Food Friday and the road to a dress to wear to a wedding

First the food.

That’s chicken with chestnuts, brown mushrooms and potatoes and fennel. The chicken is so adorable looking that I will serve it whole and carve it at the table. I know it’s an autumnal combination, but it’s been chilly. Actually it’s what I think of as menopause weather from moment to moment the weather flip flops from being balmy to bone chilling. So a hearty taste will be nice for tonight. I’m, also serving a kale salad dressed with sesame oil and rice vinegar. I will add bits of cara-cara oranges and pecans before serving.
As always I’m grateful to my older son for his input and insight. He will ask me how I plan to cook each of the elements of the meal and offer tweaks and suggestions. I realize that I do the same for him as he cooks. It’s nice to have this sort of a dialogue going about the meals that I cook. It just makes it all come out better.

The time has come for me to make a dress to wear to my niece’s wedding. My sister, the mother of the bride, has purchased this Eileen Fisher dress top wear at the wedding.

I realized that the dress my sister purchased looks an awful lot like my usual wear to a wedding dress. V- necked, sleeveless and a high/low hem and black crocheted lace over a lining.

I realized that I needed to make something new. I have made a few really dressy dresses over the past while but they have too much sparkle to wear to a Boston afternoon wedding. Sparkle and sequins look just right for a New York evening wedding or one in Florida, but it just would not fly for either Boston, or my family. I bought some smoky blue lace to make the dress a few months ago but I was chicken to cut into the fabric.

Before we went on the cruise, I got a little brave and cut into a black eyelet and made a dress to wear on the cruise. I used my usual method of making a big shape and then darting and seaming it until I ended up with a dress that worked.

I had mis- calculated when I cut the skirt of the dress and cut it too narrow. I added a godet made out of some wide galoon lace. ( ( Galoon lace for you non-schmatta-geeks is those wide strips of lace with a finished edge on both sides)
I liked the shape of the dress. It looked good on me, so it seemed like a good idea to base the wear to the wedding dress on the black eyelet dress.

So far what I have is a relatively unedited dress shape.

I cut the dress so the scalloped selvedge would be the hem. I plan to applique the other scalloped edge along the neckline and the sleeve. Clearly lots more shaping and darting needs to take place before this is a completed and flattering dress. I thought it was useful to show the dress in this in between unattractive and awkward stage. It will look like a lovely wedding worthy dress when I’m done. But darts are a girl’s best friend.

As I tried on this draft of a dress I remembered that both of my grandmothers wore short sleeved blue lace dresses at my parents’ wedding. At the moment the dress does look grandmother-ey. It won’t by the time I’m done.

Shabbat Shalom to all.

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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