Skip to main content

A tiny adventure

 Yesterday I had a tiny adventure. I went to the post office to mail a baby gift (and a big sib gift). In normal times this wouldn't count as an adventure of any size, but in pandemic days I am chalking this one upon the adventure side of the spreadsheet.

It was cold and damp. I can choose to have my glasses entirely fog up having me look and feel like Mr. Magoo or I can remove my glasses and hope for the best.  There seems to be a moment when the moisture equalizes and one can wear glasses that are mostly not fogged up. For some reason, the only way this can take place is if you also go into someplace warm while out.


All of this is a long way around way of explaining why I couldn't take any photos during the first part of this tiny adventure because there is no reason to take photos when you can't see anything.

As I walked home from the post office things were so grey that it looked like I was walking through a black and white photograph.


I love the composition. I regret that this is slightly out of focus.



Here I loved the interplay of the tree branches that looked like ironwork and the ironwork made to look vaguely foliate.






Here is a nice example of 1930s brickwork around an entryway.



This sign on Broadway left me puzzled. Is the chicken partially cooked? or are they selling half of a cooked chicken? Either way, I am not going to find out.  It amuses me as much as a long-ago sign outside of a shoe store a few blocks north on Broadway "Three shoes $99". I have spent entirely too much time over the years wondering about who might need three single shoes.


Despite all of my wondering about half roasted chickens and three single shoes, I did bake a loaf of bread. If you add a few tablespoons of cocoa to bread dough it turns into pumpernickel bread.


It was delicious for lunch with warm goat cheese.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

I love hearing from my readers. I moderate comments to weed out bots.It may take a little while for your comment to appear.

Popular posts from this blog

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...
1 comment
Read more

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...
8 comments
Read more

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 ...
2 comments
Read more