sarah in nyc

 We seem to be transitioning from Zoom dinners to having people actually eat at our table. Several of our usual Friday night gang are off enjoying the holiday weekend. Each week, I remember that our buddy Mike can't join us because he is no longer alive. Every Friday I expect his call just before dinner is to start asking me to resend the Zoom link. We won't be getting those calls anymore. Two of our usual gang are joining us in person. I am so happy. Yesterday during a long chat with a friend she mentioned that she felt that her circle of friends has shrunk during the pandemic. I completely understand what she meant. The social restrictions of the pandemic mean that the lovely encounters one usually has with your wider circle of friends are just gone. You can't visit for a few minutes at kiddush over a plate full of food and catch up with the person whose child was in Hebrew School with yours ten years ago or chat with the sweet elementary school kids who used to sit on my...

 UGH! I spent a day and a half putting in time writing a post about how mature pantings in the NYC public housing projects have turned the projects of the most beautiful verdant spots in their neighborhoods. My writing was turgid and unreadable, so I tossed that post. I do want to thank Marc Kolman for writing a paper about how New York City public housing projects interact with the city landscape and how the architecture and the layout of the buildings help to determine safety. He wrote this paper all the way back when we were juniors in college but I have been   thinking about the subject since then because the public housing projects are my neighbors. My feelings about the NYC housing projects have changed over the years. I assume that when the buildings were new the public housing projects may have looked bleak. However, as the spindly trees of the 1950s have grown and the shrubbery has matured it is hard not to love the lush gardens in the projects. When I walked pas...

 With additional work, todd's tallit actually is looking much more like a tallit and less like a random pile of wrinkled linen. There are only two sets of stripes left to sew on. Clearly, there are many other tasks that still need to be done before this is completed but I can see the end product in my mind's eye. Like many of the pieces I work on before I start on the journey I pretty much know where the final destination is. I don't always know the road that will take me there. I was able to sew today because Shabbat starts relatively late. Our chicken tonight is inspired by the flavors of the incredible food I ate at a Uighur fast food place just south of Columbus Circle. Unfortunately, the restaurant closed so you can't eat the amazing pilaf topped with a salmon kabob and a slice of roasted corn (and neither can I). The chicken thighs are cooked on a layer of sliced onions, mandarin oranges, and pear and coated with spices including hawaij, turmeric, ginger, allspice...

 First, a follow-up on the food I had prepared for Shavuot. The sweet cheese filling baked between layers of noodles was really good. It is much, much easier than making individual blintzes. It was so good I had to make another which was topped with a thickened berry sauce.  No, you don't need a fancy pasta machine to make big pan-sized noodles. All you need is a rolling pin and a tea towel. How did I make these noodles? I put three cups of flour in a bowl. I made a dent in the center of the flour and added three eggs and mixed the flour and the eggs with a fork. the mixture was too dry so I added another egg. I then kneaded the mixture for a few minutes until it was smooth. Then I wrapped the mixture in plastic wrap and put it in the fridge. (Noodle dough likes to rest between the initial mixing and the noodle forming parts of its life cycle. Thirty minutes is a minimum but this batch rested overnight) When I was ready to roll out the noodles I cut off a lump of dough roughly...

 Shavuot begins tonight. My challah dough is made with barley to celebrate the barley harvest. I was moderately successful at making barley sheaf-shaped challot and round challot decorated with scored barley designs.  Earlier today I made two big noodles with a sweetish cheese filling in between. It is less work than making actual blintzes. We are also eating salmon as well as salad topped with roasted vegetables. Wishing you a meaningful holiday.

 I have three tallitot all due the same week in June. Two are for a bride and a groom, Todd, and Alejandra. The other is for Ella a bat-mitzvah girl. Ella's tallit is made out of a herringbone woven silk noil that has a beautiful drape. Most of the tallit will be painted blue to look like the sky. The "stripe" sections of the tallit will look like the sky at sunset on one side and sunrise on the other. I had cut the silk to size and rough hemmed it. I was ready to start painting the blue sky. I didn't want the blue dye to bleed into the sunrise and the sunset. sections of the tallit. I came up with a clever way to block the dye. I first pressed in a fold  I then put raw rice on that fold. If any dye migrated the rice would hold back the flow of the dye. The watered-down dyes are applied in thin layers and allowed to dry and set between applications of color. So far two layers of dye have been applied. I have also begun constructing Todd's tallit. These strips need...