The last bit of Santa Barbara

I had hoped to post more while I was away but time just got away from me.

Santa Barbara is really beautiful but we had kind of run out of things to do---or at least it felt that way at the moment. Like many other folks who live in the area with the need to experience something different, we took the relatively short drive to Solvang. Solvang had started out as a Danish settlement but is today a touristy Danish themed town.

On the road to Solvang you drive on the Chumash Highway

which is also known as the San Marcos Pass. As I type this it is now snowing on the Chumash Highway, but when we went it was not.

We did pass

the Chumash Museum and the Chumash Casino. While along the Chumash Highway, Chumash refers to a tribe on native Americans. Those of us who listen to the world with Jewish ears, Chumash is what the first five books of the bible are called.

The ride to Solvang offers up spectacular mountain views.

We stopped at the overlook for several minutes.

We got to Solvang.

It's a pretty silly place.

The last time we were here ---our kids who have the great ability to push a silly joke to its outer limits made being here delightful.

We stopped in a bakery and had coffee and a roll.

The bakery was selling these pastries-- are they proto hamentashen?

I overdosed on the cute pretty quickly and just had to get out of Solvang---so we did and headed back to Santa Barbara.

On a different day we meandered in downtown Santa Barbara.

If I had passed this window display as a child I would have had nightmares for weeks

One public park offers trapeze lessons.

We didn't bother trying the N.Y. Pizza.

We did go into a wonderful antique store on State Street. They have an excellent and really well priced selection of vintage clothing.

This cookie jar stood on my childhood dresser. My sisters will likely point out that our cookie jar was painted differently. They are correct but our cookie jar was created using the same slip mold.

We passed the Cat Mewseum. The balance of goods in the store leaned heavily towards the kitsch rather than the fine art.

In Santa Barbara the variety and the fabulousness of plant life never ceases to amaze.

These blossoms look like muppets

A bit of Google searching let me know that these are Yew Plums. They are edible but we didn't try any.

We are one of the best meals of the trip here.

I strongly suggest eating the fish tacos.

I haven't quite figured out how to either talk about the last leg of our trip or bring this post to an elegant close. It's late and it's time for me to hit the hay so I will just bring this post to a screeching halt.

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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