sarah in nyc

Getting ready for the last Yom Tov bit of the holiday has provided me with some frustrations and some real pleasures. Amazon.com Widgets First two bits of frustrations.  Frustration bit number one Eliana wanted white lightning bolts on the underside of her tallit.  I started out making two bad lightning bolts couching silver thread to the tallit with many rows of zig zagging. I have spent a couple pf hours picking out the stitching and not cursing. This is a much improved lightning bolt. It's easier to construct. After the holiday I will make more of them. I think I have picked out every stitch of my failed attempts. Frustration Two We have been invited to dinner tomorrow night and lunch on Shabbat. I had planned to make a batch of meringues and an orange version of the cranberry chocolate tarts I had made for seder. In thinking about this dessert combination I had thought that I could be clever and put the egg yolks into the nut crust. The yolks and...

 The big Passover embroidered table cloth is at the dry-cleaner's. The napkins we used for Seder are washed, dried and ironed and will, after I finish this blog post be put away. Since the photo of the napkins is right here, I just want to spend a moment on the napkins. Unlike my mother, I don't always set my table with identical napkins. This batch of napkins has arrived in my house from a variety of sources. Some were my mother's. Most of them came into my house in the what is now usual for me method. A relative of a friend dies. there are odds and ends of linens left when the house is broken up. The cut-work embroidered linen napkins are too lovely to throw away and most people can't imagine ironing napkins. So these napkins find a home in my house and are used  for fancier dinners.When my sister was setting the table she noted how the mixed napkins worked well together on the table. They were probably all made within a generation of one another. Some are ma...

For those of you still cooking,  this lemon almond cake  is the best Passover cake in my repertoire. It is baking in my oven as I type this. Each time I make it I am amazed by what a beautiful cake batter it is. Amazon.com Widgets One of the things I love about my local fish monger is that if you ask for say,  1 3/4 lbs of salmon he will slice off EXACTLY that amount. The lemon cake needed a cup of ground nuts. I tossed some into the food processor. It came out to be exactly one cup ground. It's a good thing to be able to develop and eye for the work one does. This is the 2016 version of the lemon almond cake. There is a layer of tart lemon custard underneath the sliced almonds.  I also made the must be served the first night of Passover flour-less chocolate nut torte. last night I made the also must be served at Seder meringues. No, I am still not done, closer but not yet there. I did take some time to escape to the park with my neighbor and si...

The weather is just the peak of spring perfection but the Passover meals are not going to cook themselves.  I was outside enough to be able to at least notice that it was a gorgeous day. The beef is cooked, sliced bag and in the freezer joining the chickens. I have inherited my mother's ability to pack the freezer like a clown car. The charoset is completed and the flavors are melding in the fridge door. It ought to be perfect by Seder. We need to eat even thought it is not yet Seder. I pulled out all of the chicken from the soup, and made a giant chicken loaf.  To be honest, in this state it tasted a bit like reconstituted sawdust. My son mentioned that it needed some sort of a sauce. He was, as usual correct. I made a tomato sauce out of two cans of crushed tomatoes and caramelized onions. It was both acidic and slightly sweet and transformed the chicken loaf into something really delicious.  The kiddush cups all got kashered. My frien...

Today I received the following email from my friend Martha Ann Sarah, sometime when your life isn’t at such an “Olympic” stage, why don’t you write a post about what you have to do to get ready?  Are there other occasions where you have to do other things as well.  I understand about the wheat but what about the dishes, cooking utensils and all the aluminum foil???  I’m sure there are a 1000 other things I could be asking but for those of us who are not familiar with Jewish holidays/celebrations/etc, I don’t even know enough to ask questions!  Maybe it isn’t something to share but thought I would ask - could be there are others who grew up unfamiliar with other religions might like to know as well.  Martha Ann In other words, what is this insanity around Passover?This is a great question that sort of cracks open the evolution of Jewish law from biblical times until today. Here from Chapter 12 of the book of Exodus is the source טו  ...

