Radio Alabama

Moving to the south has been quite a culture shock for me. It’s warmer, people drive the speed limit, some people have accents, and most radio stations play all country music or cut their country music with some Christian music and priestly sermons. I’ll admit that I was a little discouraged at first and kept mainly to my ipod in the car, but a couple of weeks ago I found my radio station. Woof FM. The Wiregrass’s station for continuous soft rock and winning, and not only a station with great music and the occasional… ok… I haven’t heard this on the radio before, but it’s music I guess… and kinda catchy… song, but also a source of legitimate entertainment in news, figures of speech, and awesome finds. 

 Examples:

1. The 20K Giveaway. They call out cash card numbers all the time and you win $100. If you hear the woof woof howl and you are caller number 10, you win $100. If you listen to Woof FM at work, tell them so, and they show up and you are listening to Woof FM at work, you win a plush baby woof woof (a what?), $100 cash, and for you and your coworkers a gift basket from Woof FM and wait for it…. delicious food from McDonald's. (Wow. Slow claps please for the most over exaggerated description of McDonald's and an "awesome" prize.) Also, once you win any of these prizes you are entered into the drawing for the 20K Giveaway. Good times.

2. The other day, one of the news anchors for the radio told me that the place for me and my family to be this Tuesday night was IHOP. Free pancakes. Now isn’t it great that my radio station lets me know when and where there are FREE PANCAKES! It’s like college all over again. In Alabama.

3. Real news in Alabama is just awesome. Did you know that Alabama passed the “Saggy Pants Bill” in Montgomery County. Yes, that is what it is called and yes, it is now ILLEGAL to wear saggy pants that show your underwear because it is considered disrespectful. If you are a juvenile, you can be fined up to $100 and if you are an adult, you can be fined up to $150 for wearing saggy pants in public. This bill passed in the house 59-0. Freedom of expression, watch out! The Saggy Pants Police are out and they are hungry!

4. So this isn’t so Alabama specific, but Alanis Morissette redid her song Ironic. As we learned in my high school, the most ironic thing about the song Ironic is that most of it isn’t ironic at all and there are only two instances of actual irony. See here for a breakdown of why this is so. HOWEVER, in her new remake of the song, she added an ironic statement! “Meeting the man of my dreams and meeting his beautiful wife” has now become, “meeting the man of my dreams and meeting his beautiful husband.” LOVE THIS NEW VERSION. Ironic statements and support for gay marriage all in one fantastic line. You HAVE to check out this video and pay attention around 2:44. Also, I love the fact that my new radio station chose to play this version rather than the older more PC version.

 

99.7 Woof FM!

PS. All this talk about Alanis Morissette is really making me want to watch Dogma where she plays G-d. Handstands and all. LOVE KEVIN SMITH.

Puppy Power

As promised, I give you Claire! So last Sunday, we adopted a puppy! She is about 10 months old and super adorable, as you can see from the pictures. We think she is part golden retriever, and she is part chow, which we know from her black tongue. We think she might also be part lab, but she is also only 30 pounds so she has some smaller dog in her too. I think she might be part English shepherd because she looks the part and she tries to herd us when we go walking. She always stays by our side and doesn’t try wandering off, which is great, but she also likes to circle us and gets under foot. We found her in the Dothan classifieds. A couple of months ago she was brought to the animal hospital because she was hit by a car. She had broken her leg and needed pins put into her pelvis. We also think that she was mistreated in her previous home because she was really shy around people. Because she needed more care than could be given at the hospital, one of the volunteers took her home to foster her. Four months later, trying to find a home, we found Claire, or rather, Claire found us. We decided to keep the name her foster family gave her after much discussion, little agreement, and finally adorable nicknames: My little chocolate eclaire, and clairebear. My Clairebear hobbles all over our living room as she is learning to put more and more weight down on her bad leg. She had muscle atrophy in that leg from disuse as she was going through all of the surgical procedures and recuperation, but we have seen so many strides on so many fronts.

