A math problem and Shavuot cookery for the short of time

First the math problem:

I am working on finishing up Linda's tallit. There are four panels of ribbons each need to be sewn into the tallit facing the right direction.

How many possible errors can I make before the tallit is completed?

The answer is not yet complete but I have unstiched three times so far, and yes, This is with a three step zig zag stitch. If you can intuit that I am now feeling cranky then you have earned yourself a gold star.

Which leads me to the second part of this blog posting. Shavuot begins tonight. If I were not quite so stressed for time I would be making blintzes right now.

Because I like my readers I will share a terrific recipe with you. Most mid-century Jewish community cookbooks will have a recipe for something called blintz souffle. That is a couple of packages of frozen blintzes covered with a mixture of sour cream eggs and sugar and then baked. This is not real food. Don't bother making that dish.

About 24 years ago we went on a family vacation to Charleston, South Carolina. Charleston is a great place to visit and I strongly suggest that you go. One of the highlights of that trip was our Friday night at Kahal Kodesh Beth Elohim, one of the oldest synagogues in North America.

The service itself was fabulous, it was very High Church Reform. The service was both very formal in the manner of very old fashioned classical Reform services and also incredibly spiritually moving. After services they had the kind of Oneg Shabbat that I hadn't seen since my childhood complete with giant bowls filled with punch ( not just a few cans of High -C but a careful concoction made out of various kinds of bug juice as well as sodas , fruit juices and lots of pretty stuff floating on top) and lots of intricately layered jello molds. While their gift shop was not open for sales some of the goods were available for browsing. I happened upon their community cookbook and fell in love.

We went back later in the week to buy me a copy. The cook book had of the usual mid century community cookbook staples of mixtures of lots of things from cans heated up with Velveeta cheese. They also had the largest collection of recipes made with crayfish and other shell fish I have ever seen in any cookbook. Additionally as an old Jewish community there were also lots of really good old time heirloom Jewish recipes.

When I first saw this recipe

I assumed that it was that old standard take a couple of boxes of ready made blintzes and drown them in sour cream sugar and eggs, bake and then pretend that you actually cooked something.

I realized that this is actually the real deal, Two layers of dough surrounding a layer of sweet cheese.

This is easy enough for a grade-school child to make with minimal supervision. You can serve it with cooked summer fruit or with fresh berries. Frozen blintzes are nearly always pretty terrible- with the exception of the well named Taam Tov blintzes ( taam tov means good taste) that are available in some of your frummer kosher markets.

Last Shavuot my friend Debbie taught me that one of the big reasons we eat so much dairy on Shavuot is that Shavuot coincides with the time that dairy farmers wean the newly born calves and kids and get them to eat grass and hay. There is an over abundance of milk at this season so it makes sense to eat blintzes and cheesecake

I have to go back to sewing and hopefully my error making time is over for this project.

Enjoy your Shavuot and your blintzes or cheese cake..

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...

A Passover loss

My parents bought this tablecloth during their 1955 visit to Israel. It is made out of linen from the first post 1948 flax harvest. The linen is heavy and almost crude. The embroidery is very fine. We used this cloth every Passover until the center wore thin. You can see the cloth on the table in the background of this photo of my parents and nephew My Aunt Sheva bought my mother a replacement cloth. The replacement cloth is made out of a cotton poly blend. The embroidery is crude and the colors not nearly as nice. The old cloth hung in our basement. We used the new cloth and remembered the much nicer original cloth. I loved that my aunt wanted to replace the cloth, I just hated the replacement because it was so much less than while evoking the beauty of the original. After my father died my mother sat me down and with great ceremony gave me all of her best tablecloths. She also gave me the worn Passover cloth and suggested that I could mend it. I did. Year after year ...

sarah in nyc

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