Finally–Food Friday again

It was so comforting to be fed by people who love us. They showed their love by cooking LOTS of food.

It does feel nice though to do my own cooking today. I went to Costco with my neighbor Lorraine earlier today. My parents lived far from the closest kosher butcher. Getting meat needed forethought. I remember one Friday letting my parents know that I was going to walk the six blacks to the butcher to buy meat. It seemed unthinkable to my parents that one could buy meat so close to the time that one was going to be eating it.

I think that I have internalized the patterns of my parents’ home and usually buy meat far in advance. But today Lorraine and I went to Costco to buy the food that I would be cooking tonight. I bought two rolled roasts. I dry rubbed them with spices ( cinnamon, ginger, cloves, corriander and black pepper) and then cooked the meat at 350 until cooked. After the meat cooled I sliced it. I made a marinade to moisten the meat as it wars up for Shabbat ( olive oil, maple syrup and mustard).

When my older son was little he used to call beef, “beep”. So here you see our beep, about to go into the oven for Shabbat.

Today is cold. I guess in January we would think of it as a warm day, but for the moment it is cold. You need warm food to put in your belly on a cold day. all summer I have been making a vaguely Chinese cabbage salad ( shredded cabbage and carrots with sesame oil and rice vinegar) that is truly addictive.

Today I made a cooked version of the same salad. While the meat was cooking I put olive oil in the bottom of one of my pink roasting pans. Yes, you can make it in a pan that isn’t a pink enamel wear pan from the 1940’s. I sliced an onion finely and also added a large box of white mushrooms that I had sliced. I let that all cook down for a while. Then I shredded most of a head of cabbage and some rice vinegar. I baked the cabbage in the oven until most of the moisture in the pan cooked away. It was pretty wet for a long time.

The end result looks kind of ugly but it is really delicious. My daughter and I will probably add a dose of hot sesame oil to our cabbage. My husband isn’t a fan of heat in his food and will leave it out. My youngest isn’t a fan of vegetables in his food and won’t touch it at all.

I retrieved out challah from our neighbor’s freezer. Some of the cakes that were lovingly made for us will be our dessert. So this is our post Shiva Shabbat dinner.

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sarah in nyc

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