On the way home from her foster family, she was drooling all over the backseat of our car. My husband was driving and I was petting her and singing to her and trying to calm her down but she was shaking. Of course my husband had to comment that drool can be a precursor to puke, so I was super grateful that I was the one in the back seat with the carsick scared puppy and not safe in the front seat driving not like a maniac of course. She was also really afraid of people. She would shake and had to be coaxed into coming into a room with strangers. Her foster family had other dogs, and her foster mother told us that she would bond to us quicker because she couldn’t bond to dogs in our apartment, but I am amazed at how true that has been and how great she has become around people. We brought her to a friend’s house this past Saturday night, so basically a week since we got her, and there were 4 couples. She was a little hesitant to come inside, and proceeded to pee all over their kitchen floor, but she warmed right up. She actually went up to one of our friends whom she had never met before without being introduced, and I have never seen her do that before. She also made friends with Ky, the giant husky mix with whom we brought her to socialize. She even became so comfortable as to steal a couple of his toys, and he is a good 50 pounds bigger than she is.

So from shy puppy who wouldn’t leave her kennel to crazy dog that runs/hobbles around our apartment wanting to play, she is adorable. She was even chasing her tail last night. She also jumps like a cricket when she gets excited. She sheds like it is her job, but we got a FURMINATOR and I brush her every day so that has kept the shedding to as much of a minimum as possible. I am amazed that something with such a tacky name works so well, but I am glad that it does. She is dark brown and all of our rugs are cream colored. It is also a good thing I am not allergic to dogs, and thank goodness my father in law is an allergist who told me so, after giving me the test as his kitchen table… awesome I hate needles but now we have a puppy so it is ok.

She is just really too cute. 

That is her, "step away from my chew toy" look

Check out that blue tongue!

Aww Yeah.

One Cupcake to Rule Them All

One Cupcake to rule them all, One cupcake to find them, One Cupcake to bring them all and in their hunger bind them.

So this post is about 3 parts of awesomeness. A. We got a puppy. Her name is Claire and I promise to do an entire post on her soon once I have good pictures. B. I got a haircut for $30 (which compared to what I was paying in Boston was kind of a Valentine's Day Miracle. See? There are AWESOME parts about Alabama).  And … drumroll please…

C. I made awesome cupcakes. Cupcakes to Rule them ALL. Red Velvet Cupcakes with Chocolate Mousse Filling and Cream Cheese Frosting.

Part 1. Make 24 Red Velvet Cupcakes. You can go to the trouble of finding a recipe and getting ingredients. OR you can use Duncan Hines Red Velvet Cake Mix and follow the directions on the box. Also, use those little cupcake paper fillers for easier cleanup. Once the cupcakes were done, I took them out of the tins and left them to cool on a cooling rack. I heard somewhere that allowing cakes and cookies and such to cool on a cooling rack stops them from getting soggy, but also from cooking more from the heat of your pan.

Part 1.5. Once the cupcakes are cool, get a cupcake corer and bore a hole into the middle of the cupcakes. We got ours as a wedding gift, but it is the same kit as here. 

Part 1.75. EAT THE CUPCAKE MIDDLES. They are about as awesome as donut holes.Which are SUPER awesome.

Part 2. Make Chocolate Mousse. This is my mom’s recipe.

Ingredients:

24 oz (either 2 12 oz bags or they sell 24 oz bags) semi sweet chocolate bits

4 Tbsp confectioner sugar

10 Tbsp cold water

2 whole eggs

1 pint heavy cream or heavy whipping cream

1 tsp instant coffee

2 tsp vanilla

4 eggs separated

Directions:

1.     Combine chocolate, confectioner sugar, and water in saucepan or double boiler. Melt over low heat, stirring constantly. Let cool.

2.     In Blender or mixer, combine 2 whole eggs, 4 yolks, 2Tbsp cream, instant coffee and vanilla in large bowl.

3.     Stir cooked chocolate mixture into blended yolk mixture.

4.     Beat 4 egg whites until stiff and fold into chocolate mixture.

5.     Whip remaining cream and fold into rest of the mixture.

6.  (Chill to firm, though some people prefer it to be served left out of the refrigerator for a short while.) To make these cupcakes, SKIP THIS STEP. It is really hard to fill cupcakes with firm mousse. See below.

Part 2.5. Using the squeezing thing with your cupcake corer (or you can use a plastic ziplock bag and a cake tip) fill the cupcakes with Chocolate Mousse.

Part 2.75. Put in refrigerator until the mousse hardens. This makes it easier to frost them. Trust me.

Part 2.76. Also refrigerate the mousse. (See? You get to refrigerate it at this moment!) You will have a LOT left over. You can pour it into decorative bowls, or into miniature gladware containers and give them as gifts. If you are a chocoholic, who doesn’t love getting chocolate mousse for V-day? I personally like my mousse firm and straight out of the fridge, but some other people like theirs served out of the fridge for a short while.

