sarah in nyc

I usually don't do much dessert baking. But commercial Passover baked goods, are for the most part, dismal. Besides, how could we do Passover with my mother without serving the flourless chocolate nut torte?? That cake came together fairly well. flourless chocolate nut torte One of the nice things about having Passover in my house is that I can choose the menu. The thick asparagus my father adored, is not on the menu. Neither is the boiled broccoli.  My mother makes a wine-nut cake that always tasted a bit musty to me. So that to is not being served. No banana cake either, because I hate the taste of cooked bananas. I decided to make an orange walnut cake from Claudia Roden's The Book of Jewish Food. She is a really smart woman and a great cookbook writer.  I made the cake which involved ground almond and chopped walnuts, the rind and juice of an orange, and lots of eggs. I don't know if my oven's temperature is miscalibrated, but after I took the cake out of the oven...

Yesterday, at services, My friend Anne came up behind me as I was chatting with a friend and said " Every conversation here is about the same thing, cooking!". Ann is right. Everyone at synagogue is doing something to get ready for Passover. We are all working hard. People are scrubbing their houses, bringing cartons of dishes down from the top shelves of closets. Lots of hard physical labor is going into to getting ready for the holiday. I went to an Orthodox day  school for both elementary and high school . As soon as Purim was over each year, we learned the laws of Passover. There are lots of them. Each year we  learned those laws with a bit more depth. As I work my way through the preparation, I am beginning to realize something that we were not taught while we were learning those laws. One of the fascinating things for me about Passover is how seder serves not simply as a religious ritual, a retelling of the story of slavery and deliverence into liberation, but ove...

The house got switched over yesterday. Hmm, that sounds like magical elves showed up and did all of the work. Trust me, there were no elves. Just Patricia, my sainted cleaning woman, and I, working away until the cleaning was done. Then my youngest and I put all of the dairy dishes pots and  in their places. This morning, before I took my shower, I put up tonight's chicken cooked with sauteed onions, mushrooms and celery flavored with black pepper and balsamic vinegar. Then, I went to the uptown Fairway with my neighbor. It was completely nuts there. I got enough produce to make dinner and get me started on round one of Seder cooking. I caved. I kept telling my mother that I wasn't going to make chicken soup, but there it is, boiling away on the stove. It won't be as good as my father's but it will have to do. I will make matza balls after Shabbat. I also made a cole slaw with a home made lemony mayo. It ain't fancy, but it will do. The figs are soaking in boo...

I'm taking a break from Passover work. Earlier today I was at the butcher's. As I was paying for my purchase, I mentioned to the Jamaican born cashier that I was planning to switch my house over tomorrow. She said " You're kidding! You STILL haven't switched your kitchen!!!" I am in the middle of working on the meat dishes and pots.This is the first year that we are doing meat during Passover. Every other year, until last year, we would go to my parents for Seder. After eating out fill of meat for the first two days of holiday, we were content to eat dairy for the rest of the holiday. My father died a year ago September.  I couldn't bear to do Seder with my mother and my sisters last year.So,we all went to my husband's friend's house. He had just come off of a difficult divorce. I went up a few days early and cooked like a madwoman. This September, my mother moved out of the house that she shared with my father ( and the rest of us) since 195...

I had written a long detailed entry about all of the parts of my kitchen that are now sanitised for Passover, but it was just too boring to ask any one else to read. I will however, make special note of my youngest and his help in pulling the fridge out of it's corner and his heroic work in cleaning out a particularly grotty corner of our home. More scrubbing today for my shriveled, and sore hands enlivened by food shoppingand the purchase of a new hand-mixer because my old Passover one performs like a Victorian lady with the vapors. It works valiently for a while, and then just sighs from the sheer effort of existing. I think I need to replace the refined lady with a sturdy peasant girl of a hand mixer. We all need to experience out own personal bondage to truly experience the liberation of Passover. My own personal bondage this year comes highly scented by "Senor Limpio", the Spanish labled Mr. Clean from the .99 cent store. I love Senor Limpio.

I make most of my clothing. I haven't used a commercial pattern in years. What I usually do, is a combination of using finished garments as a starting point, and drafting from my measurements. I like this method a whole lot because it allows me to make garments quickly. I can usually get from idea to finished garment in less than an hour. If before I made a garment, I had to first go pattern shopping, and these days, that would mean on line, and then waiting for the pattern to be shipped before I then began cutting in to the fabric, that means a delay of several days to a couple of weeks before you could begin sewing. The other real dirty secret of commercial patterns, is just like ready to wear clothing, each pattern manufacturer creates for a particular body shape. That ideal shape probably isn't yours. Most people who sew from patterns spend a huge amount of time adapting patterns to fit their particular shapes. I like that when I fall in love with a fabric and bri...

