sarah in nyc

Tonight's dinner guests are foodies of the highest order. Our friend Alan is probably the only one of our guests that I will ask to bring challah.  Amy and Alan force me to up my cooking game. Amazon.com Widgets When I began making tonight's chicken I pulled out a selection of red spices.  The tag line "cooking with the reds" popped into my head. I think it sounded like a Revlon ad from the 1980's. here is the chicken duly massaged with the red spices and waiting to be put into the oven. Raw chicken is never appetizing, not even when covered with red spices. Cooked though is a different story. The house smelled amazing as the chicken cooked. Now for the roasted section of the dinner. A spicy eggplant to be served as part of the mezze course, and  tomatoes that will be added to the salad, Dessert is a two part deal that includes a sorbet that started out  with intentions to be pomegranate fig but seems to be the flavor that we c...

This is my beloved sewing machine. I purchased it a few years ago when my Pfaff bit the dust.My go to brilliant sewing machine doctor, leon Speilvogel had moved his repair shop in the garment district, appropriately called "Garment Center Sewing" out to Brooklyn. Getting the machine to Leon was something of a problem which required either an expensive taxi ride or dislocating my funky shoulders from carrying the sewing machine. While I weighed my options I purchased  the inexpensive Janome as a stop gap measure. I ended up falling deeply in love with what was supposed to be a temporary fix. The Janome was in many ways just a better machine than the Pfaff which had cost several times more than the Pfaff.  Over the years several parts broke off. The stopper mechanism for the bobbin winder went early. While I was teaching a class the little tool box crashed to the ground so I hacked together a repair using Velcro. But the machine kept purring along, working as an exte...

As I had mentioned on Friday I have been making lots of lazy sour dough bread. I wanted to just take you through the not very scary process.  Amazon.com Widgets First you start with a regular bread dough.  This is what goes into my regular bread dough. I usually put some water in the bottom of  my green Pyrex bowl.  I inherited two of the set below  (the yellow and the green bowls)from my mother-in-law. I see that it holds 2 1/2 quarts. I used to measure out two cups of water and add them to the bowl to begin my bread baking. Now I just put water in the bowl. It's always the right amount, even if the amount varies. I add a teaspoon of dry yeast to the water and sprinkle a tablespoon flour or some grain like oatmeal or ground barley or  a few shakes of Maypo or Wheatena on the yeasted water. The grain is food for the yeast and will allow it to bloom and do a good job raising your loaf. I like adding a grain with some texture. Go away for a few...

My friend Alan is serious about cooking. A couple of years ago he  started to bake challah. As with al of his other cooking endeavors he approaches his challah baking with the seriousness of a scientist. Each week he weighs out each of the variables. Alan has been making sour dough challah. He makes sour dough in the classic fussy way that gives me a headache to even think about. The results of Alan's challot are heavenly. He is the only dinner guest that I will invite to bring challah.  I have also been playing with sour dough, but in a much more low key way than Alan. during the week when I make a bread, I will lop off a lump of dough, toss it into a bowl and add a bit more water and perhaps a bit of honey or sugar, cover the bowl with a towel and stick it in the fridge and use that as the starter for my next batch of bread. It takes the same skills that it does to make mudpies. Occasionally, I have used that sour dough -ish lump  to start my challah. Today I had a ...

Right after oldest was born, my dear friends Curtis and Jessica, who were at that point married, gave us this rocking  chair as a baby gift. This was a gift that was not on the usual "what to give for a new baby" list, and was incredibly generous. Most of the baby gifts we received have long been out grown and passed on.  This chair was for a long time the nicest piece of furniture in our living room. All three of our kids got nursed in this chair. All of our kids got comforted in this chair. This is the chair that is first chosen for watching TV. Last night I noticed that one of the back legs had gotten disconnected from the rocker.  The rocker was no longer safe. My husband scrawled " Do not sit on this chair." on a piece of paper and put the note on the seat.  I realized a long time ago that the fact that spouses do not react to a problem in exactly the same way does not mean that there is a problem in a marriage. We have guests coming for dinner t...

Both my husband and I thought we would work yesterday, but when my husband suggested that we play hooky from our responsibilities and go on a small outing. We decided to go to the New York Historical Society. Amazon.com Widgets First we waited for the bus which gave us the time to pay attention to the familiar landscape. I have been fond of this 1920's Tudor revival brick apartment house since I moved to the neighborhood. I am a sucker for fancy brickwork. My husband pointed out a detail of the building that neither of us had noticed before. That great scalloped terracotta tile at the roof line is just amazing. The bus took a while to arrive so we had a long time to admire that tile. I had lots of time to admire trees in Central Park. On the way to the exhibit we had planned to see we were gobsmacked by an exhibit of  Larry Silver Photographs . You can see a few of the images if you click on the link. The images capture the ordinary in New York City life in ...

Our washing machine has developed a drip. The repairman was scheduled to come today--any time from noon until 5. It's Friday, of course I have nothing else to do!...I agreed to the timing.  Yesterday I got a call from the repairman saying he planned to show up at 1:00. I can do that but I had plans to meet a friend for lunch, Shabbat dinner needed to get cooked . My son is usually a good sport about working around my schedule but he had a commitment.  Amazon.com Widgets My friend was willing to have lunch at home with me but aside from the food I was cooking for Shabbat, the larders were pretty bare. I got up early, got the chicken going, Cleared out all the stuff around the washing machine and got a workout in. I showered and got a load of laundry in the washing machine before the repairman came.  I then got a call from the repairman. He was coming an hour early. Great! but there was a load of wash going in the machine he was supposed to fix. I had adjusted ...