The first night..and turkey day

Last night was the first night of Chanukah. Amazingly, we were all together. There were so many years when one or another of my kids was away, it’s really nice to see all five Chanukiyot lit together.

I took photos while we were doing our usual post candle lighting singing.

We are serious about doing ritual and not so serious about how heads are covered, as long as they are. My boys are into wearing stupid hats. the squid hat is what my youngest usually wears during Shabbat dinner. The bunny hat I made for my youngest seems to have been taken over by my older son.

To remember the story of Judith and Holofernes and it’s connection to the Chanukah story I made cheese keplach . I put pureed collard greens into the noodle dough so my youngest would get some green vegetable into his body.

I’m slowly getting the hang of making filled pasta. I love how the vegetable matter makes the noodle dough easier to roll. I have added a refinement to my dough rolling technique.. I roll dough out on a floured tea towel. it makes both the rolling and the clean up much much easier. I highly recommend the technique. I added the second photos just because I’m so pleased with myself. The kreplach were filled with a mix of drained cottage cheese and halloumi cheese. I particularly used the salty halloumi because Holofernes ate lots of salty dairy which made him want to drink lot of wine which is how Judith was able to over power him.

Today I am in the odd for me position of not having to cook very much for the holiday.

I made.

A vegan pumpkin pie with a pecan crust. My kids won’t eat it on principle if it is vegan, but will if it is simply parev. So for them.. it’s parev.

Meringues, for our hostess who loves them and requested them.

And

Radish roses. Because our hostess grew up with them and knows that a meat platter is incomplete without them.

Happy Thanksgiving!

חג האורים שמח

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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