First Days of Vacation

Yesterday was my first day of vacation. I'm off work until the turn of the year. My first official act yesterday was to sleep in. It got my day off to a very late start but it was just what the doctor ordered. It felt wickedly indulgent to sleep until 11 AM on a day that would normally be a workday for me and require early hours. My second accomplishment was to cook a very belated Chanukah dinner - potato pancakes, sweet potato pancakes, and matzo ball soup. It took a ton of time to do between the last minute shopping and the preparation and cooking of the meal but it was delicious, even if it was quite overdue.

The recipe for the potato pancakes comes from my mom, who is of Irish/German descent. Potato pancakes are one of her comfort foods and she prepared them a lot when I was a kid. She made them from scratch and served them with butter and sour cream. So do I. They are addictive. Here's how my mom makes them: coarsely grated potatoes, a little bit of flour, a couple eggs, salt and pepper as you like. Fry them up in a big frying pan with oil. As you spoon the mixture into the pan, flatten it out a little so your will have thin and crisp pancakes. They are done when they are brown and crispy on both sides. Drain them on a paper towel.

My dear mother-in-law, who passed away a few years ago now, taught me how to do the matzo ball soup. I was the Catholic girl her son decided to marry. I am sure I was a bit of a surprise. She was very kind to me and really helped me out with the matzo balls making. Here's her no bother but taste like you made it from scratch trick : use the boxed mix (matzo ball and soup mix together). We make about 5 or 6 batches in a hug pot (we like lots of extras for the next day) but we only use a couple of the soup packets. Empty those packets into the boiling water and cook all your matzo balls in that soup mixture but when you serve the matzo balls, put them in bowls of chicken broth. Just toss out the soup mixture you used for cooking it up. If you've never had matzo balls give them a try - they are delicious.

The sweet potato pancakes were my idea. We usually do them from a box but I wanted to try to create them from scratch. The kids say they were amazing and I thought they were pretty good myself. Here's my concoction: coarsely grated sweet potatoes, a couple eggs, a little flour, a bit of sugar, a dash of apple pie spice. Fry them up in oil just like regular potato pancakes. These burn more easily though, so watch out. Just like that, a new holiday food tradition was born. How do I get myself into these things?

The bad thing about a vacation that starts around the holidays is that you have to use it to get a ton of chores done. The great thing is that you have the time to do the chores without going crazy. Yesterday, I wasn't even able to figure out my chores until bedtime when I finally wrote out a chart of the days leading up to Christmas and what needed to be accomplished by when. As I began to scrawl my mental list across this makeshift grid, I felt better. Just seeing it all down there like a little hastily drawn roadmap of my life for the next week took away some of the pressure that was building up around this pile of tasks. It was a relief because once I saw it in writing, I thought that maybe I could actually get it all done. Before it was just a huge chore-cloud darkening the landscape of Suburban Island. Now, I could see the blue sky behind it.

It's taken me a long time to learn that it is usually better to face things than put them off or subconsciously avoid them. Of course, I still procrastinate all the time but at least I know it would be better if I did not. That's progress, isn't it? Well, it's something like progress anyway.

I felt that all in all, I had accomplished a lot for my first day off the clock. It wasn't what I meant to accomplish but I accomplished it anyway. I added the dinner to my list after the fact with a big check mark after it. A chore done is a chore done and it looks very impressive on my scribbled grid with that huge check mark next to it.

Comments

[Margaret]

The sleeping in sounds wonderful. Today is my last day of work. I tend to be an obsessive list maker, and then drive myself crazy trying to get everything done. So, I just make a mental list of what I'd like to get done. Right now, it's mainly holiday baking. The gifts are all wrapped. I've never tried either one of those dishes; they sound delicious!!

[l'empress]

You made a better Hanukkah than I did; I'm not cooking for a family any more. The potato pancake recipe is much like mine. The matzo ball soup is something I'm not willing to do for two people, not because it's that difficult but because I have to do one part of it vegetarian. The sweet potato pancakes sound great. I guess I'll try that when the old grouch isn't home.