Home and Away

Last Wednesday night I took the 11:00pm bus to Boston. I had a meeting Wednesdays night and needed to be in Boston in time for my mother’s noon appointment.

In case you were wondering, there are taxis at South Station at 3:15 am.

One of my other tasks during my time in Boston was re filling my mother’s freezer. My husband arrived Thursday evening. Friday we picked up a rental car in Needham and went to the Costco in Dedham. In case you were wondering, there is no fresh kosher meat in that Costco but there are kosher frozen capons.

Four chickens are now cooked and cut up into single servings are now in my mother’s freezer. Of course I bought her other foods and necessities at Costco, but don’t worry, I won’t bore you with the complete shopping list.

What flavor chicken you ask? Two were cooked vaguely Israeli with Zaatar, smoked paprika and lemon. Two were cooked vaguely French with fresh thyme, oregano and marjoram along with fresh lemon. If you visit my mother at dinnertime, she may offer you a piece.

This is one of the nice things about driving around Boston.

You just don’t see this bumper sticker in New York. If you are from Boston, you can watch this video and get a bit weepy. Paragon Park or this one another Paragon Park video.

My husband and I took the bus home together.

Today I have been doing laundry and also made my son a sleeve for his laptop. I had gone to the local TJ Maxx to buy one for him but the only ones they had were way too girly. I didn’t think my son would want a hot pink laptop sleeve.

It turns out I was wrong and he didn’t care. But I had already made him one out of a dollar store rug and a cool plastic runner from TJ Maxx.

The rug.

The table runner.

A pocket for the charger, I still haven’t figured out a closure.

The elastic cord was purchased at the Boston Children’s Museum recycle store not quite twenty years ago.

My son, who owns a pink zebra striped yoga mat for his gym class ( because that was the one that I found) told me that he would have been fine with the magenta lap top case that I didn’t buy but likes the one I made him a whole lot better. As I had anticipated, he loves the textures.

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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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Connecting with the past

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