Jerusalem, If I forget you.....

For dinner group this week I made a special Jerusalem dish for my dear friend, Vladi. He is going to go to Jerusalem or winter semester so I decided to make him a little farewell dinner to prep him for his journey. Something that we commonly ate was the falafels. I actually always wondered what went into those but I never wanted to ask. 

Now once a week I will either have tasty tuesday or tasty thursday. I am going to compile the recipes and food that we make (because we make dang good food here) and it is always better to share. Katharine, my sister-in-law, persuaded me over the break to start this section of my blog. So first recipe is the falafels. I will actually just send you to the page because that is easier: falafel recipe. The only thing I changed was to dip it in flour before frying it so it holds together better.

The falafels are in the top left hand corner. Jessi made some delicious naan bread

Then for our desert Melissa made the world's best cinnamon rolls, seriously try these. And they make 40 so they last forever (except in our house-they are already gone)

Cinnamon Rolls

3 1/2 cups warm water

3/4 cup sugar

1 cup of oil

5 tbsp yeast

combine above ingredients in a large bowl- rest for 15 minutes

10 1/2 cups flour

1 tbsp salt

3 eggs

add all together, beat with mixer until smooth

beat in any remaining flour by hand

pour out onto floured board

knead until smooth

rest 15 min

divide dough in half

roll each half into 12 in x 30 in

melt 1/2 cup butter

spread evenly on each half (1/4 c on each)

sprinkle 1/2 c sugar on each

generous amount of cinnamon

roll each half and slice into 20 rolls

place on large cookie sheet (greased)

let rise 20 min

bake for 10 mins or desired at 400 degrees

let cool 5 min

Frosting:

3 1/2 c powder sugar

1/3 c butter

1 tsp vanilla

3-4 tbsp of milk (Melissa 1.5x that recipe because dry otherwise)

We had a great turn-out for dinner group, around 15 people, because I invited some jerusalem friends and we reminisced for over 2 hours! We were the annoying people at the party who are laughing way too loud and not inclusive. But hey thats what happens when you live with these people for the GREATEST 4 months of your entire life. Miss those people so much. I also wore some of the clothes that survived from Jerusalem including my John Cena shirt.

Well enjoy :) have a tasty thursday.