Back among the living–and Food Friday- Birthday Edition

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 the center of the table. The sauce is a semi home made one, that is 1/4 jarred sauce and the rest is stuff I throw in.

The challah is baked. I’m going to make a kale salad. you need something really healthy to counteract all of the greasy meat. I also made these green meringues in honor of my son being born on St. Patrick’s day. You can see them here still baking in my oven.

For my son’s first birthday, my father who spent much of his adult life living in deeply Irish Boston, bought my son a Shamrock sweater in green. My parents had received a package of greeting cards from a Catholic charity. My father carefully pasted stickers over the Christian symbols and sentiments and then wrote my son a birthday poem in Yiddish. my skinny son wore that sweater until he turned 7. That card though is one of my favorite of my father’s many goofy acts.

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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...

A Passover loss

My parents bought this tablecloth during their 1955 visit to Israel. It is made out of linen from the first post 1948 flax harvest. The linen is heavy and almost crude. The embroidery is very fine. We used this cloth every Passover until the center wore thin. You can see the cloth on the table in the background of this photo of my parents and nephew My Aunt Sheva bought my mother a replacement cloth. The replacement cloth is made out of a cotton poly blend. The embroidery is crude and the colors not nearly as nice. The old cloth hung in our basement. We used the new cloth and remembered the much nicer original cloth. I loved that my aunt wanted to replace the cloth, I just hated the replacement because it was so much less than while evoking the beauty of the original. After my father died my mother sat me down and with great ceremony gave me all of her best tablecloths. She also gave me the worn Passover cloth and suggested that I could mend it. I did. Year after year ...

sarah in nyc

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