Pre Passover marathon

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.

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Connecting with the past

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...

The light themed tallit has been shipped!!!

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מְחַיֵּה הַמֵּתִים

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...

sarah in nyc

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