sarah in nyc

 My friends who live just to the north of us tell me that they woke up to a dusting of snow. We ate truly in the thick of autumn. The scaffolding and netting outside our windows have changed our views. We can pretend for the duration that instead of living in a more than century old dowager of a building, instead, we are living in a piece of Avante Garde architecture. The cold weather makes orange starchy vegetables especially appealing. I boiled a few giant sweet potatoes in heavily spiced water. I then mashed the sweet potatoes with a big spoon and picked put the skins. I added more spices(cinnamon, coriander ginger, and black pepper) and added a couple of teaspoons of chopped etrog jam, a glug of spiced rum, and a couple of eggs, and baked the whole thing in the oven.  The protein portion of Shabbat dinner is  meatballs that were made with lots of pulverized dried mushrooms. Mushrooms make the meat taste meatier. There were also spices involved. Until I taste the meatb...

Tuesday, my husband and I went to vote.  Usually, this is not a big deal. Our usual voting place is in the public school two blocks away. Voting in a midterm election is quick to do. During Barak Obama's first election the line to vote went from the door of the school all the way east to Columbus Avenue and then doubled back west to Amsterdam Avenue. I just looked up the distances between the avenues  here  and it is 800 feet. So the line waiting to elect Barak Obama was about 2000 feet. This was before the age of Covid so people were snugged up pretty close together. I say lined up to elect Barak Obama because something over 99% of our election district voted for him. I will let you do the math about how many people that was waiting to vote. New York has been encouraging early voting partially because the early voting stations are relatively Covid safe and also because there were some issues with mail-in ballots in the election that took place earlier this year. Early vo...

Now that it has become cooler I have started pulling out my cashmere sweaters.  I discovered that one of my favorites, a wonderfully deep red cardigan had become dinner for a moth. The hole was distressingly large. I can usually repair a moth hole by making a few discreet stitches from the reverse of the sweater. usually, the repair is invisible or nearly so. This time the mend was far more visible than I would have hoped. I did what ladies have done countless times over the centuries and turned to embroidery to disguise the mend. One spiral over a mend might look a bit like a crude fix. I figured that if I added a few more spirals this might look like not a mend, but rather a charming embellishment. There may be more additions to this sweater over time.

 First a bit of catch up. I normally do a Food Friday post. I wasn't able to because I had a bit extra scheduled into my Friday. So for those of you who expect to see what we ate, here goes... All long Broadway there are fruit push cards every few blocks. During non-pandemic times the pushcarts had a small often quirky selection of produce. The owners usually buy what is left over at the big wholesale produce markets. The gorgeous blackberries might not last until tomorrow but are a great price.  I was always a frequent customer of the Turkish man who ran the cart at Broadway and 96th street. Since the pandemic began, buying from an outdoor vendor has felt like a much safer shopping option than going inside a  crowded supermarket. Clearly, I am not the only person who feels this way. All of the pushcarts in the neighborhood have expanded over the past few months growing beyond the original pushcart. Our Turkish vendor has deeded several stacks of produce cartons to the so...

 Sunday, our cousin and her beloved organized a socially distant engagement party in Central Park. It was the first time since February that we and our children were all together in real life and not just onscreen. I didn't take photos of our family, my cousin and her beloved, her older siblings with their families (including our newborn cousin), and our kids because I was too busy enjoying our time together to take photos. I apologize to the bride's parents for not taking photos because I was just having too much fun. My youngest and I had to leave the celebration early. He has a weekly meeting with friends and I was tying tzitzit with Max and his family via Zoom.  We walked home because I am still not doing public transit. This building seems to have been renovated recently. I am not sure if it was painted or if the decorative elements were re-cast and restored. I don't remember it looking quite so crisp and beautiful in the past.   Clearly, the old fire escapes ha...

 For the food portion of this post, I offer you chicken legs cooked in a marinade of pomegranate molasses and mustard and then topped with pomegranate arils. I may have added other flavors to the marinade but I no longer remember exactly what they were. The fruit and vegetable pushcart a couple of blocks away has become my favorite place to buy produce since the pandemic hit. The selection isn't very broad but I can shop outside. Lately, the pushcart has been selling pomegranates and some have been wonderful. Big fat leeks have been for sale as well. So we have been eating lots of potato leek soup.  Today I decided to make a batch in our slow cooker. At the moment, it just looks like wet salad but hopefully, by the time we sit down to eat dinner, it will be a proper soup. Our challot just went into the oven. I finally figured out that we can make do with smaller challot since there are just three of us at the table. This also means that I only have to bake challah once every t...