A Post So All Over the Place I Can't Even Come Up With a Title

 First a quick round-up of tonight's dinner. My husband had gone to Costco and the while usually you can get kosher chicken in a few different cuts, whole, chicken thighs, chicken bottoms, or breasts, the only offering this last visit was drum sticks. 

Any of you who have spent any time hanging out here with me on this blog know that I cook often. I cook chicken most Shabbatot. I tend not to be an anxious cook. A raft of chicken drumsticks had me stumped. Adding to my anxiety is the fact that tonight's guests have never eaten at our table before so I can't even coast on the memory of past excellent meals. I worried back and forth if I should do something crispy and breaded or if I should go for chicken simmered in some sort of sauce.

Part of my anxiety is that while drumsticks were my favorite chicken part when I was a young child, not particularly skilled at knives and forks--drum sticks had a handle and even my fancy mother let me just pick up the drum stick and eat it.  I haven't been a big fan for about fifty years. Serving just drum sticks felt somehow not fancy enough. 

Another thing you need to know about me is that I rarely have dreams. When I do have dreams they are extraordinarily boring. Last night though I did have a dream. I dreamt that I was in a dining room perhaps it was a restaurant or a hotel and my friend Miriam ( who died several weeks ago) was sitting just behind me at the next table. In my dream, I turned to Miriam and said "You know, I really miss cooking with you."

After I woke up I realized that I would have talked out my chicken drum stick worries with Miriam and we would have lobbed cooking possibilities back and forth until we would have settled on something that would have felt festive and not out of the Cooking From the Bottom of the Barrel for my Guests Cookbook.

I told my husband about my dream and then I decided to make a sort of chicken mole...Ok, I am getting into dangerous territory here because I have eaten chicken mole exactly once probably thirty-five years ago. But I mixed up cocoa and black pepper and cayenne and allspice and cinnamon and coated my chicken with it. It did smell yummy while it was cooking.

I didn't sneak a bite so I have no idea how it will actually taste. I am going to hedge my bets and call this mole-inspired chicken.

Another purchase from the Costco adventure was an air fryer. I know, I am probably the last person in America to own one. 

Tonight will be one of many meals we will be eating of crispy vegetables. In tonight's mix are broccoli, eggplant, and zucchini. I drizzled fresh lemon juice over the whole thing.

My husband asked for potatoes, so I made some.

Because we are having actual guests at the table I decided to make a pie.

When my kids were teeny a friend invited us to her house in the Catskills. There were berry bushes around her house. It was a little early in the season and the berries weren't yet plentiful. I had promised to bake a berry pie for our hosts.  I dealt with the paucity of berries by making a pie crust, filling it with vanilla custard, and then topping the hot custard with the raw berries. The heat of the custard barely cooked the bottom of the berries and the tops still looked beautiful and plump. I had stumbled onto a good idea. I decided to make a similar pie today.   I made the custard using coconut milk and tapioca starch. I had read a tip on Food 52 that suggested using sugar to weight a pie crust when baking blind. I tried that tip today. I rate that tip a "meh" but I did use the sugar that weighed down the crust as the sugar in the custard. 

 Although I did make several meals this week mostly what I have been working on this week is Caleb's tallit.  Caleb's bar mitzvah is Parashat Shelach, the Torah portion that talks about the spies entering the land of Israel.  The Biblical character Caleb has his shining moment in this portion.  Another feature of this Torah portion is the pillar of fire by night and cloud by day that lead the Children of Israel in the desert.

After our initial meeting, Caleb sent me this sketch.

Caleb loves anime and you can see the visual reference. The next several photos show how I built up the images of the fire and the cloud. 

I cut a stencil in the shapes of the edges of the fire that Caleb drew.

I used an oil paint stick and added layers of color.

For the clouds, I reference his sketch but didn't follow it as closely.

Finally, I added the black outlines to the flames.

Those of you with sharp eyes will notice that I also made a narrower stripe for the reverse of the tallit.

I needed black Petersham to edge the stripes. For those of you who are not sewing geeks, Petersham looks like grosgrain ( the ribbon with narrow ribs). Most grosgrain these days is made out of polyester. which is both too stiff and too slippy for use in a tallit. Petersham is used mostly in garment construction because it gives strength and is also able to be curved. A nice skirt may have a layer of Petersham in the waistband. I like using it to edge stripes in a tallit because the rayon or cotton used to make it are soft so the tallit drapes nicely. The Petersham is also grippy as opposed to slippy so a big shawl style tallit made with it will stay in place and not cause the tallit to slide off the shoulders. 

I went downtown to Pacific Trims to buy what I needed one roll of 1-inch Petersham and another of narrow Petersham. 

I did not get distracted by all of the glittery things for sale.

I didn't even stop to admire all of the zippers.

This, by the way, isn't even Pacific Trim's full stock of zippers. I neglected to photograph an aisle and a half of additional zippers. 

I purchase only the two rolls of ribbon but I did take the time to help a fledgling stylist (who asked for my help) to make a flower out of red horsehair.

Once I got home, I got to work edging the tallit stripes.

 I also started constructing the tallit so that the stripes "read" on both sides.

Next, I stitch down the wide fire and cloud stripes.

This week for your Shabbat listening pleasure... Each week I send out an invitation to the folks who join us for Shabbat dinner via Zoom. Last Friday I decided to add a recording of Zum Gali Gali to the invitation. I thought I would be sending out something like a Yaffa Yarkoni recording. Instead, I found this. Enjoy!