A blog, mostly about my work making Jewish ritual objects, but with detours into garment making, living in New York City, cooking, and other aspects of domestic life.
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Sometimes you have to shift gears---and Shabbat
When Judith brought me this tallit to mend
I had assumed that the the right way to go about the job was to add patches to cover the worn away bits.
I dyed a couple of lengths of silk to use for the patches.
Unfortunately as I was about to begin patching, I realized that a patch would cause further damage. The weight of the heavier fabric would break the existing fabric. Luckily I have more than one mending trick up my sleeve.
I needed to strengthen the weak parts of the fabric.I put some turquoise tulle behind the worn bits of the tallit and grafted the tulle and the silk together using embroidery thread.
here it is from the front and from the reverse
The stitching is still incomplete and the tulle will be trimmed.
Here is the same process on the other side of the atara.
The embroidery threads on their own are fragile. The tulle on its own is fragile. The silk tallit is fragile from wear but joined together the three weak things are strong. You can create your own d'var torah here. This is an old fashioned technique for the preservation of fragile fabrics. It has been a satisfying task.
Last night I made one of the most delicious things I have made in a long time. I had a bread dough hanging out in the fridge. Part one of the dough became pita that had been eaten. I took the dough out of the fridge. I mushed and stretched the left over dough into a well oiled pan. I topped the dough with Herbes de Provence and fennel seeds and then sliced some asparagus the long way and arranged them over the dough and sprinkled more olive oil over the whole thing.
I am not quite sure of the alchemy that took place but it was crazy delicious.
For tonight I made a pot of chicken soup. The other day I ran into a good friend on Broadway and there are times when life just seems a little bit extra hard. My friend was going through one of those moments. I wrote to her saying that although I can't solve her big issues...perhaps dinner with us would help. Our friend is joining us. Since she needed comfort I made chicken soup and even strained it so it is clear and beautiful.
We are also eating
idiot chicken made with
more Herbes de Provence and lemon juice. This was the first chicken dish each of my kids learned to make. It's always delicious. It tastes like you worked hard but a small child can put it together and feel proud of the results.
Our synagogue is doing a big kiddush tomorrow but community members have been asked to bring desserts. This is what I made.
I'm trying to use up the bag of almond flour that I bought for last Passover. I figured out how to make them soft and chewy, you underbake them. I will be serving these almond cookies for dessert tonight as well.
How did i make them??? Easy peasy.
Almond cookies
4 egg whites
1 cup sugar
pinch of salt
almond flour
whole almonds
Put four egg whites into a large bowl. Add a pinch of salt. beat until the egg whites look foamy. Start to add the sugar bit by bit and continue beating until they are thick and glossy...sort of like shaving cream. Add flavorings. I added grated tangerine rind and vanilla. Then add the almond flour and continue to mix. I think I added three cups it might have been more. I added the almond flour until the dough looked thick like chocolate chip cookie dough. I put the dough out on a parchment paper lined pan using two teaspoons. Top each cookie with a whole almond. Bake at 325 until just golden.
This was my ear worm this morning, now it can be yours. Shabbat Shalom!
I am an idiot. Could you say a little more about how small children and full grown adults make the chicken? It looks like skin on bone in chicken thighs were used, but what else do I need to know?
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...
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...
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 ...
I am an idiot. Could you say a little more about how small children and full grown adults make the chicken? It looks like skin on bone in chicken thighs were used, but what else do I need to know?
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