sarah in nyc

 If you have been a frequent Shabbat guest at my house there is a good chance that you have eaten  what I think of as Idiot Chicken. I don't make it weekly, but it shows up fairly often on my table.It is the first chicken dish I have taught my kids how to make. It tastes like lots of work went into it, when almost none did. Many years ago, my husband was sent to Paris on business. He brought home one of those adorable ceramic jars of Herbes de Provence as a gift for me. It was a REALLY good gift. It was one of those gifts that is life changing.  Herbes de Provence is one of those mixtures that makes anything taste instantly delicious and sophisticated.  This gift came into my life, just when caring for my kids was at it's most time consuming. Being able to produce a meal that was delicious and easy to prepare was indeed a gift.  Once I finished the adorable ceramic jar, I was able to pick up  plain glass jars of it at Zabars and at F...

A Women's Minyan /Prayer Group asked me to come up with honors cards. At a service, there are various honors to be distribulted. On a regular Shabbat there are eight readings from the Torah. A member of the community honored by being called forward to recite the blessings before and after that reading. The Torah scroll is raised after the reading, and then, rolled wrapped and dressed before being returned to the ark. In some synagogues, the honors are simply given out verbally.( Someone will come up to you and ask if you want an aliya /to be called up to the Torah) Other synagogues give out cards. I guess the advantage of the cards is that the honoree knows for sure exactly which aliya they are being called up for.  It also helps the person giving out the honors keep track of what has already been given out and what is yet to be given out. Hebrew is a gender language. Unlike English , the words for numbers differ if they object being counted is masculine or f...

My youngest loved how this photo looks like a lovely Italian church escaped to our urban neighborhood. Looking North. If you look carefully, you can just barely see the side of St. John the Divine neat the top center of the image. Another view of the church Our building's water tower

The door to the roof of my building is normally locked.  This morning though, I had the opportunity to be up there and took some pictures of the view. Looking west, with my building's cornice in the foreground Looking east, towards Amsterdam Avenue Iconic New York sky scape with water towers Water towers to the west

My family loves watching "The Office" together. We love the show so much that our  vacation before our oldest left for college for the first time was to Scranton, PA where the show is set.  Yes, we own seasons 1-3 on DVD.  One of our favorite DVD extras is "Kevin Cooks Stuff in the Office". In it, he makes "Quesadilla a la Kevin" . He puts spray cheese on  sour cream and onion potato chips and heats the mixture in the microwave. He proclaims the mixture "Hot, but so good." I had gone to Costco with my neighbor. She bought a giant package of shredded cheddar cheese. She gave us a gallon bag full, it barely made a dent in her cheese stash. My youngest melted the cheese over Pita chips in a more elegant version of Kevin's snack. It was his go to Shavuot meal. Today, after school, he bought a package of sour cream and onion chips to try a  more authentic version. It was indeed, hot but good, but also a bit too much. He needed to lie down to r...

is now complete. We will be tying the tzitzit next Friday afternoon. Some things to notice as you look at the photos both in the post and in the album to the right. The atara/neckband and pinot/corners are made out of translucent silk gazar. The sparkles beneath the gazar twinkle through . Often I make the atara and the pinot flashy. Maya's tallit has so much going on, that it made more sense to have the corners and the neckband be fairly quiet.   I did the eyelets by hand. It is a satisfying operation.  My hand work used to be not all that attractive. I'm glad that with practice, even I can improve.

Adelle was the coolest relative we had. She was a high school friend of my aunt's. Adelle had an affair with her High School Hebrew teacher, who was a cousin of ours. Eventually, she married him.  Adelle came from a family of not Communists, but Anarchists.  She was smart, arty and mouthy. She treated kids as worthy conversation partners. My parents loved fine china of the Royal Crown Derby mode. We once has lunch at Adelle's seaside  Victorian home in Brooklyn. Her table was set with mis matched, hand thrown ceramic dishes and mugs. I had never seen anything so beautiful in my life. After Adelle retired, she began making art. She made collaged assemblages out of found objects. They were hauntingly beautiful. Several months after he husband had died, Adelle came to visit during Shavuot. My mother was going to make blintzes and began to flip though her cookbooks. Adelle said to my mother, " A cookbook for blintzes?? Don't you know how to cook? ". After that S...

Although none of the elements of this tallit are trditional in a tallit, particularly the Guatemalan weaving, the whole piece reads very much as a tallit. There are several traditional methods to tie tzitzit. Most tallitot employ the wrap method. I prefer to use a half hitch knot on the wraps. For one thing, that ridge of knot spiraling around the tzitzit is just pretty. For another, tzitzit are held during prayer. The ridge of knots also allows the user to focus on the meaning behind each set of knots. We tend to forget , because Judaism is so text rich, what a fully sensory religion it truly is. My clients will always tie the tzitzit with me, and learn the meaning behind the numbers of knots. I assume that as they sit in services in the future and hold their tzitzit, they will remember their time tying them. Joshua did a pretty good job tying the tzitzit. his mom though was amazing, just zipping along. I know that she used to sew al of her clothes, so I suggested ...

