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.

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...

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...

Food friday - your grandmother's food processor

My grandmother bought my mother this wooden bowl and a chopping knife, known in Yiddish as a hock-messer, soon after my parents got married. Yes, she also got them a dairy set as well. these wooden bowls and chopping knives were a big part of food prep when I was growing up. meatloaf and meat balls were mixed in this bowl. Chopped liver was made in this bowl as well. Sundays we often made chicken salad for lunch made out of chicken left over from Shabbat chopped with vegetables and mayo. That too, was made in this bowl. When I was in college my parents got their first food processor and the chopping bowls were not used as much. Several years ago, my father asked if i would like the bowls and the hock-messers. I was happy to have them. I like the sheer physicality of chopping up a big bowl of stuff into teeny pieces. While the wooden bowls have stood up well to the years of use, the hock-messers had not. The bladed which were bolted into their handles, wobbled. The blades wouldn't ...

sarah in nyc

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