יארצייט קטן

 Today both is and isn't my mother's seventh Yahrzeit. My mother died on the tenth day of Adar on a year when it wasn't a leap month. If I remember correctly you get an extra month of Adar three times every nineteen years or something like that frequency to be sure that the holidays stay at their appointed season ( unlike the Islamic calendar where Ramadan can appear during any season of the year).

The year after my mother died it was a leap year with two months of Adar. I asked my rabbi what I should do. he told me to observe the Yahrzeit during Adar II. My sisters' rabbis told them to observe during Adar I . Such a completely Jewish answer! Our synagogue calendar actually sends out the Yahrzeit notice for me for the first Adar and not the second, but I am following what my rabbi told me to do.

I actually find this difference in family observance to be both amusing and oddly appropriate. After all, I am the granddaughter of the woman who used blue towels for meat and red for dairy--and I follow that reversal of what seems to be universal Jewish kitchen towel custom out of the pure perversity of it. 

My father had at least five days that he observed as his birthday. He marked both his English and his Hebrew birthday, the day of his bar mitzvah--also on both calendars as well as his birth Torah portion. There may have been others. I do know that each time we actually tried to mark each and every birthday we had neglected at least one.

My mother only marked her English birthday.

My mother's mother died a few days before Tu B'Shvat, The New Year of the Trees. My mother shifted the marking of her mother's Yahrzeit to Tu B'Shvat and would bring a big fruit-themed kiddush to synagogue along with a big cheese cake to mark the day.

My rabbi had said that I should do something to mark the tenth of Adar on Adar I. Some years I have taken a friend out to the kind of ladylike restaurant my mother loved. This year I am not --it's Friday and all of my outdoor activity this week has left me a little ragged around the edges. So I am writing this post. I actually love that my mother now forever one-ups my father by having not one but two Yahrzeits.

This morning at breakfast while thinking about how to flavor tonight's chicken I suddenly thought of Chicken Mole. I ate it once about thirty-five years ago. I looked up recipes online and discovered that most of the ingredients are not in my pantry. ( But why should that stop me?)

I did read one lovely essay about the sauce that talked about the flavor profile of sweet and bitter spicy ( with several varieties of pepper) and sour. So I began pulling flavors together out of my spice cabinet.

I started out with dark cocoa

I then added some Persian sour grape powder, some sumac, cayenne pepper, hot paprika and I think cinnamon and turmeric.

I massaged the mixture into the chicken.

I then put it into the oven to bake.

As the chicken baked I thought about how my father would sometimes hear about food and then try to recreate it without really knowing what it was, what it looked or even tasted like. Often those experiments were nothing at all like the food that inspired them. Surprisingly, many of those experiments were quite delicious.

When they weren't, my mother would look at us intently across the kitchen table and say carefully "This is so delicious." Our job was to repeat the praise...

I have no idea at all of this not really Mole chicken is any good. It did smell incredible as it cooked.

I feel like this odd culinary experiment has totally brought me back to our yellow kitchen on Presidents Lane. I will let you know after Shabbat if it was any good.

I am now going back to get some work done before Shabbat starts. But I do want to leave you with this video.  My mother's name was Zipporah, bird in Hebrew.  We used to sing this often around the table and of course, this song sung to a bird meant a great deal to my mother. one of my sisters sang it at my mother's funeral.

Shabbat Shalom!