Wedding Cake

This is it--the cake that my blog is named after. When my eldest son and his then fiance, now wife, decided to marry, they had three things that they wanted at their wedding in terms of food. My macaroni and cheese, my husband's brisket, and the lemon cake of my best baking friend ever, Ivy. Here is how the third request turned out. Ivy and I have been baking together for decades. Ironically, when we lived together we were more parallel cooks--she made the desserts and my spouse and I made the appetizers. That was the stuff of our big parties, because at the time we lived in very small spaces that were not conducive to large sit down dinners. So we served food that you could stand and eat instead. In some ways, Ivy's willingness to bake for any and every occasion became a dependency for me. She was invariably invited to meals at our house, and she always brought dessert. I stopped planning dessert after a very short while, and assumed she would bring it. Then came the clincher. When Ivy couldn't come to dinner, she would drop off a dessert for me to serve. She was always experimenting with new things and always looking for taste testers to give her feedback, and we were there for her. In a big way. I was an above average baker before I knew her. I didn't fear the dessert end of a meal. I learned to cook in college when I lived in a large cooperative house. It is true that once I developed a team that I regularly cooked with, I was not responsible for the dessert much of the time, but I had some very reliable dessert options in my repertoire. With Ivy in town, that became completely unnecessary, and worse still, I really could not compete with her. She made things that were more beautiful, more varied, and better tasting than anything I could prepare. That is still true--the good news is that in the years since we have lived apart, we have continued to bake together. One of the highlights of the preparation leading up to Jake and Alice's wedding was the week we spent doing the desserts. Over the next several weeks I will post recipes from that baking extravaganza, but the prettiest thing we produced was this cake.

Justice Robert's Compromise

The votes that could be relied upon for and against the Affordable Health Care Act were known before the opening arguments in the case. But what would the middle of the road justices do? That was the big question, and things were not looking good for the Affordable Healthcare Act up until yesterday's decision was announced. One ray of hope ahead of the decision came from Justice Roberts, when he said on the third and final day of argument that states have been compromising their sovereignty for decades through increased reliance upon the federal government for money and accompanying directions on the governance of state affairs. The other is that Justice Roberts himself has a pre-existing medical condition that would impact his ability to purchase health insurance as an individual. Maybe he considered that. Those were the rays that shone bright yesterday. Chief Justice Roberts cobbled together an opinion about the Affordable Healthcare Act that is worthy of Chief Justice Marshall, my very favorite Chief Justice of all time. In doing so, he created some unusual alliances along some tricky lines of ideology, but it will work in the short run, at least. What he did was to put together a narrow majority of the justices who value societal justice to save the law by arguing that the individual mandate is a tax. Meanwhile he assembled a majority with the ultra-conservative justices to hold that the law otherwise would have violated the Commerce Clause. The decision allows Roberts to protect the Court against criticism it was usurping the legislative process, while simultaneously warning Congress that if it wants to enact sweeping legislation like this in the future it had better stay on the right side of the Commerce Clause. Otherwise “the Government’s logic would justify a mandatory purchase to solve almost any problem.”

Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness by Alexandra Fuller

This is almost a companion novel to a memoir the author wrote about her personal experience of a child growing up in Africa. This book is written from the perspective of her parents, who are Europeans choosing to stay in Africa throughout their lifetime. While the story line is not nearly as gruesome as the one in JM Coetzee's fictional novel ;Disgrace', it is not an easy read. Her mother is a Kenyan by birth, then moved to what was then Rhodesia, and when that became an untenable prospect, moved to where they live today, Zambia. They are farmers. They do not live an extravagant life. They have experienced things that would not have befallen them if they lived in a first world country. Most shockingly, they have had three children die of things that were either preventable or treatable at the time they happened. So the lack of accessible medical care harms blacks and whites alike in this story. It is a largely unflinching look at Africa through the lens of her parent's generation. It reflects the quickly shifting political landscape of Africa, as well as the difficulty of being an immigrant on a continent that is less and less hospitable to it's colonial past, without truly dealing with what it's future needs to include. Sad and sobering.

The Groomsmen Were Brothers

I love this picture of my three youngest boys. They share the same hair, the same shoulders, the same tuxedos and the same kippah. They are all standing on the groom's side of the chuppah, supporting their brother who was getting married, despite all. They did not want to wear tuxedos. They were not excited about the ceremony. They were hot and they were tired. They had been helping to get ready for the wedding for months. But no one watching them that day would have guessed how they felt. They were there for their brother and that was that. I am not one of those parents who is inordinately proud of my progeny. I do not generally sing their praises from the roof tops. Seriously, most days I am unhappy with at least one of them for at least something. But on Jake's wedding day I was very proud of all of them. True, there were shenanigans. There were silly photos. There were episodes of wrestling. But that is part of who they are together, as brothers. They managed to be the best they could be together for Jake and Alice's wedding day. They individually and as a sibship tried to make the day a success and it was. I am still carrying the glow of it around, days later.

