In 1975, my mom and her best friend designed and illustrated a cookbook for kids. I was 4 years old.
I remember my mom sitting at the drafting table in her bedroom. I would sit next to her, at a smaller desk on the floor, doing my own “work”. In those days, text was laid out by hand (!!!) every letter and line, hand pasted. Hard to imagine, in the world of digitized type. My mom drew most of the little visual illustrations that went with the instructions.
On a recent snowy day, we cracked open our copy of “Yeladim Mevashlim” and made a simple, lovely, no fuss chocolate cake. The book is still in print in Israel, 35 years later! And I love being able to share it with my own kids, who are now the same age my brother and I were when our mom was working on the book.
Spending time with my parents cooking and eating made me love to eat and experiment. Nowadays, the one thing I love more than eating and cooking, is thinking and planning what I want to be cooking and eating.
Here’s what I want to eat right now:
- From Lisa’s Kitchen Chickpea Flour Dumplings in a Spicy Yogurt Sauce
- From Sprouted Kitchen, Lentil “Meatballs” in Lemon Pesto a lighter take on Jennie’s recipe which was well loved by us last winter but the deep frying, not so much… (made this week! delicious!)
- From Sprouted Kitchen again, a reason to use my lovely birthday gift from Rancho Gordo (thanks Anita!) Baked Sweet Potatoes with Chili Beans
- And lastly, from Smitten Kitchen, a cake that looks so much like the Israeli apple cakes of my childhood, I can taste it already, Apple Sharlotka
