Ending a complicated week

I got a delighted phone call from the mother of the recipient of this sweater. It made me happy that I had made the effort and that my niece was as delighted by this sweater as I am, perhaps even more.

Another great niece visits on Monday and I made her this sweater.

It is knit with a wool-blend heavy weight yarn and is edged in purplish crochet.

My favorite part of this sweater are the buttons.In Hebrew this baby is named for my Mother , Zipporah, which means bird.

This baby's middle name in Hebrew is Zahavah, which means gold. I was delighted to find the button with a beautiful cloisonne bird. My mother, in the family was known by her English name.

I think that the hand carved shell buttons are a nice evocation of my mother's English name.

I love a baby garment that is a bit over the top.

Tonight is officially Tisha B'Av but since we don't fast on Sabbat ( except for Yom Kippur) the fast begins tomorrow night. There is a tradition to not eat meat during this time of national sadness.

I got the batty idea to make ravioli. This is the dough I mixed up this morning.

It's a crazy amount of work. Luckily, my youngest helped. Usually before I start making filled pasta I am sure that it is an completely doable job. Inevitably about half way in, when it is too late to change course I realize that it is a much bigger job than I had anticipated.

With my son's help I was able to muster through.

We are eating vegetable ( yellow pepper, red carrot and onion) and cheese filled ravioli. the pasta has been layered in my late mother-in-law's red Pyrex casserole dish with shredded bok choi, more of the vegetable puree and more cheese.

If I have the energy, I may make something else as well.

Wishing all of you who fast a meaningful fast.

Shabbat Shalom!

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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...

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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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