Department of Complaints Department

Well, this week has been something of what my son's special educators would have cheerfully called a challenge.

My cruddy cold has left me feeling like I have been hit by a truck so I have been watching more episodes of "Say Yes to the Dress" than I would care to admit. But it's all my teeny pea brain could handle as I lay on the couch and dozed.

My camera and my computer have not been on speaking terms which has made creating photos for this blog not possible. After a bunch of searching on the internet, I coaxed my miffed camera to chat with its fellow electronic devices. Apparently, the Canon photo transfer software isn't very robust and like a touchy teen gets all snitty at very little provocation. ( My kids actually very little of that snitty behavior when they were teens).

I discovered this morning that my sensitivity to sesame is a full blown allergy. Techina is no longer part of my life. Why, yes, I am leaving out a whole lot of the story-- but I am leaving this topic.

I did make dinner.

The date studded Moroccan spiced meatballs will be served with Amba (a pickled mango sauce that packs so many different flavors in a bite that it makes my head explode every time I taste it).

We loved last week's chicken made with chili pepper infused maple syrup and cranberries. It was so good I decided to reprise it but added a few swigs of pomegranate molasses to the pan. I assume that it will be even better than it was last week.

The Brussels sprouts are roasting in the oven.

My hands have not been idle this week despite having the mental capacity of a sleepy lizard.

I have begun work on a tallit. I still don't know the dimensions of the final tallit but I had begun on the lettering

which will be added in curing stripes on the tallit.

My daughter works for a clothing manufacturer. They had produced a belt trimmed in black rabbit fur. They realized that the belts were not appropriate for sale. My daughter gave me one of the belts. It was too weird to wear. I have a really wide latitude for off-beat clothing but the belt was beyond the pale. I loved the buckle but the black fur, well, it was a hard look to pull off.

A few days ago I ripped the fur off.

I covered the spots where the fur had been with super glue and then went to town.

Unfortunately, I don't own quite as many googly eyes as I thought I did. (This feels like this might be the first time that particular sentence was ever written) Beads and sequins had to do for the rest.

I love this belt now.

I am looking forward to sitting down to our table full of people we love. Hopefully, next week's post will be less cranky.

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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