Food Friday - Last Chametz Edition

Sunday we change the house over to Passover. Yes, I know it's early. I grew up on a home where the task of changing over the house was done early so all of the cooking and all of the baking could all take place before the holiday. I don't change our house as early as my parents did, and I don't change my house over as late as my husband would like (perhpas the day before the holiday).

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I made a matza farfel kugel out of what was left of a box of farfel from last Passover. We are also eating roasted mushrooms and Brussels sprouts

using lots of condiments from the fridge for flavor.

We also are eating beef.

I had time to put in some work on Cavill's tallit. When we had met to design Cavill's tallit, he brought the tallit his grandmother had bought him I believe for his bar-mitzvah. It was never exactly the right tallit for Cavill, but it represented the bond between grandmother and grandson. So while he didn't like the way it looked it was at the same time a beloved thing.

I decided to line both the atara/neckband and the pinot/corner pieces with the tallit.

Here are the pinot with the facing side up.

The pinot are now sewn onto the tallit and the eyelets are done. Yes, that is a machine worked flame stitch which is perfect for a tallit with the theme of holy fire. I just wish I had been clever enough to think of it earlier in the process.All that is left to do is to sew on the atara and to snip up all of the thousands ofloose threads.

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Connecting with the past

A few months ago I had a craving for my father’s chicken fricassee. If my father were still alive I would have called him up and he would have talked me through the process of making it. My father is no longer alive so I turned to my cookbooks and the recipes I found for chicken fricassee were nothing at all like the stew of chicken necks, gizzards and wings in a watery sweet and sour tomato sauce that I enjoyed as a kid. I assumed that the dish was an invention of my father’s. I then attempted to replicate the dish from my memory of it and failed. A couple of weeks ago I saw an article on the internet, and I can’t remember where, that talked about Jewish fricassee and it sounded an awful lot like the dish I was hankering after. This afternoon I went to the butcher and picked up all of the chicken elements of the dish, a couple of packages each of wings, necks and gizzards. My father never cooked directly from a cook book. He used to re...

The light themed tallit has been shipped!!!

I had begun speaking to Sarah about making her a tallit in the middle of August. It took a few weeks to nail down the design. For Sarah it would have been ideal if the tallit were completed in time for her to wear it on Rosh HaShanah., the beginning of her year as senior rabbi of her congregation. For me, in an ideal world, given the realities of preparing for the High Holidays I would have finished this tallit in the weeks after Sukkot. So we compromised and I shipped off the tallit last night. I would have prefered to have more time but I got the job done in time. This tallit was made to mark Sarah's rise to the position of senior rabbi but it was also a reaction to this year of darkness. She chose a selection of verses about light to be part of her tallit. 1) אֵל נוֹרָא עֲלִילָה God of awesome deeds ( from a yom kippur Liturgical poem) 2) אוֹר חָדָשׁ עַל־צִיּוֹן תָּאִיר May You shine a new light on Zion ( from the liturgy) 3) יָאֵר יְהֹ...

מְחַיֵּה הַמֵּתִים

וְנֶאֱמָן אַתָּה לְהַחֲיוֹת מֵתִים: בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְהֹוָה מְחַיֵּה הַמֵּתִים You are faithful to restore the dead to life. Blessed are You, Adonoy, Resurrector of the dead. That particular line is recited at every single prayer service every day three times a day, unless you use a Reform or Reconstructionist prayer book . In those liturgies instead of praising God for resurrecting the dead God is praised for giving life to all. I am enough of a modern woman, a modern thinker, to not actually believe in the actual resurrection of the dead. I don't actually expect all of the residents of the Workmen's Circle section of Mount Hebron cemetery in Queens to get up and get back to work at their sewing machines. I don't expect the young children buried here or the babies buried here to one day get up and frolic. Yet, every single time I get up to lead services I say those words about the reanimating of the dead with every fiber of my being. Yesterday, I e...

sarah in nyc

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