In the pre Shabbat home stretch

The challot are nearly done. Tonight’s dinner is part of an experiment by my synagogue where members are encouraged to invite others to their Shabbat table. We are happy to participate. It isn’t much different for us than a regular Shabbat. Three of our guests are people we know and have invited before. One of our guests is new to us. It ought to be a nice evening.

Here is your warning that the topic is about to change.

My cousin is getting married next fall . It will be a Long Island wedding. My youngest was sitting next to me as I was looking at some sale fabric from Fabric Mart. I was debating if I should buy some great sequined fabric to make a dress to wear at the wedding. It cost about 1/4 of what I have been seeing it selling for in the garment district. My son told me to buy it.

I’m not going to turn it into a dress until next summer, but I’m ready for that wedding. I don’t think I would have chosen a ready to wear dress in this fabric. I love that the fabric just looks like a party all by itself.

My son fell in love with this knit.

I will be making him a sweater out of it. He has ideas. My job is to carry them out.

My part of dinner is done, the meat balls and the grain and a beef soup . in a few minutes I will put everything into the oven, just before another early Shabbat begins.

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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...

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מְחַיֵּה הַמֵּתִים

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sarah in nyc

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