sarah in nyc

 Sunday we did part one of Thanksgiving shopping with our dear friend Charley. We made the trek to Bingo (the frum answer to Costco) in Monsey. Their Brooklyn store is ten miles closer but the travel time to Monsey  is less and the trip is less irritating because of Brooklyn traffic. We are doing Thanksgiving with Charley. One constant on his Thanksgiving table is brisket. My job is to cook the brisket. Last year, the brisket came from a fancy local kosher butcher. I almost fainted when I saw the price on the meat. Charley joined us for Passover and had brisket I had sourced at Bingo. Despite it not being polite to share the cost of the food with your dinner guests I did share the cost of the brisket with our dear friend. He suggested that we make the trek to Bingo. There are many wonderful things to buy at Bingo. The produce is beautiful, really beautiful. I didn't take photos of the produce. I was distracted by OTHER things. I was distracted by the green marshmallows. I love...

 Often a quality of light will compel me to take a photo. Sometimes the subject itself isn't all that special, like the morning light shining off of my baking pans, or the same morning rays on the brick wall across from my kitchen window. Sometimes the appeal is more obvious, like the afternoon golden light reflecting off of the cornice of my building. Right after I took these pictures I ran into a young neighbor and encouraged him to look up. I don't know if he appreciated what I was seeing or was just indulging me. The right light can make even the most mundane building look beautiful Even this bit of 1950's city housing gets a glow up in the late afternoon light. Sometimes it is a bit of color in an unexpected pace that pulls my eye.  This leaf was resting on the service gate of my building. My building's garbage is stored on the other side of this gate. For those of you who don't reside inside of my head, I am switching topics.  I purchase a 25 lb bags of flour ...

Like every other Jewish person on the planet I know that because Purim has just passed that Passover is looming over the horizon. I have done one of my annual getting ready to start Passover work tasks. I took down our previous vintage tablecloth kitchen curtain assemblage and put together a new one. Out new curtain is made up of a cloth I had received from the collection of my friend Alix's late mother. It's Central European styled embroidery done on a jacquard woven linen cloth. It is counted embroidery that was likely done on a roughly woven fabric that was basted to the jacquard woven cloth. You can't do counted stitchery on jacquard woven material. It is a little hard for me to date this cloth. The design is very old fashioned. I am not sure about the dating of the base fabric. When i first received this piece I had thought that it might have been unfinished. There is no embroidery at all in the top 1/4 of the piece. I now wonder if it was actually designed to be a kit...