sarah in nyc

Some days have a rhythm where I go easily from one task to another.   Amazon.com Widgets Today was interrupted by a slew of completely disconnected phone calls that each pulled me completely out of what I was doing and pulled all of my brains and all of my energy in a completely different direction. So this post will be a bit all over the map as well. Tonight's challot are made out of strands that were filled jelly roll style with spices,  (cinnamon, allspice, cardamon and nutmeg) cocoa and sugar.  I made chicken using these spices. If you can't figure it out it, sumac, smoked paprika, hot paprika, turmeric and some cayenne. The chickens look like they came out of a rotisserie from a mid-century supermarket. Gavi's tallit finally got shipped out after I spent the week picking out teeny bits of paper with a tweezer.  I have been thinking all week about how this sort of patient careful repetitive work  is so not how I usually work...

When I was a little kid the photo albums lived in my father's office in the basement. Often I would pull the albums out and look at them while I was on my own. Sometimes my mother or my father or one of my older sisters used to look through the albums with me. Amazon.com Widgets The act of looking through the photos was a private one, often solitary. Yesterday, I posted two photos of my mother in honor of her birthday. My sister wrote to me yesterday about how she was so happy to see the photos of my mother as a young teen. Today, my sister wrote to me again. She was so touched to see how many reactions there were to the images. my sister loved seeing, as i did to see reactions from a classmate of my mother's, classmates of mine, my son's kindergarten teacher as well as various relatives. How sweet is it that this previously private moment can be shared beyond my father's basement office  with the world of people in my life. So now I repeat the exe...

The weather has changed. It is now officially  gross and muggy NYC summer.   Amazon.com Widgets I had been itching to make a dress but I had too much work on my plate.  Today I scratched that dress making itch. It's a cowl -front dress with six waist darts for shaping. The fabric was purchased a couple of years ago from Kashi at Metro textiles. Kashi told me to buy this fabric, and I listened. It's a cool to wear rayon knit. When I bought the fabric I had been entirely in love with the print. I am slightly less in love with it now.  It is cool  and I can wear it and not wilt. If you want a diagram for cutting the dress just let me know. This morning my husband and I attended the funeral of the mother of a friend. It was nice after the batch of funerals we had attended of people who had died far too young to be at the funeral of someone who had lived to be ninety five. There were aspects of the death and of the funeral planning and the funeral itself ...

The work part of my day was being interviewed about the possibility of a teaching gig.  Things are looking good and it should be a nice addition to my summer. Amazon.com Widgets I had planned to visit the Musuem of Art and Design with my youngest after the interview.  He met me at the museum. I was dying to see  the Judith Leiber exhibit.  The last big exhibit of her work was at FIT just over 20 years ago years ago. When THAT exhibit was up I took my older son who was then really little to fill up the time between the end of his day at day care at the time we had to pick my daughter up at her school bus. My son was so enchanted by the exhibit that he asked to go back several times, and we did. The current exhibit was fine but had none of the magic that the brilliant Valerie Steele adds to every exhibit at FIT. We saw cool pocketbooks, but no magic. We stopped by  this exhibit.  I might not be clever enough to understand the premise of the exhi...

A week does not go by when someone doesn't post a challah recipe on Facebook that they claim is the best ever recipe.  Every time I read through those recipes and I see that they are all made with far too much yeast. Yeast does make bread rise, but too much yeast makes bread taste nasty. Amazon.com Widgets This week I saw a recipe that called for four tea-spoons of yeast, for one challah. That's  kind of crazy. I bake challah every other week. Each time I bake four big challot. Each one is  bigger than a standard bakery challah, probably 150% larger than a store challah. I use a scant tea-spoon of yeast to make the entire batch of four challot. An overly yeasted bread tastes a little rotted. It will have a bad texture. Please don't use too much yeast. A bread tastes much better with a long slow rise. So now that you have patiently sat through this lecture on yeast, onto some fun stuff. This week I decided to go a little wild with my challot. I decided to...

When Hannah and I first met it took a little while for us to speak the same language design -wise. She was very clear about what she didn't like and had a harder time explaining what she did want.  After our initial meeting, she went home and emailed  lots of images to me. That was incredibly helpful. Once I understood what she wanted I could go about making it happen. I have friends in the sewing world who detest sewing for others. Some of them complain bitterly about having to take direction from prom girls or from brides. I could see why some people might find it annoying to be taking direction from an almost twelve year old. I actually find the process of collaborating with a kid to be a blast. i like helping them think about what they want and don't want and figuring out how to express ideas that might be difficult to put into words. Hannah is a deeply thoughtful person. When she walked into my dining room and saw her  completed tallit for the first time s...