HAKOL - Homes & Gardens 2014

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MARCH 2014 ADAR I/ADAR II 5774

Gomez Mill House, oldest Jewish site in North America, observes 300th anniversary

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Attract pollinators to your yard with child-friendly projects

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Symbol brings links and, maybe, luck

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Jewish gardening

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‘The Monuments Men’ recalls Allied effort to save Europe’s heritage Kosher in the Kitch

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Gomez Mill House CREDIT: DANIEL CASE VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS.

Oldest Jewish site in North America observes 300th anniversary

The Gomez Mill House.

By Paul Foer Jewish News Service MARLBOBO, N.Y. -- The oldest Jewish site in North America is not Newport’s famed Touro Synagogue, or any other synagogue. Rather, it is a stone structure tucked away on the west side of the Hudson

River, about 60 miles north of Manhattan.

Due to its multiple uses and inhabitants over the centuries, the Gomez Mill House -- built in 1714 in Marlboro, N.Y. -- is one of the best-kept secrets in American Jewish history, and also holds a unique place in greater American history. With its 300th

anniversary, its story may very well become familiar to a much broader audience.

“Most Jewish visitors [to the Gomez Mill House] are surprised that the story is not about the Jewish religion or about being Jewish, but about the story of Jewish pioneering success in American and Jewish

contribution to the founding of America,” said Ruth Abrahams -executive director of the Gomez Foundation for Mill House, a group of historic-minded citizens and descendants of the families that have owned the property -- in an exclusive interview with JNS.org that serves as the first public announcement of the house’s tercentenary celebrations.

Luis Moses Gomez came to the Hudson Valley wilderness from Manhattan with two of his sons to expand his trading and commodities business. He built a trading post and a mill next to each other on a fast-flowing creek. Today, visitors can marvel at the original blockhouse trading post’s two-foot-thick stone walls and huge fireplaces at each end. While that original structure has been built up many times with oak floors, massive roof beams, a second story, and an attic, it’s not so much the building itself as what went on there throughout the generations that captivates visitor and historian alike.

Gomez, born circa 1654, is believed to have been the grandson of Gomez de Salazar, Comptroller of the Treasury for Spain’s King Philip IV. His father, Isaac, also a royal adviser, was forced by the Inquisition to leave Spain and moved to France, where religious liberty was guaranteed through The Edict of Nantes. Gomez married in France and moved to London with his father and other members of the extended family. After his first wife died, he moved to Jamaica, where many Sephardic Jews had settled, and married his second wife. Five of his six sons eventually married women of the West Indies and lived in America.

Records show that Gomez -- trader, merchant, and possibly ship owner -- became quite wealthy, and by 1703 he paid taxes in New York City. Papers of “denizenship” granted from England’s Queen Anne in 1705 provided special privileges for him as a non-Christian resident of the colony, including that of owning land without an oath of allegiance to the Crown sworn in the name of the Church of England. In 1714, he purchased 2,400 acres of land and built a fieldstone blockhouse into the side of a hill along a stream that became known as “Jews Creek.” Gomez chose to be near Algonquian Delaware Indians, as well as local residents and travelers heading north, so that he could trade with those groups.

But it was timber and lime that drove the industry that he and his son Daniel conducted for

more than 30 years.

Before the Revolutionary War, the Gomez Mill House was purchased by Wolfert Acker, a Dutch American who added a second story, as well as an attic with bricks made from local clay.

Acker served as a lieutenant in the New Marlborough Company of Minute Men, chairman of the Committee of Safety and Observation, and Newburgh Town Supervisor while General George Washington was in the Newburgh area and his army was camped nearby at the Fishkill Depot. After the war, Acker established a landing on the Hudson, with a ferry to cross the river to the town of Wappinger and a packet line to carry freight.

