sarah in nyc

 We switched our house back to Chametz-mode last Saturday night, so today is our first post-Pesach challah. It felt wonderful getting back to the really pleasurable job of kneading challah. Today, my Facebook feed was filled with photos of Schlissel challot.  A Schlissel challah is a custom to bake challah in the shape of a key to help open the gates of heaven on the Shabbat after Pesach. Or more properly, it is a Slavic Easter bread tradition to bake a loaf of bread in the shape of St. Peter's key. Just as I don't put a conifer in my house at Chanukah time to say, symbolize the wooden posts installed at the rededication of the Temple I don't bake such an iconographically Christian challah. So sorry folks, no Schlissel challah here.  I made a batch of two stranded challot. I made eight small challot rather than four big ones because it is just the two of us eating. Here is a visual on how to make two stranded challot. Roll out one strand of dough. I had rolled the dough i...

 Normally I am pretty good about posting about works in progress as they are progressing. I had spent so much time unpicking the messy substrate under the embroidered wings that the actual construction of the tallit took place around and between breaks from the mad cooking rush that is Passover. One of the really beautiful things about a woven tallit is how the stripes n the right and wrong sides of the tallit interact with one another when the tallit is worn. That dynamic interplay of stripes is as satisfying as a really lovely chord progression. Years ago when I first began constructing tallitot I used to create the stripes out of hemmed units of fabric that I then sewed together. I got that stripe interaction using that method. My main concern was sturdiness. While those tallitot WERE sturdy, they lacked in flowy drape--because the seams were bulky. Lately, I have been constructing tallitot slightly differently stitching the stripe elements to both the right and the wrong side o...

All parents make choices when they send their children to school. My parents chose to send us to an Orthodox day school that was a bit of a distance from our home. Our father was a Conservative Rabbi. They chose the school because they felt that there, we would get the best, the highest quality Jewish education in Boston. They weren't wrong about the Jewish education, but the experience a child has in school isn't just the book learning but is also about the complex social dynamics that take place in a classroom and in the schoolyard. Most of the kids who went to our school lived in a couple of neighborhoods. I didn't realize until I was an adult how much of my classmates' lives were also made up of the social life that takes place when you go to synagogue together, and hang out with one another on long Shabbat afternoons, or eat meals together. We lived far away. Our religious perspective was just different enough. I went through school feeling always not quite in bala...

 I keep plugging along here. Yesterday afternoon I made a batata kugel. My lovely son-in-law gets hives when he eats potatoes. I spent a long time yesterday in the "tubers from foreign lands' department of my supermarket trying to decide which ones could stand-in for potato in a kugel. I ruled out the one with skin that most people are allergic to and cooks up to a grey slimy mush. Instead I chose Korean batata which is firmer and less sweet than a yam.  I assumed we had a few apples at home that could be grated in along with the batata. I was wrong. But we did have a couple of carrots. I added some chopped-up dates and Thanksgiving-ey spices along with a whole bunch of eggs. The result is mildly sweet. I might come up with something to top the kugel while it warms up and add more flavor. I also cooked two roasts. They will be sliced and sauced later. Most of the main dish elements of Seder are done and it was time to turn to dessert making.  I had been planning to make a...

 Despite living here in New York since 1982, it never ceases to amaze me that when we celebrate  חג האביב, the spring festival of Passover it is actually springtime. Thanks to my youngest who put in some time on Friday and to my daughter and son-in-law who did the big labor of switching the house with me, our house is now officially Kosher for Passover. I am grateful for my son -in law's excellent spacial skills because a great deal of the great switch-er-oo involved figuring out how to pack a great deal of stuff into small spaces. Right after they left, my husband ran out to get more of the root vegetables we needed for the great soup-making. I had something less than 15 lbs of chicken bones and carrots, parsnips, onions a fat celery root and a turnip and set the soup to simmer away overnight. I also put up eggs to boil so that they could sit in a beet brine and we could have beautiful beet eggs for our seder plates. The soup simmered away and then I had the big job of s...