sarah in nyc

 During the fall holiday season my time to actually do stuff is pretty much chopped up into odd shaped bits. I baked a bread. This is actually far less impressive than it looks. For some reason my Instagram feed has been filled with short videos of  loaves of bread that are coated with flour or cocoa and then scored before baking. I have a medical scalpel that I use for bread scoring ( as opposed to the ones I use as seam rippers). You can use a straight blade razor. Just scoring a bread before baking is pretty...coating the loaf just makes it extra fancy. Since you asked this is a basic white flour bread dough with what was left of a container of fine bulger wheat. One of the great things about the High Holidays is that I get to see tallitot I had made in the past worn long after I had made them. One  real joy was  this year was seeing  Todd and Ale's linen tallitot  again. Todd and Ale are vegan and they wanted their tallitot made out of a plant fiber tex...

 Yom Tov begins again tonight. we are having one guest and a simple meal. We hare having some of the lasagna adjacent dish I had made for Friday night---which ended up being delicious.   I also made some spring rolls and a dipping sauce There will also be a green salad and a cheese platter. We won't starve. Today I worked on creating the lining for Yocheved's tallit bag. When I was part of the cleaning crew for Yo's apartment I took some hand embroidered textiles that were part of her collection.One of the things I have learned from Yocheved's collection of textiles was that old pieces were often combined to make new pieces. I followed the example of the anonymous women who made some of the treasures that Yocheved owned and turned two different bits of handwork into the lining. The top geometric piece is counted work done over three layers of cotton. The bottom layer is checked so the embroiderer could establish the basic gridlines by following the design on the back pi...

 First an apology to all of you who used to subscribe to my blog and were used to getting an email when a new post appeared. Blogger has discontinued that service. There are other ways to have people sign up to subscribe but I haven't been able to figure out any of those services. If you are willing to help me figure out how to do this-please be in touch---I will be so grateful. The High Holiday season is both synagogue and cooking seasons. I took a break yesterday and ran away to see the current exhibits at FIT. The upstairs gallery had an exhibit of Balenciaga and Dior. After seeing the exhibit I can tell you that I am on Team Balenciaga---the photos that follow are all of his work. The piecing on the bodice of this dress is just so incredibly beautifully done. I am not going to get too technical here but you might want to pay attention to how each of the stripes march up. For those of you with more advanced dressmaking knowledge just take a look at how those three inset vees...

 Like many coffee drinkers, I have been getting advice for years to reduce my caffeine intake before Yom Kippur so that I don't get that inevitable caffeine headache throughout the day. Actually, for a couple of years I did follow that advice. This is what I drank this morning. A big cup of really strong black coffee.  I will have more of the same tomorrow morning. Why? The biblical text about how to observe Yom Kippur states the following: אַ֡ךְ בֶּעָשׂ֣וֹר לַחֹדֶשׁ֩ הַשְּׁבִיעִ֨י הַזֶּ֜ה י֧וֹם הַכִּפֻּרִ֣ים ה֗וּא מִֽקְרָא־קֹ֙דֶשׁ֙ יִהְיֶ֣ה לָכֶ֔ם וְעִנִּיתֶ֖ם אֶת־נַפְשֹׁתֵיכֶ֑ם וְהִקְרַבְתֶּ֥ם אִשֶּׁ֖ה לַיהוָֽה׃  Mark, the tenth day of this seventh month is the Day of Atonement. It shall be a sacred occasion for you: you shall practice self-denial, and you shall bring an offering by fire to יהוה; The key words here are       וְעִנִּיתֶ֖ם    אֶת־נַפְשֹׁתֵיכֶ֑ם     ,  you shall practice self-denial. I would actually translate t...

 Many years ago my wise friend Sharon told me that every time she closed a real-estate deal she would buy herself a piece of jewelry. I loved the idea of rewarding yourself after completing a piece of hard work.  I had been working and kind of a crazy pace since before Passover. It was time to reward myself. Many of us who grew up in tune with the Jewish calendar know that it is traditional to have a new garment for the Jewish New Year.  I wanted to make myself a new dress. I have lots of lovely yardage comfortably ageing in my closet. I had purchased a length of black and white vertically striped lace a while back from  Fabric Mart . (What do you get for clicking on the link? great deals on fabric. What do I get? No kickbacks, just the happy knowledge that you too can get excellent fabric for a great price) I had an idea for a dress, lay the fabric out on my floor and cut. Attempt #1 was a failure. Attempt #2 was not. It's a simple dress made out of complicated...

 When I was a kid, Rosh Hashanah was all about looking forward to the new year. Maybe it is just that I am older, but between the timelessness created by the pandemic and the fact that I have lost so many friends this year my head is definitely in the past as I prepare for the holiday. When I used to go through my parents' wedding album with my father when I was little my father inevitably used to point at people in the photos and say "Dead, dead, dead." I have been going through my address books sending high holiday greetings to friends and I was struck by how many of my friends have died this year. There was the terrible three week period early in the winter when five friends died, but the most of the deaths were spread out between last Rosh  Hashanah and this one. I prepared the tzimmes and the stuffed cabbage that was my parents' love note to their first pulpit in Halifax and the people who helped my very young parents to become adults.  I have also made the merin...

 This post is mostly about food. It is about the food I have been making for Rosh Hashanah and the food I have been making for us to eat until then. Earlier in the week I baked bagels. That was a simple mid-week bake. I only used half the dough for bagels. The rest was pulled pulled out of the oven in the form of a cute heart shaped loaf. Yesterday was challah baking day. My husband discovered apple butter this summer and suggested that it would make a yummy and appropriate Rosh Hashanah  stuffing for our challot.  I remembered that I had actually filled challot with apple butter a couple of years ago and it was a bit too wet. so I microwaved some apple butter with tapioca starch (and probably some spices-- I was working too quickly to account for every ingredient in the challah ) to thicken it up. Above is the thickened apple butter and below you see it in use before being rolled up. How many challot did I make? I have no idea. I made several of them small. Three will en...