sarah in nyc

I swear, it tastes like it is made with cream.   But this pictorial recipe will show you how to make this incredibly delicious dessert.   In a pot, place a few pods of cardamom add sugar, 1 cup salt, 1/4 tsp or the amount that fits in that tiny space in your palm How much you ask? That much. And yes, the full can.   Then Simmer for about 30 minutes.   Then, let it cool for a bit, puree in a bender  and put into an ice cream maker. That’s it.  If you don’t let it cool, then you risk some of the hot liquid jumping out of the blender top like mine did today and burning my wrist. Yes,It tastes really decadent and mysterious and very, very milchig/dairy. It is worth the burned wrist. You’re welcome.

My mother’s birthday is today. My mother does not need stuff. She owns a life time’s worth of stuff. What my mother does need is a few short sleeved shirts. After a lifetime of wearing shirt waist dresses, for the past few years my mother has been wearing pants. For me, this is a shocking development. Since 1959 there is exactly one photo of my mother wearing pants (posed with my sisters and their new snow shovels in the back yard – I was not yet born,and was not even the proverbial twinkle in the eye). This new sartorial life has called for a new item in my mother’s life, tops. My mother seems to have winter weight shirts.  She does need some summer weight shirts. I made her three shirts as a birthday gift. I bought a size large t-shirt to use as a pattern. I  chose a red and white seersucker as the fabric for the first shirt. My mother loves seersucker and owned many seersucker shirtwaist dresses over the years. I also owned several as a child. When i bought the seer...

Last Wednesday night I took the 11:00pm bus to Boston. I had a meeting Wednesdays night and  needed to be in Boston in time for my mother’s noon appointment.     In case you were wondering, there are taxis at South Station at 3:15 am.   One of my other tasks during my time in Boston was re filling my mother’s freezer. My husband arrived Thursday evening. Friday we picked up a rental car in Needham and went to the Costco in Dedham. In case you were wondering, there is no fresh kosher meat in that Costco but there are  kosher frozen capons.  Four chickens are now cooked and cut up into single servings are now in my mother’s freezer. Of course I bought her other foods and necessities at Costco, but don’t worry, I won’t bore you with the complete shopping list.   What flavor chicken you ask? Two were cooked vaguely Israeli with Zaatar, smoked paprika and lemon. Two were cooked vaguely French with fresh thyme, oregano and marjoram along with...

I made this dress yesterday. It has a  twisted cowl neck  and nifty extended sides.   I have been seeing lots of garments on the street where the hem is extended to the full  selvedge to selvedge width of the fabric. You get a top or a skirt that looks really complicated but is in fact quite simple to  both draft and construct. You can see direction for  a skirt made with this principle here table cloth skirt . Here is an earlier example of using the same concept . The skirt is cut wide at the hips and creates a lovely vertical cascade.   I was also poking through a Japanese sewing magazine ( a constant source of good ideas) and found this. I realized, perhaps influenced by the very graphic Japanese sewing magazine, that I could more easily explain the process with pictures than with a whole lot of words.   I cut the dress as usual from shoulder through high hip. Then I cut straight out to the selvedges.   Here ...

and why not. When I had posted this  challah cover Kathleen asked how I get the color variation in the text. I made the next challah cover so I could illustrate how.   I had learned how to do this cool trick from Ellen Alt, my calligraphy teacher. You work with two pots of color. Choose two colors that will look good when mixed. As you paint the text, alternate the colors you did your brush in. do not clean your brush between colors. See your kindergarten teacher spin in her grave, but just keep dipping your brush and not cleaning it between colors. The colors end up blending in a cool way. You may notice that the text does not stand out as much as it usually does.  as I was leafing through Shabbat z’miroti   table songs I was drawn to this poem. Ki Eshmirah Shabbat . You can listen to the melody . It’s a great melody.   As I was calligraphing the text I remembered that I actually don’t like the words themselves all that much. You can see ...

The High Holiday season means that work weeks are compressed.   There is a whole lot more cooking to be done, and everything else needs to be squeezed into two fewer days. Sometimes this makes me feel overwhelmed. Other times I get filled with energy and work really well.   My youngest wants to attend New York Comicon dressed like this character King of All Cosmos . My son is planning to make the neck tube on his own, but he asked me to make him the jacket and sash.   He goes to school just south of the garment district. we decided to meet on the corner of 39th and 8th Avenue and fabric shop.   My son hates shopping. Even choosing between two pairs of pants on line gets him quickly overwhelmed.   I got there early and realized that the whole experience would be easier if I swatched just a few fabric choices and  let my son choose.    In the few minutes I had I quickly looked through the stock at three stores but had th...