Great NY Times article on multitasking and gadget use...

Yum!

Easy recipe idea (reflecting the last 3 meals at the Levin household!).

1. Chop a TON of veggies (I have something like what you see to the right.  I use the grid one so they're teeny cubed veggies.)  Mushrooms, yellow and orange peppers, eggplant, carrots, sweet potatoes... whatever is fresh and in season.

2. Night one: serve 1/3 of veggies, seasoned to your liking, on top of your favorite tomato sauce and whole wheat pasta.  Top with some yummy cheese.  (And, if you're us, dirty martinis!)

3. Night two: put the second 1/3 of veggies on the stovetop.  Add mushroom or vegetable broth.  Use an immersion blender.  Now you have soup!  Serve with some garlic bread, couscous, etc.

4.  Night three: take the final 1/3 and add to the stovetop.  Add (much less) broth.  Add a can of coconut milk and blend.  You will want to season differently because now you have a delicious curry!  Serve with whole grain brown or basmati rice.

Enjoy!  YUM!

I get inspired by veggies.  Is that wrong?

healthy living

I just had the most therapeutic kitchen mopping experience ever. Thank Gd. I had no idea how much the kitchen floor was bothering me!!!

So Omri and I know we're in a big learning process. And it truly feels like it some days. I'm learning how to manage a house, feed our little family properly, do errands. On top of that, we're adjusting to a new community and the major lifestyle changes that that includes... especially as neither of us grew up as religious Jews. Finally, I'm learning how to teach... as I do it. Which ends up in nights like last night: 3 hours of cramming over a fifth grade history book to get my head around the differences of the 13 English colonies. Then, once I learned it, how to teach it. Then creating the materials. Thank Gd I love my job but it is not always so easy this first year.

Well, I decided to add another learning curve. Which sounds crazy, but I find that the busier I am, the better I feel. And while this running-a-house-learning-to-teach-learning-to-be-married curve is progressing nicely, it's progressing slowly. In the meantime, I'm finding other things that are lacking.

The TED video I posted yesterday reminded me that we need to really prioritize finding a social group here in town. So hopefully this Shabbat, hubby will be going to the "young" shul in Passaic and I'll follow next Shabbat. That is a good step in that direction. Oh, and an awesome young couple down the road may be coming for a meal next Shabbat as well!

But I'm also less-than-satisfied with our lifestyle, health-wise. I learned at Tisch to love body work, exercise, and healthy living. I want to get back to that. I get all starry eyed walking through Sporting Goods stores and I had a near-religious experience in the Kripalu giftshop. But that's not sufficient.

But, BH, that's fixable! So my plan is to check out this amazing looking yoga studio in nearby Clifton next Monday morning.

And the second bit is where this blog comes in. I've heard friends and professionals go crazy over amazing diet changes that I just don't know anything about. I'm not talking crash diets. But, learning about whole grains, for instance. What qualifies? What does it do to help? What are best recipes to try? Or, what's so bad about caffeine? Or sugar? I love health, and I appreciate health. But I just don't know that much.

So, IY"H, I'm going to be using this blog to track the progress and report on my findings. Whole grains may have to wait, as Passover is coming and they'd get the short end of the stick. But here's the list I definitely want to start with:

Whole grains

Caffeine

Sugar

Alcohol

What else should I add to the list?

Alternatively, ages back I bought Dr. Weil's CD 8 Weeks to Optimum Health. Maybe I should start by doing his program and use the blog-part as a supplement?

Hm... leaning towards the latter.

What do you think?

Martin Seligman on positive psychology | Video on TED.com

Martin Seligman on positive psychology Video on TED.com

A must-see!!!!!

Smallest apartments in NYC...

I wish I could copy and paste in case NY Times takes this down but since I can't, here's a link to the article about Manhattan's smallest apartments.

The smallest one featured, the Hell's Kitchen abode, was my place for about half a year. I loved it. Here's the article.

And here's a video tour of the apartment.

Oh, and here's the guy from the NY Times article... and me (the day I moved out)!

Extra bounce in my step...

The more time I spend with Omri, the more I realize how much there is to be said for a simple, happy life. (Which, essentially, is why I married him. And why I named my blog "Bliss You.") Last night he convinced me to give up my fancy dinners and instead we ate (turkey) hotdogs and frozen veggies. It was simple, delicious, and most importantly FAST. It allowed me to take the time I needed to catch up on a lot of schoolwork after a week of being sick and everything falling by the wayside. And there's something about a really good hotdog that just feels like summertime and flip flops.

Speaking of, I actually WORE my flip flops yesterday! Outside! It was the most stunning day! And I have to give NJ props... if it wasn't for this harsh winter, I don't think I could have appreciated that day quite so much. My students and I were all antsy so we had a very high energy math class (laughing over fractions... good sign), a quick Social Studies review, and then a nice long recess outside in the beautiful sunshine. It was a fabulous day.