Romantics Anonymous (2010)

This is it.  This movie is what I love about French romantic comedies. Painfully shy man meets overanxious woman.  They share a passion for chocolate and each other.  They promptly and appropriately fall in love.  Problems ensue (this is the French part) when they can't remain calm enough to build a linear relationship.  Instead they have one in fits and starts. Angélique (Isabelle Carré) is a gifted chocolatier who is so self-effacing that the merest compliment makes her faint--literally. To cope with her fear, she sings “I Have Confidence” (from “The Sound of Music”) to herself and attends 12-step meetings for people with social-anxiety disorder.  She is so timid she doesn't admit that she is the chocolatier everyone wants to find. Her male counterpart, Jean-René (the Belgian comic actor Benoît Poelvoorde), is the middle-aged owner of the Chocolate Mill, a failing enterprise whose products are deemed old-fashioned by those in the know. Jean-René is afraid to answer his own telephone, sweats so much when he is with Angélique he has to change shirts frequently, listens to self-help tapes at night, and sees a therapist who pressures him to take action--which is the plausible piece of how these two get together. It is typically French in that the two main characters are incredibly likable, and everyone wants them to get together.  We know they will, but the movie is a romp of a tale about how that happens.  I just loved it.

Dance, Dance, Dance to Celebrate

The past month has been particularly celebratory in our family. We have had two bar mizvahs and a wedding, and all three had music that one could really dance to. Such a treat. I am not a particularly graceful or accomplished dancer, but I do enjoy it. Why? I like the movement, the interpretation of something that you hear into something that you do. But I think it is a very communal activity. I have danced with my husband, my nieces and nephews, my children, my extended family, my husband's siblings and my own. It is a way to demonstrate how happy you are to be at the event, that you are celebrating, and you are celebrating with friends and family. My son's wedding was the most recent event, and it reminded me of how lucky I am to have family and friends who come from near and far to enjoy life's milestones. So much to be thankful for. My parents and my mother-in-law have been able to be at a grandchild's wedding. We have an extended family that has faithfully come to each event, which makes the celebrating fuller and more rewarding. There is so much about the event that you attempt to plan for so that it will be enjoyable, but the company is something you have no control over. When they are there, you can dance, dance, dance.

Lviv, Ukraine

Lviv is a very pleasant surprise after the border crossing into Ukraine. It is a beautiful city, with a sprawling old town, and it is well deserving of it's status as a UNESCO World Heritage site. It was the fourth city with that designation that we visited on our recent swing through Eastern Europe and it was very charming, second only to Krakow in my eyes. Lviv has been continually occupied since the 5th century, and we know that as far back as the Monguls, in the 13th century, it has been invaded on a regular basis. The location apparently is too tempting for those around it to resist. Like many countries in Eastern Europe, it is a place which has had many masters. The upside of that is that there is a cosmopolitan flavor to Lviv that developed literally over the centuries. It was a trade center, and home to Poles, Germans, Jews, and Armenians. All of that ended with WWII. In 1939, while Poland was being invaded from the west by Germany, Russia invaded from the east. Poland was diminished in size and it's multicultural past was reduced to rubble. After Ukraine's independence, Lviv has emerged as the most livable city in Ukraine, and certainly a must visit one. The traditional embroidered goods and the vodka are just two of the highlights beyond the stunning architecture.

Ukraine Border Crossing

Ok, first and foremost, check out the impossibly oversized hat on the Ukranian border official. Seriously? That is the uniform? It makes anyone wearing it appear at best to be a buffoon, and at worst to be a cartoon character. You have no trouble figuring out from the get go that crossing this border is going to be a challenge. On our way into Ukraine we got all the way up to the window, the final step, and were told that no, we were not a car, we were a bus, and would need to enter the truck and bus line (which stretched as far as the eye could see. Okay, that is not good, and we had already spent an hour on the process. We get into the other line when suddenly the booths go black. Closed. No explanation, no estimated time of reopening. It was two hours before they reopened, and another hour or so before we got through. In retrospect, I wish I had eaten before we got to the border, and used a bathroom, because both were nowhere to be found. Welcome to a beaurocratic regime!

Chachmei Lublin Yeshiva, Poland

This yeshiva was established by Rabbi Meir Shapiro, with the first cornerstone being laid in 1924, and it opening it's doors in 1930. But Lublin had a history as a center of Jewish education long before the 20th century. Around about the second half of the 16th century one of Poland's most important Jewish communities was established in Lublin. It continued to be a vital part of the city's life until the community ceased to exist during the Nazi Holocaust. Students came to Lublin from all over Europe to study at the yeshiva in Lublin. The yeshiva became a center of learning of both Talmud and Kabbalah. The great scholarship of those who studied there led to the city being named the "Jewish Oxford"; the Rosh yeshiva received the title of rector and equal rights to those in Polish universities with the permission of the King in 1567. It has been recently restored and returned to the Jewish community--in Warsaw--there are no longer enough Jews in Lublin to worship here, or for it to function as an educational venue. Instead, it is slated to ultimately become a museum. Yet another beautiful building with no one to appreciate it.

Who Lived in Lublin?

Who lived in Lublin before WWII? The short answer is that we will never know. Like much of eastern Poland, the Jewish population was probably about 50% of the town. Post WWII, it was well under 1%. Who were those people who disappeared? It is too late now to answer that question. Even people who were children during the war are in their 80's now. We went to a museum that is dedicated to chronicling who lived where in Lublin before the war. The walls are lined with notebooks, one for each individual dwelling on each street. They have a picture of that house, and then whatever information is known about the inhabitants. I picked up notebook after notebook, and not one of them contained any data. Those people are gone forever, anonymous to the inhabitants of Lublin today. Instead of being a source of comfort, the museum is a stark reminder of how completely Hitler and Germany wiped a group of people off the earth.