Cooking: Pot Roast with root vegetables, stuffed artichokes which look much more complicated to prepare than they were in reality.

Reading: Back to the Renaissance.

Working: Filling the vegetable garden with soil mixture (700 lbs of it).

Listening: Josh reading the Megillah this Purim, fantastic.

Baking: Hamantaschen, chocolate and apricot I need to improve the aesthetics.

Listening: A radio 4 show about why the public are disenchanted with politics, the first speaker began by quoting Aristotle, yet he still wonders why....

Reading: Krugman in the New Yorker, history of the Ostia Antica synagogue

Cooking: Judy made the kid's ultimate comfort food:Chicken Schnitzel

Booking: Rooms in Florence, visits to the Uffizi

Listening: Anne Sofie van Otter: Bach

Buying: Postcards of Donald Evans fantasy stamps.

Reading: Introduction to Anthony Julius' history of Antisemitism in England. Incredible reading.

Cooking: Alton Brown steak, mixed pea stir fry and zucchini stir fry.

Watching: Winter Olympics, on and off

Feeling: Tired mosty

Cooking: Minestrone (original recipe, only fresh vegetables and dry (not canned) beans). Pretty good, plenty of extra it serves about 12 so Yoni and Daci and we were able to have it for lunch. Southwestern baked chicken and salad Nicoise. Divine brownie pie and ice cream for desert courtesy of Daci.

Watching: Dr. Bramell..Meh

Thinking: about random decisions with far reaching implications. Someone in the Jewish agency decided that our group should go to Mishmar David in central Israel rather than the more common choice of the periphery. Without that decision I probably would have not gone back to University.

Buying: Dirt for the yard, with an aim to grow as many of our vegetables and herbs for next year as possible. I no doubt, will lose enthusiasm somewhere in June.

Baking: The usual and cinnamon bread.

Watching: AJP Taylor an unusual kind of star (youtube).  Well yes he is smart, and he was a public intellectual but his views on the origin of WW2 were despicable.

Reading: Finished 1977, too much for me, it might be "realistic and gritty" a bit like a very serious version of "life on mars" but I got little pleasure from it.

Cooking: Veal again

Watching: Rick Steve's the Cinque Terra, a little homework for our summer trip.

Cooking: Lamb chops (Yehudit is working late) mashed potatoes with skins and peas

Reading: 1977

Listening: Macbreak weekly

Watching: Winter Olympics.

Thinking: Surely the Mossad wouldn't use the names of Anglo-Israeli's would they?

Driving: Gil to fencing lessons

Watching: Weeds season 5, the Lightening thief (with Gil)

Reading: 1977, War and Peace

Cooking: Mushroom and Barley soup, Cornish Hens with molasses, green squash with mint

Eating: Katia's Beef Bourguignon (delicious).

Baking: Chocolate pie and Bread.

Socializing: Dinner at Katia and Andy's.

Reading: Finished Interesting Times back to war and peace

Cooking: Vegetable soup with smoked sausage  Spaghetti with meat sauce

Watching: Shreveport's excuse for a snow shower, we are supposed to get 4-6 inches but they must be expecting blizzard conditions for that to happen.

Listening: The Be Good Tanyas

Thinking: Helping the students work out that we have no real way to explain what a "good doctor" is or how to measure that.

Cooking: Baked chicken with cilantro and chopped chile (a family favorite). Creamy mashed new potatoes.

Reading: Interesting times, still hilarious but I think you need to be a 50 something Englishman to understand all the jokes.

Watching:  The Year My Parents Went On Vacation. How many Jewish/Brazilian movies can there be.


Thinking: Favorite historians: Simon Schama,  Jonathan Israel, J. M. Roberts, Roy Porter, Gary Schwartz and Martin Gilbert.

Listening: Simon Schama on Barak Obama, broadcast on the BBC world service

Reading: Interesting times (book 4 of the rincewind discworld cycle).

Listening: ITunes U History 167B: The Rise and Fall of the Second Reich  UC Berkeley(recording not great but fantastically interesting)

Cooking: Veal Marsala and new red potatoes in olive oil and rosemary

 Watching: As it is in Heaven: wonderful Swedish movie

Reading: Finished book 1:part 1 of W and P, Prince Andrei goes off to war. Time for something a bit lighter than Napoleonic wars and the Holocaust I think. NYRB arrived with two more articles about Isaiah Berlin and more of Tony Judt's recollections.

Watching: The bloody miserable rain.

Listening: Liszt Sonata, Ballades and Polonaises

Cooking: Sunday, Flank steak Argentinian style. Lamb chops for Lunch (Yehudit at work). Another chocolate pie. More chopped liver and simple red cabbage coleslaw.

Reading: More Sir Ian Kershaw

Viewing: The Superbowl...what else!

Buying: Furniture for what was an office and is now officially a sun room

Thinking: I had no clue about Weber's theory of Charismatic Authority.  Blomberg-Fritsch affair

Caring: Gil has Antibiotics and is feeling better.

Cooking: Mushroom and Barley soup, from scratch, of course.

Reading: Ian Kershaw essay on the differences between Stalin and Hitler.

Viewing: A truly miserable Grey day.

Reading: Yes, Yes still war and peace (about 6 months I think)

Caring: Gil needs a doctor this morning

Cooking: Platt family style Italian meat sauce and spaghetti (a radio 4 cooking show cautioned on the use of the term Bolognaise as this a very specific N. Italian dish)

Baking: Fresh baguette to go with above and a largish white loaf.

Half Watching: Awful British movie, those Glory, Glory days

Fixing: Sink in kids bathroom, pump, pump more of Noam's hair, pump and now it is free.

Thinking: We need to bring back social and political discourse without name calling and accusations

Reading: Still War and Peace, eventually I will be able to work out who everyone is but that may take a few more days. The book is neatly devided upp into books and parts so I am aiming to finish part 1:book1 this weekend. Then I must push on with Ian Kershaw

Watching: 24 season one. After The Wire it all looks so unsophisticated. Can you really have Plastic surgery to change your appearance to match someone else so far ahead still knowing that in 3 months the same person will still be taking teh photographs, surely it was easier to change the ID picture rather than kill 300 people?

Thinking. IP rights in Medical School

Reading: War and Peace the new translation , having read an older translation during interminable guard duty in the Israeli army many years ago. Even after the first chapter it is  clearly an easier text to read. However, having to look down for the translation from the included French is a little wearisome.

Cooking: Veal Schnitzel with small red potatoes in lemon, butter and parsley

Watching: Season 4 of The Wire, final episode.

Listening: The Waterboys "red army blues".


Wondering: What the lyrics were to polyushka polye that we sang in Habonim, the Hebrew version is a bit crude.