Once again--Blog Salad

This wonderful coffee-drinking, newspaper-reading skeleton has been installed in front of a local Georgian coffee shop around the corner from my house. The people who own the coffee shop have been enjoying setting up the skeleton in various amusing poses.

I am between commissions right now (two are beginning any minute) and my draggy cold seems to be thinking about leaving my body (finally!). So, I have been tackling some tasks that have been on my "tuit" list for a while. "Tuit" is a term I have learned from some of my sewing buddies---the things that eventually one will get to it.

Dyeing my sad grey boots red was one of those tasks. The other was tending to my purple cotton sweater.

Years ago, I found a lovely heavy cotton sweater with pretty covered and embroidered buttons in a local thrift store and I thought that it would be perfect for my mother. It was perfect for her and she wore it for a few years until she died. The sweater was made by Evie. a mid-range knitwear company. They make sweaters from wonderful high quality knits and save money on the buttons.

My mother died in 2015 and I inherited her sweater. The buttons soon began to break. I replaced them all with the buttons below.

These brass buttons at one point had a plastic triangle glued into the center. I no longer remember the color of that plastic triangle. After many washes, all of those triangles just fell off.

I don't think that my Evie sweater was expensive when it was new but it is a great weight, and gets a massive amount of wear, so I felt that adding a new set of buttons wasn't a waste of time.

I found six black buttons that fit the buttonhole and more or less matched one another.

The edge of the neckline had gotten worn. I found a yarn in my stash that would work with the purple knit and I could crochet an edging that hid the grotty bits.

So, now my sweater is wearable for the next period of time.

A s part of my long tuit list. I also cleared out my art-supply drawer. which was jammed with supplies that my kids loved when they were little. I left five gallon bags of various goodies on the giveaway shelf in the basement of my building.

We are celebrating my daughter's birthday at Shabbat dinner tonight. Tomorrow she celebrates with her friends on the actual day.

I baked a boozy apple cake last night. My dear friend Shawna used to bake a boozy apple cake that my daughter LOVED. I don't have the recipe but I thought about Shawna and hoped that I channeled her successfully.

We aren't dining just on cake. I didn't take a photo of the chicken we are eating tonight. But this is what went on it.

It is a mix of ras-al hanout, Bell's Seasoning, and Hawaij. All are mellow curry adjacent flavorings but from different corners of the world.

I made challah. Two are vaguely pumpkin-like for my Halloween-born child,

The others are braids with variations.

Nothing says "party" like chicken wings--so we have some.

And what is an autumn dinner without butternut squash?

And. because this is a blog salad, I end with the best photo I took this week. (No AI was involved.)

Shabbat Shalom!

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...

Revisiting a beloved piece

About thirty years ago I was asked to make an atara to be a gift for Jerry. Jerry was one of the founders of an alternative Hebrew school in our neighborhood. Jerry was also one of the people who forged an alliance between the older mostly German members of our synagogue and the young counter culture former ( and still hippies) that were the new lifeblood of our congregation nearly fifty years ago. At that point, it wasn't the easiest marriage between the old guard and the new guard but Jerry helped to break down the barriers between the suit wearing older folks and the ripped up jeans wearing younger folks. Jerry has prepared thousands of kids for their B'nai Mitzvah. He is a frequent and excellent Torah reader and for many years he organized Morning Minyan. Jerry had often said that his favorite biblical text is the following: (יא) כִּ֚י הַמִּצְוָ֣ה הַזֹּ֔את אֲשֶׁ֛ר אָנֹכִ֥י מְצַוְּךָ֖ הַיּ֑וֹם לֹֽא־נִפְלֵ֥את הִוא֙ מִמְּךָ֔ וְלֹ֥א רְחֹקָ֖ה הִֽוא׃ (יב) לֹ֥א בַשָּׁמַ֖יִם הִ֑...

sarah in nyc

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