For the first time in twenty eight years

no one in our family is preparing to go back for the first day of school.

Our youngest finished the last of his college requirements a couple of weeks ago. I had friends who finished college on the seven-year plan. My mother had a cousin who was never quite able to finish off his bachelor's degree despite taking classes for decades. So our son's need to just take one class this summer seemed like not a bad thing at all.

Our youngest had missed out previous adventures at Angela's restaurant in Boro Park. We all agreed that this was the perfect place to celebrate this milestone in his life. We planned to have all of us meet at the restaurant.
We parked a few blocks from the restaurant.

It was pretty clear that we were not in Manhattan anymore. First of all, most of the buildings had little driveways in front. It made parking a little difficult for us.

As we walked we saw more signs.

A dear friend is a descendant of this Chassidic dynasty.

We finally arrived at our destination.

If you read Cyrillic you will see that it reads "Samarkand Restaurant ", in English Angela. If you like little-grilled bits of meat, this is the place for you.

It took a while for everyone to arrive.

Our youngest was surprised that the normal protocols of restaurant service don't seem to apply here. I told my son to just go with the flow because he was no longer exactly in American anymore.

Soon we were all assembled ready to begin our meal.

Our waitress didn't give us a menu. She knows we love the grilled meat so she quizzed us on which meads we wanted. Liver? No. Beef hearts? Yes. Chicken hearts? (sorry not available) Lamb? Yes. Chicken? Yes. Beef?Yes. Sweetbreads? Yes. Chopped lamb? Yes.

Then she quizzed us on the sides. We got one pickled salad and one fresh salad and two loaves of bread.

You can bring your own booze. We toasted our son's finishing college.

Soon our food arrived, one grilled bit at a time. if I were a better blogger I would have taken photos of the plates as they arrived. I kept forgetting and eating.

Here is the chopped lamb.

This is the beef

Here are the skewers you meat comes on along with the shaker of magic red spice. I have no idea what is in that shaker except that it is delicious and makes the wonderful meat taste even more delicious.

The fresh vegetable salad is made with a homemade dressing.

I am told that the pickles are transcendent. My older son would probably trade a year or at least several months of his life for the pickled cherry tomatoes.

My husband drove my daughter and son-in-law home to the Bronx because he is a good father. There wasn't room for all of us in the car so my youngest and I walked to the subway. I passed S&W which used to have a store on 72nd street where I bought a raincoat and a winter coat soon after I moved to New York. They had a large store just down the street from FIT and it was a great place to buy discounted fancy clothes. They closed several years ago and I have missed the store. Glad to see that they are still in business.

Across the street from S&W was a clothing store that sold clothing geared for the local community.

The dresses were all made out of scuba fabric. Scuba is a thick knitted material similar in look to the Neoprene used to make scubawear but not quite so heavy.

I loved that these collection of dresses were so chic, so visually arresting and also modest. The scuba fabric is machine washable and has the kind of structure that is favored in this religious community- a drapey fabric shows off the body in a well, less modest way than a structured fabric does

I like that this collection would work for a variety of body shapes and ages. I have seen dress stores in religious neighborhoods that simply take RTW and fill in a neckline or lengthen skirts or line sheer sleeves. This store carries clothing that has been well thought out for its particular audience.

We saw this truck at the gas station next to the subway station.

getting on the airconditioned subway was a nice end to to delightful dinner.

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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