sarah in nyc

 This is the season of tomatoes, zucchini, and corn. My husband and I have been eating gazpacho and focaccia with tomatoes, and zucchini several times a week. My son has passed on the gazpacho but has been living on the focaccia.  The crust is essentially a vegetable delivery system.  We are not eating either gazpacho or focaccia for Shabbat dinner this week. We are eating meatballs that are hot, smokey and slightly sweet. Once again I grilled corn on our stove-top. The charring is the only flavor added to the corn. It's all it needs. I still feel like a genius for figuring out how to cook corn this way. Our son ate three ears last Friday night. In a month or so it will be hard to find new sweet corn, so we may as well eat it while it is in season. We had a bag of onions in the fridge. After all of the reports of salmonella in onions, I was ready to throw them out.  My husband detests onions, but my husband hates the idea of wasting anything even more than he hates o...

  Today is my father's twelfth yahrzeit. In honor of the day, I am posting some photos of my father from the 1940s and 50s. He is completely recognizably himself in these photos. Those of you who only got to know him much later in his life will find much that is familiar here. At Camp Massad With his oldest nephew, Jimmy circa 1952 On the beach in Miami On the banks of the Hudson River With a friend at the Jewish Theological Seminary. This expression is entirely typical. In 1955 my parents took themselves on a trip to Europe and Israel. The next batch of photos is from that trip. Playing at preaching in a Paris chapel Paris by the Kinneret attending this wedding Please note that my father is darker than the Yemenite groom. My father used to tan to dark.

 Some number of years ago, (10? 15? 20?) our friends Debra and David came for a visit. At that point, I was making pillbox-shaped kippot. I had made one using a wide embroidered border from a vintage dress as the side of the pillbox. It was gorgeous but much too wide for most human heads. David has a larger than usual head. If he were a character in a romance novel he would be described as having a leonine head. He fell in love with that kippah and I let it take it home with him. David adored that kippah and has worn it constantly ever since. The kippah was so well-loved that the original embroidery wore away. He had the kippah "slipcovered" with another pretty piece of embroidery. This bit of embroidery is wearing out as well. David asked me to make him another kippah.  I searched through my stash and had selected a few lovely pieces of red and spice colored upholstery fabric that had a similar feel of faded grandeur. I had even cut them to size when I remembered how much Da...

 I had made these mushroom and tomato focaccias yesterday. Two of us had eaten half of one of them for lunch. The big one was intact. Our older son called and said that he was in the neighborhood. My husband suggested a socially distant supper in Riverside Park. I packed up the rest of the focaccia, cut up a watermelon, and packed up dishes and silverware to take with us. Our younger son would join us when he was done with work. We started out supper in the playground where my kids and I had spent a huge amount of time when they were little. As the day turned to dusk, we were asked to leave and the gate to the playground was locked.We walked up to Riverside Drive and saw our youngest ready to join us. We continued our dinner by a bench on Riverside Drive. you can see that our older son who no longer lives with us is more than six feet away. The bugs had come out, and as usual, found my husband delicious. If you look just past the street lamp you will see a large branch downed by la...