Illustration: Denis Shifrin

Bringing back the license will halt bike thefts 

Whilst my husband and I were clearing out old material, we came across a Bicycle License from Tel Aviv Municipality dated 1947 which stated his name, address, date of issue and validity, make and frame number and the fee paid. I think this would be an excellent idea in helping to avoid all the stealing of bicycles that goes on today. Apparently this license had to be with him whenever he went out on his bicycle – similar to your driving license of today.

Deal yourself some cards and save money even in the smaller shop chains

For the last few years I have found myself being offered membership cards at the various big chain stores such as Shufersal, Super-Pharm, Mega-YOU, Yeinot Bitan etc.

Recently, I have also been offered membership cards at much smaller places that I occasionally frequent and, as they did not cost me anything, I accepted and have found them to be quite useful. Here are three examples that we use from time to time:

1. The Original Pancake House (09 951 4215) "Machlef Hasirah", Herzliya, on the Haifa Road next to the PAZ Petrol station if you are going from South to North. This gives you a15% discount, and plenty of parking.

2. The China Class Restaurant (09 957 9054) at 33 Ben Gurion St., Herzliya, next to the Courts. 10% discount, but not on business meals. The discount is also on take-away food, but check out their minimum for free home delivery. Parking in the court area next door.

3. Pe'amit Store (1 700 502 401: 03 561 5107) at 110 Yigal Alon, Tel Aviv (where I did pay a small sum) and it gives me a 6% discount. They have stores in many different areas. This was worthwhile as they are very inexpensive. A problem could be parking – but sometimes there is parking by the petrol station close by. They have branches in other areas of the country.

If you have your own recommendations which you would like to pass on to others, send them to me, including the correct name, address, phone number, percentage of discount and any other useful information.

A whole cake was cheaper than just a slice

After a doctor's appointment, my husband and I decided to have cake and coffee at a Roladin Cafe. He chose a portion of apple cake but I noticed, at the same time, that they also had whole apple cakes. A single portion was NIS26 and the whole cake was NIS55. So we had two coffees and one whole cake, from which they served us two portions, with the remainder wrapped up for us to take home. We were left with two-thirds of a cake. Make your own calculation – the apple cake was excellent.

Shine on: a tip on getting your jewelry to sparkle

The jewelry shop said they could not repolish my silver necklace because there were semi-precious stones in the attached pendant and they were afraid the stones might become loose. I tried rubbing half a fresh lemon over the whole necklace and was surprised at the result. Not quite the same shine as when it was new but definitely wearable again. To the best of my memory, the reason for the black staining was accidentally spraying perfume in the area after putting on the necklace and not before.

Squeeze 'n freeze! How to stop wasting those fresh lemons

If you have a lemon tree in your garden, there is often a problem when all the lemons become ripe simultaneously. If you have space in your freezer and a juicer, I have a solution to save wasting those ripe lemons. Squeeze the juice (minus pips) from the lemons. Divide this up amongst small plastic containers (I keep all those small plastic pill containers, whether from medicines or vitamins) and put them in your freezer. The juice can be frozen for a year or more. Each time you need lemon juice just defrost one container. The great advantage is that fresh, defrosted lemon juice will keep in the fridge thereafter for as much as two or three weeks, whereas fresh lemon juice does not keep for more than a day or two.