sarah in nyc

Well, the last stretch of Sukkot begins tonight. As much as I love cooking, I have been dragging my feet all day. Never the less, I have two chickens in the oven  ( with smoked paprika, black pepper and onions), the challah dough is on it’s first rise and my noodle dough is resting. During the week though I made some progress on the matza covers. I realized yesterday that making matza covers during sukkot has a bit of a Christmas in July  sort of a feel.  I have three in progress. I had taken this photo before I sewed the elements together for a blog post I didn’t have time to write. I suppose that if I were a different sort of a girl, even making batches as small as three matza covers I could manage to make them look more or less identical. I am not that girl though. So the results each have their own personalities. This one is ready to line and assemble. I have run short of water fabric so have added some turquoise wool. The outer border is periwinkle colored silk...

Because I had sold my only copy of this matza cover, it was time to make some new ones for my stash. I really like the design. my lettering has improved a whole lot since this was made several years ago. The center of the matza cover is made out of a quilting cotton that is no longer in print. Now that I have access to really beautiful silks and wools, it seems like a waste of time to make challah covers and matza covers in quilting cottons.   The stone path through the water is the major focal point of the matza cover, so I had to figure something out. I’m also trying to figure out how to do work in less obsessively labor intensive ways. When I actually sit down to figure out how much I make per hour, it can be pretty depressing.   I decided to try painting the rocks. I pulled a piece of  ivory wool/rayon broadcloth out of my stash. my tallit is made out of this wool as is my son’s. This is what I came up with. Rocky enough for you? I then cut strips ou...

When I work, I often have ear worms, that is little chunks of music that play themselves over and over in my head.  I have learned, over the years, to pay attention to those ear worms. Often they have something to do with my work. One of the pieces that I have been working on is the Parochet /ark curtain for the Solomon Schechter School. I had met with the 8th grade girls who are commissioning the piece just after Rosh ha Shanah. The text that they chose, comes from the Psalm that we recite, actually, more often, sing, as we return the Torah scroll to the ark after we have completed reading it for the day, at services.  "The earth is God's and all it contains" The melody that we most often use, is a wonderful grand Germanic stately march. When you hear it you can, in your mind's eye, see the angels marching across the clouds. This morning as I was going about my business, eating breakfast, putting up the challa dough, taking my shower, I kept hearing th...

My oldest son is leaving next week for his stint in the Israeli Army. I have been making Cholesterol death Kugel to bring for Kiddush on Shabbat, after services. So far, I have made four. I still need to make one more. But, as I keep making the kugel over and over again, I keep being struck by how well structured this recipe is. In my book, a real recipe that has been created by a real home cook is structures so that each step dovetails into the next so you can go about your business setting up each stage of the cooking, and the the next piece is ready to go just as you need it. So with the kugel, you preheat the oven with 1/2 a stick of butter in the cooking pan. then you put up the pot of noodles. Then you begin mixing the custard. Just as the oven beeps to let you know it is preheated, the butter is melted and ready to pour into the custard. As soon as that is mixed in, the noodles are ready to be drained. The nice thing about a recipe like this is that you have very little wasted...