In the 19th century, William Henry Armstrong made the Gomez Mill House his family’s home for four decades, adding a kitchen wing, porch and stone walls. The property’s best-known owner in the 20th century was Dard Hunter, a craftsman and paper historian who built a paper mill on Jews Creek that resembled an English country cottage with a thatched roof. He made paper by hand, cut and cast type, and hand-printed his own books.

Abrahams, the Gomez Foundation for Mill House executive director, told JNS.org that Jewish visitors to the historic site are “impressed with the presentation of connecting stories” of the house’s five owners over the course of three centuries.

The house has “as many motivated visitors as our complex history inspires,” she said. Annually, roughly half of those visitors come from synagogues, JCCs, other Jewish community groups and Jewish individuals and families.

For its 300th anniversary celebration, the house is planning special events and a fundraising campaign.

“Programs will include guest lectures by such Jewish scholars as [New York University professor] Hasia Diner and [award-winning journalist and author] Andree Aelion Brooks,” she said. “Other special events include a ‘Celebration of Paper Day’ that will bring Dard Hunter III to the site to make paper using the 100 year-old beater in his grandfather’s Paper Mill, a Paper Sculpture Garden Exhibit and printing on an early 20th-century press.”

After nearly 300 years -- all starting with a Jew whose family, despite being advisers to the King of Spain, was expelled by the Inquisition -- the house remains American history made manifest.

“Better than any single house and site in the history-laden Hudson River Valley, the Mill House symbolizes and sums up our regional and national history,” said Harry Stoneback, professor of English at the State University of New York at New Paltz, on the house’s website. “It is a most dramatic and absolutely irreplaceable incarnation of American history.”

For more information on the Gomez House, visit www.gomez.org

2 MARCH 2014 | HAKOL LEHIGH VALLEY | HOMES & GARDENS

Symbol brings links AND,

By Alice Level Special to HAKOL

I received my first hamsa as a present from my sister when I moved into my first home.

“What’s a hamsa,” you ask?

Well, let me explain.

A hamsa, also called a Fatima’s Hand, is a stylized hand showing not the usual five fingers, but three fingers enclosed by two thumbs. They are very popular in North Africa among Jews as well as Muslims and are supposed to protect their owners from “the evil eye” -- which is why a lot of them have an eye in their middle or side. They can be either worn on one’s body as an ornament, usually a pendant or a ring, or may be placed inside a house, hung or framed, for protection.

The origins of the hamsa are not well known. The symbol is very old and even precedes the arrival of Islam in North Africa.

It is widely seen in the whole Maghreb (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia) as well as Israel, Egypt and even some parts of Pakistan and India, but it is interesting to note that they are not used at all in others Arab countries, such as Saudi Arabia or Yemen.

Although the hamsa is not a religious symbol, both Jews and Muslims claim to be the originators of it. However, it is hard to verify whether the Muslims copied the Jews on this one, or the other way around. What we do know is that hamsa means the number five in Arabic (hamesh in Hebrew).

Obviously the hamsa shows the five fingers, but some argue

that the fingers are also a symbol of the five books

of the Torah.

There is also a story that I find most credible that the hamsa is a reminder of the exodus of the Hebrews from Egypt: G-d told Moses to mark each Hebrew door with the blood of the lamb, which was to be eaten in each Hebrew home, in order to protect these homes from the plague of the first born.

After doing so for a while, Moses and his army realized this took too much time, so they just dipped their hands in the bucket full of blood and left the bloody handprints on every Hebrew home. After a while, the Egyptians realized that the sign of the hand on each Jewish door had saved them and started wearing hand talismans for good luck.

From there, it spread through North Africa, where it is still considered a good luck

symbol.

You might think that the hamsa symbol is just another talisman, like a rabbit’s foot or a St. Christopher’s medal -- popular among superstitious people and similar in its use. But what makes the hamsa different and so very popular, is that people do not own them out of simple fear or blind superstition, but rather to enjoy their artistic beauty and peaceful qualities.

And if they bring good luck on top of that, then why not enjoy that as well?

