Food Friday and a visit to the thrift

Just a quick post because I need a nap before Shabbat dinner. Today's dinner is all about remote collaboration.

My friend Alan, the excellent challah baker, was sad because his kitchen was too hot while his challot were rising. While I was commiserating with him on Facebook about the frustrations of baking challot in the heat of the summer while cooking other things--I managed to drop a bunch of whole coriander into my challah dough and had to fish it all out and toss it in the trash. I then ground up some dry coriander. You can also see that I glazed my challot unevenly.

I know that the folks eating at our table will not complain. I do know that Alan and I will be grumbling as we taste our challot tonight. We KNOW what has gone wrong. Hopefully, all of my fretting will be internal and I won't be tormenting my guests.

Our older son is joining us. I asked him what sort of chicken he wanted. He suggested the awesome gochujong and Molasses mixture that I had made a while back. Unfortunately, I haven't visited the Korean market for more of that excellent sweet-hot pepper paste. Inspired by my son's wishes I mixed up molasses and hot sauce. I believe I added a couple of other ingredients to the mix but I can't say for sure exactly what I added to the bowl.

I cooked the chicken atop the tiny sweet peppers that were getting exhausted in the fridge. I could pretend that that was a planned addition to our meal, but that would be a lie.

I haven't left the house all week because I have been under the weather. It is my usual sinus crud. I spent most of the week prone on the living room couch. Today I am feeling somewhat better and bought tomatoes from the pushcart guy on the corner of 96th street. They are cooking on a low heat in the oven.

I took advantage of my time out and visited Housingworks, the local thrift. They had this couch with fabulous velour upholstery.

It is one of a pair. I think that if I owned it I would have to own a pair of flowy Quina pajamas with palazzo pants in a pale slate grey and swan through my apartment while I held a glass of Chardonnay in one hand and a Virginia Slims cigarette in the other.

If you are in need of a bridesmaid dress there are many to choose from. All have been donated by the manufacturers. There were more bridesmaid dresses that I didn't photograph.

I am sure that there is a setting where this lamp or its twin would look beautiful

but that place is not my house.

I'm going to wrap this up so I can lie down before Shabbat dinner.

Shabbat Shalom!

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

Search This Blog