DIY -- Basic Cooking Vegetables

Most people who "don't like vegetables" never ate them properly cooked.

Close your microwaves.  You can cook vegetables right, FASTER, in some boiling water.

The trick is that you use no more than 1/2 cup of water per serving of vegetables.  1/3 cup is probably better.

1 serving of frozen vegetables
1/3 cup water
small saucepan with a lid

Put the water in the saucepan, set the burner on high.
When the water boils, put the vegetables in and turn the burner down to 2 1/2.  Put the lid on.
Do something for no more than 10 minutes and then dish up the vegetables.

What most people know is, fill the saucepan with water leaving enough room for the vegetables, then boil for 20 minutes or something.  The vegetables turn out a dead-ish color and mushy. 

The way I'm telling you, the vegetables are somewhat bright colored and al dente.

You can't do this in the microwave.  It takes at least 15 minutes.  Read the instructions on the bag of frozen vegetables.  They admit it.  This is why vegetables in restaurants are so often woody.  The color may be bright, but they are woody because the vegetable chef throws them in the microwave 10 minutes before the plate is brought to the table.  That's not long enough. 

If this happens to you, send the vegetables back and tell the server why you're doing it.  If enough people do this, the restaurants will catch on.  If they serve vegetables.  Which most of them don't, except for salad.  Which isn't good enough.  All the experts in eating right say so.  Rant over.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

Garden -- the midpoint

Yesterday I started one of my winter projects -- shortening my privet hedge.

I know some garden gurus will tell me that's wrong, because it's not the dead of winter yet.

They need to define the dead of winter.

I'm going by the fact that tomorrow is the first day of the month of Tevet on the Jewish calendar, and six weeks exactly before Tu B'Shevat, Jewish Arbor Day, the New Year for Trees.

On Tu B'Shevat the sap will be rising in trees and bushes.  Watch for it; they will flush about the same color as their buds or the color the leaves were before they fell.  For privet, it will be a yellowish color.

The other sign that the winter is about to turn is the fact that candle-lighting this Sabbath will be one minute earlier than last week, while next week it will be the same time as last week.  After this week candle-lighting for Sabbath will get later and later.  Always a good sign in my book; anything that says winter is closer to its end is good.

The Gregorian calendar says the winter solstice is December 21.  The Jewish calendar goes by actual sunset, not when the sun hits one of the tropics.  I'm trimming the hedge now.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

Outdoors -- Once in a While

OK every once in a while winter serves up something attractive in spite of the cold.

I was driving in Pennsylvania last week, up in the mountains in the center of the state.

The lower and upper altitudes were leaf-bare and brownish; at least it was dry and sunny the whole time.

But in the middle altitude the trees, the bushes, the grass way off beside the road were covered with ice and they glittered in the morning sun.

It took a lot of discipline not to just stare but I had to do it or drive off the road in a car I just finished paying for. 

It sure was beautiful.

But it sure was cold and I was glad to get back home where it was still sunny and forties.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

OB -- not meant as a rant

But it probably is one.

Spent part of Thursday night watching football on TV.  That's not a problem; I was raised on Penn State football, I'm happy with the simple things... ooops, that's a song.

Anyway every commercial break included a food ad.  Now, I ate pretty well over the holiday but by Thursday night I was more than fooded out, and here they are trying to entice me into busting my gut.  Sorry, but the problem is I'm already trying to bust my gut in reverse, and I was proud of myself for increasing my exercise quotient in spite of the six hour drive.

So I was already starting to feel sort of -- not happy -- and then they had an ad with The Hunger Games as a tie-in.  You guessed it.  A food ad.  A sandwich company that shall remain nameless, offering thousand-calorie sandwiches.   Are you familiar with the concept of irony?

Now I'm back home and I just finished my Tai Ji for the morning.  Today's exercise will be heavy housekeeping and tomorrow when temps will be in the 40s I'll catch up on yardwork.  I expect to lose 5 pounds this month.  Cross your fingers.

I'm really really glad I don't have a TV any more.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

Bit at a time Hebrew -- Genesis 1:1 c

The end of Genesis 1:1.

א בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם וְאֵת הָאָרֶץ:

Transliteration: B’reshit bara elohim et ha-shamayim v’et ha-arets.

Translation:     At the beginning Gd created the heaven and the earth

Letters in this lesson: בּ, ר, א, שׁ, י, ת, ל, וֹ, ה, ם, שּׁ, מ, ץ

Vocabulary in this lesson:

בְּ	on, in, at, by (swear by), with (by means of), against
בְּרֵאשִׁית	at the beginning
בָּרָא	created
אֱלֹהִים	Gd
אֵת	direct object particle
הַ, הָ	the
שָּׁמַיִם	heaven
וְ	and, or, continuation particle
אָרֶץ	earth, land, world

Now notice that the bet of the first two words has dagesh both times.  The first bet comes at the start of a sentence with nothing in front of it.  The second bet comes after a tav.  The first word of the Torah ends in what is called a “closed” sound, so the following bet has to take dagesh.

You’ll see these things over and over and get used to them. 

Verbs.  Semitic languages have a common feature about their verbs.  Verb roots have mostly three letters, although a few have two letters and some have four.

Verbs change for tense (past, aorist, present, future); for person (1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd), for number (singular and plural), for gender (masculine and feminine), and also for something called binyan.  This word comes from a root meaning “build”.  You build verbs from roots by adding: prefixes; suffixes (usually person, number, and gender); and infixes.  “Infix” means, there is a binyan which adds letters in the middle of the root.

The binyan often controls shades of meaning based on the root but this isn’t always true.  Sometimes a verb will look like a particular binyan of a root but the real meaning is not a shade on the root, not even close.

