Skip to main content

Mostly textile related Passover Prep

Not all Passover prep is cooking, baking and shopping. Other things need to take place as well.
Napkins for both Seders (and accounting for spills and accidents)are washed and ironed. If my mother were alive she would have pointed out that they are not dinner napkins but luncheon napkins. They are luncheon napkins. If that fact distresses you too much to join us at Seder I am sure you can find other accommodations.

I also ironed the afikoman bag I had made about fifteen years ago.

My husband will have a pillow covered leaning chair to his left during Seder. This beautiful circa 1920 pillow case will adorn the pillow this year.


I just love the design the colors and the workmanship on this pillow cover. Some of the handcraft magazines of the era suggested taking such rustic embroidered pillow covers with you when you traveled to the country to decorate your otherwise bare cabin and make it feel homey. Deliberately rustic work was often used for this sort of decoration. 

I am using these doilies on my cookie trays. Why use paper when one has such treasures at hand?


I never would have imagined myself to be the sort of person who not only used doilies  but has a vast collection of them. I also never in my wildest dreams would have thought of myself as a woman who would starch and press her doilies. I never set out to collect them but they seem to show up at my house. I like honoring the women who made them by using them. 

I also never would have imagined that I would be the sort of person who owns embroidered fingertip towels, but I am, so i will be putting them out for our guests to daintily wipe their fingertips.
I had thought that I might be able to get away with no cooking or baking today...but
more tapioca flour rolls got made.


I also made a batch of the walnut cookies as jelly tots.
They are much improved. A bit of Turkish cuisine meeting New England cookery. It's a nice marriage. Perfect with our post dinner tea.
Shabbat Shalom!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

מְחַיֵּה הַמֵּתִים

  וְנֶאֱמָן אַתָּה לְהַחֲיוֹת מֵתִים: בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְהֹוָה מְחַיֵּה הַמֵּתִים   You are faithful to restore the dead to life. Blessed are You, Adonoy, Resurrector of the dead. That particular line is recited at every single prayer service every day three times a day, unless you use a Reform or Reconstructionist prayer book . In those liturgies instead of praising God for resurrecting the dead God is praised for  giving life to all.  I am enough of a modern woman, a modern thinker, to not actually believe in the actual resurrection of the dead. I don't actually expect all of the residents of the Workmen's Circle section of  Mount Hebron cemetery in Queens to get up and get back to work at their sewing machines. I don't expect the young children buried here or  the babies buried here to one day get up and frolic. Yet, every single time I get up to lead services I say those words about the reanimating of the dead with every fiber of my being. Yesterday, I e...

Connecting with the past

A few months ago I had a craving for my father’s chicken fricassee.  If my father were still alive I would have called him up and he would have talked me through the process of making it.    My father is no longer alive so I turned to my cookbooks and the recipes I found for chicken fricassee were nothing at all like the stew of chicken necks, gizzards and wings in a watery sweet and sour tomato sauce that I enjoyed as a kid.  I assumed that the dish was an invention of my father’s. I then attempted to replicate the dish from my memory of it and failed.   A couple of weeks ago I saw an article on the internet, and I can’t remember where, that talked about Jewish fricassee  and it sounded an awful lot like the dish I was hankering after. This afternoon I went to the butcher and picked up all of the chicken elements of the dish, a couple of packages each of wings, necks and gizzards. My father never cooked directly from a cook book. He used to re...

The light themed tallit has been shipped!!!

 I had begun speaking to Sarah about making her a tallit in the middle of August. It took a few weeks to nail down the design. For Sarah it would have been ideal if the tallit were completed in time for her to wear it on Rosh HaShanah., the beginning of her year as senior rabbi of her congregation. For me, in an ideal world, given the realities of preparing for the High Holidays I would have finished this tallit in the weeks after Sukkot. So we compromised and I shipped off the tallit last night.  I would have prefered to have more time but I got the job done in time. This tallit was made to mark Sarah's rise to the position of senior rabbi but it was also a reaction to this year of darkness. She chose a selection of verses about light to be part of her tallit. 1)  אֵל נוֹרָא עֲלִילָה  God of awesome deeds ( from a yom kippur Liturgical poem) 2)  אוֹר חָדָשׁ עַל־צִיּוֹן תָּאִיר   May You shine a new light on Zion ( from the liturgy) 3)  יָאֵר יְהֹ...