sarah in nyc

Today is Sunday and the last leg of Sukkot begins tonight.  I feel that I am an Olympic cook. We have two delightful houseguests and they are joining us for tonight’s holiday meal. I am serving some of Friday night’s stuffed cabbage. Two small roasts are resting in the fridge. I will slice them after they have cooled. I made spiced mocha-pecan meringues. I actually began cooking for tonight’s dinner last night. Before you feel sorry for me for working so hard, after we came back from the theatre last night I took out the slow cooker and threw in some giant carrots and parsnips, a whole onion, some beef bones that my son picked up at the butcher, some cabbage,  a can of diced tomatoes and a box of beef broth and a tea ball full of spices. The house smelled amazing when I got up. These sorts of peasant soups taste best after a long cook. I made matza balls earlier in the day. The weather has turned damp and cold. I think our guests will be happy to have the soup. be...

Tonight, my nephew is coming for Shabbat dinner.  His mother adored my mother’s stuffed cabbage.  I decided to recreate my sister’s favorite dish. I know, I just made a batch for Rosh Ha Shanah. I finally figured out that when you core the cabbage before steaming the leaves off you need to really dig out that core. Perhaps my life was made easier because I used a different variety of cabbage. The cabbage I had used for Rosh Ha Shanah was  round like a basketball. The cabbage I used for today’s stuffed cabbage was squat. The pot pictured above is huge. It is a large oval. You could easily bathe a 6 month old child in this pot.  I once cooked a 30 lb turkey in this pot. The magic of photography has foreshortened the massive oval into a circle.  I even, for the sake of this blog plated the cabbage onto a cake plate so you could admire their adorableness. I baked challah. I will make salad later and my son made spiced roasted potatoes. I pulled a plum tart ou...

I’m not just cooking these days, even though it sometimes feels that way. I put in some work on the bag that will hold  Danielle's chuppah. I’m piecing ribbon using metallic stitching. This is what the grosgrain and satin ribbon look like  so far. I’m going to add the blue and metallic braid soon. The top picture gets the color right. the bottom image gets the textures right.  I guess you have to meld the images through the magic of IMAGINATION. I also put in a fair amount of work into my son’s Comicon costume. We have no photo  of the jacket today because my son’s  slobby mother dripped some grease onto the jacket. My son washed out the grease spots and the jacket is now hanging to dry. My normally blasé son is excited about the results. Given that it’s Friday, I had to  surprise(!) cook. The butcher was selling flanken ribs at a nearly silly price ($3.99/ lb) so today is Caveman Shabbat. I know that my youngest will really eat tonight. I also ...

There are moments that can occur during the observance of a holiday that change how you experience that holiday each subsequent year. Those of us who attend Yom Kippur services each year read over and over again  our desire to be inscribed in the book of life. As we say the confessionals each year we hopefully think about our own lives in the balance. The Yom Kippur of 2009 that message was made all too real.  Rafi Lehmann, the son of our dear friends, was across town at Mount Sinai in the ICU.  he had been there for the previous three weeks. On that Yom Kippur Rafi’s family had to make the terrible decision to remove hi from life support. “Who shall live and who shall die”, indeed. Last year, during Yom Kippur we knew that my father in law’s death was an any minute sort of a thing. Rafi’s death was  by any reckoning a tragedy. My father in law was 97 and had lived a rich and full life. This year, the life of no one I knew was in the balance. Yet my experie...

  The text of this piyyut/liturgical poem has been running through my head for the past couple of days Open the gates of heaven to our prayers the gates of mercy the gates of prayer the gates of supplication the gates of the desired time the gates of the time of asking the gates of full healing the gates of holiness the gates of holiness the gates of Torah…… And for your listening pleasure,

When we were growing up, my mother often declared supper on Saturday night and Sunday to be zeh v’zeh Hebrew for this and that. Meaning that we could just go into the fridge and concoct something to eat out of what was hanging around. Today felt like my entire day was a zeh v’zeh sort of a day. My older son and I made bagels. That is he did the first knead and I formed boiled and baked the bagels. I decided to make this batch poppy seed because my youngest loves poppy seed bagels. I picked up a small bag of poppy seeds at the spice store down the block. The overly seeded bagels are the result of a failed experiment. I assumed that I ought to put the poppy seeds in a plate and then plop the boiled bagels into the plate to coat the bagels.  Those black bagels are a result of the poppy seed overkill. A much better method is to sprinkle  the seeds from the little bag while the bagels are still wet. I’m also do lots of pre Yom Kippur laundry.  The following is proof t...

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...