Sunday, November 27, 2016

Being Thankful

Most Thanksgivings in the US, we were guests at either my mother-in-law's (missing the poached pears, Chellie!) or Deb and Frank's.  When Deb and Frank were here recently we talked about making a whole giant meal to recreate and have an early "Franksgiving", but were convinced that going out was lovely, too (and it was, as we got to introduce them to our favorite restaurant which has, truly, the best french fries/home fries we've ever tasted).  Frank also taught Penina how to make his homemade tomato sauce, which is delicious.

And then this past Thursday came around and we had volunteered to make a side dish for the Lone Soldiers Thanksgiving Meal in Tel Aviv (by dividing the whole meal up into portions for 20 people, and working with a number of communities, somehow a meal for 1000 people comes together!).  Lone Soldiers come voluntarily to Israel to serve in the army.  As my neighbor, Kara, said, they leave their homes, families and their friends and come overseas to join up in an army, in a totally foreign language so all of us can have a country to call home and so we can feel safe every day, and the rice and turkey and potatoes are "all just a teeny, tiny drop in the bucket of the immense gratitude we feel towards them every single day"

Well, after we were already cooking wild rice for the soldiers (whole machloket over whether to include cranberries.  Do they look nice or were they too feminine for a bunch of soldiers [some of whom, regardless of gender, I was quite sure would appreciate the cranberries]?!  In the end we put just a sprinkling in for visual appeal).  Chana decided she wanted to make Thanksgiving.  Far be it for me to ever tell one of my kids they shouldn't cook, so she made a whole feast and I made a few things and we sat down and told each other what were thankful for about each of them, which was a nice change over saying what each of us was thankful for.


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