Costco has changed my life. I went earlier in the week, and bought a raft of chicken thighs for prices nearly as inexpensive as non kosher chicken. I also bought a large package of skinny French string beans. I had some of the massive package of dates that I had purchased to make charoset for Passover, as wel as a few sad looking lemons left over from Passover.I roasted the chicken thighs with a shredded fennel bulb, chopped dates and the juice of the lemons.  I just reduced the pan juices with the dregs of white wine our guests brought last Friday night. The beans were roasted with olive oil and salt. A salad and home made challa round out the meal. Blackberries for dessert. It's just the three of us for Shabbat this week. Most of the chicken will go into the freezer for another meal.

One overarching precept of Jewish law is that in general, women are exempted from time bound commandments.  If they choose to take on those time-bound commandments, they may do so, but given that women in traditional times were primarily responsible for child rearing, that, as all of us know, makes the time bound a little difficult to manage.     I reached my teens in the 1970's when the role of women was being re-thought not just in the world as a whole, but also in the Jewish world. Women were more and more taking on roles that they were excluded from by reason of custom. During those years, I was studying Talmud in my Orthodox Jewish day school and also reading essays on the halachic role for women written by scholars like Judith Hauptmann. It was a heady mix. I spent lots of time during my teen years thinking seriously about the role of women in Jewish ritual life and how to take part in areas, that had, by custom, been men only. It was very clear when reading t...

Yesterday, was Mothers' Day. My husband wanted to spend time with me doing something fun, but he had work due and needed to put in several hours of work. My youngest had homework. I decided to take the opportunity to visit The Brooklyn Museum and see the newly opened exhibit American High Style . The exhibit has been launched to mark the new partnership between the Brooklyn Museum's extensive fashion collection and the Metropolitan Museum's Costume institute. Since it was Sunday, and Mothers' Day I thought that the Brooklyn Museum would be far less crazed than the Met. So, I set out for Brooklyn with a good book to read on the subway to keep me company. The exhibit opens with a selection of Worth dresses, all embellished like wedding cakes.  I really wasn't in the mood for that level of frou-frou so i didn't look all that closely. I did, however notice a lovely Paquin wedding dress from around the turn of the last century. The outer layer of the dress was ma...

Maya came by today to check up on my progress on her tallit. When we had first met, she had seemed a bit worried about my ability to actually meet her needs. That made me worried. I really try to keep my clients happy. I work hard on teasing out what their real desires are. Maya had been following the progress of her tallit here. So when she rang the doorbell, I could see that she was happy. Once she saw the tallit--even in it's unfinished state she began twirling around. The purpose of today's visit was to figure out what fabric to make the atara/neckband out of. I do some of my best thinking in my sleep. When I woke up this morning I remembered the dark blue silk gazar I have in my stash. I realized that the color was perfect and that the translucent quality of the silk gave the right ethereal look. When I lay the gazar over the glittery ocean, I realized that the atara would look wonderful if it were placed over more of the couched gold cording. I am going to paint t...

The atara/neckband of Joshua's tallit  is to be made out of the central part of a belt that was made out of units of Hmong work.  I have seen lots of this work which is made by the Hmong of Cambodia. Their traditional handwork is a combination of reverse applique and embroidery. I have never seen the work done on such a refined scale. It's a really beautiful piece. The central panel and the two outer ones presented something of an iconographic problem. The geometric design is one of crosses. If I were making something for Josh's home I would have no problem with having something that wasn't meant as a religious cross, but was simply a geometric design  that resembled a cross . I had brought the issue up to both Joshua and his mom. They were fine with the crosses. I was ok with the crosses in theory. But the closer the tallit comes to completion, the more it looks like a religious garment, but not one for Josh's religion. My husband took one look and...

Several weeks back, my student designed and made a zippered tank top for herself. Her classmates and friends fell in love with the tank top and placed orders. Although my student suggested that her friends might want the top in different colors, or with some other design variations, they all wanted exactly the same thing. my student mentioned how boring it can be to keep producing the same piece over and over again. One way I keep fropm being bored is to work on m,ultiple projects at one time. I worked on the pinot/corner pieces for two different tallitot at the same time. This Sunday, I went to  the Columbus Avenue Craft Show. I have been going to that show since I moved to New York in 1982. Some of the vendors exhibiting on sunday have been exhibiting since I first moved to the city. Unlike my student, some of them are clearly not bored by producing the same item over and over again. Some of them are showing exactly the same items for nearly thirty years. One could argue ...

I know that when most people teach sewing, they have a curriculum and the student learns what the teacher decides to teach.  I have let my student set her agenda when it comes to her sewing lessons. I assume that if she wants to learn a skill then she will be eager to learn it, even if on paper it might seem too advanced for her. Sometimes, my student wants to try things that I have not yet attempted to do. Today, my student came in with a pair of shorts similar to this pair. They were a pair of shorts that she had purchased. She owns several pairs of pants made by the maker, so she bought them with out trying them on. There shorts, were however, more than three inches too big. I have never altered pants for myself. My youngest, is skinny, and I  add elastic to the back waistband of his pants as a matter of course. We briefly discussed this option which might work for a boy who does not care a whole lot about fashion, but for a girl who cares deeply about fa...