Also, for the Sephardic Jews, it is interesting to note that the hamsa has now become much more than a good luck charm. Somehow, the symbol represents what the Sephardic heritage is, a blending of both of the Jewish and Arabic cultures, traditions, and arts. Possessing a hamsa for everyone to see is like affirming one’s identity as a Sephardi and being proud

Moroccan demonstrators protest exhibition on Sephardic Jews Jewish Telegraphic Agency Moroccan nationalists protested the opening of an exhibition on Moroccan Jews in Tangier.

At least 150 people gathered Feb. 18 in front of the venue where the Spanish government’s Cervantes Institute opened an exhibition entitled “The Spanish Jews in Morocco and their Diasporas,” the Spanish news agency EFE reported.

The protest in the northern Moroccan city was organized by the Coordination Committee for Political Forces for Palestine. Protesters chanted insults aimed at Andre Azoulay, a well-known Moroccan Jew and adviser to King Mohammed VI, according to EFE. The protesters displayed

MAYBE, LUCK

flags equating the Israeli Star of David with a swastika. Some of the protesters posed for photographers while trampling that flag as well as Israeli flags.

Signs denounced the exhibition as normalization of ties between Morocco and Israel.

Cecilia Fernandez Suzor, the director of the Cervantes Institute, a cultural center, told EFE that the same exhibition opened recently in Tetuan without incident, but that hardliners had organized an online campaign ahead of the opening in Tangier.

of it.

For all these reasons, after I hung up my first hamsa on my entrance wall, I came to realize I really enjoyed seeing the graceful hand in my home every day and decided to find more.

Of course, I found several beautiful hamsas in Israel that I enjoyed buying over the years, but I also found some others in many unexpected places, such as Tunisia, Spain, France, Brazil and even in the United States, where an artist friend

of mine sold me several pieces. I was quite surprised to see that most of her paintings were hamsas, because she is not from a Sephardic background at all, but when I asked her about it, she just said: “I don’t know, I like their elegance, I like their design, I like painting them, they just make me feel good!”

And isn’t that exactly what the hamsa should be about?

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HOMES & GARDENS | HAKOL LEHIGH VALLEY | MARCH 2014 3

Jewish

GARDENING

“You did not take these things to heart.

You gave no thought to the end of it.”

—Isaiah 47:7

By Dr. Erica Brown JNS.org Recently, I finally went out into my yard to take care of a leyland cyprus that was rotting in places due to a fungal infection. I wrestled with its large and scratchy branches to remove the dead leaves and spray it, and I was angry with myself. I saw the tree browning and getting incrementally worse every day but let it go for weeks because I was just too busy, and the plant wasn’t complaining.

And as I cut away the bad parts of the bush to strengthen the good parts, I thought about incrementalism and about a chapter in Isaiah I had just studied the day before. The historical context is a prophetic prediction that Babylon and other empires would be overturned for their arrogance, believing they would always retain their strength and superiority. And in this critique, one verse stood out: “You did not take these things to heart. You gave no thought to the end of it.” When we are at a point of strength and self-assurance, we often don’t take into consideration the long-term consequences of decisions.

One leadership writer observes that when we are young, acts and consequences live in close proximity to each other. We put a hand on a hot stove, and we get burnt. We learn not to do it again. We do something good, and it has an immediate payback so we are incentivized to repeat our behaviors. As we age and life gets more complex, the distance between acts and consequences grows. We make professional decisions that others will have to tend to long after us. We make parenting mistakes and hurt friendships in ways that are not immediately evident. And as Isaiah says, because we did not take the entire matter to heart, we gave little thought to how things would end. Incrementalism in this scenario hurts us.

