The first glimmerings of Passover prep

Like every other Jewish person on the planet I know that because Purim has just passed that Passover is looming over the horizon. I have done one of my annual getting ready to start Passover work tasks.

I took down our previous vintage tablecloth kitchen curtain assemblage and put together a new one.

Out new curtain is made up of a cloth I had received from the collection of my friend Alix's late mother. It's Central European styled embroidery done on a jacquard woven linen cloth. It is counted embroidery that was likely done on a roughly woven fabric that was basted to the jacquard woven cloth. You can't do counted stitchery on jacquard woven material. It is a little hard for me to date this cloth. The design is very old fashioned. I am not sure about the dating of the base fabric.

When i first received this piece I had thought that it might have been unfinished. There is no embroidery at all in the top 1/4 of the piece. I now wonder if it was actually designed to be a kitchen cabinet curtain-- made to cover shelves. Either way it will now spend the next many months as my kitchen curtain.

The valance is made out of hand woven placemats that were a gift to my mother. My mother loved them and used them sparingly.

Our kitchen was pale pink until the mid 1970s.

My mother loved this contemporary take on pink. If you were a special guest for tea or a dairy meal you might have used these placemats.

So, my kitchen window knows that Passover is coming, how about the rest of my kitchen???

Well, I have to bring cookies, lots of them, to three different events between now

and March 25.

Don't ask me about the wisdom of taking on these obligations right now.

I have, after a break of about thirty years, fallen in love with the concept of refrigerator cookies. Of course I am not talking about the stuff you buy in the supermarket. I have mixed up several batches of the basic refrigerator cookie dough from Joy of Cooking and flavored them to my liking. There was at least one batch of lemon cardamom, another of lemon rosemary. I no longer remember what I added to the logs of chocolate dough.

What I like is that I can play with the shaping and the decorating . There are a few batches of sandwich cookies. I had made a chocolate custard for that. Some of the cookies are filled with jam I have both dark and while chocolate foe decoration and flavor.

When I have the time and inclination I roll out a tray or two.

I think that one of the reasons that my refrigerator cookies of the distant past were failures is that I didn't own a mixer in those days. I think that in the future I may just keep a roll or two of frozen cookie dough in my freezer for those times when you just need to have a plate of freshly made cookies to serve to guests.

Baking in these last weeks before Passover is not the only thing on my mind. I have to do my taxes.

I also have a tallit to complete so it can arrive to Israel before Passover.

The atara is ready to sew on.

I made a bias binding to cover the raw edges. I sewed it onto the tallit yesterday.

I have to decide if it pulls too much focus for the tallit or not.

The fabric on the straight reads as much more blue. On the bias the red is louder than I had anticipated.

I am happy to hear your opinions on this. I will also send photos to my client and see how she weighs in on the border.

מְחַיֵּה הַמֵּתִים

וְנֶאֱמָן אַתָּה לְהַחֲיוֹת מֵתִים: בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְהֹוָה מְחַיֵּה הַמֵּתִים You are faithful to restore the dead to life. Blessed are You, Adonoy, Resurrector of the dead. That particular line is recited at every single prayer service every day three times a day, unless you use a Reform or Reconstructionist prayer book . In those liturgies instead of praising God for resurrecting the dead God is praised for giving life to all. I am enough of a modern woman, a modern thinker, to not actually believe in the actual resurrection of the dead. I don't actually expect all of the residents of the Workmen's Circle section of Mount Hebron cemetery in Queens to get up and get back to work at their sewing machines. I don't expect the young children buried here or the babies buried here to one day get up and frolic. Yet, every single time I get up to lead services I say those words about the reanimating of the dead with every fiber of my being. Yesterday, I e...

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...

sarah in nyc

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