Small Projects and Food Friday

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 how I have shown students the seemingly illogical steps that when followed leave you with a not bad looking corner. I thought about how easy it is to show someone how to manipulate fabric and how difficult it is to translate those simple moves into words.

I learned nearly everything I do in the universe of sewing by reading books over and over again. There used to always be several sewing skills that were slowly being learned by reading how to do them in a wide variety of books written over about a century. Eventually one of those sets of directions opened my understanding of the seemingly impossible.

As I completed the cloth I realized that I probably taught myself to sew in the hardest possible way. My inefficient way of learning does have a real silver lining though. I have learned that there are probably a dozen different ways to complete any task. When I teach someone a sewing skill if one method doesn't work I can pull out three or four others that will be easier for my student.

Here is my cloth ready for Shabbat.

I staged this photo andI only set my place so far. The other places will be set before we sit down to eat.

What are we eating you ask???

This was a challah baking week so we will have two of these challot. I didn't do anything fancy because I was rushing to be ready for a client meeting. The challot rose a bit too much and sank a bit. It was just so hot. That's how it goes with summertime challot.

We are eating chicken wings. The sauce I cooked them in is made with the following:

Chopped candied citrus peels

Mustard

lime and Tabasco sauce

Mix. I know this looks repulsive. Just put it on the chicken. Move the chicken around in the pad during cooking so all the surfaces get brown and crispy.

The end result will be delicious.

I made gazpacho and also roasted okra with zucchini slices and smashed ripe tomatoes and spices ( I can't swear top what I used, I just know that spices were involved). Smashing the tomatoes was fun. The tomatoes were very ripe. I just squished them in my hands. It felt like the sort of thing a mother would scold a child for doing. I ought to remember to do this the next time I cook with a child.

I think we have entered the phase of the pandemic where the return to regular life feels like yearning for the Messiah to come or like hoping that the Red Sox would win the World Series someday.

Shabbat Shalom!

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...

The light themed tallit has been shipped!!!

I had begun speaking to Sarah about making her a tallit in the middle of August. It took a few weeks to nail down the design. For Sarah it would have been ideal if the tallit were completed in time for her to wear it on Rosh HaShanah., the beginning of her year as senior rabbi of her congregation. For me, in an ideal world, given the realities of preparing for the High Holidays I would have finished this tallit in the weeks after Sukkot. So we compromised and I shipped off the tallit last night. I would have prefered to have more time but I got the job done in time. This tallit was made to mark Sarah's rise to the position of senior rabbi but it was also a reaction to this year of darkness. She chose a selection of verses about light to be part of her tallit. 1) אֵל נוֹרָא עֲלִילָה God of awesome deeds ( from a yom kippur Liturgical poem) 2) אוֹר חָדָשׁ עַל־צִיּוֹן תָּאִיר May You shine a new light on Zion ( from the liturgy) 3) יָאֵר יְהֹ...

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

Search This Blog