Meanwhile, VosIsNeias, a news website I often check out, seems to have caught the summer bug as well. Here are two adorable, uplifting news articles. Worth the read.

Manhattan, NY - Artist Fixing NYC with Legos -- VosIzNeias.com

Jerusalem - Oldest Man in The World Lives in Israel -- VosIzNeias.com

Enjoy!

How Not To Stop Intermarriage

How Not To Stop Intermarriage

Another Aish article on marriage (interesting... a theme!) with an amazing quotation from Professor Alan Dershowitz on his debate with the late Rabbi Meir Kahane.

Eat, Pray, Love, Then What?

Eat, Pray, Love, Then What?

Sarah Yocheved Rigler does it again. Another inspiring, humorous, relatable, intellectually satisfying article.

I highly recommend the read, especially to anyone in a relationship.

Fluttering

I have a strange history with some southern ladies I've never met.

Don't worry, I intend to clarify.

In high school, I was very involved (understatement) in forensics. "What?" you ask, wondering what high schooler occupies herself with the examination of crime scenes.

Ohhh... not that kind of forensics. Forensics is the inexplicable moniker that's replaced "speech and debate" since "speech and debate" became "speech (3 or 4 different forms), debate (at least two forms), mock congress, and--get this, artistes--Competitive Acting." Speech and Debate just doesn't suffice.

Anyway, I did the Competitive Acting bit. Dramatic Interpretation, Humorous(ly bad) Interpretation, Duo Interpretation, Prose and Poetry. In each, the student would take a book, play or screenplay and cut and paste it into a (hopefully) coherent and (when lucky) interesting 10 minute performance. My speech coach stumbled onto a dusty book called Sidetracked Home Executives. Prone to a dangerous mix of irony and nostalgia, our coach thought we should put together a mildly satirical, ultimately heartfelt DUO based on the authors: classic old-school housewives and their systems and processes to run their homes in a time when a new bundt pan could really rock your socks.

Now, at the time, I had no idea how brainwashed I was being by "progressive feminism and democracy." ...hold on, lemme just pull out the soapbox. Ok, got it....

I was raised believing that women and men were equal. That women could (and should) have the same careers and, basically, lives as men. We should approach relationships the same way (ick), work the same way (ouch), have the same interests and hold marriage and family at the same very low level as (most) men. It didn't occur to me until midway through college that this isn't actually practical. And, more upsetting, many women who were caught up in the early feminism craze have come forward stating that they feel robbed of the opportunity to have a real family.

What did feminism--the way most people understood it--do? It took all the glory out of being a woman. To say that women should work like men is to say that the way women have worked throughout history isn't noble or downright incredible. Well, it is. And now, thank Gd, most feminists are catching on that the whole POINT is to give women the CHOICE.* No, you don't HAVE to be just like a man to be fulfilled. In fact, it's pretty awesome to be a woman. And it's nice to live in a time where jobs are open and women are more respected in the workplace, but really, are men respected in the house? Have we perhaps stumbled upon a bit of a double standard here?

Househusbands of the world unite!

Ok, back to my southern friends....

So, a few years after I am performing Sidetracked Home Executives to teeny tiny audiences on the Forensics circuit, I've landed at NYU's Tisch school and I'm in on a monologue workshop with the amazing Karen Kohlhaas. She's giving her schpiel on Why Actors Need Flylady (definitely worth a read if you haven't heard this!) and so I decide to check out this website. She explains it's a home/life management "system" (sort of) mainly geared towards stay-at-home-moms but particularly crucial for the working actor. So I sign up for her emails and I've been getting them for years now.

It wasn't until a few years in that I realized (you've probably guessed by now) that Flylady IS THE SIDETRACKED HOME EXECUTIVE!!! I've become a devotee of the very woman whose entire life view I thought had gone out with avocado refrigerators! Go figure!

So, hats off to you, Flylady. The "hotspots" are getting cleaned, my "DH" is happy to be no-shirt-for-work-panic free in the mornings, and I introduced the timer to my fifth grade class.

Cheers (you know, Purim's coming!),
k

* My teacher, Devorah Kigel, gives an amazing series of classes for married and engaged women in which she pointed out the relatively recent story of a female politician who stepped down from her role to spend more time with her family. She was slammed by the feminists, totally denying her her privilege to choose how to prioritize her time!

Day 4 TV-free

Plans changed quite suddenly and I was really down last night.

Normally, this would have meant curling up to TV or a movie, which we consider "treats."

Instead, we busted out the wine glasses, poured in ginger ale (our poor-man's Moscato), and learned how to make egg rolls.

We could use more practice (namely, we spent the first 7 not realizing we hadn't torn off the sheets fully and were wrapping each roll doubly thick) and Omri valiantly tried to turn beer chicken into a Thai-style stir fry...

But one day, they'll look like this:

Most importantly, we laughed, talked, bonded, and had a much more meaningful experience than 45 minutes to 2 hours of the tube could possibly have provided.