Part 3. Frost the cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting. You can either go to the trouble of finding a recipe and getting ingredients, OR you can buy Duncan Hines Whipped Cream Cheese Frosting.

Part 3.25. Put a sweetheart candy, you know one of the ones that says “love ya” or “text me” on them,  on top of the frosted cupcake.

Part 3.5. ENJOY! And you should probably share. I gave half of my batch to friends and the smiles I got at just the sight of them were pretty big.

Epic Weekend

Epic Weekend: My husband flies helicopters, I have an Uncle Fabio, and I almost bought a 1lb box of chocolate.

If that didn’t intrigue you, stop reading. We can’t be friends.

Exhibit A: My husband flies helicopters.

            So my husband is in flight school right now at Fort Rucker. He is still in the first stages of learning how to fly, and every night he comes home, gets on his simulator, and crashes. I have seen him crash more times than I can count on my fingers and toes. I have seen him fly too, do cool maneuvers, but inevitably I will also watch that tiny CG image crash and burn. So I was a little nervous as Family Day came around. Family Day is the day that spouses, parents, children, neighbors, cousins twice removed and their roommates etc. come out, stand in the drizzle, and get the chance to watch their loved ones fly a helicopter. So as the first helicopter flew into view my stomach knotted a little bit. But I finally saw 60C fly into view and HOVER! … and LAND. gracefully! It was really awesome. They do this awesome maneuver where they fly really high, and then cut the engine, come speeding in, and pull up at the last minute to skid beautifully along the ground. It was really fascinating. I am so proud. 

Landing. Gracefully!

So Proud!

Exhibit B: I have an Uncle Fabio

            My mother in law and her entire family are from Argentina. So as they all speak rapidly the second most used language in the US, I sit there grinning and nodding occasionally because I speak French... and Hebrew. Useful, I know. Even the children in Argentina speak Spanish! Why is this relevant? We went to a Bar Mitzvah this weekend in Florida for my husband’s little cousin. Shout out to Steven who did a FANTASTIC job reading Torah. We also had dinner with the rest of the family on Saturday night and I finally had a conversation with my husband’s elusive Uncle Fabio. He is described by others in the family as “the liberal one,” but we had yet to have a real conversation and I was intrigued to finally talk to the one person in the family deemed “liberal,” when I myself am a CT Yankee with democratic leanings, and friends who are homosexual. Let’s just say I enjoyed the conversation immensely and it was honestly a great weekend. I really feel like I have been inducted into the family clan now: donkeys, strange voices, fat/bald/zombie apps and all.

Exhibit C: HAVE YOU EVER SEEN A 1lb BOX of chocolate?!!!???

            It is beyond epic proportions. We were driving down I75 and had hit Wildwood, Florida. What is in Wildwood, Florida? I’m glad you asked! Well about 20 minutes before you hit exit 329 you start seeing billboards with truffles on them. At about 10 minutes from the exit you see more billboards with creamy delicious chocolate covered nougat and truffles and your mouth starts watering and you turn to your husband, who is driving, and you give him the puppydog eyes. Oh yes. Now he pretends not to see you because he’s “watching the road,” but then you coyly ask, “so were you planning on getting me chocolate for Valentine’s Day?” So now of course he has to say yes. “So, why don’t we just stop there for 5 minutes and you can get it now?” Here’s the kicker: “It’s probably cheaper.” Add some pouty lip now and you’re golden. So you take exit 329 and go about 3 miles and finally you arrive. Welcome to a giant monster outlet store attached to the Russell Stover Chocolate Factory. 

Outside: WOOHOO!!! CHOCOLATE!!!

Inside: Ok. So I may have been a little overwhelmed.

Not only are there isles (yes that is plural) of boxed chocolate, it was cheaper, and better. You know how you get a box of chocolate and you don’t even like half of the flavors? Yeah. They had boxes by FLAVOR. They had boxes of all dark chocolate and others of all milk chocolate. They had FREE SAMPLES. They have a card. My husband got the card. You rack up points and get free chocolate. I think he may be trying to fatten me up. HA! Sucks for him, ‘cause he’s stuck with me forever 

*insert evil laugh.* 

Yup. Dark Chocolate Butter Cream Caramels ONLY and they are ALL FOR ME!

Anyway, epic weekend of Legen…. wait for it….and I hope you’re not lactose intolerant…. dairy proportions.

