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Sleep Training Advice

My boys are both well past the sleep training phase, but I was recently asked for my advice, so here it is:

- treat daytime and nighttime different.  At night, the curtains go down, lights get dim, voices get soft, no more playing or exciting interactions.

- bedtime routines are important.  Do the same things in the same order every night.  Pajamas, story, lullaby, then lights out.

I'm Back!

The truth is I never left; I've just been active on other parts of the internet.  For the new year, I finally fixed that, with a new home page that accurately reflects where I am online these days.  Please follow and engage; that's the whole point, right?  Also let me know what you think about the t-shirt idea.

Passover in 2017

Yes, this is another trite screed about refugees.  But it's heartfelt.

Passover is coming up, and so for family movie night we watched the Prince of Egypt.  We were watching the scene where the Jews are finally able to leave Egypt, and I turned to Yelena and wondered aloud: "Is this how my grandparents felt when they were liberated from the Holocaust?*  Is this how your family felt when you left Soviet Russia?"

I Was Wrong

Turns out, I didn’t know what was going on.
 
To be fair, we were coming off of 8 years of liberal dominance.  The Republicans were in disarray.  All the conventional wisdom pointed to a Clinton landslide - even the polls did.  So what went wrong?  I don’t know; I’m going to wait for smarter people to try to answer that question for me.
 

"We have sinned against you by mocking"

We need to stop making fun of Trump.  No, I’m being serious.  I’ve been sitting on this for a while, but the bombing in North Carolina over the weekend showed me it’s time to say something.

Last week, I took a day off to atone.  It was Yom Kippur, the holiest day on the Jewish calendar.  During the Vidui, the Confession, I recited the following:

We have sinned against you by speaking perversely;

Daddy in the Kitchen

Cranberry Relish

Add this to the list of things that are better made by yourself, along with applesauce and peanut butter.  Our local organic box brought us a bag of fresh, ripe cranberries, oh-so-perfectly timed just before Thanksgiving.  And a week before that, a fresh pomegranate.  We'd already used half the pomegranate in fresh salads, but had just enough left for this recipe.

Potato Leek Soup

Soul food.  Not a desert island dish, but darn close.  Our local organic basket kept sending us potatoes and leeks, so I decided to go with a classic.  Glad I did.  This recipe is everything you want potato leek soup to be.

Homemade Applesauce

I got this recipe from The Kosher Palette, but it's pretty much the same as every other homemade applesauce recipe out there.  Here's the gist:
Peel, core, and slice apples.  Cook 'em in a pot with a little water - just enough to keep 'em from burning.  When they're soft, mash 'em a little.  Eat.  Wonder at God's creation.

Easiest Pasta and Broccoli

This one is fast, easy, and tasty.  The trick: you cook the broccoli with the pasta.  I recommend fresh pasta; the broccoli were only in the pot for three minutes so they were blanched rather than boiled.  As usual, I left out the salt & pepper, but I added crushed red pepper flakes (the way I usually do with noodles).
The only critique I can make is that it isn't thrilling - I'd call it "good not great."  But if you're looking for a quick and easy dinner, it's a great way of making plain pasta more interesting.