sarah in nyc

When I was growing up my father used to speak in awe of old world cooks who were able to bake cakes without a recipe. That method of cookery was known in Yiddish as shit arayn, or put it in. Aside from the grade school amusement my sisters and I had at the word shit so close to cake like my father I have always been intrigued by the idea that a cake could be created without carefully following a recipe. A few summers ago I found an old cookbook in an antique mall that gave a series of proportions for cake making. it made me realize that the  shit arayn  method was indeed possible. I have been attempting such cakes for a couple of years now. The disadvantage of such a cake is that the results of these wild and wooly methods are not always completely predictable. I call my efforts at these no recipe cakes, fake cakes. A dear friend is coming for dinner. Her birthday was yesterday. I had thought I would make a citrusy cake to hono...

Amazon.com Widgets When my oldest was a pre schooler someone had given her a beautiful book called The Napping House.   In that book, all of the various occupants of the house first fall asleep and then wake up. The tagline of the book was "This is the napping house where everyone is sleeping." When my youngest is home from college and my husband is int he middle of his busy season, unlike The Napping House,  at any moment of the 24-hour cycle, someone is sleeping, someone is awake and someone is eating. With so much eating going on we had turned into a version of Mother Hubbard's kitchen. To stock our empty larders, we went to Costco. We went home with a taxi trunk filled with food.  I loved the twilight views from the back seat of our cab. Our trip was delayed for a long time by a fender bender that luckily took place right in front of the emergency room of Metropolitan Hospital. We waited behind the excitement until ...

My dear friend Marcia (known in our family as Tanta Marcia) invited me to go to a lecture yesterday about  Ludwig Wolpert  given by a Ph.D. candidate at Bard who was writing her dissertation about Wolpert's work during his New York years. Well, going to such a lecture is high up on my idea of fun. Amazon.com Widgets I finally learned the name of Wolpert's first metalsmithing teacher,  Christian Dell . Clearly there was a strong dell influence in Wolpert's work. You can see how the use of actual text used during the ritual when the cup is used rather than Dell's glyphs created a more powerful, more meaningful piece. I loved the lecture, loved seeing deeply familiar and beloved work by Mr. Wolpert. I went home feeling very happy. I knew that something special would be awaiting me. My father's father was born in Konin, Poland and arrived in New York before WW1. My father's mother was born here, but both of her parents were born there too...

My daughter wanted me to put together a headpiece for her for her wedding. She works full time but had today off. Normally I would not be able to go shopping on a Friday but the stars aligned so that I could go on this delightful adventure with my daughter even though it is one of the shortest Fridays of the year. Amazon.com Widgets A dear friend invited us for dinner, so that meant that I didn't have to cook. My son volunteered to make the challah so that I could go off with my daughter. We decided that our first stop would be M+J Trimming because they have everything. Walking up 6th avenue we saw a 1950's bus, we looked in and were invited on by the driver. It was on the street as part of a holiday season project by the transit authority. I was reminded of the busses I used to take with my sisters from Field's Corner to Hancock Street in Quincy. The bus even had that same old bus smell I remembered from my childhood. There we bought ...

some not exactly miracles but definitely nice things. Amazon.com Widgets I decided to outline all of the text for my future son-in-law's tallit. This was not a miracle at all but a fair amount of time doing careful work. I am at this writing nearly done, with less than one verse left to go. Also in the delightful but not miraculous category was lighting Chanukah candles all week, several nights virtually with our youngest via Skype and two nights with my older sister who spent a couple of days with us.  Today on my way to do some errands this Christmas tree stand a block from my house was playing not Christmas music, but klezmer. I circled back to be sure that my ears were not deceiving me.  I stopped off at the local thrift to see if there was anything interesting to look at. I found this. A small wall chanukiya designed by Ludwig Wolpert. It was missing its little glass oil holders. It cost a f...

The Chanukah cooking continues. Amazon.com Widgets Last night's entry in the festival of lights and latkes was from left to right, batata, carrot, and apple with ricotta cheese, zucchini and cheddar cheese and finally beet, onion, and goat cheese.  I am working on baby gifts for babies both newly born and not yet born. This hat made out of two types of silk ribbon will probably end up with a set of eyes above center the pom pom. This purple hat is made out of a wool blend. When my second child was born a friend had given him a similarly shaped hat that made us laugh whenever we put it on his head. We immediately called it "the stupid hat".  Living with a newborn is frankly not much fun. I figured that with a stupid hat that difficult time is a bit more amusing. I began working on my future son-in-law's tallit. Much text needed to be painted. I completed the job.  I still may outline the lettering in black. But here is my calligraph...

My future son-in-law is converting to Judaism in the next several weeks. We met to design a tallit together. His tallit will be both thoughtful and beautiful. he had decided on a fabric, a black silk matka.  It's a roughly woven raw silk that looks something like burlap and drapes like wool.It is one of my favorite fabrics for making a man's tallit. Amazon.com Widgets Usually, buying the matka is easy. I call up the nice lady at Supersilk, and she fills my order. I have been buying from her for at least twenty years. Supersilk seems to be located in an apartment building in Queens. On at least one occasion my order was delivered the same day. I tried to call Supersilk several times but the phone was not answered. Their website seems to be no more. I guess it has gone out of business. I am actually quite sad about this loss. This morning I called Kashi at Metro textiles to see if he had the silk I needed. He assured me that he did. I had a hunch that he ...

We learned last night that my sister-in-law and brother-in-law evacuated from their Santa Barbara home and went up the coast to safety. They aren't sure about the state of their house but they are grateful to be out of harm's way. Amazon.com Widgets This morning I woke up to the news of the bombing in the tunnel between the Port Authority and the subway. Fortunately, nearly all of the damage was born by the man who tried to blow up his fellow New Yorkers. I hope that tomorrow brings better news. Meanwhile, I wanted to share some unexpected pleasures of our trip. The first was shul. It was my mother-in-law's yahrzeit last Monday. We found an egalitarian evening minyan in Austin. AQs it is often the case, while in the rest of the world there are six degrees of separation, among Jews, it is often only two degrees of separation. It is not a surprise to discover that the rabbi of the synagogue knew our rabbi. That is to be expected. It was nice to discover a college ...