Doing it all…or at least doing some of it

I’m not just cooking these days, even though it sometimes feels that way.

I put in some work on the bag that will hold Danielle's chuppah. I’m piecing ribbon using metallic stitching. This is what the grosgrain and satin ribbon look like so far.

I’m going to add the blue and metallic braid soon. The top picture gets the color right. the bottom image gets the textures right. I guess you have to meld the images through the magic of IMAGINATION.
I also put in a fair amount of work into my son’s Comicon costume. We have no photo of the jacket today because my son’s slobby mother dripped some grease onto the jacket. My son washed out the grease spots and the jacket is now hanging to dry. My normally blasé son is excited about the results.
Given that it’s Friday, I had to surprise(!) cook.
The butcher was selling flanken ribs at a nearly silly price ($3.99/ lb) so today is Caveman Shabbat.

I know that my youngest will really eat tonight.

I also started a big pot of chicken soup yesterday in the crockpot. I made matza balls and added then to the soup. I can’t tell you how almost naughty it feels to make matza balls not at Passover. I know, most of the Ashkenazi Jewish world does not limit matza balls to Passover, but family custom is strong. No, they aren’t hard to make. I made this batch gingery and added lots of parsley. Since it isn’t Passover they don’t have to taste exactly like my mother’s.

The soup is a crude one with whole vegetables. Since everything has been cooked for so long the vegetables have caramelized and have a nice deep flavor. That counteracts the fact that I started with a box of chicken soup. A few packages of chicken necks, a tea ball filled with whole coriander and cloves and the long cooking vegetables mean that the soup won’t taste like it’s boxed origin's.

There are many wonderful things about having my older son home from Israel. One of the wonderful things is that he is so good in the kitchen. He put together this weeks's challah. He asked me to form the loaves. Not having to do everything for Shabbat dinner means that I can even take time to sew on Friday.

My sister loved her gift. Hurray!!!

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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