Food Friday and a whole bunch of blog left overs

Tonight's dinner is the following:

Chicken cooked with the dregs of the gochujang container, molasses and some yellow hot sauce from Barbados.

I am also serving vegetables that looked like this a few minutes ago.

The vegetables are now cooking in the oven at 375 with Meyer lemon, olive oil, and black pepper. the magic ingredient actually in both the chicken and the vegetables is evaporation. Slightly charred each is elevated to wonderful.

Last week I baked a batch of challah. Taking ( and burning ) the little bit of dough is one area where it is the husband's mitzvah to be annoying.

According to a book my husband bought me last year about the mitzvah of taking challah it is the job of the wife to take the challah and the job of the husband to remind his wife. So each time I now bake challah I bug my husband to bug me. I think if we were actually serious about this it would be a moment of actual annoyance. It has evolved into one of the many nonsense riffs we as a couple have developed over the years.

One unanticipated side effect of making the stuffed challot

Is how they are space savers in the freezer. I was able to stack six challot in my freezer last week.

Earlier in the week I found stack of these saucers and matching teacups at the thrift store.

I have spent enough time around my fine china-loving parents to suspect that these dishes (regardless of if they are exactly my taste or not) are probably a quality item. A quick look on the back

showed me that my hunch was right. A whole bunch of internet searching revealed that they were made by Cauldon a maker of fine china.No, I didn't buy the cups and saucers but I did have fun looking at all of the pretty patterns. Before my easy ability of taking photos of things that catch my eye I probably would have NEEDED to buy a cup and saucer. Now, just the photo is enough.

I have been tackling some stuff from my tu-it pile...as in eventually,
I will get to it pile.

I had cut out these masks and done the first couple of stages of sewing but had never finished them off. Masks worn often and washed frequently eventually get too thin to keep out all of the bad stuff. I am glad to have a new batch of masks.

Not photographed is a placemat that was cut to size and serged but without a binding. The other placemats were completed a few years ago but some small household crisi that I no longer remember caused the last one to go unfinished. It now has a binding and joins the other placemats in the drawer in the kitchen.

Last Sunday we went to visit our son in his new apartment, around the corner from his old apartment.

We took the subway there. It isn't easy taking photos when the train is moving and the train windows are dirty and the bridge supports keep blocking the view.

He lives near the Parkside station. I loved the mosaics in the train station.

Just outside the station, we saw a relic from an earlier time.

An essential from the past is now completely useless.

We helped our son do a bit of apartment set-up and took him out to eat because that is what parents are for.

We went for a dark walk in Prospect Park.

The boathouse is magical in the dark.

Here is the interior.

After our walk we headed home.

I hope you all have a restful Shabbat. It is time to take the vegetables out of the oven and set the rest of dinner to warm.

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

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