just a quick post

 This has been a week of celebrating. My husband had a birthday.  My wise son-in-law has named his birthday celebrations so they are now a festival. My daughter has done the same so inspired by them, we have been celebrating Pop-fest.

There was the family trek to Boro Park for lots of skewered meat. Last night we celebrated with old friends of my husband's who very nearly share birthdays with him. I baked a small heart shaped chocolate cake from the Settlement Cookbook.

I made half of the recipe and added a whole lot more flavor in terms of spices (cinnamon, allspice and black pepper) . I topped the bake cake with some Israeli instant vanilla pudding made with much less liquid than asked for on the directions and rum and orange flower water for additional flavor. I shaved chocolate over the vanilla pudding and then edged the top of the cake with a cut up Kit Kat bar. Sorry, no photos and it was as my late friend Shawna used to say, "Not,bad ". Especially since the cake came together in no time.

For my husband's actual birthday yesterday I made him a meal I knew he would love, Impossible Burgers served on homemade rye and fennel hamburger buns and an array of vegetables to top the burgers. I left over some dough to bake a loaf today.

We are leaving town in two weeks and I had only two challot in the freezer. Rather than committing to baking just before we leave I decided to cheat a bit. So, one of our loaves tonight will be an actual eggy challah, the other will be the same rye and fennel dough braided like challah.

I was planning to make my husband's favorite chicken that mimics the flavor of the take out rotisserie chicken his mother served religiously.  I started out with sumac and hot paprika but then I took a left turn or two and added some Ethiopian berbere spice, some hawaij and turmeric to the bowl. It smelled good while cooking. Hopefully the spices didn't decide to have a fight.

I will let you know if they all behaved and decided to become better than the sum of their parts.

And now a small digression.

Those of you who are plugged in to the universe of kosher foods and the various stringencies that have evolved over the past few decades may be aware of the concept of Bodek---or inspected vegetables. The idea developed ( I kid you not) by the musings of a yeshiva student about the possibility of their possibly being teeny insects hiding in greens. 

Well, those musings have created a mini industry. Clearly, I do not hold by those stringencies. I wash my vegetables and am particularly careful when washing vegetables that tend to have lots of dirt clinging to them...like Romaine lettuce or leeks. I don't need to pay a premium for someone else to do that.

That being said, this is what I found clinging the the last head of lettuce that I purchased.

It was dead and I didn't need a magnifying glass to find it.This is the first time that I have ever found such a beast on my Romaine lettuce. It was easy to find, and wash away.

And ...another topic.. I have been working away on Miles' tallit.

I am now working on the atara.

I did some free motion embroidery on white silk. ( I finally learned how to lower the feed dogs on this machine)--that's the turquoise loops..

I pencilled the letters onto the silk and I am couching gold cord to form the letters. I'm liking this and will post more photos soon.

I am also preparing to make the pinot--the corner pieces.  I have lots of lengths of embroidered ribbon because I kept making stupid measurement errors. Some of the embroidered ribbon is left over from other projects.

I wove the ribbon on the diagonal over a piece of fusible fleece.

When I was done I ironed the ribbon to the backing.

This is more than twice as much as I need so some of it may be used in the bag.

Hopefully this Shabbat melody will give all of us a bit of comfort.

Shabbat Shalom!