sarah in nyc

I grew up in a family where the house was changed for Passover the first Saturday evening after Rosh Chodesh. for those of you not familiar with the Jewish calendar, Rosh Chodesh is the the first of the month. Passover begins on the 14th of the month of Nissan. So bread was banished from our home nearly two weeks before the holiday.  My husband grew up in a family that liked to put off hard stuff to the last moment. each year my husband thought the right time to change over the house was a day before the holiday, maybe. After 26 years of marriage, and given the fact that I do the changing over he’s stopped fighting me on this one. We are changing over the house on Sunday. ( Many thanks to our oldest who is showing up to work with us).  I had briefly thought that I would bake challah today. Since my usual yield is four massive loaves  I had thought that if I made all of the loaves smaller and gave most of them away it might be worth the effort. I am not completely ins...

It isn’t often that I write a blog post for an audience of one, but this post is being written primarily for one reader. The rest of you are more than welcome to keep reading. Writing a blog, you never quite know who is going to be reading what you write. A little bit ago, a woman was doing research about Israeli Yemenite embroidery and the work of Esther Zeitz, and found this posting Keeper of the Textiles part 4 that I had written a while back, via the magic of Google. She sent me an email anting to know a bit more about Zeitz and her work.  I was intrigued and did some Zeits  Googleing myself. I was delighted to find this post Nostalgia Sunday – Yemenite Embroidery that was written by my dear friend Rachel.  We seem to have been the only two listings for  Esther Zeitz available on Google in English. What are the odds of that??? The email  and the fact that I was sick and couldn’t do real work got my research itch going. This Yemenite embroidery was fir...

Yesterday, Ipa, our sainted cleaning woman  made me a dose of her home made cough suppressant. It consists of a pat of butter, a tablespoon or so of honey and the juice of half a lemon heated up  and then taken by spoon while  still warm.   When I first took it I thought I was just going to throw up. But the stuff works. I followed her directions and took a dose before bedtime as well.  Last night was the first night since I got sick that I was able to sleep without being kept awake by coughing spasms. I actually feel human today.  I’m weak , but among the living. only one nap so far today.   Tomorrow is our youngest’s 16th birthday.  The birthday child gets to choose the menu for the Shabbat just before their birthday. Not surprisingly, the birthday boy chose Cave Man Shabbat,  flanken  bones ( I think that’s beef ribs in standard English) and chicken wings in barbecue sauce.   I will set a big bone discard bowl in ...

I know. I haven't posted in a while. I have been laid low by a bad case of bronchitis. I haven't been this sick in several years. I got sick Tuesday night and have spent much of the week huddled under my mother's old fur coats. Yes, in my overheated Manhattan apartment. For several days in a row I dressed like most of America, that is in my pajamas, wearing workout pants and a tank top and a sweater. It made me feel lazy wearing pajamas all day long. I finished the three day course of antibiotics yesterday. I'm still left with a cough which is especially bad when I lie down. I have those awful spasms of coughing. I may have cracked one of my ribs. So this is the longest I have gone without sewing  in 16 years ( when I was confined to bed for 5 months of my pregnancy with my youngest). This is the longest I have gone without working out in years. I guess the only good news to come out of this is that I have lost weight because I don't particularly fee...

Shelley completed her piece. I went over to see what she had done. I'm really impressed. I love her sense of color and composition.  I think she did a beautiful job. This is the view from Shelley's apartment. I'm in love with that cornice. Another view of the piece. Another view of the cornice. Yes, my computer is still broken. Yes, even after the repair guy spent a few hours re-installing new brains into my hard drive and after I spent a few hours re installing the start up software. I'm in a foul mood and if myu computer woes weren't enough, I also have a sore throat.

The hard drive on my computer died last Friday. I spent entirely too much time last week trying to get in touch with the company that has purchased the contract for customer care/extended warranties at Staples ((Barrister). How much time is too much time you ask?? I think two hours, by the clock qualities as too much time. The fact that they have one of the worst voice mail systems I have ever encountered that is paired with truly irritating music  did not add to the enjoyment of those two hours. The Restore disc  I had to have Fed-Exed  from HP has been here since Friday. The parts that needed to be installed  arrived on Saturday. The repair person was scheduled to arrive today between 9 and 11 am.  I couldn't start sewing. My computer and my sewing space are one and the same. I didn't want to create a mess for the repari person. At 1:15, I called Barrister. I did not time the several minutes on hold today, it was more than five minu...

Chicken cooking juices cooking down  to deliciousness. I taught myself how to sew by sewing on cheap gold lame`. Those of you who know how to sew know how completely insane that previous sentence is. Lame`, especially the cheap kind, shreds like mad. Sewing machines  get cranky when forced to sew lame.  But what did  I know? basically nothing, so I went on my merry way sewing up that awful fabric.  A local toy store had me making dress up cakes for little girls.  Those capes were my sewing school. As I have discovered, my usual method of learning how to do things, just barging ahead, failing as I go often ends up teaching me advanced techniques very early on in my learning curve. This seems to be true in my cooking as well. Most fancy chefs say that a roasted chicken is insanely hard to do well.  Apparently warming chicken up for hours in an oven after it has been cooked is supposed to be a disaster for the chicken. I didn't k...