Shavuot and Tricolada

We celebrated my daughter’s Bat Mitzvah right before Pesach and the caterers brought a cake which all 6 of my children fell in love with. Tricolada. They have been begging me to make it so finally in honor of Shavuot I decided to grant them their wish.

First I looked on the internet and I found a few very rich versions of the tricolada using chocolate eggs and 38% fat whipping cream.

Although none of us have a weight problem I just couldn’t bring myself to make such a rich cake.

I came up with my own version which came out delicious.

Warning this recipe is simple but takes a lot of time and makes alot of dirty dishes, but its worth it.

First stage: bake brownies in the pan in which you want to make your tricolada. A thin layer of choclate cake can also be used.

Second stage: Leave 3 eggs out until they are room temperature. separate the yolks and the albumen. Melt a 100 gram bar of bittersweet chocolate in a double boiler.  Beat the egg yolks lightly, add vanilla extract, when the chocolate is melted, add a little bit of the chocolate at first and mix it with the egg yolk, slowly adding more and more chocolate until you used up all the chocolate, and the egg yolk/chocolate mixture is well mixed.

Beat the egg whites until almost stiff. Fold the chocolate/egg yolk mixture into the egg whites until it is evenly mixed. Pour on top of the brownie or chocolate cake and let it set in the refrigerator.

Once this layer is set, repeat stage 2 only this time melt white chocolate and pour the final mixture onto the the bittersweet mousse.

Once this layer is set repeat stage 2 only this time melt  milk chocolate and pour the mixture on to the white chocolate mousse.

Once all three layers have set, grate some bittersweet chocolate on top for decoration.

For a variation which can be used as ice cream, let the layers set in the freezer and then store the cake   in the freezer.

When you cut the slices of the cake you should see the three distinct layers. It looks very impressive for serving to guests.

Warning: this is a very rich and delicious cake!

Enjoy.

Listen to Your Heart

Today my 8 yr old son did an amazing thing. He did most of his Navi (bible study on Judges) HW by himself for the first time. Through out the year I was told that I should not help my son so much with his HW. I was told that if I did I would be giving him the message that I didn’t believe he could do it. But in my heart I felt I was doing the right thing. Any time I would tell him to do his HW on his own, he would sit, dream and get distracted and I would get frustrated that he did not manage to complete even one problem in the last hour. I turned into a nagging mother, constantly reminding him to concentrate on his HW. I hated it.
So I did what my heart told me to do. I helped him. I figured this was much better for our relationship and that was equally if not more important. It left him more time to follow his own interests and that too is extremely important.
Then, today, I was busy cooking dinner and he needed to do HW. I told him to take out his Workbook and start to read it aloud and see what he could do.
Lo and Behold. All my work had paid off. He was able to read through the questions. look at the text, read the commentaries, understand and write down his answer. I may have needed to explain a word here or there but he was doing it on his own.
I had been right in following my heart and helping him as much as he needed before and I will continue to do so when he needs it. Because when he “gets it”, I get my payback for all the work, and so does he.
So if your heart tells you something, follow your heart.

Uses for Chewing Gum

When my eldest was 5 years old he asked to invite a friend over. Happily I agreed. The boy who was a very sweet boy had one fault. He was chewing gum. That in itself was OK although I did not usually let my children chew gum. My elementary school teachers ingrained in me that when you chew gum you look like a cow. Until today when I see someone chewing gum I see a picture in my mind of a cow chewing her cud. Some cows look cuter and sweeter and some less but they are cows all the same. I did not want my children looking like cows, even if it was only in my eyes. Back to my story this boy then committed the cardinal sin. He took the gum out of his mouth and left it on the sofa. I found it on my skirt bottom a few hours later. Yuk.

Well I managed to raise  four children with out chewing gum. Then my fifth child came along. He was given to me by G-d to teach me humility.

At age eight while at a session with an occupational therapist she suggested I give him gum to chew while he was doing his home work  to help him keep his mind on his home work.  Then she said that chewing gum was a good method to help him alleviate his anger issues.  I was at the point where I was willing to try anything that might make it easier on me and the rest of my family. So much to the dismay of my four older children I went out and bought him gum.

