sarah in nyc

 My parents bought this tablecloth during their 1955 visit to Israel. It is made out of  linen from the first post 1948 flax harvest. The linen is heavy and almost crude. The embroidery is very fine. We used this cloth every Passover until the center wore thin.  You can see the cloth on the table in the background of this photo of my parents and nephew My Aunt Sheva bought my mother a replacement cloth. The replacement cloth is made out of a cotton poly blend. The embroidery is crude and the colors not nearly as nice. The old cloth hung in our basement. We used the new cloth and remembered the much nicer original cloth. I loved that my aunt wanted to replace the cloth, I just hated the replacement because it was so much less than while evoking the beauty of the original. After my father died my mother sat me down and with great ceremony gave me all of her best tablecloths. She also gave me the worn Passover cloth and suggested that I could mend it. I did. Year after year ...

 Today has been a rush of a variety of tasks. I made a roast. This is a shoulder roast.  I coated it in a variety of spices and cooked it until it smelled done. I added boiling water to the pan drippings and then added other goodies ( fresh thyme, dried mushroom and good old Manishewitz wine that is a must for charoset and kind of useless as drinking wine). I carefully scraped up all of the dried up good stuff and turned the mixture into a gravy that will be served with the meat. We are a bit container shy during Passover and there was a bit too much gravy to fit in the one container we had left , so I boiled red potatoes in water to which I added that last bit of gravy, the dried mushrooms and the thyme stems.  Covid had meant that not very many people visited so I had allowed bits of our couch to get shabby. I had been meaning to replace the cover on the center cushion on our couch for the last long time. I pulled down a few of my upholstery fabrics and made a new cushi...

 Last night my youngest and I went to see the delayed by Covid, New York City live-in-person premier of a wonderful poignant funny film made by my friend Judith Helfand.  You can watch the trailer above or watch the entire movie by clicking on this link  Love & Stuff  (well, only until November of this year). Watching this movie that deals so much with the objects in our lives that carry the memories of people who are no longer with us was so right for me this week.  I have spent two days this week making what for my family, for me are the touchstone foods of the High Holiday season. I made a big pot of tzimmis earlier this week. I more or less followed the recipe I extracted from my mother during a very long digressive conversation more than thirty years ago. I wrote out more explicit directions  here . I am my mother's child so the directions are a bit digressive but it is hard to get tzimmis wrong as long as you have lots of meat and root vegeta...

 If you have spent any time at all reading this blog you will know that I work best when I have several bits of projects going on at the same time. I have three big projects all due on the same day (just under two weeks from today). I am attacking each of these projects from a variety of directions. When the dust settles all of them will be completed. Friday I sewed Ale's tallit together. In terms of actual tasks, I folded it in half the wrong side out, sewed the raw edges together being sure that the stripes aligned as I stitched. I then unpicked some of the stitches and then turned the tallit right-side out through the small hole made by the un-done stitches. I then carefully pressed the tallit and topstitched all the way around. Much to my delight... You can read the text straight across each stripe --from one side of the tallit to the other. I am so chuffed about this. I paint the text freehand. I am not painting the text while paying close attention to a ruler. This nearly per...

 Well, since you asked, our seders were lovely. The first night was just family and the second night we had both friends and family. Yes, I did get a whole lot of pleasure from seeing the people we love eat the food I had made for them. It was a relief to get all of the food packaged and out the door in time. Although I did forget to send along kugel to one of the households we were feeding. The lemon cakes baked in muffin tins was a hit. It always makes me feel good to hear a first bite be deemed so good that it elicits a string of curses from the eater. This cake has never failed me and is always especially good with a dollop of very tart lemon custard. Most Passover cakes are filled with nuts. Ground nuts make an excellent alternative to flour and it doesn't have the gunky heavy taste of matza meal. Unfortunately, my youngest is tree nut allergic. The meringues ( flavored with fresh lemon peel dark chocolate and chunks of dried apricot) I had made were nearly all gone after the ...