sarah in nyc

I finally completed the girls' tallitot. Amazon.com Widgets As I may have stated earlier they are twins, the children of thoughtful parents who have since they were born been comfortable treating their daughters like sisters and not like a single unit of human being. They came by yesterday with their parents and a dear family friend to tie their tzitzit. Eliana had mentioned that she had forgotten all of the details of our design meeting but seeing her tallit reminded he of our discussion. She was happy that I had remembered to include all of the things that she had mentioned. Aliza hadn't realized just how much she really liked the verse she had chosen for her atara.  The bags I had made were like the girls, related but not identical. I constructed the ribbon stripe with two widths and colors of ribbon and some machine embroidery. The girls were as impressed as I was with the result.  We then got down to the work of tying the tzit...

Today I baked bread for the first time since Passover. I felt like there ought to a a b'racha to recite for that first bread baking. There isn't one as far as I know, but i felt grateful to get back to that familiar task. Amazon.com Widgets Perhaps it was the pickled beets I had made to accompany last night's dinner but I thought it would be nice to make pumpernickel bagels. As per my usual way of doing these things, I didn't consult with a cookbook.  I know from extensive cook book  reading that the color in pumpernickel bread comes from chocolate. I added two hefty tablespoons of cocoa to the dough and some caraway seeds. The cocoa changed the texture of the bread dough to sort of resemble Play-do. it wasn't unpleasant, it was just different. Next time I might add a bit less cocoa to the dough. This is definitely something I would do again. I went back to work on Eliana's tallit. her mother had sent along some fabrics to be used in the tall...