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!!!

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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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