Turns out this is the end of last night's storm. Tonight's storm hasn't started yet. Crazy, huh? Thanks for all the Chanukah greetings! It's very kind of you all. I think I'm going to skip the candles. Open flames don't sound like a good idea in this mess (house draped in plastic, boxes, etc.). I should mention that it's one of the minor festivals, but the influence of Christmas has made it fun. And if you're into what my grandmother called "stomach religion" it's a great excuse to eat fried food. No borekes this year since the kitchen is non-existent. Solman, I'd take you up on the desert, but I already live in one. :) That's why we take rain so seriously. Figs, dates and spring water (i.e., wadi)? Yeah, that's what I have in my fridge. And tamales. Hey! I wonder if buñuelos were started by maranos? That would make so much sense! That they were being fried for Chanukah. Because what has it to do with New Year's? Aha! According to Wikipedia, yes! (sort of) Merengue is DR, but PR sounds nice. Never been there. Love festivals. HI PEANUT!! I totally get what you're saying, but I think the mismatched glass just gives the visual tension the room needs, so it'll be fine. Hey, Missy. You could come visit. It's pretty awful here, but it's incoprehensibly awful there. And that's not even your "real" winter?? Maybe Solman will give you the ticket to Bali. Tex, Steff, has it warmed up at all for you? Tex, thanks, the herbs sound nice. I think I have some lavender oil... Marthavila, are the twinkle lights still making up for the chill?

I just noticed that in my first post I said that I used phyllo dough for the wrappers when in fact I used the puff pastry squares and rolled them out to the size I wanted. I don't think rolling phyllo dough would change the size. Anyway, I made some pasta dough yesterday and will use that to make proper egg rolls. I don't know why I thought it was too much trouble to make - I made it in a small bowl with the one egg that I had plus some semolina flour, white flour, salt, and a bit of olive oil. I don't use oil when I make pasta, but I thought it would help for the egg roll wrappers. My question at this point is - should I have added water to the egg roll wrapper dough? For ravioli I do not, but the recipes I've seen for egg roll wrappers have more water than egg in them. I guess I could cook one the way it is and if the dough needs water and flour I can still add that to what is remaining. Do you make your own egg roll wrappers? Lars

Thank you for all the good comments and well wishes. We have a basic permanent menu that we take orders for and make extras of the more popular items with different specials every day. Today our specials were hot roast beef and gravy rolls, oven baked potato wedges and porcupine meatballs with tomato gravy and mashed potatoes. Tomorrow is Sloppy Joes (would you believe these are a novelty here?), hot dogs and macaroni cheese. The macaroni cheese was slow to take off until the kids realised it's the same thing as "mac and cheese". These are very culturally impoverished kids in the main and I find it really sad. One student had never heard of or eaten macaroni cheese, one can only despair at what the home diet is...or isn't. Our hamburgers and chicken burgers are all made from fresh meat (I even grind the chicken myself because it's cheaper), as opposed to the previous manager's bought in patties made of Lord knows what part of the animal (well it claims 100% beef but doesn't say which bit). We buy fresh chickens, boil them and strip the meat off for our chicken and salad sandwiches, hot chicken and mayo rolls and chicken quesadillas (still trying to teach them how to say that one :-) ) instead of buying bags of pre-chopped plastic chicken from the frozen food section like most places do- and it's been noticed :-). We make filled and toasted foccacia sandwiches, pulled pork and coleslaw rolls, lasagne, tacos, pizza, shepherd's pie and in summer our own sushi. Fried rice has been a runaway best seller. I'm learning a lot of the kids' names because I introduced a Loyalty Card system where they get a dinosaur stamp every time they pre-order their lunch, and after ten stamps they get a free muffin :-) I write their names on the cards and then remember them when I give out the lunches. I'm kind of amazed because usually I have a terrible time remembering faces and names :-) I really enjoy working with the kids and it's not hard to be a smiley Canteen lady most of the time- we have a few students with behaviour issues and I just let them know that if they want to behave badly they can do it somewhere else. I'm pleased to say it stops right away :-) I even get smiles and waves when I'm at the store after school and whispers of "Hey Mum, it's the Canteen lady" which really gives me a boost. I work hard at promoting the Canteen because we have a really large student body but I'd say maybe only 10% used the Canteen when I started. If we could get more of the students in we could put on more staff and open more serving windows: we have six but only use two (and when I started they only used one and it was so unwelcoming looking). Now we're seeing new faces every day so I'm hoping the word is getting out. Because we're not in the middle of the campus we're easy to overlook and I figured that just sitting back and thinking good thoughts at the kids wasn't going to bring in new customers :-) DH and I brainstorm ideas often. Next week I'm going to run a "Vote for Friday's special" campaign to try to generate some more buzz. This Friday we're having Curry Day with Thai chicken curry and beef curry. While I do look forward to my time off I'm really enjoying my job and get a lot more satisfaction from it than I have in a while.

I think I'm too literal minded. I keep reading your answers and thinking that if I were facing execution I wouldn't have an appetite. I'd be either innocent or the political prisoner of an extremely corrupt regime, and the injustice would make it even worse. Tea and toast? So I came up with an alternate scenario--if I were going to have lifesaving surgery that was likely to destroy my sense of taste, these are the things I'd want to taste one last time: Cheese borekes made with filo and gruyere (among other cheeses). Eggplant in techinah salad with Syrian style scratchy hard pita. Greek style salad with a large variety of vegetables, including peppers and cress, and feta. My mother's arroz con pollo, full of dried fruit, mandarin slices, and guava jelly. A friend's "Flablam!"--mostly cheese with some tomato sauce stuffed into a butter pastry shell. Double cut rib lamb chops with salt and ketchup (childhood favorite). Petits Pois (plain). Sunbursts little yellow tomatoes, chilled. Roasted eggplant spears with pepper and herbs. Sliced cremini mushrooms braised in port with shallots. French vanilla ice cream. 72% dark chocolate. Perfectly ripe cantaloupe, strawberries, peaches, and cherries. Aged gouda and triple cream brie with whole grain and seed bread. Plain buttered white toast. Plus a double double animal style + raw onion and the world's best crunchy street taco. :) That's more than a meal, but it's interesting to think of living but not tasting. There are all kinds of foods that I love that aren't on the list. These are the ones I'd want to remember most. OTOH, I think I already remember them really well, so maybe I should ask for stuff I can't imagine?