sarah in nyc

 My parents served exactly the same meal for Shabbat week after week, decade after decade. We ate chicken flavored with Lawry's Salt, either kasha or parley, Friday night we ate a cooked vegetable, and Shabbat lunch we had the same meal but with canned vegetables swapped out for the fresh. While there is some comfort in knowing exactly what you will eat, there is also some tedium in that. I usually don't cook chicken exactly the same way week after week. Last week's chicken made with a gochujang, molasses, and water paste was hauntingly delicious. I think it was among the best chicken I have ever made. I needed that taste in my mouth again. So I made it again. This is the "I am ready for my closeup Mr. DeMille." shot of the chicken. I think that I will make my Thanksgiving turkey with the same flavor mix. You can thank me when you cook your chicken in this mixture.  It is cold and damp and grey out. In other words, soup weather. I know this looks something like in...

Walking around Manhattan I have been seeing lots of the simple sorts of summer dresses that I (and the rest of the world) wore in the 1970’s. The 1970’s was a great decade for DIY. Aside from the The Whole Earth Catalog , and Simple Living   which were generalist books that taught skills from simple plumbing to how to build a mulch pile along with  diagrams and patterns for simple clothing, there were also more specialized books with lots of directions for garment making. Some of the books came from  mainstream sources, like Time Life Sewing .  ( This is actually an excellent series both from a fashion history perspective as well as being really good at teaching skills. The material books are organized in a slightly daffy way though. It isn’t always easy to find exactly what you are looking for. It’s usually easy to find single volumes   on ebay or Amazon. Sometimes you can find the complete set or most of a complete set for not too much money) I h...

Sometimes, my work goes along swimmingly. Every seam lines up just right. Materials that are known to not play nicely together, come together  with nary a whimper. Other times,figuring out the technical elements of my work is so hard, that it just makes my head hurt. During the past couple of days I have been working on several pieces that have all made my head hurt for various reasons. I do know that if I had a more traditional sewing background I probably would not attempt to line velvet with lame'. It looks wonderful, but it is a bear to sew. Sometimes when i am trying to puzzle out a problem, I will read a book. Michael Pollan's  A Place of My Own, has ended up being a most serendipitous choice. Pollan describes the process of building a small "writing house" on his property.  Despite it's being a tiny project, Pollan hired an architect to work with him. Reading about the design process, the discussion between architect and client, was terribly...

My youngest helped me put away all of the Passover dishes. It was a big job, not as big as getting ready for Passover but still-- a job. It is definately easier getting it done with one big kid rather than doing it with a bunch of toddlers underfoot. The flurry of cooking over  Passover has gotten me thinking about some of the larger issues of domesticity. that and reading the truly excellent The Age of Homespun: Objects and Stories in the Creation of the American Myth, by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich.  In the book, Ulrich explores several different objects created anywhere from the mid 1600's to the early period of the industrial revolution and sets them into their historical context. I hadn't really thought about how the labor of women producing fiber helped the cause of the American Revolution. Apparently, early in the Revolution, women spun in public, in Boston Common to show their support for the Revolution. These displays were followed by militias marching. Both were diffe...