lighting a candle at Dunkin Donuts for Chanukah, a Rutgers Hillel event
On Tuesday night, the first night of Chanukah, the daughter, her friend and I wandered over to our local Highland Park Dunkin’ Donuts for a Rutgers Hillel candle lighting. We just went because it was a convenient time while we were waiting for the rest of the family to come home. The guitar playing and singing were quite nice, and thank you to Rabbi Esther Reed of Rutgers Hillel for the role she played in organizing the event. It was a fun way to start Chanukah.
snapdragon leaves in late December 2011 with drops of water
It’s been a while since I’ve done Nature Notes – I could blame both my work load and the gloom of early December darkness, cold and brown. Today it was a tad warmer, and I went outside to photograph some burnt red bald cypress leaves – instead, I found this snapdragon plant with bright green leaves and drops of rain water.
I have an idea for next week’s Nature Notes, but I need your help. Can you tell me which of Michelle’s many topics were your favorite(s) in the past year? Shh… don’t tell Michelle. Oh, is she reading this? Well, anyway, your comments on Best Rambling Woods Nature Topics are requested.
The game of dreidel (yiddish – the Hebrew is sivivon) is associated with Chanukah because when the Assyrian Greeks came to see if the Jews were studying Torah, a practice which was banned, the Jews would take out the spinning top and play that game instead. The four Hebrew letters on the dreidel are Nun, Gimel, Heh and Shin – short for Nes Gadol Hayah Sham (a great miracle happened there). In Israel the dreidel has a Peh instead of the Shin, for Nes Gadol Hayah Po (a great miracle happened here).
There is a game with the dreidel that involves pennies and taking the pot of pennies if you get a gimel, giving it in if you get a shin, half the pot for heh, but it is all luck. My kids just spin them and spin them and spin them. What do you do with your dreidels?
I did the above drawing with black marker, then I colored it in with Photoshop. I promised my daughter she could color in the original with colored pencil. If she does, I will post that version as well.
Radish, Kale, Parsely in watercolor by Leora Wenger, 2011
It is customary to eat foods with oil on Chanukah. However, one is not obliged to eat fried foods on Chanukah. Yes, yes, I will be serving latkes (potato pancakes) as well as sufganiyot (doughnuts, usually jelly doughnuts but we leave out the jelly). For this post, however, we will be creating salad dressing with olive oil. That way, one can fulfill the custom of eating foods with oil in a healthy manner (yes, first cold pressed olive oil, uncooked, is actually good for you). And why do we eat foods with oil on Chanukah? Because of the little vial of oil found in the Temple in the days of the Maccabees – the vial was only supposed to light the menorah for one day, but miraculously, it lasted for a whole eight days (thus, eight days of Chanukah).
So here are some salad dressing ideas:
Olive oil, raw apple cider vinegar, sea salt, turmeric, pepper and garlic powder
Olive oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper
Ilana-Davita’s Sweet and Tangy Dressing (balsamic vinegar, olive oil, sweet chili sauce, salt and pepper)
Rachel: crushed garlic, dijon mustard, red wine vinegar, salt, pepper, dried oregano (if your kids don’t mind “green stuff”) and olive oil
Rachel: lemon juice, cumin, salt and pepper, and olive oil
Olive oil, honey, mustard, a little orange juice and a little vinegar, salt and pepper.
Ilana-Davita: balsamic vinegar, olive oil, soya sauce, lime juice, salt and pepper
Sandy: Cilantro or basil in the blender with vinegar and olive oil.
Get the idea? How do you dress your salad? If you comment and it fits the olive oil category, I’ll add it to the list.
Chanukah starts next week, and I wonder if I will have the energy to take new photos. I’ve taken so many Chanukah photos already. Any suggestions on a new twist? Which Chanukah photo is your favorite?
[nggallery id=1 images=20]
This gallery is built with the NextGen gallery plugin for WordPress – I’ve been using this for a client, so I thought it would be fun to install the plugin on my own blog and show off some photos. It might make doing JPiX (Jewish Photo Blogger’s Carnival) a lot easier, too. Hm.
Just discovered one tiny technical problem with the NextGen Gallery – if I want to pin a photo (I just joined Pinterest), I have to put one directly into the post and not only use the gallery. So here’s one:
Update on July 2013: Having problems with the new version of NextGen Gallery. May go back to Reverted to the old version. Oh, well, it was nice while it lasted.
Update on August 9, 2013: updated to NextGen Gallery 2.0.7 – so far, it works.
Update in December 2014: Version 2.0.66.33 – still works.
