Happy New Year

Things seem pretty good with the new hard drive, though I'm afraid to tempt fate and call it successful. If it is, though, Ed gets most of the credit. He was quite fearless about boldly disconnecting apparently random wires and plugging new things in, and even vacuumed out a fair lot of cat hair from what I suspect was the mother board. We had a couple false starts, but everything does appear to be working now. Yay!

We've been reading about the Jewish holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur this week for our history/literature/etc. program, TOG, and one of the activities I'd planned was making a honey cake. According to our book, this is "a traditional Rosh Hashanah treat ... in the hope that the sweetness will last for the whole year." I'm all in favor of a sweet new year*, so we had this honey cake for dessert tonight.

To be honest, the cake came out a little dry. I think I overcooked it. It is supposed to be served with whipped cream, but I didn't have any. What I did have is a fruit dip that I made after Ed couldn't stop eating it at church last Sunday. The dip is made by mixing 8 oz of cream cheese with a 7 oz jar of marshmallow fluff. Now that is my kind of recipe! It is excellent with apple slices (and I'm always trying to get Ed to eat more fruit), and not bad with honey cake.

So here's wishing you a sweet and very happy new year!

*One of the books we are reading is The Family Treasury of Jewish Holidays, by Malka Drucker, which is really excellent. It explains about the Jewish New Year not being like the January 1st New Year's holiday, being a time for self examination, prayer, and contemplation. Just in case you thought we were missing the point entirely.