Shavuot

[magid]

I spent most of Thursday after work cooking, and I'm glad I did; it meant there was that much less to do later.

I lit candles to start Shavuot, and there was time to sit down and rest for a bit before going to the frank people for dinner. It was a congenial meal, with some people I know fairly well, and a new face or two. Food highlights included a cold pureed pea-and-something soup, incredibly light cheesecake (apparently based on ricotta and yogurt) topped with macerated strawberry slices and a pansy flower, and a lovely Vouvray. Conversation ranged all over the place, including gardening, New York institutional geography, science and environmental reporting and glass being a liquid. We sang Shir Ha'Ma'alot to "Scarborough Fair" for the produce referenced therein :-).

I'd thought about going to the tikkun, but my path took me right by my house, with my bed calling me from inside.... Plus I had already decided not to stay up all night; I am a morning person, and it's incredibly difficult to sleep when I get home from a tikkun, so I don't catch up on sleep for a while, and am therefore rather cranky. Not good. On the very-much-plus side, I'll note that this year's tikkun was the joint effort of people from a number of different minyanim, a true community event, and that's wonderful.

First day lunch ended up being:

• spelt challah (brought by my guests)
  
• chilled grape juice (it still surprises me how much chilling it makes a difference)
  
• The spring rolls were inspired by seeing watercress and mint together, and remembering that months ago I'd bought rice wrappers on a whim and never used them, plus knowing that having to take wheat out of the diet of my guests (hopefully only temporarily) was frustrating for them, so this would hopefully be a nice surprise for them.
  
  I've had spring rolls only a couple of times before this, so read some recipes for inspiration, but I had a number of constraints to work with, so I knew I'd have to wing it to some extent.
  
  What I ended up doing:
  
  1. Dampen a rice wrapper, rather like dampening a sheet of matzah before making matza brei. Shake off any excess water.
     
  2. Put a bunch of watercress leaves down as a base (leaves only; at least one recipe had warned that stems might poke through the wrapper) near one side of the circle.
     
  3. Top with a couple of julienned pieces of cucumber (baby ones that didn't have huge seeds).
     
  4. Next, a couple of julienned pieces of very firm tofu that I'd further pressed before cutting.
     
  5. I put some dressing over the tofu, because I hadn't had time to marinate it. The dressing was a mixture of hot-pepper olive oil, soy sauce, lime juice and zest (prepared before yom tov), and a bit of sugar. I don't know the proportions; I was just mixing until things tasted good. I'm glad it came together, because I didn't have a lot of options for ingredients for this.
     
  6. Top with a few pieces of chive, and pieces of mint leaves (about one large and a bit more, ripped into thirds).
     
  7. Put on pieces of pea pod and minced carrot, then remember that the allergic one might not eat pea pods, so make two without pea pods, and remember to put them aside.
     
  8. Roll up the wrapper, tucking the sides in. The wrapper sticks to itself very well, which is satisfying.
  
  The first ones I made were... unaesthetic, but I got better at it, and there were enough for all of us to have pretty ones :-). I was really pleased with how happy it made my guests, and I definitely have to make these again. And as a side note, I think I was influenced by the recipes in Untangling My Chopsticks, thinking about the coolness of tofu, mint, and lime, balancing that with a touch of heat, but wanting an overall cooling effect (despite the weather having started to cool off already).
  
  
• green salad: spinach, mesclun, scallions, chives I'd picked the day before, roasted onion-tomato-mango stuff, basil leaves, diced chicken breasts cooked in tomato sauce, balsamic vinegar and olive oil
  
• roasted eggplant
  
• a mix of brown rice, black barley, and daikon seeds, to which I'd added black beans (plus lime juice and mustard powder, but not enough of either to change the flavor) (I was rather glad to have a dish with barley in some form, as Shavuot celebrates the first measure of barley being brought to the Temple, along with other first fruits.)
  
• baby artichokes boiled with lime and cracked black pepper
  
• pear-strawberry crisp
  
• cherries

Luckily we'd finished lunch by the time a utility worker came to replace my gas meter (apparently something mandated every seven years, but I don't remember it happening before, and I've lived here longer than that).

The afternoon was taken up with preparing for Shabbat (I'd remembered the eruv tavshilin just before candlelighting, huzzah!), doing all the fleishig dishes and turning the kitchen over for a milchig dinner (only in the summertime...), and rereading Ender's Game (still not sure why I picked it up, but it's still so good.).

There were six of us for Shabbat dinner, and as one made kiddush, ending in Shehechiyanu, I realized that not only had I forgotten that when lighting candles, I'd forgotten the yom tov part of the bracha, despite lighting off the already-lit jesus candle. Oops.

