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!

מְחַיֵּה הַמֵּתִים

וְנֶאֱמָן אַתָּה לְהַחֲיוֹת מֵתִים: בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְהֹוָה מְחַיֵּה הַמֵּתִים You are faithful to restore the dead to life. Blessed are You, Adonoy, Resurrector of the dead. That particular line is recited at every single prayer service every day three times a day, unless you use a Reform or Reconstructionist prayer book . In those liturgies instead of praising God for resurrecting the dead God is praised for giving life to all. I am enough of a modern woman, a modern thinker, to not actually believe in the actual resurrection of the dead. I don't actually expect all of the residents of the Workmen's Circle section of Mount Hebron cemetery in Queens to get up and get back to work at their sewing machines. I don't expect the young children buried here or the babies buried here to one day get up and frolic. Yet, every single time I get up to lead services I say those words about the reanimating of the dead with every fiber of my being. Yesterday, I e...

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...

Food friday - your grandmother's food processor

My grandmother bought my mother this wooden bowl and a chopping knife, known in Yiddish as a hock-messer, soon after my parents got married. Yes, she also got them a dairy set as well. these wooden bowls and chopping knives were a big part of food prep when I was growing up. meatloaf and meat balls were mixed in this bowl. Chopped liver was made in this bowl as well. Sundays we often made chicken salad for lunch made out of chicken left over from Shabbat chopped with vegetables and mayo. That too, was made in this bowl. When I was in college my parents got their first food processor and the chopping bowls were not used as much. Several years ago, my father asked if i would like the bowls and the hock-messers. I was happy to have them. I like the sheer physicality of chopping up a big bowl of stuff into teeny pieces. While the wooden bowls have stood up well to the years of use, the hock-messers had not. The bladed which were bolted into their handles, wobbled. The blades wouldn't ...

sarah in nyc

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