Another week and Food Friday

Last night I sent out emails to invite our small band of regulars to our virtual Shabbat dinner. One of our guests quipped to me in an email, "Wasn't it just Shabbat yesterday?" Covid-19 has done funny things to time. It has caused it to both expand and contract at the same time. 

During this week there was a crazy hailstorm.

 It was incredibly loud with the hail bouncing off of the airconditioners

some even bounced into our living room.

Our son decided to go out on his skateboard after the storm. My ever-cautious husband mentioned that he thought that skateboarding so soon after a rain might be a little dangerous. Our son thought that it would be OK. A while later we got a phone call from the park. Our son had wiped out. He didn't think he had any serious injuries but thought it would take him a long time to get home.  My husband suggested that we meet our son in the park and walk him home. It wasn't that he couldn't it just seemed that after wiping out, my son would like the company.

We met our son at the bench he told us he would be sitting on. My husband took the skateboard, I took the helmet and my son draped his arm around my shoulder and leaned on me as he limped home. When my son was little I carried him home from the park and after various falls and injuries often. It has been a long time since then. There was something so familiar about balancing my walk against his weight.

My son has recovered. His hip is no longer sore. His elbow has scabbed over nicely. If the weather is nice he will go back on his skateboard again.

Sunday evening our synagogue had its annual benefit via Zoom. I got dressed up for the event. I guess I was feeling a bit sentimental so I wore an Esther Zeitz embroidered scarf which was a gift from a friend. This scarf was made in Israel in the 1940s.  It's always a little hard to wear these scarves because they are so small.  Today, we tend to wear our scarves much longer.

I solved the short scarf problem by pinning it with a 1930's pin I had given my mother for her last birthday.  My mother's Hebrew name was Zipporah Tzivia,  Zipporah means a bird and Tzivia means a deer. My mother owned pins with birds and pins with deers.  I don't know if my mother ever wore the pin. After she died it was in her jewelry chest in the box in which I gave it to her and with the note, I had written to accompany the gift. 

I keep thinking about what we do to keep our bodies and our spirits going during this long period of social isolation. Every day the three of us work on the Wall Street Journal crossword puzzle.

 There are days when one of us will complete the puzzle. More often the puzzle remains on the kitchen table and over the course of the day we each fill in a bit more until the puzzle is completed.  

There are TV shows that some of us watch alone or all together or in pairs. We clean the house or take on a bigger task that has been neglected for a while. There is always laundry to do, groceries to order, meals to cook, and bread that needs to get baked.  We each of us have Zoom sessions with friends and funerals to attend and friends and relatives to touch base with by phone. Each of us has projects that we are working on.

These days I welcome slow tedious handwork. Normally, I avoid it.

Despite it feeling like Shabbat was only yesterday, it was time to make challot again.

When I began to get ready to cook the chicken I realized that breaded chicken always feels like a party.

I used cornmeal with lots of spices for the breading.

I went to the pushcart fruit and vegetable guy near 96th Street so I wouldn't have to go inside a store.  the advantage of buying my vegetables on the street is that it feels safer than going into a store. The disadvantage is that he has a small selection of wares.  i bought what would make my household not miserable.

I made roasted eggplant and peppers in a peanut butter sauce (think cold sesame noodles but made without sesame oil because both my son and I are allergic to sesame). 

I also made another big jar of gazpacho because I crave it all summer. 

We have been on lockdown/social isolation since March. The goalposts keep getting shifted for the end of this time of isolation.  This has been a week of rearranging the furniture in my brain so I persevere, so I can stay the course. 

Shabbat Shalom!