sarah in nyc

After months of being essentially house bound, I am finally healthy enough to have a few tame adventures in the city. (For those of you who have expressed your concerns about my health... In September I got a cold that decided to become a long term resident in my body. My doctor had thought that it might be a particular auto immune deficiency. It isn't-- which is both good and bad. Being able to slap a name on something, even if there is no cure, is comforting. I have no diagnosis. I assume that I will continue to just get sicker than most people when I get sick. This isn't going to kill me--- I will just continue living my life as I have since I was five and first got hit with this. People live with much worse.) Sunday, a friend and I went to the Museum of Art and Design for the last day of  Vera Paints a Scarf . Textiles by Vera Neumann were just a ubiquitous part of of the visual landscape of Mid-Century America. You might eat at a table covered by a table-cloth cove...

Once again, it's Friday and time to cook another Shabbat dinner. The view from our bedroom window---or at least a part of the view. I had made  crispy breaded cod for dinner last night and wanted to play with more  crispy coating. My parents regularly used to use matzah meal and spices to create a coating for fish. I learned how to first dip into  a watery egg wash so the crumbs adhere better, back when I was in elementary school. I bought a package of course ground grits several weeks ago. I thought it would add a good texture to the fish. It did. So when I made today's chicken I mixed the grits, and some farina and hawaj.  I realized as I was mixing up the bread-cumb mixture that my default cooking style is a multicultural mix. North African Hawaj seems to be a perfect pairing with grits--both in my head and in my mouth.  If you haven't done this method of breading..here it is in visual form.  Prepare your crumb mixture and an egg b...

I was born in the early 1960's. That means that I was witness to the last gasp of the era of the club-woman. It is easy in these post feminist times to scoff at groups of women who get dressed up to meet together during the day-- because of course, they had no paying jobs. One of my old sewing books referred to a few categories of women, housewives  who mostly stay at home, working women who work in offices and club-women who attend lots of meetings. However, before you turn up your nose at those women who put on hats and gloves and attended this or that tea or luncheon, you ought to remember that we drink milk untainted by tuberculosis because of luncheons long ago. Abolition of slavery was achieved partially through the charming efforts of bonneted women. You can add to the list of achievements of club-women fundraising for hospitals, the creation of settlement houses, funds to run houses of worship, care for wounded soldiers, money to run orphanages as well as money to fund th...