sarah in nyc

 I am glad that all of you are on the other side of this screen and not here in my dining room with me right now. My husband and i did our big Passover shop at Bingo yesterday. we aren't switching the house over until Sunday. My dining room table is stacked with cartons and boxes of dry Passover goods and my fridge and freezer are simply bursting at the seams. It isn't pretty. I want to share some of the great things we found at bingo yesterday, and I am not even including the kosher brisket at 6.99/lb. One of the tasks one often needs to do is to kasher items that one uses during the rest of the year so they are useable for Passover.  I will kasher my parents' sterling flatware and serving pieces. It is lovely to use my parents things on Passover. To kasher metal you need to plunge it into boiling water. At some point during a lull in the cooking I will set a parge pot of water up to boil and then lower silverware  or kiddush cups.in a strainer to the rapidly boiling ...

 First of all we are celebrating the birthday of our youngest tonight. His actual birthday is taking place next week and he will be celebrating with friends but tonight he is joining family. Given that I am switching the house over to Passover mode next Sunday, I am actually pulling the main dish portion of  tonight's celebration out of the freezer. it's delicious food but cooked in the past couple of weeks.  I have one small challah in the freeze but with only one week left after this one for Chametz ( leavened stuff)  I made a second loaf that is braided like a challah but is just a rye bread with added dried cranberries and fennel seeds. This is the last bit of our rye flour from Netcost. Below is a tiny visual tutorial for braiding challah. Four strands always look better than three. Bakeries do a four stranded braid. Always start your braid not from the end, but from the middle. It gives you a prettier braid. The braid below was photographed after the ugly ends ...

 I have been in touch with friends and family in Israel. There have been exchanges of darkly funny memes that are impossible to translate into English and I think that they have kept all of us going. There is much to be said for dark humor during dark times. I baked this bread two days ago. I just learned that bread looks prettier if you score the crust when you form the loaf, and not just before the bread goes into the oven. And in the spirit of honesty, here is a less pretty view of the loaf. I  think I hadn't let rise quite long enough for the second rise. My husband isn't one to spread butter on bread .Lately he has deemed some of my loaved worthy of being embellished with a bit of butter. This loaf is one of those loaves.  I got the upper part of Tim's atara done. The lettering is completed. All of those letters have been couched with heavy gold cord stitched down with blue silk thread. I also couched hand dyed silk embroidery floss to the ends of the atara. Yes, the...