Food Friday and other stuff

My parents served exactly the same meal for Shabbat week after week, decade after decade. We ate chicken flavored with Lawry's Salt, either kasha or parley, Friday night we ate a cooked vegetable, and Shabbat lunch we had the same meal but with canned vegetables swapped out for the fresh. While there is some comfort in knowing exactly what you will eat, there is also some tedium in that.

I usually don't cook chicken exactly the same way week after week. Last week's chicken made with a gochujang, molasses, and water paste was hauntingly delicious. I think it was among the best chicken I have ever made. I needed that taste in my mouth again. So I made it again.

This is the "I am ready for my closeup Mr. DeMille." shot of the chicken.

I think that I will make my Thanksgiving turkey with the same flavor mix. You can thank me when you cook your chicken in this mixture.

It is cold and damp and grey out. In other words, soup weather. I know this looks something like industrial waste, but believe me, it is delicious.

It is a package of chicken bones (beautifully packaged in a net bag by the nice people at Riverdale Kosher--and no, I don't get a kickback from them I just like to shop there. ), two packages of chicken wings, parsnips, onions fresh mushrooms, and lots of dried mushrooms. I also filled a tea ball with hot pepper flakes and coriander and tossed that into the pot. There is also a hefty tablespoon of gochujang in the soup. It will give a pleasant buzz to the soup rather than a screaming heat.

A deeply brown meal like this needs a bright side dish.

It is thin-sliced zucchini and peas that are soaking in a honey mustard dressing. I chopped up tons of fresh dill and added it to the zucchini. It smells amazingly fresh.

The same way that Americans speak louder and louder at someone who doesn't speak English hoping that the volume will somehow translate the words. I will post more pictures of this salad so you will be able to smell how incredible this is.

I have never been to Scandanavia but as I took a whiff I thought, "Oh, this smells Norwegian!". I could be completely wrong about the geographic origins of this dish but I look forward to eating it later tonight.

I often confuse my husband by changing topics with no warning. So I am now telling you that I am changing the topic.

Nineteenth-century novels often have the lady of the house busying herself in the mornings with her correspondence. I think of those women sitting at their writing tables with their ink and pens and elegant writing paper during these pandemic times.

These days a chunk of my mornings is taken up with correspondence, not with ink and dip pen but by email. One friend had surgery. I sent her a quick email to be sure she is OK. How is my friend whose father is now in the hospital with Covid? How is my friend who looked really sad during our last zoom call? How is my friend who is on the front lines faring?

It feels very old-fashioned to be doing this. Email and texting make fast work of this old fashioned task. While we are physically distanced from one another this old-timey task seems even more important.

And now another topic yet again.

You are more than welcome to join a book-talk next week about this book.

Painted Pomegranates and Needlepoint Rabbis How Jews Craft Resilience and Create Community By Jodi Eichler-Levine

It is a lovely book (even if I were not mentioned in it).

The Jewish Studies Program at Penn State invites you to a

BOOK TALK AND DISCUSSION: Painted Pomegranates and Needlepoint Rabbis How Jews Craft Resilience and Create Community/ Jodi Eichler-Levine

Exploring a contemporary Judaism rich with the textures of family, memory, and fellowship, Jodi Eichler-Levine takes readers inside a flourishing American Jewish crafting movement. As she traveled across the country to homes, craft conventions, synagogue knitting circles, and craftivist actions, she joined in the making, asked questions, and contemplated her own family stories. Jewish Americans, many of them women, are creating ritual challah covers and prayer shawls, ink, clay, or wood pieces, and other articles for family, friends, or Jewish charities. But they are doing much more: armed with perhaps only a needle and thread, they are reckoning with Jewish identity in a fragile and dangerous world.

Click on the link below to register.

Book Talk

I plan to attend. Hope to see some of you there.

Shabbat Shalom!

מְחַיֵּה הַמֵּתִים

וְנֶאֱמָן אַתָּה לְהַחֲיוֹת מֵתִים: בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְהֹוָה מְחַיֵּה הַמֵּתִים You are faithful to restore the dead to life. Blessed are You, Adonoy, Resurrector of the dead. That particular line is recited at every single prayer service every day three times a day, unless you use a Reform or Reconstructionist prayer book . In those liturgies instead of praising God for resurrecting the dead God is praised for giving life to all. I am enough of a modern woman, a modern thinker, to not actually believe in the actual resurrection of the dead. I don't actually expect all of the residents of the Workmen's Circle section of Mount Hebron cemetery in Queens to get up and get back to work at their sewing machines. I don't expect the young children buried here or the babies buried here to one day get up and frolic. Yet, every single time I get up to lead services I say those words about the reanimating of the dead with every fiber of my being. Yesterday, I e...

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...

sarah in nyc

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