A Hodge Podge of tasks

Today has been a rush of a variety of tasks.

I made a roast.

This is a shoulder roast. I coated it in a variety of spices and cooked it until it smelled done.

I added boiling water to the pan drippings and then added other goodies ( fresh thyme, dried mushroom and good old Manishewitz wine that is a must for charoset and kind of useless as drinking wine). I carefully scraped up all of the dried up good stuff and turned the mixture into a gravy that will be served with the meat.

We are a bit container shy during Passover and there was a bit too much gravy to fit in the one container we had left , so I boiled red potatoes in water to which I added that last bit of gravy, the dried mushrooms and the thyme stems.

Covid had meant that not very many people visited so I had allowed bits of our couch to get shabby. I had been meaning to replace the cover on the center cushion on our couch for the last long time. I pulled down a few of my upholstery fabrics and made a new cushion cover.

Yes, the cover is two sided

A friend had been napping on the couch please excuse the tangle of blankets. I love how all of the various prints and stripes all play so nicely together. I am grateful that I had seen a beautiful ABC Carpet and Home couch upholstered in several different fabrics at our friend Bonnie's country house. I love that I can replace the upholstery as it gets sad looking. Occasional time commitments of an hour or so keeps my couches from looking too shabby.

I also ironed a stack of linens but took photos only of this new to me tablecloth.

This is a great example of a late 19th -early 20th century home made linen tablecloth. The red embroidery was particularly beloved in Central Europe.

The machine sewn hems are a neither wide and generous nor are they tiny and fine. They are an in between not very elegant width. A length of crochet lace was added to give the cloth a bit more elegance.

These sorts of edgings were crochet by the mile and then added to whatever needed a pretty trim.

The stitching is large and fairly tidy.

This cloth will probably make an appearance during Passover.

Shabbat Shalom!

Comments

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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