1/2 cups white sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 
  
• We just mixed it all together. The kids used their hands to 'knead' it into a solid ball, but you can also use a kitchen aid if need be. Half the fun is mixing it and getting all full of dough:)

I then gave each munchkin a piece of card stock with an outline of a Sukkah. I gave them glue, Popsicle sticks, stickers and they went outside and collected leaves. Then they made their own Sukkah designs and we hung them up in our Sukkah for all to see, check out their creations!

Enjoy the holiday!

Souper Suppers and Keeping the Munchkins busy

Ok, I will admit, my kids are all picky eaters- except Munchkin- she LOVES veges, we're talking broccoli, cucumbers, tomatoes and more...

But the others- nope. Nothing doing.

So I got myself 2 cookbooks which I have listed below: The Sneaky Chef and Deceptively Delicious and from there, I got tons of great ideas how to hide great food in my kids favorite foods. In fact, I actually started a blog, but just couldn't keep up with it- but here it is, just a couple of ideas that I've done and worked like a charm- http://hidden-treasures-for-kids.blogspot.com/

And I try make a different vege soup with dinner every night so I know that they are getting a nice full serving of veges every day. I never use soup cubes, just plane old salt'n pepper with whatever veges I throw in there and puree. And they love Osem Soup Croutons that we find at the local Safeway supermarket (for a ridiculous price but I tell my hubby that its worth it if it gets the kids to eat the soup:)

And our cleaning help and babysitter both quit so this week has been so challenging... but thanks to a few great new toys that our good friends gave us (they are moving to Israel and getting rid of everything) the tots have been busy and happy which means mommy is happy too:)

I posted the toys that they gave us and highly recommend them-

Okay, my feet are up and I'm off to watch my Grey's Anatomy reruns (my hubby bought me the entire set!!!- yes, I am a total sucker for this show)

Here's to a great week and getting ready for the upcoming school year~

Power Chocolate Cupcakes!

Ok- we took a box of Dunkin Heins Devils Food Chocolate Cake mix...

We added:

1 1/3 cup of frozen spinach which I pureed with water (enough water to just cover the spinach and microwaved it for 30 seconds to soften the spinach)

1/2 cup of oil

3 eggs

3 Tbs wheat germ

Mix, pour into cupcake pan and bake for 20-30 minutes at 350

Kids LOVED them and I didn't feel as guilty as I usually do giving them chocolate cupcakes:)