Considering the State of Our Kitchen...

You might wonder, like Dani, where we eat these days. Actually it's a matter of what we eat. We still eat mostly at home - we don't have time to eat anywhere else. But we do spend a lot of time buying a lot of frozen food! Our freezer is full of frozen pizzas, fake meat chicken nuggets, buffalo wings, chicken patties, veggie burgers, etc. That's what we usually end up eating for dinner. Sometimes we carry out pizzas. But every now and then we feel like having something that resembles a real meal, you know, the kind with vegetables, so we experiment with dishes that don't take too many dishes to prepare, like roasted green beans (wash the beans, spray them with olive oil, salt, and parmesan, and bake for 1o-15 minutes), shakshooka (tomato and eggs mixed together - one of the few real Israeli foods), salsa fresca (tomatoes, corn, and beans), black rice salad (black rice cooked in the microwave, edamame, and sesame, tossed with some sesame oil and a bit of rice vinegar), or just plain salad.

This has been the case for exactly 2 months now. And now that we don't have a sink, we're even more limited - by the size of dishes that fit in the bathroom sink. For example, In the days we still had a sink, I discovered a fabulous recipe: melon tapioca soup (courtesy of the Vegetarian Times): you soak 1/4 cup of small tapioca pearls in 1 cup of water for about 45 minutes. Then you cook it with a can of coconut milk and 3 T of sugar for 5-10 minutes (until thick and pearls are translucent). Then you turn the heat off and add 1/2 cup of milk, stir well and let cool. Next, you blend a melon, and when the tapioca pudding is cooled enough, you add the liquefied melon and chill. It is SO refreshing and delicious! You have to try! Now, where can I wash my blender?? :(

So we are really motivated to finish up with the kitchen. Here's what we need to do next:

1. close up the kitchen walls and plaster them (we can finally do that, now that the electrical wiring got inspected)
   
2. paint the walls (either before or after installing the cabinets, or both)
3. connect a new AC duct and a vent duct over the range (the latter will be connected to the microwave)
4. remove floor tiles from areas where cabinets are to be installed
   
5. install cabinets (I suspect this will take us a while!)
   
6. call the countertop people to come and measure, so they can prepare out fabulous Corian countertops with integrated sink. It will take them about 10 days to prepare the countertop, and then we will FINALLY have a sink, and we could FINALLY unpack all of our kitchen equipment and all the raw materials, and FINALLY we could eat some real food.
7. in the meantime, we will need to install new floor tile in places where there used to be cabinets but there will not be in the future.
   

At least there are still a few things that don't require much dishes and are awesome nonetheless, like a scoop of ice cream in a glass, topped with a bit of Irish Cream and some soy milk. Pure indulgence!