Random pretty things and Food Friday

A post mostly about pretty stuff and a small bit about Shabbat dinner.

The other day I came across an old friend in the local thrift store.

In my house, growing up, this can housed Red Rose tea bags.

Each side of the can was decorated with scenes from Israel. The mix of mid-century modern abstraction with the pretty and old-fashioned shape of the can make it very appealing.

Although the graphics were by a "famous Israeli artist" the candy makers failed to credit the famous artist. As a not particularly famous artist, my response is, "Grrr.". I was delighted to see the tin canister but did not purchase it.

The median strip in the middle of Broadway is maintained by a neighborhood group (and the parks department). The tulips are about to go to seed but look so much like the Warhol silkscreens of poppies.

I leaned over the bench to get close-ups of the tulips all while this grandpa and his grandson enjoyed one another's company. The two were so sweet together I asked if I could take their photo. The grandson was a little bit suspicious of me in this photo. I loved how the two of them were just intertwined, the little boy curling into his grandfather and the grandfather curving around the little boy. The two were having the sweetest conversation before I took the photo.

Tonight we are having soup made out of two chicken frames leftover from two different Shabbat dinners and a bunch of vegetables.

Unlike the Passover soup, this isn't a fancy soup.

We are also having meatballs.

A salad will be made after I finish typing. I hope to squeeze in a nap before dinner.

Shabbat Shalom!

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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

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