sarah in nyc

 First a review of last week's Shabbat dinner-- also known as FleishFest. It was delicious and festive.  I admit that I made an insane amount of meat. Despite sending all of my kids home with meat there were several days this week when my husband and I ate meat for both lunch and dinner to make a dent in the leftovers. We still have a bag of frozen pigs-in-blankets in the freezer if you have a craving for some--they are yours. This has been a week of life cycle events. I attended (virtually) the wedding of a cousin in Israel. There is something so profound about seeing faces of people I love on people a generation or two or three younger. We virtually attended the shiva of the father of a synagogue friend and last night and this morning I attended funeral services for the father of one of our doormen. Mass this morning was in this   beautiful church that manages to make you feel both enveloped as well as giving you the sense of the infinite at the same time. The core...

 Tonight is a big night at our house. We are celebrating the birthday of our youngest and our older son returns from Arizona for the weekend. All six of us will be around the table. There was a request for...meat-- fleish. It has been so long since we were all together. There is something so truly festive about planning and cooking and serving this meal of many meats. I made beef with a spiced coffee rub. I still need to slice it up and make a sauce to cover the meat and keep it from drying out while it warms up for Shabbat. My youngest requested spicy chicken wings. The wings are covered with a mix of Korean gochujang, maple syrup, vinegar, and coffee. I would have preferred to use molasses but I used up the last of our jar and Passover is soon...so the maple syrup will have to do. I love the mix of Korean, New England, and Southern flavors all in one dish. Unlike my usual Shabbat dinner, there are some purchased delicacies including beef kreplach and an insane amount of pastrami....

 If you had asked me last week or even yesterday if I would be making hamentaschen for Purim I would have told you that I would not.There are just the two of us at home.  While we are going to services tonight we participated in the communal Mishloach Manot, so of course, it wasn't necessary.  But I woke up this morning like a woman possessed.  This recipe has been on the front of my fridge since before the pandemic. I believe that I did make this recipe for yeast dough hamentaschen. It may have come from my schoolmate Rena Gopin's mother---but then again perhaps not. I don't know if it has been the parade of photographs of gross triangular-filled pastries that are NOT hamentaschen, covered with rainbow sprinkles, filled with Nutella, or speculoos or chocolate hummus---but I woke up this morning like a woman possessed, determined to make hamentaschen. So I followed the recipe above making almost no substitutions. it is a lovely, lovely dough. I made a poppy and fruit...

 This Shabbat is something of a placeholder. Sunday is my mother's Yahrzeit. Next Shabbat will be one of multiple celebrations, that of a visit by our older son and the birthday of our younger son. So a simple meal is in order this week. Once again, I made red chicken, chicken covered in red spices. For those of you who can't decode the mix of powders, it is a mix of smoked paprika, hot paprika, cayenne pepper, sumac, and black pepper.  this particular spice mixture always reminds my husband of the rotisserie chicken his mother used to pick up at a local kosher store in Queens. After a while, my mother-in-law stopped cooking chicken and served only the rotisserie chicken. For my husband chicken spiced this way sparks all of the warm fuzzy feelings, other people (like me) have for home-cooked foods of their childhood. I will be blanching a head of broccoli and our carb will be provided by the stuffed challot I pulled out of the freezer. I have also been adding another layer of ...

 Earlier this year I read an article that showed up on my newsfeed about how to be a successful artist. The article stated that in order to be successful you need to come up with a recognizable style and then just stick to it--no matter what. After thinking about that for about a minute I realized that the article was talking about financial success rather than an artistic success. When I make a piece I worry a whole lot more about the piece being a successful one rather than my bottom line. If I only used one technique only made tallitot or challah covers or Torah Mantles in one particular style I might be more financially successful but my work would be boring, and I would be bored by the process of making it. When I had last posted about Benjy's Torah mantle I had just finished adding in the color with the oil paint sticks. As I types that last sentence I wasn't sure which verb to use. I use a paintbrush to take color from the surface oil paint stick and then paint it on the...

One day this week a bunch of us went to Yocheved's house to help empty the many bookshelves. Our own bookshelves are overflowing so I actually had to be particular about what I took.  One of the books that I took was this exhibition catalog. I was actually going to leave it behind but I flipped through the book and found this photo These garments are called brust tichels. Brust is clearly breast, and those of us who have grown up at the edges of the Orthodox universe know that tickhels or hankerchiefs  are what the headscarves that cover the heads of Orthodox women are often called. Until modern times, most women throughout Europe wore something like this under their clothes, it was their base layer, a simple  garment, that was simply cut. Often there was a deep slit in the front of this garment which made breastfeeding easy. In eastern Europe, those chemises were often embroidered and worn as blouses. Looking at the photos of the brusttichels I realized that they solve a...