A blog, mostly about my work making Jewish ritual objects, but with detours into garment making, living in New York City, cooking, and other aspects of domestic life.
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Cooking, a birthday and a few more things
First a tiny bit of business.
I began this blog in 2011. I just discovered this week that I have passed a million page views. I started this blog because the child of dear friends strongly suggested that I should. The great heyday of blogs and blogging seems to have passed, nevertheless there are usually a couple of hundred of you who stop by every day. Thank you.
Some blogs are very focused on one topic. I write about my work creating Judaica in fabric, the process of sewing both my commission work and clothing ( mostly for myself), I usually post about cooking for Shabbat. I often post about living here in New York I also post about Jewish issues that I have been thinking about.
There probably aren't any readers that are interested in everything I write about and that's fine. Some of you are people I have known for most of my life. There are people here who know me from the neighborhood and my synagogue. There are other readers who I have known virtually through the world of sewing. Some of you I know nothing about at all. It has been wonderful having all of you here.
And now, back to the usual mix of topics that I post about here.
Today is my eldest's birthday. We are having a dinner in her honor.
There will be four different kind of meat.
crispy pastrami
brisket in gochujang and molasses
chop meat-in formation--flavored with za'atar and dried Iranian greens
Not pictured are pigs in blanket--because it is a party.
I already made a pumpkin pie.
I would have topped the pie with pecans but two of our guests are nut allergic. Instead I made candied pecans so people can embellish their pie slices as they wish.
The pecans are locked up, (actually the equivalent of being locked up) so I don't eat them all.
We are leaving for Texas this coming week. During part of our visit we will head to Houston to visit a dear cousin who has been going through some pretty serious health issues. I decided to make her a pillow with the prayer for healing on it.
because You are the Almighty, King, Who is a faithful and merciful Healer. Blessed are You, Adonoy, Healer of the sick of His people Israel.
I bloc printed vintage linen damask and then painted the text on top of the block printing. I stencilled the border design in blue on a beautiful crisp blue cotton.
I don't have the power to make our cousin well, but I can put every bit of myself into the words of the prayer as I paint them and then outline each letter. I hope that our cousin will see every bit of intentionality and love that is in this piece.
Last night I constructed and sewed on the back. The filling for the pillow has been sent to our son in Amarillo.
A bit of foliage glory has hit our little corner of Broadway.
You can just see the marigolds that are being sold for Day of the Dead
Halloween is serious business around here and both kids and adults are in costume for about a week. i spotted the blue devil below at the end of my workout.
The song below showed up on my YouTube feed and I just love how it captures the difficulties faced by those who made Aliya during the 1940s and is still upbeat.
This song was on an album my parents mistakenly thought was for children ( there was a charming illustration of a scarecrow on the album cover). This beautiful haunting song is about a drowned fisherman. I can't find the lyrics in either Hebrew or English.
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...
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...
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...
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