sarah in nyc

  After a long pause, it was time to get back to work on Y’s tallit. Above you see the sketch I had made for Y during our initial  meeting. You can see that the sketch is pretty, well sketchy. The point of the sketch is to give my client ( and me) a visual reminder of what the final tallit will look like.   One of my quirks about tallitot has come from my years of going to services. I tend to look around at the tallitot that the people who sit in front of me are wearing. In woven tallito the stripes read on both sides of the tallit. So when you flip the tallit over your shoulders the stripes on the top layers interact with the stripes on the lower layers. It looks great. If however you wear an appliqued tallit, the underside of the tallit is often distressingly white and naked looking. Clearly most tallit makers don’t share my horror of   blank bottomed tallitot.  I deal with my horror of the blank backed tallit by appliqueing and embroidering strip...

My friend Nancy is a frequent commenter on this blog. She also has her own sewing blog http://nancyksews.blogspot.com/   I always appreciate hearing what she has to say. A few days back, this post elicited this comment. Dear Sarah, I love the way you cook and sew! You just DO IT....me, I have to ponder, mull, change my mind about the fabric, read every step of the patterns....finally it gets done. Cooking, not so much. I just never know what to make, shall we get pizza? Eat the leftovers etc. More power to you! I'm too old to change but I do admire your work every day. Nancy First of all, that is a very sweet thing to say. But I think explaining how I sew will show how I actually am not that big of a risk taker. Like most people who are serious about sewing, I love beautiful fabric. I do know lots of folks who sew who collect lots of wonderful fabrics but are terrified to cut into any of it. I will admit that there are some fabrics in my stash that I have been afraid to cut i...

On one of the last days of Passover a friend and I were talking after services. We were talking about the sheer amount of work  that goes into creating  Passover in our homes.  My friend said that to her it seemed ironic that this holiday that celebrates redemption from slavery is often so difficult  for women who often do so many of the domestic tasks necessary to make Passover right. I have been thinking a great deal about this issue for the past several years. I realize that unlike most of the people I know, I earn my living doing physical labor. I’m not a lawyer, or a social worker or a writer or a college professor. I manipulate materials to create objects that get used. One of the hard things about celebrating Passover in Boston is that so often despite it's being called "the Spring festival" in the bible it is often still clod and raw. New York is far enough south that Spring begins during Passover. I took these photos today  in the block s around my ...

I haven’t only been cooking for the past couple of weeks I have also done some sewing. I had wanted a new dress to wear to Seder, so I made this dress out of a lacey grey sweater knit that I had picked up in the garment district. I’m not sure of the fiber content but I believe that there is some wool in the mix.  The dress was designed to wear with a full slip The grey sweater knit has a nearly identical cousin for every day wear. The turquoise and black rayon knit has gotten shorter in the wash so I have to figure out something to add some length. I am open to suggestions.   The basic shape , with the wide neckline and cap sleeves is really flattering on.   I also made a slightly tricky version of the same dress. The tricky part is that the fabric has a yoke made up  of the black mesh.  I decided to make life easy for myself and just sew the black mesh to the blue knit before I cut out the dress. bef   The striped fabric was tuck...

One of the great things about doing so much cooking for so many people over so many days is that the sheer force of meal production gets me to what I think of as cave-man think. You understand the sources of things we take for granted.   I needed to figure out dinner for tonight. The pickled salmon I had put up before the holiday was looking less than appealing. I decided to make a salmon filling to go into rolled  whiting.   I whipped up the salmon, some matza meal, celery eggs and spices in the food processor and  rolled up  the salmon mixture in the whiting. It looks so cute.   I had left over salmon .So I added more matza meal and  realized that this was actually gefilte fish. I cooked them like matza balls ( drop balls into boiling flavored water and cover, cook covered for 30 minutes). Thirty minutes later I had salmon gefilte fish. My mother ate them for lunch and was very happy.   I flavored the gefilte fish in a va...

On the first afternoon of Passover, I had begun making a lemon cake. the eggs were separated and I started whipping up the yolks and my mixer died. I had nine egg whites in a bowl and my whisk was in the MIA Passover box. My sister came up with the brilliant idea of borrowing a mixer from a neighbor. I finished mixing the cake put it in the oven and frankly, it looked a bit weird. I realized I needed to bake another cake in case the first cake was a disaster. I made up an orange almond cake .  It was really good.  We are having guests for Shabbat so I decided to reprise the cake. Here it is below. What’s in it? As far as I can recall Made up Orange Almond Cake 9 egg yolks – beaten until thick and butter colored with a cup of sugar and the rind of one orange and the juice of the same orange 6 egg whites ( I made meringues with the other 3 whites) beaten until stiff with a pinch of salt gently add the stiffly beaten whites to the yolk mixture sprinkle about a c...

The last of the 7.5 dozen eggs I purchased on Monday. The eggs went into matza brei pancakes cheese latkes the failed meringue the failed custards ( orange and chocolate) the successful meringue shell the successful chocolate custard matza balls and this cake. My nephew is nut  allergic and is coming to the first Seder.  I have been faking (improvising) a sponge cake out of the left over egg yolks from making meringues. I had lots of yolks so faked a lemony sponge cake. I thought it would look cute topped with a lemon custard and teeny meringue stars. I piped the meringue into the bottom of the same spring form pan I had used to bake the cake  on a lining of parchment paper. I topped the cake with the custard and then added the meringue border. I had even created a center medallion. Tomorrow night I will add blackberries to the top of the cake.

Every holiday has it's traditional foods. The Passover Seder in particular is a meal where you don't want a whole lot of innovation, you want to eat the familiar, the food that you ate as a child. Amazon.com Widgets My mother came into her marriage knowing how to make scrambled eggs, tuna fish salad and Jello. As I have mentioned before, my grandmother was a famously terrible cook. My mother didn't grow up with a sense of how to cook.  All that was to change because within a few weeks of their wedding my parents moved to Halifax, Nova Scotia. My father was the rabbi of Shaar Shalom , my mother was to teach Hebrew school. While living in the hinterlands of the Jewish world had it's disadvantages, it also had some distinct advantages. There was nearly no Kosher for Passover packaged good available. That meant that people cooked and baked everything. If my parents had lived in Brooklyn, my mother would have just picked up a couple of Passover cakes in a local...

Today is my older son’s birthday. He does not like having the usual Passover cake as a birthday cake.  ( Not that I blame him.) tonight we are going to a friend’s home for Shabbat dinner.  Our friend had a son who had died who shared a birthday with  my older son.  Every year our friend takes our son out for a meal for his birthday. It is a sweet, sweet bond between our son and our dear friend.   Our friend’s house has not yet been changed over for Passover. She is serving our challot which we had brought over earlier in the week. I had thought that I could make a meringue tart shell and fill it with custard for dessert. My son signed on to the idea.   I made the tart shell and baked it. I made two custards a couple of days ago, I made an orange custard and a chocolate one. They were both delicious. As soon as I filled the tart shell I realized that things were not going well. I hadn’t bakes the meringue for long enough. The custard melted...