The Snowy Shabbat

Like the rest of the Northeast, I woke up to the perfect first snow of the year. It's cold enough for the snow to stay for a little bit and not just melt as soon as it hits the ground.

Snow days are always a source of joy, an unexpected vacation day. But every time it snows I remember

the Sunday mornings when I was teaching Hebrew school and got the call that school was canceled because of snow. I don't think that I yelled as much and danced around the house as much when I used to listen for the radio announcer mangle the name of my school when I was a kid, Mamamodis, Manades, Mamandies. School was out and I got to go back to bed.

I am feeling less ill but my husband sounds like an old dusty mummy speaking after being unwrapped. He is awaiting the probably positive result of his Covid test. Our son across town is also awaiting the results of his Covid test.

I started a slow cooker soup yesterday. My husband and I ate some last night and will have more of it tonight.

We are eating chicken that

I coated with

smoked paprika and cayenne pepper. I added some bottled lemon juice to the pan because we are out of fresh lemons. My husband won't notice the taste difference between fresh and bottled lemon juice. I will but won't say anything.

We will make a salad closer to dinnertime.

After one week of store challah, I knew I couldn't do another, so I baked.

The stuffed challot take up much less room in the freezer than the traditional ones. I divided up a normal-sized batch into eight rather than four challot. The filling is a mix of date paste, cocoa, pomegranate molasses, and rosewater. (and a first for me, I didn't add too much rosewater so the filling doesn't taste like fancy soap.)

Yes, two of the challot are slightly over baked and the other six are slightly underbaked.

Tough noogies! This isn't the week to complain about imperfect challot. As soon as I am done typing this I will go lie down for a nap.

Shabbat Shalom!

Comments

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...

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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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