Meatball-stuffed garlic monkey bread

It's a bit of a to-do because you have to make the dough, season the chopped meat, make the meatballs, wrap them in dough and make the marinara sauce.

Of course if you don't particularly care about buying processed foods and ready-made foods straight out of the freezer, I've seen the quick and easy version of this on Pinterest with: Buy some kind of frozen Pillsbury dough, buy frozen cocktail meatballs at Costco, and pop open a jar of your favorite sauce.

The dough I made for this is the onion rolls recipe from The Secret of Challah. Obviously the filling are meatballs instead of onions.

Dough:

7 cups sifted flour (1 kilo)

2 tablespoons dry yeast

2 teaspoons salt

3 teaspoons sugar

2 cups warm water

2 eggs

2 tablespoons oil

Mix together the dry ingredients. Then add the wet and knead for about 5 minutes, until all the ingredients are incorporated. Then cover the bowl and let it rise for about an hour or until it's doubled in size.

Meatballs:

1/2 kilo (about 1 pound) of chopped meat (chicken, turkey, and lamb will do as well)

Spices - I used garlic powder, black pepper, and oregano

Mix and make into golfball-sized meatballs.

Garlic bread mix:

About 4 generous tablespoons of minced garlic

1/3 cup oil

oregano

Take a piece of dough (a little bigger than a golfball size) and flatten it like you're making pizza. Wrap it around the meatball and pinch the ends closed. Place in a 9x13 baking dish.

Once the bottom is loosely filled (you want the dough to barely be touching), spoon some of the garlic mixture on top. Then add the next layer of dough balls. Pour the remaining garlic mixture over the top.

Sprinkle with coarse salt.

Bake at 350 degrees F (about 180 degrees C) for about 45 minutes. Serve with sauce.

Some humor

I'm part of a Facebook project called Fifty-two Frames which is a year-long photography project. Each week is a different theme and you have to take the submitted photo within that week.

This past week's theme was anthropomorphism/personification. For those not familiar with the terms (and are too lazy to Google it), anthropomorphism is basically seeing humanity in objects or animals. If you click on the link for the Fifty-two Frames FB group, you'll be able to see the whole album and get a pretty good idea of what I mean.

My submission was a bit of a spoof on the home birth/water birth photos that tend to be popular these days. This is the photo I submitted:

And here are the rest of the photos in the 'home birth' series:

Politics at prayer

So this whole Women of the Wall (WOW), Women for the Wall (W4W) bruhaha... the vitriol going back and forth is an embarrassing chillul Hashem in my opinion.

I don't completely agree with WOW, but I agree with W4W even less. Their 'my way is the only way' is arrogant to say the least.

One of the things that annoys me about W4W is they seem to be ignoring what they claim to be the main goal of their mission statement. (I underlined it for emphasis)

If their ultimate goal is to make a woman's experience to be as meaningful as possible and they will do 'whatever possible' to achieve experiencing this profound connection to God, then why does it seem the only thing they manage to do is try to prevent women from that experience?

The group will be protesting at their third Rosh Chodesh davening at the Kotel in a few days. I have yet to read anything about W4W talking to the various Kotel 'authorities' to advocate say, enlarging the women's section. Or finally moving that unsightly ramp up to Har haBayit. Or any number of things.. BEYOND trying to get WOW banned from the Kotel proper.