Home for the Holidays

We know that you all miss our postings from India, and to be honest, so do we, so we thought that this year instead of sending everyone a photo saying "Happy Holidays" with a grumpy-looking cat wearing a santa hat on it , we would just make a new blog posting. As you probably know, we are no longer in India, but away for the holidays in Edmonton, perhaps a slightly less exotic destination, but never the less exciting if you, like some of us, grew up in a country that has almost no snow and where the temperatures stay above zero...

Boaz had been promised a plethora of exciting winter sports, from skiing to toboganning, snowshoeing and more. Weather, however, was most certainly NOT permitting as temperatures in the first week were hovering around -28c. A few short excursions outdoors and we quickly came to the conclusion that we would have to do some other exciting wintertime activities (like eating and shopping) until the temperature was more co-operative.

So, what do you do if you want to go out and it's minus 30 outside? Yes, you head out to the West Edmonton Mall, where it would take you 30 seconds to get from a cosy car to the balmy shopping-heaven inside. You can shop 'till you drop, you can take a submarine ride, you can play mini golf, visit the world's largest indoor water park, or, if you are like Kim's parents, just go do your daily fitness walks there - an activity called "mall walking" which seems to be very popular around this time of year. It would take you about two hours to walk the whole mall, a 7km circuit, or if you are jogging, slightly less.

Taking advantage of all the sales, we loaded our arms up with clothing and headed into the fitting rooms, where Boaz quickly found himself between a rock and a hard place when he had to give an honest opinion about some pants Kim was trying on. The basic conclusion, according to Boaz, who demonstrated a very Israeli honesty, was that he didn't like them and the cut made her "bum look big". Several of the ladies waiting around the change room all went "oooooooh" in shock and one of them said "I'm not sure Santa is going to come visit you this year". But what would you do? The pants really DID make her ass look big...(and Santa did come anyways).

Although we were excited by all of the sales on offer (40% discount at the GAP) the best activity for us was to go see Santa - or actually entertain ourselves by watching all the cute little kids that go to see Santa, sit on his knee, tell him what they would like for x-mas, recieve a candy cane, and have their picture taken in their best outfits. We had fun taking pictures of them and fun taking lots of other ones too, so if you like the photos on this post, we put more for you on our picasa album

Another favourite activity for these weather conditions is cooking at home and then stuffing yourself full to the brim on all the tasty things you have made. This year Hannuka is exactly at the same time as Xmas, which means twice as much eating. We had some family and friends over for latkes and jelly doughnuts, and spent the whole afternoon grating, chopping, mixing and, in the holiday's best tradition - deep frying. At home, we have a syringe-like pastry implement for stuffing the jelly into the jelly doughnuts, but here we had to improvise. Fortunately, there was a doctor in the house, and a quick phone call to the hospital and Kim's dad was able to bring home a variety of exciting surgical implements (don't worry, they were still in the sterile packaging). We decided to use the "abdominal irrigator" for the blackberry jam and the large veterinary-style syringe for the dulce de leche. Dad even got to help out, with instructions to inject 10cc of dulce de leche into each doughnut intravenously.

Intead of a present we are giving you a jelly doughnut (or Sufganiyot) recipe that we love - this one was given to us by Boaz's mom's friend Ety Avraham, so thank you Ety!

Happy holidays and best wishes for 2009!

Sufganiyot (makes about 16)

500gr flour

50gr fresh yeast or 8gr (one pack) active dry yeast

1/4 cup sugar

1-1 1/4 cup luke-warm milk

2 egg yolks

50gr melted butter

1 pack vanilla sugar

2 tbsp cognac or rum

greated peel from 1 lemon

for the filling: Jam of your choice or dulce de leche

oil for deep-frying

In a small bowl, melt the yeast with some of the sugar, cover and leave for 10 minutes in a warm place. In a large bowl mix all of the other ingredients and add the yeast and milk mixture. Knead for about 10 minutes until all the ingredients are well mixed and the dough becomes smooth and elastic. Let the dough rise in a warm place until it doubles in volume - about two hours. A nice trick for letting dough rise that we recently learnt is to let it rise in a big sealed tupperware (approximately three times the size of the dough).

Once the dough has risen, knock it back, and divide it into 16. Shape into balls, and let rise on a well-floured surface covered with a light towel. After about an hour you are ready for the big deep-fry. We suggest using a wok, as you need less oil to fill it. You will need about 4-5cm of oil. Fry the sufganiyot in medium-hot oil, about 2-3 minutes on each side. Fish them out of the oil, let cool slightly and inject them with the stuffing of your choice. Serve warm, with powdered sugar strewn on top.