In Isaiah 47, incrementalism is moral in nature. The one in power is self-serving: “I am, and there is none but me” (47:8). The narcissistic impulse turns ugly: “You were 4 MARCH 2014 | HAKOL LEHIGH VALLEY | HOMES & GARDENS

secure in your wickedness; you thought, ‘No one can see me...And you thought to yourself, ‘I am, and there is none but me’” (47:10). But this time, all of your strategies have already been spent and Isaiah warns that you will not be able to charm the problem away as you once did. “You are helpless despite all your art” (47:13).

Sadly, there are people in this world who are bent on wrongdoing. They seed gossip. They manipulate others and pay little attention to the harm they are sowing.

They harvest self-protection and selfaggrandizement. They do not see the failed ending, only the promising beginning. And as a result, Isaiah tells us, “they cannot save themselves.”

This is very different than the approach of the famous Talmudic figure Honi who was traveling and saw a man planting a carob tree.

“He said to him, ‘How long will it be until it bears fruit?’ He said, ‘As long as 70 years.’ He said, ‘Are you certain you will live 70 years?’

He said: ‘I found a world with carob trees; just as my fathers planted for me, so I plant for my children’” (BT Ta’anit 23a). This story illustrates incrementalism at its best. We plant knowing the results of the planting will not be ours to reap but understanding that we are stewards of an unseen future.

I hope my leyland cyprus will recover.

I am disappointed in myself that I watched a problem and it got worse. Tackling its branches made me think of the moral implications. Bad outcomes are often the work of willful ignorance. Good outcomes are the result of careful planning for a future unseen. Incrementalism requires patience.

So what do you have to take care of that you are ignoring? It will only get worse. Make it better. And Isaiah will smile at you.

Dr. Erica Brown is a writer and educator who works as the scholar-in-residence for the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington and consults for the Jewish Agency and other Jewish non-profits.

She is the author of “In the Narrow Places” (OU Press/Maggid); “Inspired Jewish Leadership,” a National Jewish Book Award finalist; “Spiritual Boredom”; and “Confronting Scandal.” This article is distributed with permission of Dr. Erica Brown. Subscribe to her “Weekly Jewish Wisdom” list at http://leadingwithmeaning.com.

Attract pol l inators to your yard WITH CHILD-FRIENDLY PROJECTS

Above, a bee pollinating a squash blossom.

Right, a pollinator box.

By Cathy Leiber Special to HAKOL An essential Jewish teaching is that the world belongs to God. Loving God means, for me anyway, that each of us is duty-bound to protect and preserve God’s property, mother earth.

The plight of pollinators -- native and honey bees, wasps, ants, hummingbirds, butterflies, birds, bats, even flies and beetles -- has been in the news recently. This year, I’ve decided to focus my Penn State Master Gardener community outreach on educating the public as to what we can do in our own backyards to protect our food supply.

Pollination, the transfer of pollen from the anthers of a flower to the stigma of the same flower or of another flower, is vital to our food supply. Insects and other animals are a key element in facilitating this transfer.

Stop for a minute and think about all the fruits and fresh vegetables that you and your family love to eat. Did you know that one out of every three bites of food comes to us by pollinators? Life as we know it depends on pollinators! Without these hard-working insects and animals, most plants would not be pollinated. Without pollination, flowers cannot form, reproduce or grow seeds.

Biologists tell us that pollinators are losing ground because of several factors: habitat loss, disease and contact with pesticides. Penn State Master Gardeners are taking action to protect pollinators by planting pollinator-friendly gardens and providing education for the gardening public. Whether you are a gardener yourself, or you hire a landscaper, you have the power to protect and preserve God’s property.

This spring, you and your family can do something fun and important right in your own backyard! Certify your property as “Pollinator Friendly” to help support a healthy ecosystem for our community and our future in just four easy steps.

source. Butterflies, for example, will gather and sip at shallow pools or man-made mud puddles. Let your child decide where to place a birdbath and then have him or her be responsible for keeping it full of water.

Step 3: Provide shelter. If your yard is big enough, you may be able to hide a pile of dead branches, or keep a small patch of bare soil -both are ideal nesting habitats for many of our pollinators. If this is an issue, help your child make a manmade pollinator box.

