Two topics that have no place being in the same post

Topic 1

A couple of days ago our daughter sent us a link to this article in Thrillist about how supermarket tourism is taking off as a thing. Our kids often joke about how we as a family often accidentally end up ahead of trends.

You know how thrift shopping is now a thing? I started doing that in college. Repurposing clothing? I can't even remember when I started. Wearing vintage??? I have been wearing hand me downs since I was born.

My sister got my started on za'atar maybe thirty years ago. My daughter brought us to H Mart when we randomly picked up a tub of gochujang and we became obsessed at least five years ago. Now it is the hottest thing.

This week's weekend section of the Wall Street Journal had an article about how now the young cool guys are wearing their socks pulled up high...just as my husband has been doing since forever. The short sock trend has passed him by, so here he is, being accidentally cool.

All of this is my lead in to mention a few not made in America sodas that are worth trying.You may end up being ahead of the trends...you never know.

The Jarritos tamarind soda is both tart and slightly sweet. It is yummy on it's own or mixed with vodka or gin. It's light and refreshing---

Russian Kvass soda is definitely an acquired taste. It tastes like rye bread that you drink. It is weirdly refreshing

The first time I drank it it felt like a mistake in the matrix. My husband keeps buying it and I must confess that it has grown on me. Kvass is vaguely similar to beer. I hate beer but I do like the kvass.

Tarragon soda

which looks like floor cleaner but tastes pleasantly odd has been part of family gatherings for the past nearly fifteen years.

The pear soda has the fact that it is pink going for it, but the flavor isn't very interesting.

We have gotten much more adventurous in our Russian soda purchases.During our last visit to Netcost we decided to try out pine soda---because why not?

I was expecting something that tasted like Pine-Sol. That would have been great just for the experience. Instead, this soda tastes almost exactly like---Coke but with a piney aftertaste. I highly recommend it. I assume that it is even better with booze.

So things brings me to ...

Topic 2

Some people have terrible teeth. I have terrible feet. I have discovered after many years of having to discard shoes that were comfortable in the shoe store but terrible once I got them home that cowboy boots are consistently comfortable on my terrible feet.

I bought my first pair of cowboy boots back in college. About thirty five years ago a shoe store moved into my building. At some point they were getting rid of their stock of cowboy boots and were selling them at 75% off. I discovered that men's boots actually fit my fat feet better than women's and my life has changed for the better. I bought two pairs of boots during that 75% off sale and still wear them both. One is a plain black pair of Tony Lama's.The other is a pair of Justin's where the foot part was a dark green lizard skin.

Both pairs have been repaired umpteen times. The lizard skin is a bit fragile and has begun falling apart especially near the sides of the balls of my feet. My shoe repair guy does wonders for heels and soles but hadn't done such a great job repairing the shoe tops. The Justins looked ragged but they are just so comfortable.

I decided to take a gamble and do something about the ragged looking boots. I watched a video on Youtube on how to do the repair and bought some barge glue which is like a much stronger version of rubber cement.

I had some leather that I had bought years ago for reasons that I no longer remember. ( Why does anyone need a skin of bronze dyed cowhide anyway?) The tools I needed were simple, scissors, a scalpel, a pencil for marking the leather and an awl to push the leather into the seam (a knitting needle or a screw driver could be used for that task as well ) and a plastic knife to spread the glue.

The process was so easy that I ended up repairing another pair of boots as well.

Will this repair take these boots another thirty years into the future? I have no idea. But I am happy that i will have more years of use out of these boots.

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...

AnonymousJuly 11, 2024 at 6:08 AM
I tried on a pair of cowboy boots in the spring as I had always been wondering about how comfortable they would be. I was pleasantly surprised! Didn’t buy them asI didn’t need them although I would have loved them (they weren’t that expensive). Maybe someday…..
Sarah JacobsJuly 11, 2024 at 3:47 PM
It all depends on your feet and their issues. Sneakers are usually painful for me. cowboy boots are good. And...I wore one of the patched pairs out today and they held up!!

sarah in nyc

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