The menu:

challah with multigrain flakes and flaxseed meal, the larger one formed into a spiral that ended in a hand (I'd seen this shape in the Jewish bread book I have, and so wanted to make it someday. I decided the symbolism worked for Shavuot if one thinks of the hand as reaching out to receive the Torah. People had fun eating the fingers after waving them at one another :-)

green salad: watercress, halved grape tomatoes, cucumbers, the last of the pea pods and minced carrots, scallions, chives, basil leaves, feta, black pepper, balsamic vinegar and olive oil

baby artichokes (reprise)

brown rice stuff (reprise)

slices of sweet potato roasted with cayenne and maple syrup

not-a-stir-fry (more of a sautee) of onions, broccoli, carrots, onion-and-garlic tofu, and seitan marinated in Szechuan spicy sauce

three mushroom sautee: minced onion, shiitakes, oyster mushrooms, and baby bok choy cooked together, then topped with enoki

strawberry-pear crisp (reprise)

cherries

fresh pineapple

vanilla truffles

We started a bit later than planned, with a couple of the guests having overslept and needing to daven first, but it didn't matter; it was an excellent group of people. Again, interesting conversation (theater, theater politics, Brat Pack movies, a Python reference or two, fundraising for institutions Jewish and non, the tikkun). I was incredibly pleased to be complimented on my adventurous cooking :-).

Shabbat morning I woke to the sound of drilling, and saw a ladder with a flashlight on top of it in the alley next to my building, but no one around. I still don't know what that was about.

It meant I got to shul just before shacharit amidah, though, which was nice, especially since it was being lead by someone I know (who's knowledgeable and got a good voice). Still being the holiday, it was the holiday amidah with Shabbat phrases added in. Hallel next, then the Torah reading for the second day (mostly about the sacrifices brought for this holiday and some others), followed by the haftarah from Habbakuk (Total side note: reading Joan Aiken has ruined the word "Habbakuk" for me; Dido uses it as a mild swear word.). However, instead of reading the haftarah straight through, after the first pasuk, the reader sang the piyyut Yatsiv Pitgam, then finished the haftarah. I've (a) never heard of this piyyut before, certainly not for Shavuot, and (b) definitely not seen (heard?) a haftarah interrupted like that before. I asked someone about it later, and apparently it's a minhag being spread by "Rav" Artscroll (something I generally dislike). The piyyut seemed pleasant (what I could pick out as it was sung; I didn't have the words in front of me), but I didn't get the impression that it was the minyan's minhag (though to be fair, it's a relatively newish minyan, so minhagim may still be in flux). I went out for Yizkor, and wondered whether there were men inside who would've preferred to go out, but needed to stay to make the minyan. Musaf included duchaning; I'm glad the one cohen made it.

After davening was over, we joined with the upstairs (non-mechitza) minyan for a reading of Megillat Rut (the book of Ruth), which I like, not only for the preponderance of verbs in the feminine (so rarely found in Tanach), but also because it shows women working with what they've ended up with to make lives better for themselves, rather than being passive, in more workaday situations than Esther (the other female-oriented megillah) is in.

Lunch ended up out, having had an impromptu invitation that I was very pleased to accept. It meant time with some kid-friends, and meeting some people I'd known mostly by face before, plus time with already-known people, all good things. The food highlights were an olive tapenade, a corn salad (fresh off the cob corn with scallions, hearts of palm, avocado, grape tomatoes, black olives, and a lime-ish dressing), and chicken with (garlic, ginger, and maple).

A walk home in the not-quite-rain, followed by Parnassus on Wheels and a nap were a lovely conclusion to the holiday.

As always, I'm amazed how differently time flows when there are 2⁺ days of holiday/Shabbat. And I'm thinking of trying to find a chevruta to learn a bit with (halacha l'maaseh, or mishnayot, or midrashim are the first things that come to mind).

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

There's an explanation about the piyyut at:

http://elie-expo.blogspot.com/2006/05/shavuos-yetziv-pisgam-theory.html

"Yetziv Pisgam is a piyyut in praise of Yonasan ben Uzziel, who wrote the targum on the books of Nevi'im [prophets]. Outside of Israel, where two days of Shavuos are celebrated, Yetziv Pisgam is sung in many congregations during the haftarah reading on the second day of Shavuos, after the first verse of the haftarah is read. The reason it is recited at this specific point in the service is that it introduces and praises the meturgaman [translator] who, in earlier times, would translate each pasuk of the haftarah into Aramaic after it was read in the original Hebrew."

Apparently the targum is still read alternately with the Torah in Yemenite shuls today.

[magid.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the pointer. Of course, it doesn't explain why shuls that don't use a metugaman would welcome him back, but it makes sense for places that do that (I didn't know Yemenite shuls do that! Cool; I'd like to hear that someday.)