sarah in nyc

Our home has been filled with guests this Chanukah week.  This has meant lots of additional cooking and baking and laundry. Amazon.com Widgets I made chicken using this new to me spice mixture. I haven't tasted it yet, but the apartment smelled heavenly all morning. I can't wait to try the chicken tonight. I also roasted some tomatoes and mushrooms to add to our salad. Tonight's dessert may have been the too far part. I did the usual faking of a dessert.  I was planning on making an apricot/cranberry tart, that is a layer of cookie type crust covered with a layer of gooey apricot/cranberry. The bottom layer was much looser and airier than I had anticipated and couldn't support the fruit layer.  As a desperate measure I marbled the two layers. I know it's ugly. It looks like a baked crime scene. I am thinking that perhaps a drizzle of chocolate, or many drizzles of chocolate may serve to improve  the looks of this pudding like thing that is no...

My husband's nephew is in town for the week. We decided to make today a museum day. We left the house thinking that we would go to the Met. We took the cross town bus and walked downtown along Fifth Avenue. On the way to the met we stopped off at the Cooper -Hewett. Amazon.com Widgets There was an exhibit called Scrap about how designers are using waste materials from the textile industry to create fashion and usable objects. One artists begins with saris. The saris are used in three stages. In the first, Western style garments are cut from the yardage.  In the second stage, mixed fabrics are pieced together and then over dyed in one color. I didn't take photos of the garments in the first two stages, they were nice enough, but not all that exciting. In the next couple of stages the artist uses smaller and smaller bits of the saris. The base fabric is made out of over-dyed saris and then circles of waste sari fbric are appliqued to the base. Curtains i...

I grew up in Quincy, Massachusetts a small city on Massachusetts bay. While there are sometimes days that are bright and clear and days that are warm and delightful, the default weather is cool, damp and cloudy. Amazon.com Widgets My husband has dubbed such weather, Quincy Weather. Today is a day of Quincy weather. Quincy weather makes you feel arthritic, even if you are not. My friend who grew up in Halifax refers to such weather as Halifax weather. She sees the foggy cold and it makes her really happy.

We are having a house full of guests staying with us starting tomorrow night, but tonight it is just family with a last minute guest who is bringing a surprise carb. Amazon.com Widgets I made another tray of last week's red chicken made with an array of red spices, hot paprika, smoked paprika sumac and lots of fresh lime juice.  I also made a load of kibbe. I don't know how other people make kibbe but tonight's version is essentially taboule  with chopped meat baked into torpedo shaped meat balls. I plan to make a techina sauce to serve with it. My youngest is home from  school and is allergic to sesame. Since I don't plan on killing him this weekend, the sauce is being served on the side. The people who are not allergic can add it to their kibbe. These days I am having a crush on the flavor of slow roasted tomatoes added to salad. So here is tonight's. The other day I bought  giant bag of limes at Costco. the limes got me thinking that a lime meri...

Our kitchen curtain was looking dirty. Let me re-phrase that to more accurately reflect the truth. The 1940's table cloth and 1930's napkins that I had stapled on the frame of a Chinese paper shade  that have been serving as our current kitchen curtain was badly in need of a wash. I un-picked all of the staples and washed the table cloth and napkins. Amazon.com Widgets I needed something new to serve as my kitchen curtain, so I poked through my collection of linens and came up with this. This window covering has been assembled out of an oval linen tablecloth that had been my mother's and a Vivian treasure, a length of linen embroidered in red with a border of grape leaves and a basket of fruit, vegetables and grasses.The piece has been bordered with some really nice hand done lace. The style of the graphics leads me to think that this embroidery was done around WWI. I have no idea of the original use of this embroidered piece. It will be nice having these two pi...

My father was a rabbi, I went to Orthodox day school.  Although I do have fond memories of stringing cranberries and popcorn to help my friends up the block decorate their Christmas trees, Christmas trees were not part of my home life. Amazon.com Widgets I remember when my kids were little and the tree vendors set up each Thanksgiving up and down Broadway when they were really small they lusted after the trees. By the time they hit grade school the persistence of Christmas felt like an intrusion into their very selves. For the past 20 years, Patricia has come into our apartment once a week and kept us looking like civilized human beings. As a family we aren't dirty, but we are all of us, (especially me) messy. Patricia cleans and tidies every Thursday. Our apartment looks great for Shabbat thanks to Patricia. Every year I give Patricia a gift at this time of the year. Every year she gives me a gift. For the past several years Patricia's gift to our family is a really Chri...