Medieval money and preparing for Shabbat

Our son had suggested that we go on a museum outing together. We ended up going to the Morgan Library to see Medieval Money, Merchants and Morality My husband had spent much of his adult life doing public relations in the financial world. he was also a coin collector in his youth. The Morgan library is beautiful even if the exhibit is a dud.

When a museum puts on an exhibit the curators are usually trying to tell a particular story through the art and artifacts shown. There are times that as a viewer one can actively disagree with the particular story being told by an exhibit.  On this visit i actually found myself not in disagreement with the curators but finding myself drawn to a completely different story as told by the artifacts and art works.  In 2024 the universes of textiles and money seem kind of distant but in medieval times the two universes had quite a bit of overlap.

The first vitrine showed this...

Fourteens century coins from the Greek hinterlands. The coins were as thin as tinfoil. They were thinner than the pretend money my friends and I used to make out of  Chanukah gelt wrappers. These  coins made me think about all the cultures that used coins to decorate garments---particularly the wedding garments of women. you could easily see sewing these coins to a garment just as we use sequins today.

Here is a set of coins embedded into playing cards.

 

Here is another set of coins embedded into a book.

 

One thing that really struck me visiting the churches of Italy and France is how Christian religious art so often plays with  what exists within the frame of the painting and what exists in the space of the viewer. The wooden frame of this image is architectural and leave open the question if you are looking at the painting or are you part of the scene itself.

The halos are  created over a tooled gesso base the are sculprural and catch the light.

The illustrative border below is pasted in around the text.

I first learned about the history of the reformation in my 8th grade Hebrew class. We learned about martin Luther and how he railed against Indulgences, or as we learned in Hebrew Indulgensiot--they way to pay your way out of your sins. This is an indulgence.

 

Each of these fringes held the seal of a priest who approved of the mitigation of sin. Both the knotted fringe and how a seal on a fringe indicated an agreement reminded me of tzitzit.

The Christian relationship with Gold was ambivalent at the very least... It is both so terrible and so deeply attractive.

The exhibit is a small one...but worth the trip...and it case you didn't feel like you got your full money's worth you can just wander to some of the other spaces in the museum.

Padded silk brocade walls are edged in silk ribbon to hide an inevitable messy join

Today is Friday... a cooking day.

Around Thanksgiving my Facebook feed was filled with  stories about Bells Seasoning.

It was produced for many decades a town away from where I grew up. My father adored Bell's and used it liberally in his chicken soup.  Inspired by all of the articles about it's history I bought a box after Thanksgiving. I don't know if  I ever purchased a box of Bell's before. But as soon as I opened the box and took a whiff I was back in my childhood home. I asked my husband to take a whiff. It did not create the same effect in him. 

 The pull of the scent of Bell's was strong so I used some in my last batch of  beef stew. I added a pinch to butternut squash soup. Just as Zaatar evokes the Middle East, Bell's evokes New England. 

Today, enhanced with some black pepper and some cayenne

it flavored out chicken.

The house smelled incredible while the chicken cooked.

Our fridge and freezer has been cluttered with bits of left over desserts, half a chocolate babka that a guest brought us two weeks ago, a quarter of a container of chocolate sorbet , a slice of ancient pie....I decided to use up desserty flotsam in the fridge and turn them into a coherent dessert that one can serve to company.

The fridge flotsam is now a baked chocolate custard.

I have been setting up loose bread doughs in the evenings and setting it covered into the bottom shelf of the fridge. I pull the dough bowl out of the fridge at breakfast time and add more flour to the bowl during the day. I bake the loaf in time for dinner. It feels like a really lazy and easy  way to make bread.

The result is lightly soured and really lovely. i was feeling really lazy last night and didn't do anything fancy with the shaping.

A thin slice covered with goat cheese and grated carrot was my excellent lunch today.

Time marches on and it was another challah baking week.