Step 4: Safeguard pollinator habitat. Avoid buying – and/or initiate a plan to remove -invasive plants from your garden landscape.

These include Japanese barberry, burning bush, Oriental bittersweet and purple loosestrife. Did you know that a well-planned garden rarely needs pesticides? Limit your use of pesticides and take a moment to teach your children how to look at labels and understand words such as Warning, Harmful and Danger.

Step 1: Provide food for pollinators by purchasing native plants that bloom throughout the year. Teach your children about native plants the next time you visit a nursery and let them pick out their favorites.

To certify your garden as “Pollinator-Friendly” go to the Pollinator certification website: http://ento.psu.edu/pollinators and follow the outlined steps. If you qualify, you can request a certificate that you and your children can proudly post in your garden.

I can’t think of a better way to protect God’s earth this year, so I hope you join me in becoming a Certified Pollinator-Friendly Garden.

Step 2: Provide water sources for pollinators.

All you need is a birdbath or shallow water

Cathy Leiber is a Penn State Master Gardener and member of Congregation Keneseth Israel.

HOMES & GARDENS | HAKOL LEHIGH VALLEY | MARCH 2014 5

‘The Monuments Men’

PHOTO CREDIT: CLAUDETTE BARIUS/COLUMBIA PICTURES

recalls Allied effort to save Europe’s heritage

“The Monuments Men” recalls Allied effort to save Europe’s heritage. From left to right: John Goodman, Matt Damon, George Clooney, Bob Balaban and Bill Murray star in “The Monuments Men.”

By Penny Schwartz Jewish Telegraphic Agency There’s nothing like a star-studded Hollywood movie to shine a light on a little-known piece of history.

That’s the hope of Robert Edsel, who wrote the book that inspired “The Monuments Men,” the George Clooney-Matt Damon film in theaters now.

Edsel suggests that while he is not Jewish, he sees in the Monuments Men a story that will resonate with young Jews, a different entry point to teach about Jewish culture and

the Holocaust.

The movie provides historical context to events that reverberate in headlines today, from the discovery of a trove of Nazi-looted art in Germany to the destruction of ancient artifacts in Egypt and war-torn Syria.

Harry Ettlinger, whose Jewish family fled Germany in 1938 when he was young, is among the only five Monuments Men still alive. Ettlinger was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1944 at age 18, and eventually was assigned to the Monuments Men unit for his

fluency in German.

“It makes me feel good that I did something of value for the rest of the world,” Ettlinger, 87, told JTA in a phone conversation from his home in Rockaway, N.J. In the movie, the British actor Dimitri Leonidas plays Sam Epstein, a character based on Ettlinger. Following a recent private screening, Ettlinger gave the film a thumbs up.

The all-star cast also includes Bill Murray, John Goodman, Jean Dujardin, Bob Balaban, Hugh Bonneville and Cate Blanchett.

Clooney, who directed the film, teamed to write and produce it with Grant Heslov, bringing together the duo who produced last year’s Oscar winner for best picture, “Argo.”

The action-packed World War II adventure film is a fictionalized version of Edsel’s book of the same name. The book tells the compelling and surprising story of a special Allied military unit known as the Monuments Men sent into battle zones to protect historic buildings, churches and monuments across Europe.

Later, the unit of 345 members from 13 countries -- many were art

historians, archivists and architects -- rescued more than 5 million pieces of Nazi-looted paintings, sculptures and rare manuscripts.

Among them were some of the world’s most treasured cultural objects, including works by Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Rembrandt and Vincent Van Gogh.

In a phone conversation with JTA, Edsel says the visibility of a major feature film offers a chance to honor the legacy of the long-forgotten heroism of the Monuments Men, provide a path to reclaim art that is still missing, and galvanize the public’s concern to prevent cultural destruction in war zones today and in the future.

Clooney said that making a film about saving art isn’t just about paintings hanging on a museum wall.

