sarah in nyc

 Since my last post, I have composed at least three posts in my head but hadn't quite gotten around to committing my thoughts to virtual paper.  Shabbat was the 20th anniversary of 9/11. Some years I listen to the memorial ceremonies on the radio with the same focus and concentration I give to the Kol Nidre. I read remembrances or will write about my own memories of that day with the same intensity I would give to the UnTaneh Tokef. This year I just couldn't. If the pandemic were something I was viewing through a rearview mirror would have had the mental wherewithal to sit and focus on that day with the bright blue skies.  We still have a long slog of disease and death ahead of us. My emotional bank account is pretty low so I avoided thinking about that day. Another year I will have the internal resources to look back at that day. I am getting ready for Yom Kippur. I rolled out the noodles that will be made into ... This year I didn't consult a written recipe but just put...

 Today was challah baking day. I have been watching Israeli Youtube cooking channels. This video inspired the shape of my challot. I also made a tray of challot shaped in a different way. The braid at the bottom is filled with date spread. I made chicken on a bed of sliced tomato and red pepper. here it is after being cooked and spending time in the fridge The chicken is now cut up and warming in the oven. We are having a simple salad with the chicken and the challah and calling that dinner. I had a taste of the plum tart. It is so bright and tart-tasting. It is a par-tay in the mouth. Shabbat Shalom!

Today I began my baking for Rosh HaShanah. My daughter had made us an excellent honey cake for Thanksgiving which made me think fondly about my mother's honey cake. There were cakes that my mother always had on hand in the freezer in case of unexpected company. Honey cake was one of them.  In case you were wondering about the other cakes that were nearly always on hand in the freezer, there were usually a few loaves of cranberry bread, several rectangles of a brownie adjacent chocolate syrup cake studded with walnuts, some mandelbrot, and a few bags of ruggelach. My mother could put together a decent dessert platter at a moment's notice. My mother was a big believer of serving a platter of small desserts made up of the sorts of goodies that were in the freezer accompanied by a big cake that would be cut up at the table with a great deal of ceremony and served with tea. The big cake was often a chiffon cake. My favorite was her walnut chiffon cake. The walnuts combined with the ...

 Today I started the part of the memory quilt that terrified me the most. While the quilt has been commissioned by the new baby's aunt it is really at its heart from the baby's grandmother who is no longer alive. In designing this quilt with the baby's aunt I felt strongly that the quilt should say that it was from the grandmother. My client agreed. This grandmother, being the thoughtful woman she was, came up with a special grandma moniker for herself. It was Shemama.  I had asked my client to see if she had a card or letter that was signed that way. Unfortunately, she did not. My client did the next best thing and cut and pasted letters written by her mother to get the message we wanted. My next task was to get those letters onto the quilt. There are many ways to do this task. I chose to use an old-fashioned method. First I printed out the image. Then I cut a piece of cotton batiste to the right size.  I taped the image to my window, taped the white cotton to the image,...

  It's Friday but I am not going to post about food. The photo above appeared in my Facebook feed today and it unleashed a torrent of memories. This photo is of the opening day of The Bargain Center in 1937.  Even people who have never been to Boston know about the wonders of  Filene's Basement, no, not the one that appeared in malls during the 1990's but the original Basement in the basement of Filene's on Washington Street in Boston. The Bargain Center was the Quincy version of excellent bargain hunting. You just never knew what you might find there. New England was a manufacturing center and the Bargain Center scoured the factories to buy unsold products.  My father often used to stop by after his morning swim at the YMCA a couple of blocks away. Once my father brought home a beautiful hand-beaded evening bag for my mother.  similar to this one. It was exactly right for my mother. It was classic, elegant, and not too flashy. It was classic enough that she use...

 I have been working away on the baby quilt. here you see the three "bookshelves" each arranged with toys and books made out of fabrics that had belonged to the new baby's recently deceased grandmother. My lovely client helpfully sent me a file filled with photos of toys and books that really mattered to my client and to her brother in their childhood so this quilt wouldn't be filled with images of generic childhood toys and books but with toys and books that truly mattered to them. As I have worked I have gone back to the list again and again.  Creating  this book cover was so time-consuming that I wasn't dying to attempt another detailed book cover. As I consulted the picture file one more time I realized that I had not yet tackled the Lionel trains. My client and her brother had spent lots of time with their father's Lionel trains.   I had kind of assumed that I could simply create a stylized traintrack, like this Clearly, I did not grow up with Lionel trai...

 Today has felt a little bit like a day out of a sitcom. I had kind of planned on having a quiet day at home to cook for Shabbat and to do some sewing and the doorbell kept ringing and friends kept dropping by--and I attended the online brit-milah of a baby born to someone I met as a toddler. The challah  got baked ( please ignore the passive voice), the chicken got cooked in these spices. There is also rice cooked with dried mushrooms that looks like rice cooked with dried mushrooms--use your imagination. My friend Janet came by with some wonderful old Arab embroideries that were purchased in Israel in the late 1960s. Janet and I are trying to come up with a way to use these embroideries in something that she will use. The quality of the workmanship is really good. We still haven't come up with a good idea of how to incorporate these into something that Janet will use and not just keep in a drawer. If you have any ideas please share. One of the items that came out of Janet's ...