sarah in nyc

My friend Alan Divak loves chicken fat. I kept thinking about him as I made tonight’s diner.  I made a mess of caramelized onions today. I used fat from last week’s chicken to cook the onions. Making caramelized onions isn’t difficult. It just takes lots of time.  I cooked down 5 lbs. of onions  from a pot –full to a little mass of deliciousness. All you need to add to the onions is some pepper, and salt. I like to add some booze. I have bee guilty of adding whatever is closest at hand , including lesser grades of single malt.  Today I used the dregs of inexpensive spiced run and some arak. I also added balsamic vinegar and  cider vinegar, to keep things a bit liquid and to prevent burning. A Kosher barbeque restaurant I have been to adds so much sugar to their caramelized onions that it tastes like you are eating stringy strawberry jam. If you cook the onions slowly the natural sugars in the onions will be released. You can see both how the onio...

Last night when my husband came home from work  he found me on the kitchen floor stamping away on fabric. I had found a crown rubber stamp at a local craft store.   I cut the crown that appeared at the top of the crown and began stamping away with a blob of fabric paint on a plastic plate.   Doing that sort of repetitive work is deeply satisfying in a kindergarten sot of a way.  I did one strip on white silk, and another on black.   I admit it’s not beautiful in it’s entirety. I do think that a strip or two of the fabric will be wonderful. If it is less than wonderful I will add more stuff to the print to make it wonderful.   Anyway, here is the blue center with it’s two sets of borders. I had wanted to pick up the orange border around the letters. Luckily I had kept a strip of pieced silk from a previous project. The colors were perfect. Sometimes when colors combine  just right they almost make my eyes water. I used to play wi...

I was about to begin on a new series of challah covers based on an Aramaic liturgical formula that is recited before the Shabbat meals. אתקינו סעודתא דמלכא I will prepare the royal feast I decided to look for crown images on Google image .   I realized very quickly that most of the crowns shown Like this one, or this one incorporated crosses into the form. After a moment’s frustration, the entire history of monarchy in Europe was made clear. all of the European kings and queens see themselves and are seen as religious leaders. Seeing all of those cross topped crowns reminded me about how some of my classmates  in yeshiva used to saw the crowns of of their chess kings.   Judaism used the image of monarchy as a symbol of divine power.  European monarchy incorporated a cross into their crowns to remind their subjects of their divine right to power. Clearly I couldn’t include a cross on a challah cover.  So I sketched one out on paper and then pai...

Amazon.com Widgets I just bought this book on Amazon. It looked like it was the book I was always looking for or perhaps the book I had wished I had written. I was really looking forward to receiving it and looking forward to making clothing from it. This illustration completely sold me on the book. I loved the simple shapes that make visually complex clothing. I also loved how the same shape was shown in variations that show how just a bit of tweaking can create very different looks. The book arrived last week. it's really beautiful. I already made myself a nightgown based on the goddess dress.  It was quick to make and looks pretty wonderful. I do have a couple of issues with the book. One is I know that I can be a bit idiosyncratic in my use of language. Despite this quirk, I do know that I can my my own quirky use of language and terms understandable to others. I found many of the terms used by the author to be incomprehensible. Do you know wh...

The house smells really good today. But more about that later. I’m usually a pretty calm hostess. Cooking is something I’m comfortable doing. Cooking for a crowd does not phase me. For tonight’s dinner though three of our guest units were unsure of how many of them would be showing up. Normally that would be fine…but there were two more wrinkles to add to the mix. The first was that I had one package of chicken in my freezer. If everyone showed up I would be two pieces of chicken short. I sort of planned for it by making a big pot of soup and planned to also make a platter of mezze.However, there is something sort of stingy about serving a main dish  where eaters may only take one ( the host and hostess would skip the chicken in that case)  and have no option for seconds. The other issue is the size of my table. I can seat twelve comfortably at the table. Thirteen at the table makes things uncomfortable for everyone.  My nightmare scenario was not enough food  ...

Zachary is my neighbor. He’s a really delightful kid.  We met before his bar mitzvah to learn a bit about tallit. Zachary wore his deceased grandfather’s tallit at his bar mitzvah. Zachary and I discussed what I could make for him as a gift. He needed a bag for his t’fillin.  I suggested a text,that is recited while wrapping the straps of the t’fillin.  I will betroth you to me forever I will betroth you to me with righteousness and justice and with mercy. I will betroth you to me with faithfulness Hosea 2-21-22   I painted the text onto heavy weight black satin in gold paint. I just used the words “ I will betroth” once. I shadow quilted the borders. For you non schmatta geeks, that means decorative stitching in the same color as the face fabric with a heavy filling beneath the face fabric. the heavy filer in this case was an old heavy weight wool skirt.   This is the back of the bag. I painted the gold vines and then did diamond...

Today I had several small jobs that had to be done outside. It’s snowing. It’s perfect snow weather. Here is traffic going north on Amsterdam Avenue.   Snow collecting on the iron work that surrounds the building I lived in before I got married.   Looking west on my block. Safely in my lobby. Looking out from the hallway outside of my apartment. Stay warm. I think tonight will be a soup night.

Last year I inherited a large collection of vintage  linens from my friend Vivian.   Vivian’s mother was born in Germany in the 1920’s. Vivian’s grandmother was born in Austria. They came with their family early enough before WWII to bring  lots of the things that made life elegant . Occasionally I will write about some of the treasures given to me by Vivian. I am particularly fond of the two cloths pictured below. Both are linen and both are embroidered with the same motifs of gryphons. The upper cloth is made out of a relatively fine linen. the gryphons are delicately drawn . The embroidery is fine using just a couple of strands of embroidery floss. The sinuous Art Nouveau  lines in the piece make me suspect that this piece was embroidered in the early decades of the 20th century, probably before 1925. The design, the workmanship and the colors are all pretty sophisticated. The other cloth is made out of a heavy rough linen. the design element...

to my husband’s office. My husband’s office is in a wonderful old office building. This is the view out the window. Sometimes my husband can see workers at sewing machines across the way. He didn’t choose the office for the view but rather  for some of the wonderful original details. The staircase sold my husband on the building. Every surface that could be made more beautiful was. Looking up and feeling an Escher vibe.