sarah in nyc

One of the many pleasures of living in my neighborhood is the richness of architectural textures. The current buildings in my neighborhood were built mostly between 1880 and the late 1920’s. It was a great era for home building.   Once the Depression began there was very little new construction  until tax laws changed in the 1980’s and there was something of a building boomlet than continues until today.   Yesterday my husband and I went for a walk with a friend. It was a spectacularly beautiful day. After being indoors for services for three days running, it was a pleasure to be out and about. There is something so delightfully over the top about two cherubs holding a banner with the balding number. I love the grille texture behind the banner. You can see the cherub a bit better here. You can also see the unfortunate choice of lighting fixture. It’s too small and not nearly grand enough for the entry way.   Griffins hold up balustrades on fences ...

Yesterday was baking day. I made this apple pie with a pecan crust. My kids love pumpkin pie and there is enough of a nip in the air to justify it being on the table. I also made a plum and apple crisp. Those desserts along with the honey cake should have us covered  for dessert for the next few days.   I baked ten challot. There is a video  making the rounds on Facebook with an Israeli woman  making tons of cool variations on braiding. I think that the dough she used had a very low gluten content. When I roll out strands of dough mine spring back and become short. I played a little bit with shapes and then went back to old standard shapes. Food-wise, I think I’m ready.   I have been practicing my shofar blowing so I ought not to make my family ashamed to be related to me.   I am so looking forward to my two out-of–the-house kids coming home.   The really hard part of the season is the  heshbon nefesh, soul ma...

  אֲרֶשֶׁת שְׂפָתֵינוּ יֶעֱרַב לְפָנֶיךָ אֵל רָם וְנִשָּׂא מֵבִין וּמַאֲזִין מַבִּיט וּמַקְשִׁיב לְקוֹל תְּקִיעָתֵנוּ וּתְקַבֵּל בְּרַחֲמִים וּבְרָצוֹן סֵדֶר מַלְכֻיּוֹתֵינוּ תכלה שנה וקללותיה תחל שנה וברכתה שנת עליה ושמחותיה שנת בטחון ועבודה בה תיבננה מושבותינו בה אדמתנו תיגאל ומארצות נכר אחינו ישובו לארץ ישראל לשנה טובה תיכתבו לשנה טובה Wishing for all of us a year of peace and a year of blessing and abundance.

Yesterday was supposed to be warm. My husband was sad, as he always is, at the departure of summer. I am always happy to see the heat of the summer go. It’s always the most difficult season for me physically. My husband thought that it would be really nice to do one last out door swim before it got too cold. He rented a car so we could go out to the country to swim. Renting the car and then driving across Manhattan yesterday was a giant nightmare.  Between the Africa Day Parade and the climate march we needed to get off the island if we expected to not spend our time in a rental car sitting in traffic. We decided to go to New Jersey and then figure things out once we got there.  We ate here in Paramus. The Fireplace felt like the sort of restaurant that would benefit from a bit of time with Gordon Ramsey.  But as we ate our fit for an elementary school cafeteria sandwiches I realized that we were not far from where my grandparents were buried so perhaps we could do...

My building is converting from oil to gas heat on Monday. The boilers will be off in my building so I won’t be able to cook. I decided to do much of my cooking today and serve some of it for Shabbat dinner. My family traditions are often a bit idiosyncratic, to say the least. Apparently Sukkot and Purim are the traditional times to serve stuffed cabbage.  In my family, that’s what we ate on Rosh HaShanah. Tzimmis is a traditional Sukkot food, in our house it shows up to mark the beginning of the Jewish year. My grandmother used red dishtowels for dairy dishes and blue for meat unlike the rest of the known kosher homes in the universe. I don’t follow all family traditions slavishly but when the High Holiday season approaches I NEED stuffed cabbage and tzimmis. Lyear I made a memorable tzimmis with flanken bones. This year I cut up London broil into chunks for the tzimmis. I make tzimmis in the turkey roasting pan. I’m telling you this so you get a sense of the sheer volume ...

There were a few cakes that my mother always baked. At any point in time over a period of decades you could probably pull a rectangle of this honey cake out of my mother’s freezer.   My mother got this recipe from the Kehillath Israel sisterhood cookbook.  This honey cake was submitted by Jen Margolis. Jen was one of the grande-dames of Boston Jewry. Jen was older than my mother, beautiful and smart. My mother really admired Jen. My mother always topped this cake with  a paving of sliced almonds. The white almonds are beautiful on top of the cake and add a really nice crunch, but one of my kids is allergic to almonds so I skipped the almonds this time. This is an easy cake to put together.  You could ask your fifth grader to bake it if they were reasonably comfortable following a recipe. It’s a step up, and not a very big step up from a cake mix cake. Jen Margolis Honey Cake preheat oven to 325 1- Prepare a 9x13 pan, I used parchment paper but you c...

My son mentioned that he he feeling a bit homesick. I took these photos for him. They are of our immediate neighborhood.   I hope this holds my son until he comes home next week.