Today’s verb, bara, has the root bet resh alef .  It is the past tense of the simplest binyan, the paal or, as it is sometimes called, the qal which means “simple”.  I know it is past tense because of the vowels.  This past tense can be used like a simple past tense, “created,” but it can also be used like a past perfect, “had created.”  Later – like about 31 lessons from now – I will show you in what sense this verse can be taken as past perfect.

A famous aggadah (story) about this verse is that before the world was created, all the letters came to Gd (that’s a Jewish way of spelling His Name) and wanted to be THE letter that Torah started with.  They all had pluses and minuses, but when it got to bet, the thing Gd focused on was that this was the first letter of barukh, “blessed be,” which is how all blessings start, and b’rakhah, blessing, and Gd meant the world to be for a blessing, as well as there being a custom of saying barukh-whatever all the time.  You say a blessing when you see the sun rise, you say one when it goes down, you say one for lightning, you say one when you hear bad news, and they all start with barukh.  During a performance of Fiddler on the Roof I embarrassed my sister by laughing much too loudly when Motl and Tzeitel asked the rabbi to bless their new sewing machine.  He said Barukh p’ri ha-sewing machine, Blessed be the fruit of the sewing machine.

No, no, one more thing.  I haven’t taught you about the vowels.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

Fact-Checking -- Genesis 21:24-25

Now we know why there has to be something to relieve the anger or grief of the person injured.  So now we’re going to answer the other question in the last lesson, why can’t you apply some other form of retaliation?  And that will help us explain Exodus 21:24-25.

Imagine a society that doesn’t have Exodus 21:22.  Imagine some form of LT like this: A and B have a fight; B hits A’s wife, who is pregnant, and she has a miscarriage.  What if the law said A had to hit B’s wife so she has a miscarriage?

What if B isn’t married?  How do you appease A?  Do you have a quickie wedding ceremony for B and then when his wife gets pregnant, A hits her and she has a miscarriage?  What if B is sterile?  What if his new wife is sterile?  What if she is prone to miscarriages and nobody ever finds out she’s pregnant until she has the miscarriage?  What if destroying B’s unborn child still isn’t enough for A?  Society can’t afford letting B’s wife get pregnant over and over again just because A still doesn’t feel repaid.

What about B’s wife?  She didn’t do anything wrong.  She wasn’t even married to B at the time.  She is absolutely innocent of all wrong-doing.  How is it fair for her to undergo all that agony just because her husband hit somebody he wasn’t even fighting with?

Fairness.  It’s the cornerstone of every legal system.  That goes back not only through history, but into prehistory, and even into evolution.  I cite two papers by Brosnan in the bibliography.

Brosnan et al. set up nice clean warm cages for monkeys – not apes, monkeys – with food and water and all that, and they rewarded the monkeys for learning simple tasks.  The monkeys could see each other.  Once the tasks were learned, Brosnan et al. designated certain monkeys and when these monkeys did what they were supposed to, they got a grape.  The other monkeys got slices of cucumber.  They liked both rewards, but they liked the grapes more.  Who wouldn’t.

When the monkeys getting the cucumber realized that the monkeys they could see got grapes, they – er – went apeshit.  They raged around their cages, they vocalized, they even threw their own waste.  Monkeys don’t take it lying down when they are treated unfairly.

Fairness is built into humans.  It has to be built into human societies.  It isn’t fair to suffer harm from somebody else, but with some forms of harm, there is no possible way of retaliating equally against the person who harmed you.  Then you have to substitute another compensation for the harm.

That’s what damages are for.  But how much do you get in damages?  If it’s an eye, you get the damages for an eye; if it’s a burn, you get the damages for a burn.  How much is that?  The more severe the injury, the longer the injured will be out of work, and the bigger the doctor’s bills.

But we’re not done yet, there’s one more word we need to understand.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

DIY -- Chicken soup

Actually, THE chicken soup, Mirepoix.

This recipe will see you through both soups and stews.

You need a medium size saucepan with a lid

This will take an hour for best results.  It should serve 4, especially if you add vegetables and starches.  It is cheaper and MUCH lower in sodium than canned.

2 chicken breasts, bone in
2 qts water
1/2 cup chopped onion
1/4 cup chopped celery
1/4 cup sliced carrot
couple pinches pepper

Optional herb combo: piece of bay leaf, pinch thyme, spoonful parsley

Put the chicken, water, vegetables and pepper in the saucepan, put on the lid, put the saucepan on the burner, turn up to Hi until it comes to a boil -- 10 or 15 minutes -- then turn to 2 1/2 or it will boil over.  Simmer 30 minutes.  Take out the chicken breasts, shred the meat off the bone and gristle.  Put the meat back in the saucepan and throw out the bones and gristle.

The name for this is Mirepoix after the French chef who worked out the proportions of the vegetables.  Other options:
1.  Use any other meat.
2.  Substitute green pepper for the celery; this is a Cajun Mirepoix.
3.  Use a piece of ham, chicken skin, or fat bacon; this is a Mirepoix gras or "fat" Mirepoix.
4.  Put 1 tsp cornstarch and 1 TBSP COLD water in a cup.  Mix smooth and add to soup to thicken it.
5.  Cook rice or noodles separately and add in when you put the meat back in.
6.  Add a pinch cayenne and some sliced okra to a Cajun Mirepoix for gumbo.  Shrimp optional.
7.  Add yellow corn and diced potatoes for chicken corn chowder.
8.  Add half a bag of mixed vegetables, some crushed canned tomatoes, and the optional herbs.

DON'T give the cooked bones to your pet.  Cooked chicken bone shreds easily and is bad for the animal. 

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved