I've conquered an obsession. Well, sort of.

The victory isn't really over my napkin obsession, but rather over the storage of its resulting output.

As I've mentioned, I have a "thing" for making dinner napkins. Maybe it's a clever and frugal way to add a touch of personality and elegance to our table. Or perhaps it's a barely controlled obsession. Most likely, it's a flimsy excuse to fondle fabric.

We have a lot of napkins.

We have dedicated dinner napkins for many holidays. I have matzah-napkins for Pesach, fall foliage napkins for Sukkot and Thanksgiving, Chanukah napkins, and Purim napkins made from a wonderful Robert Kaufman "Mardi Gras" fabric.

I make them from (often clearance-table) novelty fabric in the children's birthday party themes. As you can imagine, with five children, a number of the themes have been repeated for multiple parties, an added bonus. We have napkins with cats, princesses, ducks, horses, dolls, Winnie the Pooh, numbers, machines (for Jonathan's "engineering" themed 10th birthday party), butterflies, various sports, bears, and bats (the winged mammal).

I've also made a bunch of generic birthday and celebration napkins, just in case time, inspiration, or the fabric store is unavailable.

I have sufficient out-of-the-way storage for these "special occasion" napkins. I even have room for a few more birthday themes, just in case someone chooses something not covered by the above list. The children enjoy re-using their special napkins throughout the year, as a special treat, for minor celebrations, such as a great test score, or to make the breakfast table special for a sleep-over friend. It isn't hard to retrieve them for special occasions.

The storage problem was with our everyday/shabbat napkins.

I find it hard to pass by a beautiful fabric on the clearance table without considering how it would look as dinner napkins. When a favorite tablecloth tears or stains, it's hard not to salvage its remains for the napkin stockpile.

Thus, the stash accumulates.

For the past seven years, I've kept the everyday napkin cache in a free-standing shoe organizer, on a high shelf in the mudroom. Each shoe-hole holds about 3 dozen napkins. It worked well enough, but it was a bit too high up for the children to reach (I have to stand on a chair to reach the top compartments), and the build-up surplus hoard inventory has outgrown it.

Until this week, the only solution I've seriously considered is a Twelve-Step-Program. (Hello. My name is Carolyn and I'm a napkin-o-holic.)

But therapy will have to wait. I've found a much better answer, the offspring of the marriage of my napkin hoarding and my other favorite obsession: recycling packaging materials.

After 13 years of sending my kids to school, I'm physically incapable of throwing away an empty egg carton or tissue box. I get hives when forced to discard plastic berry containers. It's not that I'm such an environmentalist, but rather that I'm in touch with my Inner Toddler: I often enjoy the box as much as its contents.

It's not only my fault. The teachers are complicit. They encourage and reward my hoarding behavior, accepting this stuff gratefully and sending the children home with fantastically creative and educational projects made from it all. When I see what they can do with a paper towel tube, it becomes impossible to throw one away.

One reason I don't home-school, is that I need the school as a recipient of my bounteous collection of egg cartons, berry boxes, fabric scraps, shopping bags, oatmeal canisters, and bottle caps. We'd have to rent an apartment, leaving our home to house the warehouse of "good garbage" if I had no way of reducing its stock.

That is why I just happened to have, on hand, over a dozen empty Kleenex boxes.

On Tuesday morning, I moved the Kleenex box pyramid designated for the kindergarten from the dining room table, in order to sit down with a great audiobook and finally attack the napkin ironing backlog from the holidays.

(Our dining room table has a heat-resistant pad on it. I put a tablecloth on the table on top of this pad, and do my ironing on top of that. This gets the tablecloth ironed "for free", lets me sit at a comfortable dining room chair when ironing, and allows me to use the entire surface of the table as a huge ironing board.)

So, I moved the boxes to our front hallway to await their transformation to objects d'arte.

This hallway is about eight inches wider than its doorway, leaving a dead space of about 5.25" on one side and 2.75" on the other. I know these dimensions by heart, because I've measured dozens of times in the eight years we've lived in this house. Wasted space in such a central location bugs me, in principle.

Finding a 5" deep shelving unit and a useful purpose to match this spot had eluded me. Until Tuesday morning.

Gretta looked at me curiously as I squealed in satisfaction at two simultaneous wonderful discoveries: The Kleenex boxes fit perfectly in the hallway, and the ironed napkins fit perfectly in the Kleenex boxes. She followed me upstairs, as I collected supplies, including a pair of 30" x 40" foam core boards (cost: about $11).

Her excitement matched mine, until she learned I wasn't building yet another dollhouse, but rather something for myself.

I'm (almost) embarrassed to admit how happy this made me. The napkin overflow is stored conveniently, the hallway dead space is used, and the Kleenex boxes are recycled. And I can pretend that I don't qualify for a jacket that ties in the back for just a bit longer.

(Construction details that made this work:

• Brick "legs": The bottom shelf is mounted two inches above the bottom and back walls, allowing "legs" made of stacked bricks to hold it stably in place.
  
  The depth of the foam core & Kleenex boxes is just as wide as the hallway, but about half an inch wider than the hallway at the floor, due to the floor wall boards.
  
  The brick "legs" are just taller than the floor wall board, allowing for the floor under the foam core shelves to be swept.


• Fabric cover is not yet finished/hemmed, as I hope to install a "real" wood shelf with brackets about a foot above the foam core, and cover that. This will give another shelf of storage, and prevent heavy objects from being placed on the foam core structure.


• Fitted top shelf: Above the foam core shelf, I made a separate layer of foam core, cut to fit exactly inside the molding and with a rounded edge at the corner. This made the shelves look built-in, when hidden by the fabric.


• Picture hangers: The foam core shelves are secured to the hallway wall by a pair of picture hanging hooks, poked through the back of the foam core about 5" from the top shelf, each about one-third of the width from the edges. I experimented with picture wire, but it made a gap between the wall and the structure. Hanging it directly on the hooks was more secure.)

Bread Cornucopia

1. Cut a foil pan's corners so that it will lie flat.
   


2. Roll the foil pan into a cone shape and secure with duct tape.
   
   Be careful, the cut edges are very sharp.


3. Cover with heavy duty aluminum foil.
   


4. Spray generously with oil.
   


5. Place oiled foil mold on a cookie sheet and make a large recipe of bread dough.
   
   I used our regular Yekkish/Water Challah recipe this time.


6. Roll the bread into long, thin snakes.
   


7. Starting at the tip, wind the dough around the oiled foil cone.
   
   


8. After allowing to rise a bit, brush with diluted egg yolk and bake until golden brown.
   
   


9. I put the "flowing abundance" on a clear tray so we can move it easily when clearing the table.
   
   (From 2004) Including the ornamental Indian Corn, but not including the reusable nuts and vegetables, this (theoretically edible) centerpiece cost less than $3 to make.

Putting the Parsha on the Menu: Toldot

In this week's parsha, Toldot, Esav asks Yaakov to "give me some of that red, red, stuff" and sells his birthright for a bowl of lentil soup.

Thus, our menu for Parshat Toldot includes lentil salad (quick cheat: prepare lentils and add a container of salsa to taste), lentils added to the cholent, and we have "lentil soup cupcakes" and fruit bowls to supplement dessert.

The plan is to make Lentil soup cupcakes are made from yellow cake mix with a few red food coloring drops, dipped in melted chocolate to make the "bowl" once the cupcakes have cooled.

I'm attempting also to make some waffle cone bowls, that I plan use to serve red fruits and berries (strawberries and raspberries, perhaps apple crumble with cranberries, time permitting) with optional whipped topping for those not counting calories.

(I'll try to update this post with pictures when/if the food's ready for photographing before candle lighting time.)

Shabbat Shalom!

Please note: this blog is not updated on Friday nights or Saturdays. Comments made during this time will be put in a queue, to be moderated after Shabbat.

(Pictured, clockwise from upper left corner: Crudites/Matza well with hummus-filled pepper bucket, rice baseballs in celebration of this week's Red Sox victory, challot from the bakery(Thanks Mom!), camel cookies, graham cracker well, Machpela cake. The back row is a subset of the many containers I've filled with fresh water, in anticipation of the pending hurricane.)


Tonight's menu celebrates the Red Sox victory, as well as the weekly parsha.
Shabbat Shalom!

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Recently published articles about parshat Chayei Sarah that I've enjoyed:

• "Start a Jewish Family" by Rabbi Berel Wein


• “Actions, Not Words” (Pirkei Avot – Chapter 1, Mishna 15b) by Rabbi Dovid Rosenfeld


• "Because Avraham Had a Hard Day, Efron Should Suffer?" by Rabbi Yissocher Frand


• (Added Sunday) Eliezer: A Lesson in Responding to Rejection by RWAC

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I'd like to extend my thanks to Jon Abbett and his family, for sponsoring Shabbat Morning Kiddush at our shul "with thanks to the Almighty for the kindness He has bestowed upon the 2007 World Champion Boston Red Sox."

Unrelated, but something cute and fun: Dira 6 Eliyahu Hanavi music video
("dira"= Hebrew for "apartment")

I also enjoyed Ezzie's favorite video by Sir Ken Robinson, a humorous and insightful 20 minute rant on creativity. (He says: "My contention is that creativity now, is as important in education as literacy.")

Ezzie also points to a beautiful and inspiring post by The Corner Point called Human Becomings. It moved me so much that I forwarded it to our school's kindergarten teachers and two people who are planning to teach at the kindergarten level.

Shabbat Shalom!

Thanks, RWAC!

Despite his strong inclination to defer on-line halachic questions to local halachic authorities, Rabbi Without A Cause (RWAC) graciously agreed to answer Sephardi Lady's question about the need to tovel (ritually immerse) my homemade cookie cutter:

Hello Carolyn,

Thanks for your email.

I generally tell people to ask their local authorities, because I'm a big believer in the idea that local rabbis should determine local practice.

That said, from my point of view there is no need to tovel this cookie cutter, assuming a Jew made it. The steps you outline qualify as creating an implement from scratch, and an implement created by a Jew does not need tevilah.

Be well,
RWAC

Thank you so much, RWAC!

One of my daughters is home sick today, so we just might make another batch of camel cookies, just in case the pending hurricane hits Boston. (Why do Emergency Preparedness Supply Lists always forget to list cookies?)

Cave of Hope and Blessings

People call the Machpela the "Cave of the Couples" or "Cave of Pairs" because of the four husband-wife teams buried there.

Instead, I think of it as a Cave of Brothers, an optimistic symbol of the attainability of family harmony. Despite lethal rivalry, conflicting interests, and fundamental philosophical differences:

• Yitzchak (Issac) and Yishmael (Ishmael) joined together to bury Avraham there.
• Yaakov (Jacob) and Esav joined together to bury Yitchak in it.
• Yosef (Joseph) and his brothers traveled together from Egypt to bury Yaakov in it.
• After the Exodus from Egypt, the whole nation together brought Yosef's 200+ year old bones to the land of Israel (and perhaps back to this cave) for burial.

The theme of brothers reconciling to bury their father is repeated for each of the Forefathers and Yosef. The Forefathers' biblical biographies are stories of real men, not angels without strife. We study and admire their strength of character as they struggled with their brothers and faced extreme difficulties.

We celebrate their ultimate victories: not over their brothers, but in overcoming themselves. The strength of our nation was built on a foundation of generations men who vanquished interpersonal strife for the sake of brotherhood and common purpose.

When someone dies, we say "may his memory be for a blessing." In our thrice-daily prayers, we bless G-d in the names of our Fathers, each of whom ended his life with the respect and cooperation of his sons. When they gathered together in their father's memory, they became a blessing.

The midrash tells us that this Cave is the threshold to the Garden of Eden. Why? For me, this is meant to show that reconciliation and healing interpersonal relationships are prerequisites for experiencing spiritual perfection.

Hope lives in this tomb. May they rest in peace.