Today was the first Torah Study led by the new Rabbi at Shir Hadash – I enjoyed his approach. After that, we Zoomed to services – the couple leading the service were actually at Shir Hadash in the chapel where we would have been holding services in normal times. It was good to see the place!

Last week, I dug through the pile of newspapers containing recipes that I’d been collecting over the last few weeks and pulled out the ones that looked promising. My goal for this week was to try a few of them – so far, we’ve had three: Sweet Sambal Cod on Monday, Salmon with Lemon-Herb Marinade yesterday, and Black Pepper Beef and Cabbage Stir-Fry tonight. They’ve all been worth adding to our rotation, though I hope to make less of a mess the next time I do the stir-fry.

Today, I learned that dough hooks are not interchangeable. We made pretzels again, and this time, I happened to notice that there was a little diagram above each hole on the mixer showing which hook went into which hole. I followed the diagram, and the dough behaved far better than it had on my last two attempts – it stayed in the bowl instead of climbing the hooks onto the mixer body!

I did have to add a bit more water than the recipe called for to get all of the flour incorporated into the dough, and the dough was very sticky, but other than that, it was a smooth process.

Tonight, there was a special Kabbalat Shabbat service at Shir Hadash. It was billed as “an early Shabbat gathering of prayers and ‘new songs’ of peace, holding each other virtually and bringing to a close this challenging week” and it really boosted my mood, although I nearly cried when we sang Gesher Tz’ar Me’od at the end – the country and all of us are all together on a very narrow bridge and the next 12 days are going to be tense.

Shabbat Shalom!