Growing up, we called the time before Passover "Passover Starvation Week". My parents were attempting to clear out the pantry from all of the foods we couldn't eat on Passover. It really wasn't exactly starvation week, more, "Weird Eats" week. As we ran out of the foods we usually ate, meals were a bit out of the ordinary with new combinations being put together. Some were sucessful and other, less so. Some, much less so. My culinary goal for this Shabbat was to use up as much flour as possible. Our guests are vegetarian, by that I mean the kosher version of that, fishatarians. I will be cooking tilapia in a bed of vegetables. These were the guests that had forgotten to show up the last time I had made noodles, so I decided to make noodles so they could have the home made version. I seem to associate noodle making with home made cheese making, so I made another batch of soft cheese. Since I was on a flour using kick, I decided to make cream puffs for dess...

Did you ever feel like you were wearing the right outfit, not just for you, but right for the universe? That's exactly what happened to me today. One of my husband's friends was celebrating his 60th birthday with a lunch at one of the fancy restaurants at the Time Warner Center. Lunch in fancy restaurants is not part of my usual routine. Today was to be the first really warm and perfect spring day. We have just come off a week of truly beastly weather where it was cold , rainy, and windy. You just didn't want to be outside. Today felt like the e.e.cummings poem, In Justspring. Maybe it is growing up in New England, but for me spring calls for nautical clothing, the same way that the fall cries for tweeds. I had purchased this Nanette Lepore skirt in the fall at my favorite thrift store. I certainly didn't need it, but it was so much fun, and so well made. It was an impulse purchase, but at $8 it was an impulse I could indulge. The air still has a bit of nippyness...

Finish raw edges of tank top as you wish. I serged the edges, folded then to the inside and then added a decorative black elastic. You can add a crosswise strip of the same or conrtasting fabric, or apply fold-over elastic. It took me longer to set up this tutorial on the web than it took me to make the tank.

 Last night I finished darning the cloth. It was much improved. I then began to tackle the stains. As I was washing up last night, getting ready for bed, I noticed the bottle of  Peroxide. I remembered from my endless reading of helpful hints, that peroxide is a good stain remover. This morning, I dabbed the stains with the peroxide and they were much lighter. I rinsed the peroxided cloth. Then, I soaked the cloth in a weak Borax solution and rinsed it well.  I hung the cloth to dry over my shower curtain rod with a towel beneath. I thought that I would send the cloth to the dry cleaner to get it pressed. The cloth, after several hours was nearly dry. I thought that I would press it dry and then bring it to the cleaner's. I used the kitchen table as my pressing surface. There is a cotton cloth on the table. When I was nearly done I noticed, to my horror, teeny spots of ink on the cloth. I used every trick in the book and lightened the ink to a re...

My parents bought this table cloth in Israel in 1955. They bought it at WIZO, the hand craft cooperative. They were told that the cloth was woven from flax from the first post independance flax harvest. We used this cloth for seder every year until it began to develop wear holes. My parents tended to subdued colors. This cloth with the orange and green embroidery is not subdued at all. The Passover dishes were old fashioned when my parents purchased them in 1954. They have a deep blue cobalt border and hand painted flowers in red and green. They are  embellished with bright orange hand painted tear drops.The plates look great with this cloth. My mother was unable to part with the cloth even after it developed holes. She hung it in the damp basement for the past 20 years. It now has rusty stains on it. My friend Welmoed suggested that I use the nakpins to repair the cloth. I began insetting patches by hand. I think that I will get a neater finish using the sewing machin...

I know a calligrapher who is notorious for getting his work in late. Occasionally he has been known to deliver an unfinished Ketubah to a wedding, only to finish it after the wedding. In college, I was the student begging her professors for extensions. I find though, that I prefer to get my work done at least a few days before the due date.  For me, it makes for less anxious work. Life,  though, does not always cooperate.  Last Sunday I was hit with the news that several friends were diagnosed with cancer. Then I got a call from another friend letting me know of his divorce. Monday I was then hit with what the Victorians used to call melancholia. I was simply too sad to work. Naomi's tallit was due today as was her brother's tallit, the "Not Mets'" tallit. The bnai-mitzvah are not until early April.  Normally, I wouldn't have to get the tallitot completed until late March. Yesterday, though, as my friend Ruth reminded me,the words that strike terror into eve...

