November 1, 2015 by Leora

It’s a lovely time of year in New Jersey – if you drive or walk about in various neighborhoods or on the highways, you will have the pleasure of beautiful, colorful foliage. As I have been quite busy with work, I decided to take my camera on a Sunday and just walk down my own street. The photos on this post are my vibrant, lively captures.

I took these photos last week as I walked down the block. Happy to capture a cat crossing the road quickly.

I enjoy when the leaves turn all different colors – mostly red, orange, yellow and various shades of green or brown. When a tree turns brown, it has not gotten enough water – we had a few days of lots of rain, but then whole weeks of none at all.

It is nice to observe the various trees at varied times of the year.

My neighbor’s display of roses and snapdragons is still looking good.

Here is a rose in foreground, white snapdragons, and pink snapdragons behind.

The rudbeckia (yellow black-eyed susan) and maroon mums are in front of my house. Happy to say I still have a few flowers in bloom!

Your turn, please

What’s going on in your neighborhood? Any colorful fall foliage? Or do you live in a part of the world that stays green or brown?

For more Nature Notes:

Blog tips: at the end of a post, it is often a nice idea to ask a question or two of your audience. If you don’t get any responses at all, maybe you need to share the post on social media with those who might be interested. Or find out if your topic isn’t coming across clearly.

October 28, 2015October 28, 2015 by Leora

I’ve been making this butternut squash carrot soup a few times this fall. Learn more about its creation in the note at the bottom. If you are creative, you can serve it in a pumpkin along with a pea soup by its side. I didn’t do the pumpkin.

Squash Carrot Soup – Ingredients

• 1 butternut squash (or one half if quite large)
• 4 -8 carrots, peeled and cut in circles
• 1 leek
• 1 small onion or 1/2 large onion
• 1 tsp. allspice
• 1 tsp. cumin
• salt and pepper to taste
• olive oil or coconut oil for sauteing the onion and leek
• A few small leaves of fresh rosemary (optional)
• 1 tsp. chopped fresh ginger root (optional and recommended – I left it out because my daughter doesn’t care for fresh ginger, sigh)

Peel the butternut squash. If really large and you just soup for 4 people, you might consider using just half a squash. Cut in half, and pull out the seeds. Place in a pot; fill the pot with water to cover the squash. Let it cook. Meanwhile, slice and cut 4-8 carrots – even more if you have the energy. Note: this was originally a carrot soup alone – see note below. Add the carrot circles to the butternut squash with water that is cooking. Next: get a pan ready to saute the onion and leek. You can saute in olive oil or coconut oil – whatever you prefer. Chop the onion and leek finely first and add the oil to the pan. When the pan is hot (add an onion piece and watch it sizzle), add the onion bits, stir for a few minutes, and when the onion is tender, add the chopped leek. After sauteing for about 10 minutes, add the leek and onion to the pot with squash and carrots. Add the spices (allspice, cumin and ginger if using). Add a bit of chopped, fresh rosemary if using. Let the squash soup cook for about 1/2 hour. Then either use an immersion stick directly in the pot to blend the soup, or transfer the solid parts of the soup to a food processor, blend it and transfer back to the liquid. The advantage of the latter method is you can add less liquid if you want and have a thicker soup. I do the food processor method. Serve warm, although if you are quite hungry, it tastes OK room temperature, too. Enjoy!

Note: this was originally just a carrot soup. My neighbor told me verbally how to make it. She had made it along with a pea soup, and she served the carrot soup along the pea soup in a pumpkin. Yes, each of us had our own pumpkin as a bowl. It was yummy – even my daughter ate it. So this soup developed because my daughter wanted a carrot soup. However, the carrots I had when I first made it were organic and thin. I would have had to have peeled at least 20 or 30 to get a substantial soup. So I changed it to a squash/carrot soup so it would stay orange. My first attempt had two leeks, not enough carrots, and turned green. Green is a fine color for a soup, but not a fitting color for a carrot soup.

Soup Reaction – What’s in Your Soup?

Have you ever made a similar soup? What ingredients did you put in? Did you use any particular cooking methods?

Tech notes: if you look at the bottom of this post, you will see a link for both the category for recipes and tags for other carrot recipes or carrot topic posts. If you click on the recipes category, you will see a list of clickable tags in all the recipe posts. Starting now, at the end of each post, I will attempt to write a little about blogging that might help some up-and-coming blogger out there.

September 21, 2015 by Leora

I have been following this Gerber daisy plant with my camera for the past few weeks. These photos are posted with most recent at the top – you can watch the Gerber daisy bloom through my photos. My daughter and my husband originally bought this plant three Mother’s Days ago – it has survived two winters. At the bottom of this post, you can see what it looked like in the beginning of Spring 2015. The top photo was taken September 18, 2015.

September 16, 2015

After a lovely day of rain:

September 11, 2015

September 10, 2015

September 9, 2015

This is where the gerber daisy plant started last spring:

March 29, 2015

How it looked two years ago (and virtually visit our sukkah):
www.leoraw.com/blog/2013/09/jewish-holidays-nature/

Finally a few fun facts from Wikipedia:

Gerbera is a genus of plants in the Asteraceae (daisy family). It was named in honour of German botanist and medical doctor Traugott Gerber[3] | (1710-1743) who travelled extensively in Russia and was a friend of Carolus Linnaeus.

Gerbera is native to tropical regions of South America, Africa and Asia. The first scientific description of a Gerbera was made by J.D. Hooker in Curtis’s Botanical Magazine in 1889 when he described Gerbera jamesonii, a South African species also known as Transvaal daisy or Barberton Daisy. Gerbera is also commonly known as the African Daisy.