I don’t know if the actual chewing of the gum helps him do his home work , but he is certainly more willing to sit and do his home work when he knows he will get gum to chew. I also don’t know if the actual chewing of the gum helps him calm down when his  anger is building up , but I can say that when I see his anger building up I say to him “here, take gum and concentrate on chewing”.  At that moment I am offering him a distraction which is  enough to draw him away from his anger before he reaches that point of no return.

My son knows that if I ever find the gum lying around the house (ex: not his mouth or in the garbage) then he will lose this special privilege which none of his siblings are allowed.  He also knows that if I don’t find this method helpful I might revoke his privilege so in truth he has a vested interest in making this method work and keeping to the rules. That might be the key to why this method is working right now. Truthfully if it works I don’t really care why. It becomes a win-win situation for both of us. And if it stops working , we’ll go on to try the next trick someone suggests.

Just Some Thoughts

These past 2 weeks I’ve been hibernating. Well not really, I’ve been working on a new word press site for my store. While I loved the ease of building a site with Weebly, And I am grateful to them for helping me get started in my business, they simply lacked certain features that I needed. And so I decided to dive in and tackle wordpress. For a computer novice like me, it was not easy but there are many people out there on the other side of cyberspace who are just so nice and helpful and willing to take the time to help you out despite the fact that they don’t know you from atom that that I am eternally grateful to them. I am also grateful to all those people who have written amazing plugins for wordpress and provide them free of charge with technical support. I have written on my to do list, to donate some money to them to thank them for their hard work.

This weekend is particularly hard for me as my children are with their father and it is the holiday of Purim. Holidays with out the children are always hard (at least for me). But today I was invited to eat a meal by someone from the shule I go to. It was actually by accident. I needed to get a key from him for the shule for the bat mitzvah of my second daughter which I am making in 3 weeks. It was pouring rain and I stopped under the same awning that the man was standing under. He told me that I didn’t yet pick up the key and told me to stop by right now on the way home for shule. I walked with him and when I entered his house his wife asked if my children were home for shabbat. I said no so she said, you must stay for kiddush. On a cold rainy day it was welcome. So I stayed. this couple is just such a cute couple. they sat and talked torah told little jokes and just looked like they lived such a happy peaceful life. It is rare that I get to see such peacefulness. Maybe because I don’t know them better, and behind the scenes it is not so peaceful, but I don’t think so. I think  that is just the way they are.  I wish upon myself to find this kind of relationship and live my older life in such a way.

Never discount ideas

Anyone ever offer you an idea which seemed so ridiculous you laughed.

Well last night I learned not to discount such ideas. I’ve been sick with a cold for the past few days and last night my nose just felt like a leaky faucet. On of my daughters suggested I lie down saying that when I am standing up, by law of gravity everything runs out of my nose but when I am lying down that force won’t work. we all laughed at the thought but lo and behold when I went to bed I realized that as long as I was  lying on my stomach, my nose dripped. When I lay on my back it didn’t.

A few more interesting tips like that, that I tried are:

-I used to get muscle cramps in my feet while I was asleep. they would be so painful I would wake up and have to start massaging my foot sometimes for 20-30 minutes. I read somewhere that keeping a bar of soap (not dove) under my sheet near my feet would stop it. as a joke I tried it, and lo and behold my muscle stopped cramping. I have no idea how it worked but believe you me , I keep a bar of soap under my sheet now.

- a remedy for mosquito bites. I used to suffer for  2 weeks from every bit I got until I read about the scotch tape trick. Put scotch tape on your bite, as soon as you figure out that you were bitten. Again I’m not sure how it works but nine out of ten times it soothes the bite to the point that I barely feel it.

Go figure. for now on I’ll be willing to try almost any idea.

