Summer of mending continues and food Friday

When my daughter sat next to me lastShabbatt she pointed out that the tallit I had made for her 18th birthday had developed some breaks in the silk. We discussed some options in our usual short-hand manner with the last-ditch option being a new tallit. We both came to the conclusion that a visible mend done with gold thread would be a nice stop-gap method of keeping her tallit in one piece. We discussed the way Japanese ceramics are repaired with gold and envisioned a series of gold mends so the additional gold threads would look intentional.


The tallit sat on my work table all week and I tackled the job while waiting for various bits of Shabbat dinner to do their time in the oven.

The silk in the area of the mend has gone brittle and we will see how long the mend lasts.

I started our challah right after breakfast.

Now it looks like this.

This is what got massaged into our chicken.

For those of you who can't decode this particular mixture of spices, it is hot paprika, regular paprika, black pepper, sumac and dried mustard.
here is our chicken post spice massage and pre-cooking.

After a long cook it looks like this.

I went to a tiny Orthodox day school. There were twenty-eight in my graduating class. Four of those twenty-eight were named Howie. One of those Howies is no longer alive. One of the three still living Howies is coming for dinner along with his older sister who lives in my neighborhood.

In honor of the occasion, I baked a cake.  I made a pumpernickel crumb meringue cake with berries.

The photo makes this cake look far grander than it actually is. In reality, it looks much more like a deflated pancake. I nibbled on some crumbs that fell off the cake and despite being ugly it is quite delicious.

Everything is in the oven warming up. I will clean up and take a nap.

Shabbat Shalom!