sarah in nyc

  Nothing makes me feel more like an old fashioned Domestic Goddess than the post holiday ironing of tablecloths and napkins.  I have lost track of the number of tablecloths and napkins that were washed and ironed since yesterday. There have been many dinners in the past few weeks that have required a step up in the napery department. Actually the thing that makes me feel the MOST like a Domestic Goddess is noting holes in said napery as I was ironing and then deciding to mend the holes--today. This is exactly the sort of advice that one finds in the introductory chapters to sewing books from the early part of the 20th Century. Mend those holes and rips as soon as you find them. These charming napkins came into my life, perhaps from the large linen stash given to me from my friend Vivian from her mother's and grandmother's collection. I noticed that one of the napkins was full of holes. The photo below is of the half dozen or so holes in the napkin. Just as there are many ways...

 As always, this time in the Jewish calendar, we are either celebrating a holiday, getting ready to celebrate a holiday or recovering from a holiday. Sukkot begins tonight. But in between being in synagogue and recovering from all of the prep I have gotten a little bit of work done. I have made progress since I took these photos. I am now in the process of embroidering the very last letter. You can see our new honey pot in the photo below. The fabulous tablecloth is a Vivian treasure a great piece of Central European hand weaving. Sukkot begins tonight. We only have one challah left from the batch I made before Rosh HaShanah. We will have that very last challah and since we are obligated to have two loaves on the Shabbat table I made a batch of rye rolls for the second loaf. We love bread however, we don't live on bread alone. We are having some London broil as well as a  spinach kugel. I can't swear exactly what spices I put in it but there were four eggs and some grated up c...

I am someone with a strong nostalgic streak. There are objects from my childhood that I have a strong connection to. Along the way, and through the years since my childhood, some of those object got broken some got given away and others just disappeared.   Clearly you can't own EVERYTHING that you were fond of in childhood all at the same time, because if you did you would have no room in your home to actually live. Some things have a pull. My parents were collectors of lovely things. They owned lots of Judaica. they also had lots of lovely china and silver. Among the objects in their collection was a Belleek honey pot. Belleek china as you might have guessed from the photo is made in Ireland. If you went into a home of someone with Irish roots there was likely a Belleek vase or teapot somewhere in the family collection of lovely things. (Just as if you went into a Jewish home in the 1960s you were likely to see a reproduction of the Chagall windows at the Hadassah hospital in...

 Yesterday I looked out of my window and  Brian Stokes Mitchell sang "The Impossible Dream" from the Juliette balcony on the right most nights during the 7:00pm cheer saw this scaffolding going up. All of you who live in New York know exactly what this is.  In 1979 a Columbia student was killed by a piece of  loose masonry hat fell from a building in the neighborhood. Since then, every five years every residential building in the city is inspected and every bit of masonry that might be a danger in the future is repaired. This law has had a couple of consequences. The first is that it has kept all of us safer. Another is that the law has been a boondoggle for  scaffolding companies, construction engineers and contractors. The scaffolding keeps the workers safe and also keeps pedestrians safe from falling rubble. As an additional safety measure after the scaffolding goes up a layer of screening covers the outside of the scaffolding. Being inside the the scaffoldin...

 I have a completely irrational belief that if my kids taste the flavors of the holiday foods from my childhood then they will, by eating those foods inherit my memories. Like I said, it is irrational. And yet, I do it every year. My parents made these foods not to evoke their own families but to evoke the people that they loved in Halifax and that particular moment in their lives, the first years of their marriage. That Halifax evocation was so strong that my dear Halifax born friend, Shawna was able to identify whose cabbage and whose Tzimmes I serve.  I didn't grow up with the tradition of serving a plum tart made with Italian prune plums on Rosh Ha Shanah. But my dear German and Austrian born friends who are no longer living did. Herta, and Fanni and Ida are no longer living but I bring them to our Rosh HaShanah table every year. This tart feels like we are inviting those three women to join our table  for the New Year. My daughter has taken up the mantle of making th...

 I have had the honor of blowing shofar at my synagogue since the year my father died. I practice during the entire moth of Elul, the month before Rosh Hashanah. When I practice, I do a run through with each of the shofarot you see here. One was a bar mitzvah gift given to my nephew, the other was a bar mitzvah gift given to my son. The black one is easy to blow. the paler one is difficult to blow. Each time I practice I do a run though first with the difficult shofar and then with the easy one.  . We Jews like rules. There are lots of rules about shofar blowing. I try to blow with the same power that my father did. As a small child I was told that the three different sounds of the shofar correspond to a wail, and then sobs and finally completely broken up sobbing. This year I learned something new. I learned that the long blast represents God's mercy and the shorter blasts represent God's judgement. I can produce a long shofar blast. A previous year I read that one needs to m...