Some things that worked and some things that didn't

I work out every day. Those of you who know me from childhood know that the household I grew up in was the opposite of athletic. This is also the opposite of a Thai family mentioned in today's Wall Street Journal that had such high athletic hopes for their children that they named them, Bowling, Baseball and Tennis. Tennis just won a gold medal in taekwondo.

My family's expectations was that I do well in school and athletics was something of no great interest. Anyway, despite my upbringing I work out daily for about ninety minutes. I watch TV to stay on task. Often i watch videos on YouTube.

The other day

this video about making Uzbeki bread showed in on my feed. Of course I don't know Russian or Uzbeki but the idea of baking the bread on the underside of a pot lid with the pot serving as the oven seemed like a great thing to try. Besides, we love the Uzbeki bread we are served in Uzbeki restaurants. It was hot and muggy and we needed bread. I liked the idea of only having to heat up a burner rather than having to turn my oven up to 400 to bake when it was so hot and muggy.

I mixed up a dough. I heated up a pot lid. I put some dough on the center of the hot pot lid, used a fork to puncture the dough in the center and egged the dough to create a shiny crust and put the lid with the dough adhered to it on the hot but empty pot.

This was the result.

I tried to make a second second loaf. I hadn't allowed the lid to sit on the flame long enough before adding the dough, so as I baked it inside the pot the dough fell off of the lid. I attempted to re attach the dough to the pot lid but all that happened is that the bit of dough that touched the bottom of the pot burned.

I then took out a baking sheet and covered it in parchment paper and preheated the oven. I tasted a bit of the broken Uzbeki loaf. UGH! I had forgotten to add salt to the dough. This made the bread extra fluffy and tasteless.

I put the loaves in the oven and then had a mishap with the pan when checking on the progress of the breads. I had to rescue the three loaves from the floor of my oven, leaving enough dough behind to make the kitchen REALLY smoky.

I may have to find another source for baking bread on a pot lid in a language that I can understand a bit better. I may also try it when it isn't quite so hot out.

I did redeem myself the next day by making a tsibbile pletzle, an onion board using a really wet dough--I think that is an Italian bread baking technique. I covered the dough with olive oil, dried onions, black pepper and poppy seeds.

For reasons that I don't understand, my husband who detests onions LOVES tsibbile pletzle. The Jewish bakeries in Boston occasionally sold it. Whenever they did, my father would get all softly sentimental and buy some. We always ate it as we walked to the car because such a treat couldn't wait until we had gotten home. I don't think that I ever ate tsibbile pletzle on a plate and not out of a white waxed bakery bag while walking, until I was an adult.

So despite failing at the stove top Uzbeki bread I did redeem myself with the onion board.

Another item on the success list is this.

My old sewing books would call it a utility slip. I had made a full slip with the rest of this fabric years ago. That full slip died a while ago after lots of long, hard wear. The off cut was a bit uneven and for some silly reason it seemed like a job too difficult for me to tackle. I put on my big girl pants and cut this fabric remnant to size and made myself this perfectly boring half slip. I am wearing it as I type this post. It probably helps that I have a better serger these days. My old one liked to chew up this kind of slippery knit fabric.

Once again I'm not writing about what I am making for Shabbat dinner. I have been under the weather and not feeling like cooking a whole lot. I had made a stew out of leftovers that had been in the freezer and tonight we are having leftovers of the leftover stew.

Shabbat Shalom!

and as we anticipate marking Tisha B'av our national day of mourning..

Hoping that the disasters that threaten to strike us this year are averted.

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...

A Passover loss

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 ...

sarah in nyc

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