 The Soup event for this year, begun last night and completed just a little bit ago. Ten quarts of beautiful soup and one gallon bag of boiled to death chicken bits. I also made six chickens in two flavors. They are also all bagged up and in the freezer. I finally figured out that squeezing out the vegetables is much easier if you let them cool first.For the first time making this soup my hands are not burned, but are just sore. My son laughed at me when he realized how many years of burned hands it took me to figure out this much less painful method. Two are vaguely Indian with tumeric, cinnamon black pepper and dried fruit. The four are flavored in a fancy version of the take out chicken my husband grew up on( smoked paprika, sumac and black pepper) I have perfected a great method of moving whole chickens from pan to plastic bag without greasing my hands up.  I am sure that there are kitchen wear stores that sell a tool invented exactly ...

Yesterday, after my son got home from school and work we got to work switching the house over.  Many small tasks add up to be sort of monumental. The Passover stuff is hidden away all over the apartment. My son and I just kept plugging away until we got the kitchen more or less in order.  I knew that as soon as we got set up I had to get my first cooking task done. Several years ago we went on vacation to Lancaster County. While most of the Amish delicacies were not foods we could eat, we fell in love with pickled beet eggs.They taste good, but the color is insane. The white of a properly pickled beet egg is magenta. The line where the yolk and the white meet is positively technicolor. I don't remember which one of us suggested that we could serve pickled beet eggs on our Seder plate. Those Amish beet eggs have been part of our Seders ever since that vacation. So as soon as I unpacked the dishes and pots I put two dozen eggs up to boil. Once they had cooled I...

My oven has another hour and ten minutes until the self cleaning cycle is done. My burners are clean and being kashered. I am loving the red and white checked tablecloths covering my shelves (and soon to line all of my cabinets and drawers).  It's a little bit mad, just like the season itself which seems to be like a game of dare, "How OCD can you be ?Will you be? this year??" I still have not covered my counters. I am really lucky and live upstairs from a dollar store. they have the ugliest Contact paper and plastic tablecloths for the job. This year's selection of flannel backed tablecloths is particularly  hmmmm.... jazzy. I will post photos when I am done. Nothing though will match the year my older sister bought Contact paper with a pattern of cavorting  naked ladies. I am feeling a little stunned that this Chag HaAviv/ Spring festival is taking place when the trees are actually blooming. Usually, no matter how late Passover was, we would s...

For some reason I don't feel like I can actually start the process of getting my house ready for Passover until I strip the old wax off the kitchen floor. According to halacha/ Jewish law if food is not even up to the standards of a dog, something a dog would not eat then it is OK to keep it around on Passover and it does not count as Chametz. Although we do have someone come weekly to do most of the cleaning around here, I usually feel that this is to gross and difficult a job to give to someone else to do. So every year, i start my preparation for Passover on my hands and knees getting rid of waxy yellow (actually grey) build up on my kitchen floor and think about floor product advertisements from the 1960's, my father talking about ancient Canaanite spring practices of cleaning out dough bowls, Passover long ago,  the connection between the soul cleansing we do at the High Holiday season that is symbolized  by tashlich how there is a similar process of soul cleaning ...

Often one hears people saying that they wished they lived in a different era long ago. Frankly, I am awfully happy that I don't live in the good old days but am alive right now. I probably wouldn't have lived past childhood in the good old days. One of those icky infections that plagued my childhood would have done me in. Aside from better healthcare and good sanitation and indoor plumbing one of the reasons I love being alive in 2016 is the opportunity to virtually connect with friends from long ago and far away. Yesterday, one of my childhood friends was consulting with the Facebook mind-hive about how to flavor "Kismet" vaguely Middle Eastern cup cakes for a bake sale related to her daughter's performance in the play. People, including me, weighed in with their opinions about how to flavor cupcakes that were middle eastern enough to be thematic but not too weird for the kids who would be purchasing them.  That conversation was still wandering around...