Naomi's tallit is very nearly done. The top stitching is complete. The atara and pinot are completed, but not yet sewn on. I backed the pinot with blue silk from her brother's tallit. It won't really be visible, but it alters the color in a good way. I backed the atara with plan gold metallic silk organza. That will bring a bit more light near Naomi's face. Today was taken up mostly with domestic tasks. I didn't even get to sit down at the machine until late afternoon. Part of the domestic activity was dealing with the tail end of a long and complicated event involving my youngest. It makes a mother proud when her child figures out the right thing to do, and does it with grace. It's so nice to see my child grow into a deep human being. The fact that this chain of events also ended with some massive laughter didn't hurt either.

I'm getting down to the wire on both the "not Mets" tallit and Naomi's tallit.  Naomi's tallit is really close to done. It is awaiting topstitching and the atara and pinot. Like Naomi, it is quiet but glows. The "not Mets" tallitis in many ways more technically difficult. I  cut the white tussah silk to size and serged it to prevent shredding. Again, I'm so happy with my new serger. My old one would have had trouble cutting the edge and would have been spitting and complaining. This serger just cut through the thick rough silk like"buttah". I was thinking about turning the edges and just having a  narrow plain hem. Then I remembered the beautiful roll of black and white striped grosgrain ribbon that I had fished out of the remnant bin at Metro Textile. Kashi let me buy the roll for a pittance. I folded it in half and edged the entire tallit with the ribbon. I love how the striped ribbon makesthe rough silk look elegant. I also love how th...

My husband detests the taste of raw onion. I'm making Moroccan meat balls for Shabbat dinner. But because I love him, I'm pre-cooking the onions before they get mixed into the meat mixture. Onions and celery cooked into submission Our daughter comes home for spring break. Before my kids come home from being away I always ask them what they want for their first meal.  My daughter requested Moroccan meat balls. I am happy to comply with her wishes. While I was thinking about this welcome home meal, I recalled my daughter and older son watching me make one of their favorite side dishes, caramelized onions. There is something very sweet about having your kids hanging out by your elbows impatiently waiting for a dish to be finished. To make the onions- Shred a 3 lb bag of onions. This is one of the moments when I think about Laurie Colwin's line about wanting to marry her food processor. Heat olive oil in the bottom of a heavy bottomed pot. Put shredded onions in the pot. They ...

Naomi is a twin. I'm making a tallit for her and one for her brother. When I was growing up, it was fashionable to treat twins as if they were a set of book ends. Twins were dressed alike and expected to be alike, even if they were not. Fortunately, Naomi and her brother have parents who get that being born on the same day does not mean that they share a brain and a soul. Naomi wasn't even sure if she wanted a tallit before she met with me. By the time she left though, she had decided that she did want a tallit. She wanted a tallit that was fairly quiet. She chose this not quite a color called fawn. The fabric she chose though, is a really lovely charmeuse. It feels wonderful on. I have discovered that my clients fall into one of two camps, the ones that love smooth and silky and the ones that don't. Naomi is a smooth and silky loving girl. I have been working on creating the stripes for this tallit. I have been using an embellishemnt technique adapted from Bird Ross...

I made this table cloth probably five years ago. It's made out of a black cotton pique. It's edged in pom pom trim. Yes, I know that it is totally silly. My friend, Mary-Katherine grew up mostly in Texas. She was having a pom-pom trim moment. It made her laugh. She was also a fairly constant guest at our table. She asked that I trim my cloth with the pop-poms. It was all the more amusing because I had to use three different colors of trim. My youngest has been complaining about this table cloth for the past several months. Each time he sets the table for Shabbat using this cloth he points out how spotted it is,  and how frequent laundering has not been kind to it. He is right. The cloth has been looking ratty. I have been hiding it's rattyness by covering the center of the cloth with one of my smaller vintage cloths. The wild 1940's printed cloths look great on top of the black. Today though, I decided to take more drastic measures. I cut the cloth up into napkins. I...

When I was a college student at Brandeis, I took a class in abstract painting. Often, in addition to working on our paintings, our professor would  take us to the Rose Art Museum which was next door to the studio building. The Rose has a spectacular collection of post WWII art. It rivals the collections at big name museums, including the Met here in New York. Our wise painting professor wanted us to be inspired by what we saw. We were. I would get back to the studio all fired up to get to work on something spare and pure, like a Rothko. Inevitably, when I attempted spare and pure, about half way through the process, my canvas would begin to get busy. At that point in my life, that felt like some sort of a moral failure. Now when I work, I know that although my tendancy is towards chaos I also like to have that chaos confined within a structure. That way you have the lively look and energy of chaos. The structure around it makes it possible to live with that ...