Working and Cooking

My oldest son is leaving next week for his stint in the Israeli Army. I have been making Cholesterol death Kugel to bring for Kiddush on Shabbat, after services. So far, I have made four. I still need to make one more. But, as I keep making the kugel over and over again, I keep being struck by how well structured this recipe is. In my book, a real recipe that has been created by a real home cook is structures so that each step dovetails into the next so you can go about your business setting up each stage of the cooking, and the

the next piece is ready to go just as you need it. So with the kugel, you preheat the oven with 1/2 a stick of butter in the cooking pan. then you put up the pot of noodles. Then you begin mixing the custard. Just as the oven beeps to let you know it is preheated, the butter is melted and ready to pour into the custard. As soon as that is mixed in, the noodles are ready to be drained. The nice thing about a recipe like this is that you have very little wasted time. You don't have to rush around desperately hoping that you don't miss a crucial moment in the cooking, nor are you left with lots of hanging around time.

Below you see the beginning of the parochet/ark curtain . I decided, as much as possible to dye the wool directly. It was all still very wet when I took this picture. I will see how much color i will need to add once it is dry.

Like most days in my life, my time alternates between domestic tasks and work. I have to go shape the challa. Chag Sameach!!!

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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!!!

I had begun speaking to Sarah about making her a tallit in the middle of August. It took a few weeks to nail down the design. For Sarah it would have been ideal if the tallit were completed in time for her to wear it on Rosh HaShanah., the beginning of her year as senior rabbi of her congregation. For me, in an ideal world, given the realities of preparing for the High Holidays I would have finished this tallit in the weeks after Sukkot. So we compromised and I shipped off the tallit last night. I would have prefered to have more time but I got the job done in time. This tallit was made to mark Sarah's rise to the position of senior rabbi but it was also a reaction to this year of darkness. She chose a selection of verses about light to be part of her tallit. 1) אֵל נוֹרָא עֲלִילָה God of awesome deeds ( from a yom kippur Liturgical poem) 2) אוֹר חָדָשׁ עַל־צִיּוֹן תָּאִיר May You shine a new light on Zion ( from the liturgy) 3) יָאֵר יְהֹ...

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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