sarah in nyc

 THIS was the view from my window the other night. Truly the pillar of flame and cloud. But more realistically I have been getting myself ready for Passover. The main dishes are done but the side dishes and the desserts all need to be made. One of my favorite desserts of late has been  an Italian clementine tart  that i discovered on an Italian You tube channel. Below are two different iterations of the tart.(The recipe is in the link) The tart is delicious and is made with tons of nuts. Unfortunately, some of my guests each night are very nut allergic. I was trying to figure out how to recreate this without nuts. I wondered if it was possible to make a pie crust out of quinoa, and in fact, it is. I found a few recipes that weren't OK for Passover but I found one that was made with flax seeds and Quinoa. I don't have flax seeds but I do have chia seeds. I cooked up some quinoa and added some chia seeds. I added pie crust friendly flavorings to the grains and allowed them ...

 As the first night of Seder grows near I am slowly making lists and ticking things off of those lists. The second round of glass bowls are being kashered on a window sill so we can use them during Passover. The silver will have to wait until after Shabbat. I cobbled together a good enough dinner for tonight. The dress for my great niece is completed. Tim  and his wife arrived to tie his tzitzit. Both Tim and Paula were really good at the task of wrapping and tying the tzitzit. Interestingly they both had such different hands .Each did beautiful work but they each looked different from one another. We visited a friend yesterday afternoon. I loved seeing the birds perfectly reflected in her back yard window. A few bits of pretty architecture near our friend's house. Hopefully I can gets lots of sleep on Shabbat so I can tackle the rest of my list. Two sweet springtime songs for you. Shabbat Shalom!

 There are some things that are inevitable during the process of preparing for Passover. One is that some kitchen things disappear.  This year after we switched the house I was unable to find my Melita coffee filter holders.  I need to have my jolt of coffee to make it through any day. But I REALLY need my coffee on high labor days like the days before Passover. I ordered a replacement coffee filter holder from Amazon. For two days until it arrived I just dumped my usual dose of ground coffee into a large mug and then filled the mug with boiling water. Eventually, the grounds settle but cleaning a pile of damp coffee grounds is really unpleasant, not to mention the yukky sensation of straining coffee grounds through your teeth. I was so happy when the replacement filter holder arrived. Unfortunately, the base was broken which made using the filter holder a bit fiddly. Luckily later in the day I found my two Passover filter holders which had been packed away in a pot. Toda...

  Yesterday we switched the house to Passover mode. Each of our new York City based kids showed up with a friend in tow and we got the house switched in three hours. After my excellent work team left I started the chicken soup and the pickled beet eggs. The soup is the hardest task.I loaded fifteen and a half lbs. of chicken bones into our giant soup pot and then added  cut up the vegetables and loaded each vegetable into net soup bags and tied the bags shut. The soup simmered away from last night until four this afternoon. It was then time to squeeze every bit of goodness out of  the net bags of vegetable matter. I pulled each bag out of the soup and applied brute force to it to extract all of the vegetably essence. I separated the chicken meat from the bones. The bones got squeezed out with all of the meat juices going back into the soup. The cooked chicken bits will be the basis of our meals for the next few days. The process of extracting all of the goodies from the s...

 I am glad that all of you are on the other side of this screen and not here in my dining room with me right now. My husband and i did our big Passover shop at Bingo yesterday. we aren't switching the house over until Sunday. My dining room table is stacked with cartons and boxes of dry Passover goods and my fridge and freezer are simply bursting at the seams. It isn't pretty. I want to share some of the great things we found at bingo yesterday, and I am not even including the kosher brisket at 6.99/lb. One of the tasks one often needs to do is to kasher items that one uses during the rest of the year so they are useable for Passover.  I will kasher my parents' sterling flatware and serving pieces. It is lovely to use my parents things on Passover. To kasher metal you need to plunge it into boiling water. At some point during a lull in the cooking I will set a parge pot of water up to boil and then lower silverware  or kiddush cups.in a strainer to the rapidly boiling ...