Beyond Unitasking

The more I mull over this word I've chosen, the more I realize that it goes beyond just unitasking. Choosing to focus on something or someone also means that I'm choosing NOT to focus on something or someone.

I realized this today, home for our second snow day of the week.

The kids were outside, doing this: 

I wanted to be inside with this: 

 (and if I'm being totally honest, with my computer, too)

But instead, I decided to not focus on my wine and my computer. I went outside for this: 

and this: 

and this: 

Doesn't it look like Olaf is hugging Alice? 

I have so many things that distract me from what's going on around me, in and outside of my house. And really, a lot of these things can wait-- responding to emails, leaving comments on blogs, checking Facebook, Googling, pinning, looking for a job. Even the wine can wait, sometimes. (I'm drinking it now!) So yeah, FOCUS is also about priorities, about focusing my attention on the things that matter, on the moments that I won't get back again, like watching my three year old try to walk through snow that comes up to her knees and my 5 year old being buried in the snow by our neighbor.   How awful and mortifying would it be if the only thing my kids could remember about me is that I always had my nose in my phone or my ass on a chair, with my face in my computer?

No, I want them to remember me as the mom who joined them outside to help build a snowman (who are we kidding? I built the thing, they stuck sticks in it...).

That is meaningful, don't you think?

Oh, and here's the snow we got Monday and today. Between those two days, we ended up with a foot of snow. No filter on these photos. In today's picture, it is snowing,  hence the haze, if you can't tell...

Balabusta Cred.

The minute the weather cools off, I go into balabusta mode. Do you know this word, balabusta? I've heard it before, in the little snippets of Yiddish swirling around, but didn't know what it meant. I looked it up after reading about a cookbook from the restaurant of the same name.

Balabusta is a Yiddish expression describing a good homemaker

 Yup. Except maybe I would be a passable homemaker, not always a good one! I've been in the kitchen a lot lately, making soups and baking bread. I started making my own chicken soup a few years ago, relying on my memory of various chicken soups I ate growing up, between my mom, my stepmom and my grandma. But this weekend, I think I made my best one yet. The husband and 5 year old agree that it is delicious!

Chicken Soup 

Serves a crowd. 

Ingredients

• Two chicken breasts, bone-in, skin on (please!) 
• Two carrots
• Two stalks celery
• One onion
• Bay Leaf
• Sprigs of thyme
• Dill, dried or fresh
• Olive oil
• Salt and pepper

1. Place the chicken in a roasting pan or baking sheet. Season the chicken with salt and pepper, coat with oil and add a few sprigs of thyme to the roasting pan. Roast at 425 for 30-45 minutes, depending on size of chicken. The juice should run clear, and the skin should be golden and crispy. 
2. While chicken is roasting, heat oil in a soup pot, chop veggies and add to the pot, along with salt and pepper. Cook until veggies are soft, then add bay leaf and thyme sprigs. 
3. Let the chicken cool enough for handle, then remove skin and pull meat off the bones. Chop or pull the meat and set aside. Tie the bones up in a cheesecloth. 
4. Add cheesecloth-wrapped bones to the soup pot and cover with water. 
5. Bring soup to a boil, then lower to a simmer and partially cover. 
6. Simmer soup until color turns deep golden. Add more water as necessary, to keep bones covered. 
7. Remove bones from soup and discard. 
8. Add  chicken and dill; continue to simmer until ready to serve. 
9. Serve with fresh bread or crackers. The bread in the photograph is my new go-to recipe from King Arthur Flour, which can be found here: http://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/classic-sandwich-bread-recipe

Also, this: 

Borscht Under My Belt

I'm a latecomer to borscht. Growing up, I would see the stuff in jars in the supermarket and think, "Gross!" But the summer I turned 16, I was in Israel, and spent a weekend hosted by a family in Haifa. I was served cold borscht, with a generous dollop of sour cream and a few slice of white bread. I turned a corner then but didn't have borscht again for a long time. Years later, I visited my friend Yelena and her family in Toronto. Her mother, born and raised in Russia,  made a green borscht and packed it up for my train ride back to New York. This was the day of the Great Black-Out of 2003, and I was so grateful for that soup as my train sat in Utica for hours, waiting for electricity. I still think about that soup all the time.

The other day, I got hit with a craving for borscht. I was searching for winter soup recipes online, and saw a picture of borscht. Since then, I haven't stopped thinking about it. I googled around for borscht recipes and discovered that there are as many borscht recipes as there are people. Some of the recipes were incredibly time-consuming and had ingredient lists miles long, in stark contrast to the recipe found in The Book of Jewish Food, which calls for 5 ingredients. I came up with a happy medium, creating the recipe below. Delicious, if I do say so myself and judging by the shout-out I got from my husband on Facebook, it's not just me!

You'll need:

1. 1 box of beef broth
2. 1 bag of shredded cabbage
3. 2 bunches of beets (I had one bunch with small beets on it, and another bunch with medium-size beets. All together, it was six beets.) 
4. 2 potatoes
5. 2 carrots
6. 1 medium onion
7. olive oil, kosher salt and pepper
8. Fresh dill, to taste. (I had frozen dill cubes in the freezer, and probably put about 4 or 5 cubes in the soup.) 

Then, you will: 

1. Pre-heat oven to 425 degrees. Trim and scrub beets, coat with olive oil and place inside a foil pouch on a baking sheet. Bake until beets are soft, about 30 minutes. Let cool to the touch, and peel skins. 
2. Heat the olive oil in a medium or large pot
3. Chop onions into a medium dice, and add to pot once oil is ready to go. 
4. Chop carrots and potatoes to roughly the same size, medium dice. Add to pot. Stir. 
5. Chop beets to same size, and add to pot. 
6. Salt generously, add pepper to taste and stir. 
7. Cook, covered, until the potatoes have softened. 
8. Uncover, add the bag of cabbage, the beef broth and the dill. Stir to combine. 
9. Let simmer, uncover, stirring occasionally until the ingredients have sort of melded together. 
10. Turn off heat, put about half or 3/4 of the soup into a blender and blend for a minute or less--it should still be a little chunky. Then, add it back to the pot and stir. 
11. Serve at room temperature (or cold) with sour cream, and crusty bread. (We had delicious french batard baked locally, in nearby Norwalk, from a wonderful bakery called Wave Hill Breads. My Riverdale friends might wonder if there's a connection. Yes! The owners were married at Wave Hill!) 

Even though borscht is an old-world classic Russian recipe, my grandmother never made it, as far as I know. She did, however, make delicious stuffed cabbage and that is next on my list of winter cravings to satisfy. Yum.