A Memorial Day and a bargain

This morning as I went to the subway the streets were filled with firemen dressed in their dress uniforms. Every year in the fall the fire department holds a memorial service at the Fireman’s Memorial on Riverside Drive and 100th street.

( This image comes from NYC Parks)

Some years the local pubs and restaurants are filled with very sad ( and drunk firemen). I’m guessing that this was not the hardest of years in terms of loss. Some years you see the firemen walking away from the memorial with their faces full of pain. This year, not so much.
As I walked to the subway I was joined by groups of firemen making their way back home.

Firemen are big guys. There were probably thirty of them on my subway car. I realized while looking at them that men who earn their livings through physical labor move differently than men who earn their livings sitting behind a desk. I also realized that you don’t often see men who earn their livings through physical labor in suits.

So there they were standing together in loose groups by fire house ( I checked out their various badges), getting more and more relaxed as we got further and further away from the memorial. It was an honor to share the subway with them.
After my appointment I decided to check out the fabric stores on 35th street. I need to make myself a new nightgown. I wasn’t going to buy anything unless it was a really good deal.

One of the stores, it may have been Butterfly, had a bin of remnants in the back. I noticed long lengths of silk shantung and organza. The lengths ( several yards each) were cut from the bolt,some were 24 inches wide. It isn’t so good for making clothing, but it’s prefect for making challah covers.

I was told to bundle all of the fabrics I was interested in and then someone would settle on a price with me. I put together a huge bundle. I was ready to leave it all if I wasn’t happy with the price. The manager looked through my stack of fabric. He quoted a price, $30.

This is what I got. In bundle 1. Each of these pieces of fabric is many, many yards, say 5 yards, perhaps more. The orange organza is just a crazy amount of fabric.

These pieced of silk range from 1/2 a yard to a yard.

And finally….

Crinkle silk, many yards by 12 inches and the embellished organza, 18 inches by 45 inches.

The shopkeeper was happy to have the silk out of his store. I was happy to oblige. There are a lot of challah covers here. The blue silks may actually turn into a nightgown.

My mother used to describe a bargain in Yiddish as being cheaper than borscht.
This load of fabric, which was nearly too heavy to carry was far cheaper than borscht.

I just figured out the yardage for the larger pieces.

I have
22 yards x 12 inches of the orange organza.
33 yards x 24 inches of taupe shantung
23 yards x 24 inches light blue shantung
15 yards x 12 inches of orange crinkle silk

93 yards ( OK it's all narrow, but still!)

various pieces of 45 inch wide silk.

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

Search This Blog