This week is a special week. It’s the Jewish New Year and the holy week when God will decide if he is going to write me in The Book of Life for the coming year. I aways try to be on my best behavior this week. I hope that God will see all the good that I have done and do for others and write me (and my entire family) in The Book of Life for the coming year. I so want to celebrate my 51st birthday.

I guess last year he decided not to include my late husband. Wonder why he decided not to write him in The Book of Life? He was a great person, a kind person, a wonderful person…why didn’t he write him in The Book of Life? Didn’t he know it would make me very angry and sad?

I actually cooked this week for the Jewish New Year. I baked my traditional challah for the holiday. It didn’t rise as high as it usually does…but it rose high enough and was simply delicious. I had such joy during this yearly bread baking. I decided that bread baking is very relaxing and maybe I should bake bread more often. I loved kneading the dough…getting out all the stress and frustration in my body…I pounded it with a tight fist.

I baked a chicken too…with roasted vegetables – baby carrots, new potatoes and cipollini onions. I also roasted several garlic cloves. My husband used to love garlic. I’m not a garlic lover…but I roasted the garlic to honor my late husband and I ate a roasted clove too. It brought back memories of the time my late husband and I visited Carmel, California…one of our favorite spots in the world…we had lunch in a cafe and ate roasted garlic with aged balsamic vinegar…oh, how wonderful it was…we finished a whole head of roasted garlic at the time…it was just scrumptious. It was one of the only other times that I ate a clove of garlic.

I bought fresh thyme and rosemary to season the chicken. Oh, how my late husband loved cooking with fresh rosemary. In fact, on my way home from New Year services, I stopped by his gravesite for a visit…and I sprinkled some rosemary on his grave as I shared a new year’s wish.

For dessert I bought my family’s favorite blueberry crumb pie from the local farmer’s market. It was a perfect ending to our New Year meal.

My husband would have been so proud of my cooking. My kids actually said it was really good. Surprise, surprise, surprise…mom can cook. She just doesn’t do it very much. But, now that I don’t have my better half, who used to make all the fabulous meals, I think I’m going to have to open Julia Childs’ cookbook a little more often.

I do hope I’m written in The Book of Life this year…I have lots more cooking I want to do in the second half of my life.

Judi