Gerbera is important commercially. It is the fifth most used cut flower in the world (after rose, carnation, chrysanthemum, and tulip). It is also used as a model organism in studying flower formation.

For More Nature Notes:

September 17, 2015 by Leora

On the first night of Rosh Hashana (Jewish New Year) we have a table displayed with various foods – most are fruits and vegetables. These foods are called simanim – symbols. When I was growing up, I only remember dipping the apple in the honey as a siman – I don’t recall doing any of the others. It could be that doing so many of the simanim is more of a Sephardi than an Ashkenazi custom; however, the Ashkenazi prayer books do include the simanim. I described and illustrated simanim on past posts: you can see 9 illustrations or photos of simanim here. This past post has a list of the simanim. The Sephardim actually refer to eating the simanim as a Rosh Hashana seder.

Because the High Holidays (Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur) can be quite serious (the prayers are long and there is a lot of standing in shul), I like to emphasize the parts of each holiday that are enjoyable. Thus the beginning of the title of this post: Enjoying Rosh Hashana. Maybe I will make this a theme for other Jewish holidays as well; however, you won’t find such a title for Tisha B’Av (the saddest day on the Jewish calendar) – that would not be appropriate. Maybe for a day such that one I could say: Finding meaning in Tisha B’Av.

Below is one siman that I have been doing for the past few years. It represents the head of a fish. I did once buy the actual head of a fish. It smelled so bad I couldn’t wait to throw it. We do eat fish, but only if it is fresh! Maybe next August I will write a post on how to make the head of a fish using gefilte fish.

This post was written in honor of my blogger friend Batya. Many years ago she found an early post of mine and volunteered to submit to a blog carnival that she ran called Kosher Cooking Carnival. Recently, she has struggled to find people interested in the blog carnivals. I think more people are using Facebook for quick sharing. And the few bloggers that are left may have other ideas (SEO, social media) for sharing posts. Every now and then someone writes a “Is Blogging Dead?” kind of post. No, it’s not, but one does have to get creative. Batya wrote a recent post about Rosh Hashana fruit head (instead of a fish or lamb head or other animal).

Over to You

If you are Jewish, have you celebrated Rosh Hashana with simanim? Which ones have you done? Does it make your holiday more enjoyable?

Are you a blogger? Do you think people are blogging less in general? Do people share differently? Are blog carnivals a thing of the past?

August 31, 2015August 31, 2015 by Leora

We were visiting my in-laws who live near (10 minutes by car) the Jersey Shore. I woke up early as usual (see moon above), and I went on a little expedition to the lake I mean swamp I mean wet, watery, swampy area that sometimes has birds near a golf course.

I had once visited this area with my mother-in-law and my daughter. At the time I had an old phone, one with a poor camera. Of course, we saw a heron (see heron photo here). So this time I was prepared with my large fancy Canon, but no heron at all. Not even a bird. I could hear them, but they didn’t land. The day before I came with my daughter; we did see a colorful butterfly flutter around the plants in the distance. But that was Shabbat, and I had no camera at all. Often in life you have to just take what you can get – I noticed in my 2011 post I was complaining that my kale did not germinate. Well, this year it did! We shall see if any seedlings grow nicely into plants.

So looking around, what else was there to see? I did see this log – although it wasn’t exactly what I had in mind.

I looked in the water to one side, and these lily pads floated on top of the lake swamp.

I did see these little yellow wildflowers aligning the edge of the watery swamp.

Some lovely orange wildflowers were off to one side, further from the water.

Off in the distance I could see the sprinklers starting for the golf course.

For more Nature Notes:

August 23, 2015December 30, 2015 by Leora

One of my favorite places in New Jersey is Sandy Hook. Sandy Hook is a little peninsula (a hook?) at the top of the Jersey Shore. On one side there are ocean beaches with places for parking and restrooms. On the other side are little cove beaches. At the far end are a lighthouse and historical buildings.

We first went to the ocean side – it was crowded, and the waves were strong. We then decided to drive closer to the lighthouse, parked the car, and discovered the little cove beach at the top of this post. We swam, had lunch and discovered various beach items.

I wanted to climb to the top of the lighthouse, but my daughter did not. This is a lesson in patience – I make lists in my head of stuff to do when I have the opportunity. We did watch a movie in the little house next to the lighthouse all about piping plovers, and how they on the threat of extinction list. I suppose I would have to wake up early in the morning and go with another bird lover if I wanted to watch the plovers on the beach myself.

A good number of the buildings at Sandy Hook were once upon a time used by the U.S. military. Above is a mortar battery at Sandy Hook, built about 1898. You can learn more about Sandy Hook and how it was used to defend New York City on this National Park Service article.

I saw these horseshoe crabs (deceased!) on the beach, so I took a photo.
Some facts from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation website:

Four species of horseshoe crabs exist today. Only one species, Limulus polyphemus, is found in North America along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts from Maine to Mexico… Horseshoe crabs are not true crabs at all. Horseshoe crabs are more closely related to arachnids (a group that includes spiders and scorpions) than to crustaceans (a group that includes true crabs, lobsters, and shrimp). Horseshoe crabs are often called “living fossils” because fossils of their ancestors date back almost 450 million years–that’s 200 million years before dinosaurs existed.

A scene I found beautiful:

For more Nature Notes:

I did post about Sandy Hook way back in 2009.