The Trick

The Trick by Emanuel Bergmann

     When you believe in anything and everything then the world is yours and only a child would accept that premise.  Moshe Goldenhirsch is the son of a rabbi in 1934 Prague.  The undercurrent rumblings about the Jews is happening but Moshe is young and impressionable and thinks he is quite safe in Prague.  When Moshe sees his first circus and is introduced to magic there isn’t anything in the world that will hold him back from joining the circus.  He leaves his father and walks for days to catch up with the circus and joins up.  He is pretty good at this thing called magic and is a quick learner, reinvents himself as the Great Zabatini and gains a following.

    War comes, Moshe is a Jew in disguise, but when he is found out he is allowed to keep his trunk when he is taken away to the camps.  He hopes this trunk full of tricks will save his life.  We know, of course, he survives because there wouldn’t be a story if he didn’t.

     Fast forward about seventy years.  Young Max’s family is breaking up and he is desperate to keep his parents together. When his father packs up and moves out Max finds among his things an old LP recording of someone called The Great Zabatini and on this recording is a great love spell.  Max is sure this spell will keep his parents together but there is a deep scratch in the record and that part of the recording is lost. 

     Quite resourceful for a ten year old, Max runs away from home hoping to find this Zabatini person to ask him to perform the spell for his parents.   At this point the crotchety 88 year old Zabatini (Moshe) we are giggling over now is very different from the young man in World War II Europe.  He is also desperate, having been kicked out of his retirement community.  While he has no use for children he does need somewhere to stay and thus the friendship is formed between Zabatini, Max and Max’s family. Well, maybe not so much with Max’s parents. 

    Zabatini agrees to perform for Max’s birthday party and it’s Max’s plan for the love spell to be used at that time to save his parents’ marriage.  But things happen and I’ve said too much already. 

     The blurb on this debut novel says this is a deeply moving, heartfelt story about a boy who believes in everything and a man who believes in nothing.  I couldn’t agree more.  This is a beautiful story.

You Say Tomato

    I saw an article recently about tomato powder and I was obsessed with making some but the number one tool I needed was a food dehydrator.  No, the oven didn't work. The tomatoes need to be as crisp as potato chips and the oven just didn't get there.
    Enter friends.  Friend Aina planted 92 tomato plants this year and by now in the season she's emotionally done with dealing with them so I went over to her house with a small box (she was waiting for me with a bushel basket) and picked some.
Friend Linda is a big garage saler and when I told her I was looking for a food dehydrator because I don't want to invest in a gadget till I know this process will work, she said she had one she got at a garage sale and I was welcome to use it.

    This couldn't be any easier to use.  Slice very thinly what you want to dry.  Layer them on the three stackable drying racks, put the cover on and turn on the machine.

 Hours later, voila!  Tomato chips!  Now in the interest of full disclosure, I cut the first batch of tomatoes thicker than I should/could have and it took a long while to dry them.  Like a long time. Like we started at 11:30 a.m. yesterday, I turned them off at 9:30 p.m. and turned it back on this morning for awhile. But in the end they are crispy.

Crispy enough to grind up in the mini-food processor/chopper.  Yes, I could have ground them even finer into even more of a powder but this batch I left in a very lightly coarse chop.
What's the point of all of this?????  Tomato powder??  Well, I'm cooking for some friends tomorrow and I just salt/pepper/tomato powdered the pork tenderloins and set them in the fridge to think about it.  I'll let you know tomorrow if it was worth it.

But I do have my eyes on the green peppers and the chili peppers Aina gave me, too.  I'll try those next.  If this turns out to be fun I'll get my own machine. 

Diligence

Ever diligent.  I took the dresden plate quilt with me on our trip to the U.P. last week and here I sit on our second evening trying to use what daylight is left to get the binding attached.  It was a good thing I brought it AND finished it because I used the quilt throughout the trip. It was quite chilly and rained a lot and I was always cold. 

Watching a football game and being cozy.

Just wow

PH and I were gone last week.  He had to work in Michigan's Upper Peninsula and I went along for the ride. It was a nice trip, we did the same thing twice last year but he thought this year we could compress two weeks into one. As a result we drove over 4,000 miles. 

  There is a small issue with getting from the Lower Peninsula to the Upper.  You have to cross this bridge, the Mackinac Bridge.  It's five miles long, the longest suspension bridge in the U.S. and it scares me to death. I don't do bridges and certainly never one like this.  I will never, ever, ever, ever, ever drive across this thing. Did I say never ever? In an emergency?  Oh, well, too bad, so sad.
   There are lots of interesting facts about how big, strong, tough it is, but the one that gets to me is that in a big wind it will sway as much as 35 feet (not inches, folks.  FEET.)  They will close it down for high winds and ice falling from the towers and cables.   It's hard to look at a picture of it and appreciate how really big it is.  This bridge is necessary for the state and it's the icon image OF the state but oh, man, I will never, ever, ever, ever, ever drive across.

 This trip we took a little tour underneath the bridge.

 This cute little boat came from Maine and was a working lobster boat till recently.  PH and I were amazed that it came from a little town called Ogunquit, a place we have been to twice and love.  It's amazing how many times the name of that tiny little town has cropped up in conversations we've had with people.  The boat can take 35 on the tour but this evening there were just 8 of us.

 Now, this is the way to see and appreciate this bridge!  The closer we got the more we just giggled. Can you see the moonrise?

 This was phenomenal. Do you see the grates in the roadbed as you look up? There is solid road on the sides but the grates are in the middle.  Everyone hates driving on those because they make the car wibble and make a loud noise, but the grates are there to let the wind through so the bridge doesn't collapse in the high winds. 

Just wow