Kids and cooking

1. I started making french toast, scrambled eggs and toasted cheese when I was eight or so myself. Unsupervised. On a gas stove, too. And, yes, I did burn myself, but that was being stupid about a toaster (they were advertising frozen "toaster pizzas", so I tried it. With a non-toaster pizza. Ouch. Very, very ouch.)

2. The kids of that time period (Late 19th C US) were raised with open flames - unscreened fireplaces, wood stoves, coal stoves, camp fires, candles, and oil and kerosene lamps. Candles wired to Christmas trees. They understood the danger and knew their way around them. And fires and bad burns were still common.

It still gave me pause to think of a nine year old girl doing this unsupervised. What I wrote was my immediate reaction to kids doing things like that, and as I said, it was with my modern eyes. And maybe we watch our kids too much.

(no subject)

3:30 Erev Yom Kippur.

Thus far today, I've gone to Pa-kua, had lunch and did the minimal shopping I still needed to do.

My neighborhood is really interesting this time of year. The stores have special holiday hours. As each holiday approaches, the stores get more and more crowded and the streets more and more frantic. And because Sukkot is next on the list, there are sukkah stores springing up seemingly out of nowhere. These stores only exist for a couple of months, selling various types of sukkot and furniture and lights and decorations.

I've even seen ads for a sink - you hook up your garden hose to a real faucet and the drain leads to a flexible pipe that direct the water anywhere. Ritual handwashing for Sukkot is always a logistical problem - you have to all tramp out to the kitchen and then come back silently and trying not to touch things, or you can wrestle with the garden hose, or you have to tote the water down with you (we use old solda bottles). A temporary sink would solve all those problems.

And there are the signs for the sukkah builders - teen age boys looking to earn some money, as the mitzvah is not in the building of the sukkah but in the eating in one. And all of that should be done on Sunday, or before. Lots of miniconstruction going on around now.

But I don't have to do anything now. I made my chicken pasta last night, and it's good served cold. I just needed to get the V-8 juice and potato chips for fast breaking. Which I did. My candleholders are clean, and I have a nice yarzheit candle waiting, too. I hope to have a completely empty table, except for the candles.

Spiritually...I'm not prepared at all. I'm very bad at that. I just focus on the practical aspects and hope it works out.

I hope everyone who is fasting has an easy one and a meaningful one, and that you all are sealed for a good year.