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The Raw and The Cooked

Simple Meals + Honest Book Reviews + Practical Living

Summer Salad Idea: Balsamic Marinated Chicken with Strawberry Feta Salad

This is one of those meals whose flavors screams summer! I enjoy it because I love the taste of chicken from the grill, the marinade couldn’t be easier, and the salad and vinaigrette comes together in the time it takes the grill to heat up. Pretty low effort, high reward. And that is the type of summer dinner I’m on board for. It’s also a great meal to make when hosting a summer get-together, mainly because of the flavors. It tastes like you know what you’re doing in the kitchen, and isn’t that what we all want?

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Numbers 30:2 – 36:13 | Matot + Masei | “Tribes” + “Journeys”

We bought a deli container of 500 lady bugs from our local garden store, and over the weekend, released them in our front yard. We decided front yard vs. backyard, because we didn’t want our chickens (‘the girls’) to feast on them. The rest of our week was filled with playgrounds, a trip to the botanic garden, and the nature playscape, three swimming lessons, a pediatrician appointment, the installation of our new cooktop, and piano lessons. The sabbath was a much needed and appreciated reprieve from the laundry, and the cooking, and the packing and unpacking of the minivan.

If you can believe it, this is our final week with the book of Numbers, or in Hebrew called Bemidbar, meaning “in the wilderness.” It was a wild journey, that’s for sure. Today is yet another double parsha, where we talk about vows and promises, laws concerning murder, women’s rights to inherit. It also goes through the narrative of all the stops the Israelites took from Egypt to the Promised Land.

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Recent Library Hauls: The Good, the Bad, and the Returned Early

One of my favorite additions to our summer rhythm has been our weekly library trips.

I want our summer to feel slower, so naturally our local library has become one of the anchors to that plan. The kids fill up their tote bags with picture books and chapter books, we usually stay for a little while to browse, and I always wander over to the adult fiction shelves to see what catches my eye.

Spoiler: I choose my books like I choose my wines at Straubs — what’s featured by the librarians, and by a pretty book jacket.

I genuinely believe public libraries are one of our greatest community resources. Beyond the endless shelves of books, ours offers story times, craft days, STEM activities, and all kinds of free programming for children. It’s become one of the highlights of our week.

One unexpected benefit of borrowing instead of buying is that I’ve become a much more adventurous reader. If I purchase a book, I often feel obligated to finish it—even if I’m not enjoying it. But when it’s borrowed? I have no problem returning it halfway through, if it’s not working. That freedom has made reading really light this summer.

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve worked my way through quite a stack. Some were fantastic. Some were simply okay. And a few…well…they went right back into the return bin. I wanted to share those lists with you today + quick 1-2 sentence reviews.

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Numbers 25:10 – 30:1 | Pinchas | “Phinehas”

I hope everyone had a great Fourth of July! We didn’t do much, since it fell over Shabbos (and don’t forget the oppressive heatwave / and raging thunderstorms, to boot), though I really loved that the big 250 coincided with Shabbos, because it gave us time to reflect, pause, and express gratitude to Hashem for this glorious country, who has been so good to us. Think for just a moment about how good an American Jew has it, the opportunity, the freedom. I thought a lot about both my grandfathers upbringings; one born in Czechoslovakia, and the other a first generation American. How radically different their first 24 years of life were. Either way, they each raised their children here, on American soil, and after tons of hard-work, determination, perseverance, gratitude, and a bit of Hashems charm, they rest easy, knowing how much better they had it than their grandfathers. We are so lucky to be Americans, thank you Hashem, for this miracle of a country.

This weeks Parsha is Pinchas. Which doesn’t have a very clear arc, it seems to be a bit all over the place, but it does hold several interesting themes nonetheless. It opens with violence (which ends up being rewarded), a new census taken, leadership being appointed, land about to be divided, the festival calendar repeated, daughters asking for inheritance. Let’s dive in!

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Simple Pizza Dough

We’ve been eating a lot of homemade pizza around here. It’s so easy to throw together, and the whole thing, from start to finish can be done in 60 minutes. Many times, it’s my children’s preferred lunch option. I love how easy and fresh it is. The recipe below is for the dough. I do cheat, by using Trader Joe’s jarred pizza sauce, but I will take the time to grate a log of mozzarella cheese, mainly because the bags pre-shredded cheese from the grocery stores have anti-caking agents and other mysterious ingredients in them, which I prefer to skip. So anyway, I make a simple cheese pizza 99% of the time for the children. At some point I did invest in a super inexpensive pizza pan and a pizza wheel – which makes life even easier. I like to serve this up on wax paper, which means there’s virtually no clean-up. In the summer time, it’s a win-win-win. Because we’re a family of six, this recipe will yield you two 12″ pies, but if you’re not feeding two adults and four hungry, hungry children, feel free to cut the recipe in half. I knead you to know, this recipe is truly the best.

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Numbers 19:1 – 22:1 + 22:2 – 25:9 | Chukat + Balak | “Statute” + “Balak” 

We started last week off with a fantastic Fathers Day brunch at my in-laws. I brought homemade bagels (recipe here), we had the whole local St. Louis family, plus my husbands sister, visiting from NYC, and it set a really nice tone for the week. Relaxed, slow-paced, and easy. If I could draft up a perfect summer week, this past week would be it. We’re walking into our second (third?) heatwave of the summer this week, which…. isn’t fun. Especially for my chickens. They don’t particularly care for frozen watermelon rinds, but maybe they’ll get desperate enough this time.

Meanwhile. We open with another double parsha, which is kind of a shame, because each one, Chukat and Balak, are each profound in their own way, and I really wish I could dedicate one full post to each. Oh well. Chukat, because Israel is given a very interesting punishment, but also the cure, it deals with the death of Aaron and Miriam, and there’s a lot of unpack. And Balak. Well. That’s the story of the talking donkey, and again. Could be its own post. I’m going to do my very best this week. Especially since I’m writing this day of, with a baby on my hip.

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