sarah in nyc

Tonight begins Shabbat Nachamu, the Shabbat of comfort after going through the anguish of Tisha B'Av. I made tonight's dinner with that in mind. I baked chicken on a bed of shredded zucchini and a sad-looking tomato. There were spices involved but even if you held a gun up to my head I am not sure that I could remember exactly which ones were actually used.  One of my favorite foods on the planet is the grilled corn one can buy at New York City street fairs alongside of the tube socks and the "pashminas" and mozzareppas and funnel cakes. I don't know when the street fairs will begin again. I Macguyvered a grill for my stovetop out of a cookie rack. The flame on my front burner was too close to the rack and to the corn. My rack will never be the same after turning bright red from the heat. I turned off the front burner and only used the back burner, rolling the ears of corn so they all got a bit of the heat. I'm feeling very clever. When my daughter and son-in-...

הֲשִׁיבֵ֨נוּ יְהוָ֤ה ׀ אֵלֶ֙יךָ֙ ונשוב [וְֽנָשׁ֔וּבָה] חַדֵּ֥שׁ יָמֵ֖ינוּ כְּקֶֽדֶם׃ Take us back, O LORD, to Yourself, And let us come back; Renew our days as of old! Yesterday was Tisha B'Av, the Jewish day of mourning when we mark several moments of catastrophe that took place either on that very day or near enough to be rolled into the day. ( The destruction of both Temples in Jerusalem in 586 BCE and in the year 70CE, our expulsion from Spain, the decimation of Jewish communities during the crusades and of course the Shoah.) I have been fortunate until now, not have lived through terrible times. Some years when reading the Book of Lamentations with my community I thought about how those ancient words might have resonated in Spain in 1492, or in Poland in 1941.  Eicha , as Lamentations is known in Hebrew is a series of five poems of lamentation, some of which speak directly about the period of time around the siege of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temples and other poe...

My husband and I have been doing small day trips out of the city. We don't own a cooler to keep our lunches from giving us food poisoning. We debated buying a cooler. We looked at buying coolers but they are all huge. Where do you store such a thing that is used only occasionally, in an apartment??? We have a plastic-lined tote bag that was a giveaway from a cosmetics company.  It was lined with blue and white vinyl. You can fill the bag with food and with ice packs and the food stays cool. This summer the vinyl shredded. I relined the bag in orange cloth blacked vinyl that has been in my stash since before my oldest went to college.  As my eyesight gets worse I live in terror of breaking or losing my classes. I had gotten my last prescription filled at Costco and got a pair of glasses that I like a whole lot. Soon after I got them I bought a pair from one of those el-cheapo glasses places that are probably advertising on your Facebook feed. I loved the glasses I had chosen, a...

The pandemic has been hard on our youngest. What twenty-something would want to be spending all of his time with his parents? His work hours are from noon until 8:00pm. We took him on a drive last week to see the ocean.   Spending a bit of time between the vastness of the sea and the sky did him some good. The sky that night looked like the painted done of an Italian church.   We took our son on another after-work drive this week. This time we drove north to one of the Hudson River towns.   By the time we had gotten to our destination, the sun had set. We bought ice cream and looked at the river. We watched ducks swim in the darkness. We admired the new bridge and stayed until the biting bugs drove us back into the car. Then we went home.

Even though I have inherited a crazy number of vintage tablecloths from far and near, from relatives and from friends still do need to have a number of easy to wash and iron cloths for regular use.  If I had deeper pockets or spent my money more freely I would buy  Marimekko fabric. The color and patterns are wonderful. The fabric wears like iron. It does cost between $30 and $50 per yard which kind of defeats the purpose of having an inexpensive and cheerful tablecloth.  A lovely budget substitute is IKEA fabric. I bought  two yards of this loud print. The other night I hemmed the cloth so I could use it starting tonight. As I mitered the corners( that's a sewing term for manipulating the corner so you get  tidy diagonal folds at each corner, I thought about how I learned this skill. I read dozens of sets of directions over and over again. I made hundreds of truly ugly miters. Every couple of years I would try to miter a corner yet again.  I thought about...

This is the dish we have been eating fairly often in the past couple of weeks. I don't know exactly what to call it. It's a bread dough pulled into a rectangle, topped with oil, paved with raw sliced vegetables, herbs, spices, and a bit of cheese. It is similar to the large rectangular pans of dough topped with vegetables we saw in the shops in Rome. It is also related to the variations on this theme that we were served at the kiddush after services at the Great Synagogue in Florence and it is also a culinary cousin to Pita Za'atar. Here are two ready for the oven.  Right now the pushcart fruit guy a couple of blocks away has lots of zucchini and tomatoes. When he has red and yellow peppers or mushrooms I use those. If I had thought of it today I would have used the skinny asparagus that he was selling today.  Simple bread dough for vaguely Roman Style Pizza  put 2 cups water in a bowl ( if my kitchen were cold I would have warmed it for 30 seconds in a microwave) add 1 T...

I cut my hair. Luckily I have hair that is easy to cut. I have gotten two truly terrible haircuts in my life, not including the time I cut off a chunk of my hair when I was seven because it bugged me. One terrible haircut I got when I was in my teens and the stylist decided that I was a "good girl" so he gave me a Buster Brown haircut. My mother, who was thrifty and normally had the attitude of " Just live with it until it grows out." had me get my hair re-cut within a few days.  The other terrible haircut I got was from Astor Place Barbers. My first time there I had gotten probably one of the best haircuts I had ever gotten. It was glam and fun and brought out all that was best about my hair and my face. The second time I went, I asked for the same haircut. What I got instead was a mullet. the hair on most of my head was about an inch long with long strings stuff along the bottom. It took two years to grow out. The haircut I gave myself is a little unrefined but ha...

It has been a rainy day. if you look closely you can see the rain bouncing off of our dining room air conditioner. Despite the storm, I still needed to cook. Tonight's chicken is kind of upscale struggle cooking. It is made with chopped candied citrus peels, minced ginger, and mustard.   Here it is before cooking, and after. The rice was made with chicken juice from last week. . You just plop the lump of refrigerated chicken juice on the rice, add water ( 2 parts water to one of rice). This is a good time to add other spices. I was feeling lazy and didn't. Cover the rice. Put the rice in the oven. Cook until the rice is done.  How do you know it's done?? If it doesn't break your teeth. If you need to add more water, just add it. You don't need my permission. Shabbat Shalom!