Chanukah, Day 4

The posting has been lean these days due to kids home, husband home, and in-laws visiting.  (It also doesn’t help that I’m slogging through an incredibly intricate part of a Norah Gaughan cabled cardigan that has had to be unraveled three times already.)

But today was really remarkable.  Kids up at 6:30 (their usual time, not so remarkable).  Fighting (totally unremarkable).  But once the in-laws materialized, breakfast was made and consumed and a few snacks and water bottles packed, we were actually able to get on the road.  Today’s adventure was at Neot Kedumim, a sort of national park near Modi’in dedicated to educating the public about life in Israel during Biblical times.  There is a large section of sukkahs (kosher and nonkosher to test everyone’s’ knowledge) which we visited a few years ago, but this time was dedicated to Chanukah.  There was a table set up in a wooded area for kids to make whatever they liked out of clay, displaying traditional and modern versions of clay oil lamps (burning, for a cool effect).  There was an olive press up and running, with a mule hitched up to the large stone wheel to crush the olives, and the press in operation, squeezing the oil from the olives and filling a cistern in the ground.  There was a display of pottery, a water cistern (complete with pulley so the kids could get a physics lesson by comparing hauling up the bucket by hand versus using their weight with the pulley), and nearby a gently sloped stone surface with a narrow channel feeding into another cistern—a wine press.  It was a beautiful warm, sunny day (too warm and too sunny for December), and we and the kids had a fabulous time.

Ice cream break at Neot Kedumim at noon had well worn off by 3 pm, when we got in the cars and headed to the shopping center on Emek Ayalon in Modi’in, where the Pizza Domino (no relation to the Operation Rescue-owned American chain) sells the tastiest pizza we’ve had in Israel.  We ordered our favorite—cheese pizza with chopped tomato and onion— and chowed down, then went downstairs to the large open area at the center where there were inflatable bouncing structures.  The kids, used to these for years now, doffed their shoes and immediately set to.  My in-laws prowled a drug store, the Cap’n and Bill wandered around, and I bought soufganiyot: four minis with chocolate filling for the kids, and warm, fresh-from-the-vat doughnuts filled with my favorite, ribat chalav (dulce de leche).  When I walked out of the bakery, I looked over the railing of the upper level at the kid-friendly festivities below.  Directly below me was a long table set up with kids all wearing lime green bandannas on their heads and doing what looked to be a craft activity.  Gluing?  Rolling?  Arranging colored sticks on black construction paper?  No.  They were making sushi.  The red and green sticks were julienned carrot and cucumber, the glue was sushi rice, and the black construction paper was seaweed.  With the help of the sushi bar’s employees, the kids were layering the ingredients, rolling them using bamboo mats lined with paper, then taking them to the end of the table where the employee with the big knife sliced them and placed them in neat plastic trays.  Every kid’s sushi roll came out looking like a pro.  I once knew a kid whose Japanese father always made sushi at New Year’s.  I love the idea of making it anytime but especially at Chanukah to help counter all the grease we ingest.  (Last night’s mixed vegetable latkes were a success, and one which I don’t feel obliged to repeat for another five years or so.)

Had the seventh Harry Potter flick not been sold out, the day would have been complete.  But as it is, I got to come home, put the kids to bed, and sit down to blog about our very satisfactory day.

Wine press, Neot Kedumim

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