cumin
Editor's note: Today, we have a very special guest blogger, Alyssa's mom! She's the brains behind this majestic soup, so we thought it was only appropriate that she share her inspiration with us. On a related note, give your mom a call today!
When my daughter, Alyssa, was little she loved to help cook in the kitchen. Being the neat freak I am, and hating a mess, I was always reluctant to let her help. Alyssa takes after her Maga (grandmother and my mother). Translation: both are a tornado in the kitchen.
There are so many things I loved about living in Israel, but something that always irked me was the lack of seasons. Except for a few days of snow during my time in Jerusalem, the weather was hot, kind of hot, extremely hot, or cool-ish. No blizzards, no super strong windy days. Lots of humidity. And definitely no changing leaves. That's what I missed the most about home, I think, besides my family (duh - hi guys!) - I'm from Michigan, land of beautiful fall foliage and autocratic automobile executives.
The year before I moved to Tel Aviv, I spent a summer volunteering as a first-responder with Magen David Adom, the Israeli ambulance service. You might envision me delivering babies and reattaching limbs, but legally first-responders were allowed to take blood pressure and pulse and that's about. I did get to check the blood sugar of a man who had taken 8 Valium, though. My ambulance driver was pretty rebellious.
Sometimes when I'm in the kitchen, things go exactly according to plan. The dough rises, the sauce reduces, the soup is perfectly salted.
Other times, the cap on the paprika pops off and unloads two tablespoons right into the blender.
Ah, cooking. Never a dull moment.
I can’t tell you how much I love Mexican food.
It combines all of my favorite things – cheese, spice, corn and avocados and can be eaten with your hands. It's my go-to drunk/pre-drunk/drinking/non-drinking-but-just-hangry food (just ask any of my kickball teammates). If I could eat bottomless nachos and never feel sick, I would sign my soul away to the cheese-covered devil.
During my senior year of college, I noticed that I was peeing all of the time. Like, all of the time - upwards of 20 times a day. I couldn't sleep through the night without getting up to pee, and having to go up and down a lofted bed made it a whole ordeal. I drink a lot of water so I thought that was why, but something seemed amiss. I went to the doctor to get a check-up for my summer job and mentioned my issue. He sent me to a urologist, who sent me to get an ultrasound. It came back abnormal, so off to outpatient surgery I went.
To make a very long story short, it turned out there were cysts in my bladder. And they weren't even paying rent to live in there! The doctors had never seen anything like it before, which made me very special, but also made me very scared. When I woke up from the anesthesia I was crying because of how freaked out I was. I couldn't really see, so I can't picture this part very well, but one of the nurses gave me a bag of cheez-its to eat post-surgery, either because I asked for them or she intuited it because nurses are SAINTS, but then I started crying more because my mouth was so dry that I couldn't eat the cheez-its. It was a rough day.