Hoping for a Peaceful Shabbat

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, cinnamon, and black pepper.

If it tastes anything as delicious as the house smelled while it was cooking we have a good meal ahead of us.

Our vegetable matter is

zucchini, tiny tomatoes, and tiny peppers roasted with olive oil, fresh lemon juice, black pepper, dill and lemon peel. I snitched one slice of zucchini from the pan. it took a great deal of self-control to not consume the entire contents of the pan. I plan to serve the cooked vegetables over romaine lettuce.

We also have a pan of quinoa in the oven. It looks ugly so I didn't photograph it. It will taste good though ( cooked in last week's chicken juice.

It's been a hard week. perhaps a little bit of music will be of comfort. The first is called "Lullaby in the Shelter" and was written in 1967 and is sung by Yaffa Yarkoni.

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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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