Heading into second days---with some non food related work completed

We hosted both Sedarim surrounded by friends and family. We were so sad to find out on the first day of the holiday that my beloved cousin David died in his sleep in Israel after a long period of decline.

Memories of my cousin from my childhood when he was a glamourous grown up and I was a very little girl have been swirling in my head since I heard the news.

Every year I emerge from the cooking Olympics that have kept me in doors to discover that it is actually springtime.

I could have been outside in shirtsleeves today.

Last night I mended three pairs of my son's pants.

Some of these pants have areas that are mostly mending threads and patches. This is the inside of the striped pants and the archeology of the mends is on view.

I liked mending the checkerboard pants with a similar pattern on a smaller scale.

My son's cellphone wears a hole in his front pocket.

I tried to mend the pockets while not narrowing the pocket bag opening too much to make it not useful.

I began work on a scarf for a client.

The salt pulls the dyes and creates a lovely prickled looking pattern. The colors will be lighter and more subtle when the silk dries.

I also started work on a tallit.

Most of the past several days this or variations thereof have been my lunch.

It is the marinade from the beet eggs, with a beet egg or two, a cooked red potato, minced parsley or dill (my daughter brought us bushels) and a tablespoon or two of yogurt. It is a comforting lunch that I could serve to my ancestors and they wouldn't blink an eye. It would just feel so familiar to them.

Enjoy the rest of Pesach.

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...

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...

sarah in nyc

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