sarah in nyc

As we live through these pandemic times there are days and weeks when I feel like I am just barely dragging myself through life.  Sometimes though just making an effort makes one feel better.  My husband and I made a big effort in cleaning the apartment today and organizing places that had gotten neglected. As I made  Shabbat dinner tonight I decided to add some of the refinements to our meal. Our first course is gazpacho which is essentially a salad smoothie. Normally, I would just throw the whole tomatoes into the food processor. Today, I decided to peel the tomatoes before pureeing them. I may have been inspired by a long talk with my elegant friend S earlier in the week. We didn't discuss the relative merits of peeled vs. unpeeled tomatoes during our conversation, but she is the sort of cook that would go to the extra effort of peeling tomatoes. It's actually a simple thing to do. First, you mark a tiny X in the tomato skin with a knife to help the peeling along. Then...

Like everyone else, I have been spending a fair amount of time in Zoom meetings. I have been spending some of that time doing handwork. I assume that the hum of a sewing machine during a Zoom meeting would drive all of the other participants' batty. Sewing on a machine also necessitated blocking your face which would also be pretty rude during a Zoom session. I have been working away on embroidering the lettering for Max's atara.   Satin stitching is not something that I have done often and takes actual concentration. Although I am happily halfway done with the embroidery, this is a task that sometimes takes more focus than I can spare during a meeting where I really have to pay attention. There is always more than one task on my plate at a time.  I had made a really simple dress in February.  The fit was weird so I put it away for a few weeks. When I pulled it out and tried it on again I discovered that all of the wonky fit disappeared, as if by magic, if I wore the...

This week was a challah baking week. The other two challot are in the oven warming for tonight's meal. This week I decided to guild the lily and fill the strands before braiding. Some are filled with a mixture of cocoa, honey, cinnamon and ginger and a bit of water to turn it all into a spread.  I ran out of the  cocoa paste after two challot  were done (because I mix up such additions without measuring) so one of the four challot has just a tiny bit of the paste and some cut up candied orange peel and one has just the candied orange peel. If I were a commercial bakery, the fact that there is variety in my challot might be an issue, but since I am just worried about pleasing the folks eating at our table  the element of surprise when cutting into our challot just adds to the pleasure of the moment.  Our chicken is made with red spices.   Those red spices are sumac, smoked paprika and hot paprika.  Our vegetable dish is a little unfortunately looking, b...

Several days ago some of my baking friends were blown away when I posted a photo of rolls that I had made using a piece of bread as the leavening agent. I had started reading sewing  and hand craft books when I was six years old and had ordered a sewing book from The Scholastic Book Club. My reading of cookbooks had begun at about the same time with my mother's collection of cookbooks that sat on a low bookshelf in our kitchen.  The availability of cooking and sewing books from late in the 19th century and early in the 20th century for free on Google Books is one of the things that gives me great joy. One of them l;ate 19th century cookbooks I had found had a long intro to their bread section that discussed various kinds of yeast.  Like many things that I read, it took a few years for the information in that book to actually make sense to me. One of the yeast sources in that book was stale bread.  The rolls pictured above were made using this method. The rolls are de...

Tonight we are eating beef.  The cut is called  Shank Kolichel. I have only seen this name for a cut of meat at kosher butchers. I assumed that it is meant to be slow cooked. So I did, in a sweet and sour tomato sauce, think the sauce one eats with stuffed cabbage. I also made rice.  I assume that all of you know what rice looks like. Although I added a couple of cardamon pods to the rice because they make the rice taste fancy with little to no effort. The vegetable portion of our meal is a package of frozen teeny okra that are being heated up with olive oil and spices.  For reasons I don't understand, but probably having to do with baking challah for Shavuot I had only one challah in the freezer.  The second loaf on our table tonight will be one of these rolls that I baked last night. The leavening agent in these rolls was a fat slice of home baked bread. These rolls have a great texture thanks to about a cup of cooked bulgher wheat. They are chewy and make for...

I am aware that despite the name of this blog, I haven't been writing about sewing all that often in the past while. This post, at least goes back to the subject. Summer dresses tend to have a shorter life span than dresses worn during the cooler months. Hot weather fabrics tend to be a bit less sturdy. sweat is also corrosive to fabrics. The result is that summer dresses live a hard and fast life. The weather had been almost freakishly cold this spring so I could keep wearing cool weather dresses. over the past few days as I went to my closet to choose something to wear, my options seemed more and more limited.  I had made this dress several weeks ago, from a stretch suiting. I had purchased this fabric for my youngest who loves black and white checkerboard. It was too much of a variation on checkerboard to make him happy and not the real thing. This dress was fast to make up and I like wearing it. It is, however, better suited for those cold New England springs when you want to w...

Yesterday was a long awaited day at our house.  It was one of  one of the few things made better by the restrictions of the Covid-19 virus. My husband gave a reading of his newly released book yesterday morning. Because of Covid, there were people in attendance from all over the world. My husband's elementary school friend, his Hebrew high school friend, his relatives, and mine were all in attendance. Friends from Havurat Shalom, and friends from Ansche Chesed all turned out to listen to my husband read.  If you weren't able to show up yesterday, you can listen here.  Tales of the Havurah  Unfortunately you can't see all of the wonderful people who joined us.  After the reading I turned the bread dough I had mixed into a batch of bagels. After the bagels were baked we went out for a walk. Since you asked, yes, we were masked. The showy parts of springtime are over. The leaves are no longer shyly opening but are fully present. As I went over the photos that ...