The Mishkan and Parshat Terumah

For years I learned about the Mishkann by reading through the Parsha, but I always felt I was missing something. When I started to home school my children I had said to myself “We are going to build a model of the Mishkan, and then I will finally understand it” Well we started but we didn’t get very far. Other things came up and my kids (let alone me) began to get frustrated to figure out the exact measurements. It was with great trepidation that I approached making a lap folder on Parshat Terumah, but I decided to leave my comfort zone and charge full speed ahead. After learning the topic for numerous evenings with my dear father on the blessed Skype (with out whose services I could not afford to talk to my father in the US for so many hours) (I even dreamed about it a few nights). I finally figured it out and build a full model (or 2 or three as my lap folder will show you). Models like this cost lots of money in regular stores but I am offering you three different models with different levels of difficulty and yumminess, all for just $5.
So if studying about the Mishkan has also kept you in fear, fear no more. Get this lap folder and engulf yourself in the Mishkan.

Cardboard Boxes

As I already told you, I went to Ikea last week, and that means I have lots of card board boxes, but thats OK, I love them. And more importantly my kids love them. The big ones turn into houses and clubhouses or just hiding places. This time I had a big flat box. My two little ones used it to make the control board of an airplane. They even cut out a shap of a wind shield. They drew all sorts of controls underneath and glued on a few pieces of card board that stuck out so they could pretend to change gears. After spending some two hours making this plane, they then proceeded to bring two chairs, sat on them and pretended to fly for the next hour. That made for three and a half hours of productive, creative play. And whats more, after it gets all worn out, or forgotten I can throw it out and not have another “thing” sitting in my house.

I love Ikea

This week I took a trip to Ikea from Rehovot to Netanya, detouring in Bnei Brak to pick up my aunt. I had a wonderful time with my aunt, I got to buy just about all the things I wanted to buy (including a carpet, 10 wooden dining room chairs, and a s, which all fit into my car, and all that plus a few odds and ends cost less than $800. Now one of the things most people hate about Ikea is all the putting together you need to do after wards. Not me, I love that work. Especially since they make it so easy that even a 7 yr old can do it. Which is exactly what happens in my house. My 7 year old son loves building and when he can build real things that we use after wards, you should see him stick out his chest in pride. I of course stick around to make sure he’s not having any difficulties and to make sure the things are being put together in the correct way, but he feels the satisfaction of building a real piece of furniture and not just a toy. And I know that he is happily and constructively occupied in a way that is totally building his self esteem. Thank you Ikea!

Chanukah freebies

Just thought I’d let you all know that I have added PDF files for templates and instructions to make Chanukah crafts, games, delicious chocolate coated sevivon sugar cookies and a lovely, magical Chanukah tale to my yahoo group free for the taking if you join the yahoo group. (at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NaasehVeNilmad/ ) .
Join the group and they will be sent to you to your email box.

Rot Wonderful Rot

It is so nice when life gives you true examples of things that you just learned. Let me back track a little to fill you in. A few years ago we did some building on our house which included digging underground to build a “safe room” (In Israel, in order to get a building permit for over a certain a size you need to have a special room built with certain specifications which is called a “safe room where you can go in case of an enemy attack, I don’t know all the exact rules but we were required to build one). Ever since that room was built we’ve had the ground near that wall sink in just a bit after each rain (made me feel very safe!). 

Last spring I purchased a real lawn mower to keep my “lawn” looking like a lawn. So I decided instead of bringing dirt to refill the sinking ground I would fill the holes with grass cutting and to prevent it from all blowing away I covered it with a board.

A few weeks ago, my friend loaned me the Magic school bus book about rot, which my 2 little ones (aged 4 and 7) were enamored with and made me read it to them over and over.

One more thing you should know to complete the story is that it usually doesn’t rain in the spring and summer in Israel.

So last Sunday (remember its already fall and the rains have begun), I went out to mow my “Lawn” and my two little boys went to uncover the holes to add the grass cuttings when they excitedly called me over to tell me that the grass cuttings disappeared and instead there was dirt!. The moment I mentioned the word rot, they both immediately understood what had happened. And I wasn’t even trying to do an experiment with them. Life did the work for me.

And now I have some lovely fertile soil that will serve me well.
Who knows, maybe I’ll make a lap book about rot, and next time we’ll take pictures of before and after to add to the lap book.