“It’s about the fabric of our culture,” he said at a recent news conference in Hollywood.

In the film, Clooney plays Frank Stokes, based on the reallife figure of George Stout, an art historian at Harvard’s Fogg Museum whose proposal to protect cultural property during the war led President Franklin Roosevelt to establish the unit. Gen. Dwight Eisenhower is credited with empowering the unit to carry out its mission.

It was a watershed moment in the preservation of cultural history, Edsel and others say.

Through the Monuments Men Foundation he established in 2007, Edsel is backing a bill in Congress that would award the Monuments Men the Congressional Gold Medal.

“It’s a race against time,” said Edsel, who would like to see the

make statement make aastatement . . make a statement.

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bill adopted while there are living members of the Monuments Men. In November 2012, Ettlinger, the real life Monuments Man, accepted an award from the American Jewish Historical Society on behalf of all the Monuments Men. The society also awarded its legacy award in memory of Col. Seymour Pomrenze, an archivist who served 34 years of active and reserve service in the Army, for his unique leadership role in the Monuments Men recovering and restituting millions of Jewish books and artifacts and nearly 1,000 Torah scrolls confiscated by the Nazis. Pomrenze died in 2011.

In many ways, Pomrenze’s work is a parallel story to the saving of looted art, says Lisa Leff, an associate professor of history at American University in Washington, D.C., and a specialist on the fate of Jewish archives in France during and after World War II. But while the Monuments Men’s mission was to return the art to its original countries, much of what Pomrenze rescued became “heirless,” as the original Jewish owners and entire Jewish communities perished in the war.

An organization of Jewish scholars was established to deal with the books and manuscripts and other property, which was disbursed to Jewish institutions in Israel and the United States.

While the film is not an explicitly Jewish story, Leff imagines it will garner significant attention from a Jewish audience because so much of what was stolen was owned by Jewish collectors or created by Jewish artists.

In the past few months, JewishAmerican actress Scarlett Johansson has come under fire from human rights groups for serving as spokesperson for Israeli carbonated beverage company SodaStream. Yet the Times of Israel reports that a Presbyterian Church delegation recently visited the factory and that, according to a press release, the group said the factory “strengthened their belief that the location of the factory enhances the business as well as the interpersonal relations between the Israelis and Palestinians.”

SodaStream has long been the target of pro-Palestinian groups for operating a factory in Ma’ale Adumim, which is across the Green Line east of Jerusalem.

Oxfam International, a human rights group that Johansson was

involved with, took issue with her SodaStream deal, saying it is “opposed to all trade from Israeli settlements” and claiming that the settlements “are illegal under international law.” Johansson resigned from her involvement with Oxfam as a result.

But at its facility in Ma’ale Adumim, SodaStream employs many Palestinian workers and has an on-site mosque.

“I remain a supporter of economic cooperation and social interaction between a democratic Israel and Palestine,” Johansson said. “SodaStream is a company that is not only committed to the environment but to building a bridge to peace between Israel and Palestine, supporting neighbors working alongside each other, receiving equal pay, equal benefits and equal rights.”

Johansson appeared in SodaStream’s $4 million Super Bowl ad.

“We commend Scarlett Johansson for seeing through the deception and bigotry of the anti-Israel boycott movement that seeks to blame and punish only Israel for the lack of peace between Israel and the Palestinians,” Roz Rothstein, CEO of the pro-Israel education group StandWithUs, told JNS.org. “It should be clear to everyone paying attention that harming SodaStream with a boycott is not helpful to Palestinians who will lose their livelihood if the plant closes or moves. ”

Kosher in the Kitch PEANUT SAUCE: 1/2 cup peanut butter 3 T. soy 4 T. water 2 T. hoisin sauce 1 T. sesame oil

Jewish Telegraphic Agency For foodies regularly on the hunt for good kosher eats, seek no more. Kosher in the Kitch, a food blog founded by homemaker Nina Safar, lists a variety of meals and desserts that won’t keep you slaving in the kitchen for hours.

