This is the children’s favourite tofu recipe, based on something Anatt taught me once. It is very simple and quick to make:

1. Cut a block of tofu (I prefer extra firm) into cubes or blocks (approximately double the thickness of a domino piece).

2. Pour around 3 tablespoons of olive oil into a fry pan, and coat each piece of tofu in olive oil on both sides.

3. Fry the tofu over a moderate heat, until it is lightly browned, turning it over as necessary (should take around 5 minutes).

4. Remove the fry pan from the heat, and pour a generous quanitity of soy sauce over the tofu, and stir it to make sure it is abosbed evenly. During pesach we discovered that pasta sauce also works well.

Enjoy!

This is Aviv’s favourite Israeli couscous recipe. Israeli couscous is a misleading term because, well, it isn’t really couscous but rather toasted pasta. In the USA, it is known as Israeli couscous, in Israel it is called “ptitim”. Anyway, in the USA and other places, you can buy Osem brand Israeli couscous.

Ingredients:

• 250g (8.8 Oz) Israeli couscous
• 1/2 Jar pasta sauce (I like the Bertolli organic olive oil, basil and garlic, but any will do)
• 2 squirts of ketchup
• salt / garlic salt + pepper (to taste)
• little olive oil

Method:

In a saucepan over medium hear, fry the so called couscous in a little olive oil, until it starts to brown. Add about 2 cups of boiling water (it will bubble furiously as the hot oil and water mix, so be careful). Let it boil away over moderate heat until almost all the water is gone. Add salt (I prefer garlic salt), pepper, half a jar of pasta sauce and two generous squirts of ketchup (sorry for being so precise). Let it cook for another couple of minutes, stirring regularly to stop it sticking on the bottom. Don’t worry if it is still a little watery, the couscous imposters will continue to absorb the liquid and give the desired saucy consistency. Enjoy!

Links to videos of Khatib’s Introduction to Robotic course. Looking interesting.

Guide for how to get tickle me elmo to do all his special moves. yes we bought one, from the Fisher-Price store in East Aurora (home of FP). Yes it is fun. Yes I play with it more than the kids.

This is a cool pdf viewer for windows. Its best feature is that you can reload a pdf without closing it first (as you must do in adobe reader). This is great if you are writing documents in latex, it will automatically detect that the pdf has changed and update by itself. It is also free, very fast and open source.

Lots of bubble recipes (for winter in the USA, when for inexplicable reasons, one cannot buy bubble mix)

If you do a search on google for “levivot gvina” (in hebrew), basically cheese pancakes, you get this site. This is my slightly healthier, americanized version:

Mix together:

2 cardboard packets of 1/3 less fat philadelphia cheese (around 500g total), any sort of cream cheese will do really

6 tablespoons of wholemeal flour

3 tablespoons of sugar

1/2 tablespoon baking powder

2 eggs

half a lid of vanilla essence

Mix it all together until well mixed, fry them over medium heat (can do without oil in a non-stick frypan), turn them over when lightly browned (usually about 1 minute per side).

Enjoy.

This is a neat little program for making latex equations in graphics file (in linux). What is particularly nice about it is that you can make the equations, then just drag and drop them into other programs (such as OpenOffice). You can also save and load the equations.

I’ve been having lately occasional (once a week or two) random flashbacks. Recently it was of Malvern town hall …

Being relatively close (9 hours or so), next year I should try and make it. Also need to see the glass flowers at harvard.