The Wine Saga

Hey all,

    So I have been told that you want some of my crazy Jew stories since this is, after all, jewinalabama.blogspot.com. Ok. Here is my wine saga and I promise that it has a happy ending.

Part 1. The Grocery Stores et al.

            You can’t find Kosher wine in the Southeast Corner of Alabama. The only orthodox Jewish synagogue (not counting chabad in other parts of the state) is outside of Birmingham Alabama. They get their kosher meat from the Piggly Wiggly. Not a joke.

However, in what we lovingly call UCLA (Ugly Corner Lower Alabama) you can find non-kosher wine in the grocery store, in liquor stores, in pharmacies, in brown paper bags, at a friend’s house etc. You can also find products that are illegal elsewhere, such as FourLoco. Yup, the drink that caused hospitalization and death can be found in your local grocery store, but non-imported well-liked wines by brands such as Baron Herzog = big no no.

Oh wait though. I can get manischewits. And magen dovid. I do not count these as wines although I think they are great for Havdalah where you take one sip and end up pouring half of the now wax filled wine down the drain.

Part 2. Importation?

            So what did we do, well, I do? I looked up liquor stores in the area. What did I find? Bel Vino. Crazy person that I am, I emailed the owners and asked them if they had Kosher wines, or could get kosher wines. The answer was YES! I had to order 3 bottles at a time and had two choices. Baron Herzog and randomly, imported Sion Creek Red. They also told me I could get Bartenura Moscato but I have never seen the fruits of that promise. It would take 2 weeks and please don’t ask how much I spent, but we did in deed get 3 bottles of wine. Lots of effort, little reward, but I did manage to import Kosher wine into the UCLA. Win.

            The Class 6. So on a military base, you may notice a store called the Class 6. This is a liquor store with a fancy code-name. Now I was told that the army tries to provide anything its soldiers might need. I must say, kosher wine so that we can fulfill the basic mitzvah of Kiddush (because we also can’t get kosher grape juice down here) is a great need. Also, everything on an army base is usually cheaper. So we went to the Class 6 and asked them if they could order some wine. Cashier to manager to a “we’ll call you once we’ve heard from our distributers.” It is now 6 months later and we have yet to receive that phone call.

Part 3. I became a rumrunner

Now don’t you fret and don’t you frown because we spent winter break in the Northeast! We did what any desperate couple would do. We got in my car and drove into the Bronx. (I HATE driving in New York and my husband can’t drive stick shift. Well.) I faced the angry drivers and the awful parking and we made our way to Riverdale, NY. We had lunch at Carlos and Gabbys (Kosher Mexican food and the way I convinced my husband to come with me). Then we made our way across the street to Skyview Wine and Spirits. Now, it looks a little rundown and small on the outside, but their staff was really helpful and their prices were really great! We walked away with 3 cases of wine. Now with my math skills, and 1 bottle a week, I figure that will last us until October when we will see where we will be living next. I did manage to forget how much wine we go through on Passover, but I figure we’ll manage. 

Oh right, the rumrunner part. I also drove those 3 cases of wine from Connecticut to Alabama on my 22 hour roadtrip with all my stuff. With my mom. I felt like I was back in the 1920’s bringing the kosher fruits of happiness down to my speakeasy in order to fight the man and prohibition! (These kinds of thoughts help me get through my boring days of laundry, file folders, and trying to find a hobby.)

So that is my wine saga. Living in the middle of nowhere, without a Jewish community, I have learned that sometimes you just have to get creative.

Taxidermy and Tuna Melts

My last post about signs reminds me of my first day in Alabama. My husband and I went down this summer before the wedding to get an apartment and try to make connections so that our real move would be easier. We also went to Israel before the wedding since we wouldn’t have a chance to go on a real honeymoon afterward due to our mandatory road trip (aka. move) to Alabama a week after the wedding. On the way back, we cabbed from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv (don’t even ask what happened to our sherut (bus)), flew from Tel Aviv to Zurich to New York to Charlotte, North Carolina, to Atlanta, Georgia and then got a rental car to drive the 4 hours to Enterprise AL. Yup, from the biblical homeland to the Bible Belt… not the same thing, and with lots of stops in between due to a flaw in our plan that said cheaper was better and the decision to book two separate flights: Tel Aviv – New York and then New York- Atlanta. Did you know that there is a flight from Tel Aviv – Miami –Atlanta meaning only 1 stop over? Did you know that the closest affordable airport to Enterprise AL is in Atlanta (4 hours) or sometimes Birmingham (3.5 hours)?