When Nina married her husband, she had no idea how to cook anything besides pasta and schnitzel. Little by little she mastered the art of kosher cooking, and with rave reviews from friends and family, she knew she needed to take her recipes from the kitchen to the computer.

She told JTA, “I started a Facebook page to keep track of recipes and exchange ideas with friends. The blog itself started when my mom said her friends wanted access to the recipes but didn’t have Facebook. We are at 11,000+ fans and growing daily! I cook because I like food. I don’t really like sweating in the kitchen, but I love eating a good meal and that is what gets me in the kitch!”

Besides listing recipes for food like teriyaki glazed salmon skewers and zucchini Parmesan latkes, Kosher in the Kitch also offers weekly meal plans with menus that you can receive in your inbox weekly. Nosh on!

Chicken with Peanut Sauce

This is a quick and easy recipe for chicken with peanut sauce served TWO ways! You can serve it up with asparagus for a simple yet satisfying dinner or cut up in crispy wonton cups for easy and delicious entertaining.

INGREDIENTS: 4 pieces skinless boneless chicken breasts 2 T. olive oil 1/4 t. salt 1/4 t. pepper Asparagus for serving Crispy wonton cups for serving Scallions, chopped for serving

DIRECTIONS: Marinate chicken with olive oil and salt and pepper in a large ziplock bag. Heat up a frying pan until very hot without oil. Then place chicken breasts in pan. (Since it’s been marinating in oil it’s not necessary to heat the pan with oil.

If for some reason you find that the pan needs oil then spray PAM or add more olive oil to pan.)

Cook chicken until no longer pink. Remove from pan and set aside.

Combine ingredients for peanut sauce by combining peanut butter with 2 tablespoons soy sauce, 3 tablespoons water, 1 tablespoon hoisin sauce and 1 tablespoon sesame oil. Combine well and taste. Add an additional tablespoon each of hoisin sauce and soy sauce for a stronger taste, or an additional tablespoon water to thin it out more. Add more or less according to your taste. She suggests starting off with 1/4 cup peanut butter and 1 tablespoon soy sauce and then adding the other ingredients slowly to your liking.

Once the peanut sauce is prepared, you can serve the chicken sliced over steamed or roasted asparagus with peanut sauce on top or you can cut up the chicken into small pieces and combine with 1 to 2 tablespoons peanut sauce and serve in crispy wonton cups with chopped scallions. (You can also serve the chicken cut up with pasta and some peanut sauce or in a salad with the peanut sauce as a dressing.)

FLOURISH.

Crispy Wonton Cups

INGREDIENTS: 1 package of wonton wrappers, defrosted PAM Mini muffin pan DIRECTIONS: Grease a mini muffin pan with cooking spray.

Place one wonton wrapper in each muffin cup.

Gently press down and up the sides so it’s molded to the muffin cup. Bake in oven on 325 degrees for 10 minutes until edges are slightly browned and crispy. Then, remove from oven and let cool off. Once cooled off, fill each cup with chicken and peanut sauce and top with additional peanut sauce (optional) and chopped scallions.

Chocol a te peanut butter

DESSERT SAUCE SUNDAE

EXSEED. POWER UP.

By Sandi Teplitz INGREDIENTS: 2 oz. (by weight, not measuring cup) Nestlé's dark chocolate chips 2 T. Smucker's all natural peanut butter 1 can sweetened condensed milk 2 t. light cream 1+1/2 t. pure vanilla extract black and tan ice cream from Yuengling's

Red and black raspberries to top TECHNIQUE: Melt first four ingredients together in saucepan over low heat until melted and warm. Remove from burner and add vanilla. Cool for five minutes. Serve over scoops of the ice cream.

Top with fresh spring fruit.

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HOMES & GARDENS | HAKOL LEHIGH VALLEY | MARCH 2014 7