At long last...my to do list is done!!!

This morning Arianna came over to tie her tzitzit.

I like to have my clients tie tzitzit in the manner of Rabbeinu Tam.

this image comes from https://www.tekhelet.com/tekhelet-tying-tools/tying-tzitzit/

Lots of rabbis put time and effort into variously lovely and meaningful methods of tying tzitzit. I use the tying method on the very left. I like the spiraling ridge that goes around the tzitzit.

Many kids of a certain age know this particular knot from making friendship bracelets. It is known in the of friendship bracelet making universe as Chinese staircase. Yes, the use of the word Chinese to indicate something that is not usual isn't really polite but i knew that if I used the term it was a short-hand way for Arianna to know exactly what I expected her to do.

Not surprisingly, Arianna knew exactly what i was talking about and she was an expert practitioner.

Arianna tied the first corner with one strand of her grandfather's tzitzit that I had dyed blue a long time ago. Yes, I dyed it the color of techelet. I was so touched that these bits of the tallit worn by the grandfather who had died years before Arianna was born meant so much to her.

Arianna's nimble fingers meant that the task was quickly done.

Tomorrow some of you will be seeing Arianna wearing her tallit at her synagogue at her bat-mitzvah.

This piece has ended a busy six months of full out work for the past six months. Arianna and her parents left, and I spent a chunk of the day "lying in state" as my dear friend S likes to put it.

I did get some things done despite mostly being horizontal.

I finally put the two egg-whites that have been sitting in my fridge for a couple of weeks to good use.

They egg-whites are now almond cookies. Since you asked of course I didn't follow a recipe. I will, however, tell you what I did. You can ask a ten year old who can use a hand mixer to make a batch of these for you.

You beat the egg-whites in a big bowl. Add a bit of salt to the egg-whites to give the foam a bit of stability. I could have used a bit of the ancient jar of cream of tartar, but the salt was handier. After the mixture was beaten until it was white i added a 1/4 cup of sugar per egg-white. I had two egg-whites so that was half a cup. I beat the mixture until it no longer looked grainy. Then I pulled out the bag of almond flour that I had purchased for Passover out of the fridge. I added almond flour and then continued mixing by hand. I added the almond meal until it looked thick. It was probably something less than two cups. I then added vanilla. If I had some orange flower water I would have added that. I guess you could add almond extract or lemon peel or orange peel. The vanilla made the mixture too wet so I added a bit more almond flour.

Using two tea spoons I portioned out the cookies on a parchment paper line baking tray. I added a whole almond to the center of each cookie I baked until they were slightly browned at 325. They are crisp and light. My husband who tends not to clamor for sweets has already eaten two. If I had baked for less time or at a lower temp or added less almond flour or more these cookies would have had a different but also delightful texture.

I had forgotten to add one of the yucca roots to the tzimmis so I turned it ( with the help of my air fryer) into fried yucca.

You have to boil the yucca before doing anything else to it.

The yucca feels much starchier than a potato. I flavored the yucca with smoked paprika and cayenne. I added a drizzle of cider vinegar to balance the flavor.

I also cooked eggplant in the air fryer with zaatar.

Our protein is the other half of the chicken I had cooked last week with cherries.

My cousin Eunice sent me this charming and slightly daffy video of King Charles III greeting Jewish supporters.

You will have to forgive me...another royal tablescape.

Shabbat Shalom!

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...

A Passover loss

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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