Anyway, when we finally got to Enterprise, we were starving. My husband checked his smart phone to see what restaurants were around. There were BBQ pit places with a pig as their logo, and the normal restaurants like Bojangles, Waffle House, and Sonic, which we don’t have up north. We decided to try a sub place that said they had tuna salad on their menu. Great. I could really go for a tuna melt. *Disclaimer: We keep Kosher in our home but we eat dairy out.*

So we pulled into the parking lot of the sub place and I noticed that across the street was an auto repair shop. I also saw the strangest sign in the window of this auto repair shop. It was a sign claiming cheap taxidermy. I was confused. Auto repair and taxidermy? What do you do? Hit the deer and then have it stuffed and mounted on your wall as a momento?

Ok. Moving on because I don’t think that anyone could make sense of that one. We walked into the sub shop not knowing what to expect next. We went up to the register marked “order.”

             “Hi there! What can I do for y’all today?” asked the cashier.

             “Well, your menu says tuna salad, so I was wondering if we could get a 12 inch tuna melt to share,” I said.

             “A what? I never heard of that.”

             I looked at my husband with a little disbelief mixing with panic at being relocated to a place that had never heard of a tuna melt.

           “Well, it’s just tuna salad on bread, toasted with cheese on top,” my husband attempted to explain in order to get the panicked look out my eyes. He tried to give me a reassuring nod in an attempt to show me that this would be all right and that he was handling it. Maybe if this was a new thing down here and caught on they would name the tuna melt after us. The Jenn, or the CT Yankee. Maybe we could be the ones that brought the tuna melt to the south!

            The cashier’s eyes went blank, but then lit up as though she had seen the light and had received directions on tuna-melt making straight from the Lord himself. “Oh! I’ll just pop it in the oven for a few minutes! Would you like anything else with that? You guys are number 72 and you can have a seat anywhere.”

            We paid and then sat down at a two seater red plastic table by the wall. The trifold on the table gave the history of the shop and advertised their 5 gallon pickle bucket that they sold with proceeds going to charity. We actually considered buying one and making the bucket our Tzedakah box (to collect money to go to good causes that we choose).

So finally this real skinny guy with a long blonde pony tail and acne came over to us with our lunch. “Well, I never seen this before, but I hope you like it.” The guy had the thickest accent I had heard yet on our trip.

I took a bite. It was good. It was a tuna melt. We thanked him for his service.

That was literally my first day in Alabama. I’ll admit it, I was having MAJOR second thoughts about the move from what I considered the real world to this land of taxidermy and plain tuna salad. Let’s just say I cook a lot down here and that has made the transition a little easier.

OK READERS: I am thinking about turning my road trip down to Alabama into a short story. This tuna melt story would definitely be a part of it, though edited. Also included would be our stop for the ghost tour in Williamsburg VA, salsa in S. Carolina, and the Enterprise Boll Weevil Monument (which I promise to explain in another post). What do you think? Should I write it? Comment below!

Signs

Do you ever travel down the road and see ridiculous signs? I remember one day driving through our town in Connecticut and seeing not only a bumper sticker reading, “G-d loves Johnny Cash,” but also one of those custom license plate holders that read, “I’d rather be watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” Too bad for all those Twilight fans, cause she’s coming after your beloved Edward. But even with this craziness, Connecticut can’t beat Alabama.

A little background: it is January. I haven’t worn a coat, jacket, scarf, or even a sweater since I got down here to Alabama, except in the rain. I understand that this has been a mild winter up north, but I still got that fantastic call from my mother telling me that she hated me because she was shoveling her car out of the snow while I was wearing a T-shirt. Yet, I pass signs down here that read “Bridges May Ice In Winter.” It’s 60 degrees down here when it is cold. Maybe it gets slightly colder at night, and there was that snowstorm last year that introduced adults here in Enterprise to snow for the first time. I suppose that these signs are a useful reminder for people who might forget that ice is a natural phenomenon and not just something that comes out of your freezer to cool your sweet tea. Yet even if I can understand these bridge signs, there is one sign I will never understand.

On the drive from Dothan to Enterprise along US 84 there is a sign that reads, “Is your car ready for winter?” WHAT?!? Do we need snow tires down here? Do we need to make sure our heat is working in case we get stuck in a snowdrift for hours like Renee Zellweger in New in Town? Maybe the sign means we should make sure our truck is ready for tailgating the Super Bowl. The world may never know.