sarah in nyc

An Unexpected Shabbat at home

2026-08-14T16:45:02.430-04:00

We had plans, and they got cancelled.

That means that I had to bake challah.

I was thinking as I began putting together the challah dough how so much of the early stages of baking challah looks less than appealing.

It's pretty similar to my sewing while it is in progress. At some stages, it is just an ugly mess. as my British pals would say, "It looks a dogs dinner".

But with enough time and labor,

it takes shape and eventually

you end up with something beautiful.

Our boys are joining us tonight. We will be eating chicken wings made with

Pomegranate molasses, mustard and liquid smoke.

It's the perfect mix of tart, sweet acidic and smoky.

Yesterday I purchased three bottles of the pomegranate molasses at Barzini's a local packed to the gills gourmet grocery store. The store carried food and condiments from all over the world. Of course I loved it.

And sadly, unlike the news in the local news blog that I liked to, that said that the store wasn't closing--it is closing.

Everything was 40% off.

This is most of what I brought home.

When I went to check out, the owners kept asking me if I was Persian. They thought that I looked Persian, but once they saw that I bought three bottles of pomegranate molasses and three big bags of Iranian herb mix and a package of barberries they were convinced that I MUST be Persian. Finally, they were convinced that my family came from eastern Europe but they liked that I liked Persian ingredients.

I am roasting some potato wedges in the oven as I type. They are coated with....

let me see if I remember, smoked paprika, black pepper, cayenne and dill. Olive oil and lemon juice finish the potatoes off.

I still have to figure out the vegetable portion of our meal and a small dessert.

I hope that all of you have

a Shabbat Shalom.

Moving right along

2026-08-13T09:58:56.205-04:00

Hanoch, the man for whom I am making this tallit, is an army chaplain. He really wanted the pinot to echo the Jewish army chaplain stole (pictured below).

The stole isn't a tallit, but it is often worn on official chaplain business. The Christian stoles are similar but with Christian iconography. (I am not going to explain how the Christian liturgical stole is actually derived from Jewish religious dress, so the Army stole is a weird back borrowing. But that is a different topic.)

I suppose that I could have put in a million hours to replicate the embroidered insignia. I know that what I would have ended up with would have been an artistic take on the military insignia rather than the real thing. For some clients that would have been the perfect approach, but not for Hanoch.

So, uncharacteristically for me, I commissioned Jan Gorelick to use her computerized embroidery machine to create the pinot for me. The machine that Jan owns is the equivalent of a scanner and printer but instead of printing ink on paper, the output is embroidered on fabric. I am simplifying the work involved by a whole lot but, you get the idea.

I really loved working with Jan. This is what she sent me.

I wanted to integrate the Jan's pinot into the design of the rest of the tallit. I stacked a black Petersham ribbon over a turquoise satin ribbon and embroidered it into place with a gold metallic diamond stitch. Then I added the turquoise saw-tooth stitches on either side of the Petersham ribbon.

My goal was for the Jewish and the army elements in this tallit to have a conversation with one another and not sulk at opposite corners of the room.

Below you can see the ribbon applied on the pinot. I cut down the emblems that Jan had made. so the proportions would fit the tallit better.

Yes, I am aware that I haven't finished trimming all of the loose threads.

Jan had added a simple blue eyelet.

I sewed the pinot onto the tallit with a bright green scallop stitch. I expanded and embellished the eyelet using a turquoise silk thread a slate blue rayon embroidery thread and a gold metallic thread.

And here are the pinot in place on the tallit. Your brain doesn't actually notice the bright green stitches but it just works better than using the expected blue.

I really think that this works.

The atara still needs to be completed...but with tzitzit, this is a useable tallit. A friend saw the tallit the other day. She commented that she imagined a child snuggled close to Hanoch and just taking in all of the small details during services. My friend is right. I often design for the person looking closely at every detail of a tallit and not just the viewer from across the room.

And now a follow-up form Friday's post.

The custard did not set. It was delicious, but a sauce rather than a custard. After Shabbat, I added more tapioca starch to the mixture and cooked it for another minute or two in the microwave.

Food Friday and odds and ends

2026-08-07T17:26:34.490-04:00

Our table is set for Shabbat. People we love will be joining us.

What are we eating?

Chicken stuffed with dried Iranian limes. I softened the dried limes in hot water for a few minutes before stuffing them into the chicken cavities. The dried limes or limoo punch above their weight flavor wise.

We are also eating, what has become for us, the side dish of the season,

It's potatoes and carrot sticks roasted with olive oil, black pepper and lots of lemon juice. There is some sort of an alchemy that makes this simple combination taste much more complex and delicious than it ought to. You can certainly fancy this up with with some fresh herbs but there is no need to.

Salad will be made after I am done writing.

Below is either a lovely set custard or a wet mess. I made an almond milk based custard that I had planned to be vanilla flavored but I made some left turns along the way. I steeped cinnamon and mace in the almond milk and then added some bourbon and rose water and orange flower water along with the vanilla.

Either set or wet, this custardy thing will be served alongside some beautiful cherries.

In addition to being the season of potatoes and carrots roasted with lots of lemon juice, this has been a season of small appliance failure. One of the clear signs of small appliance failure is that pre-electrical fire aroma. The blow drier my husband gave me as a birthday gift in 1982 gave up the ghost at the beginning of the summer. The Vornado fan that I bought about thirty five years ago began emitting that electrical failure smell a few weeks ago. We bought a new one.

One of my irons sprung a leak. The electrical wiring in our bedroom has been finicky and we hadn't been able to use our air conditioner. Luckily my husband as able to get our unit to run last night.

I thought that the air conditioner unit in our dining room had died but it just needed a bit of crude DIY to get it working again.

As always, our lives are imperfect but pretty good.

Shabbat Shalom. Stay cool,

Things I didn't buy at Netcost- the Russian food market

2026-08-04T16:15:45.392-04:00

OK the following are items that amused me.

They sell lots of shot glasses with terrific Russian graphics. I am enough of a grownup to be satisfied with a photo.

I find the idea of Uncle Vanya canned foods to be really amusing.

We call this brand of chocolate, "ugly baby chocolate". On further thought the baby isn't that ugly but does look terrified.

The chocolate is actually not very good but my kids are always happy to get some because the packaging is so great.

Cookies with a different child on the package.

Russian sodas with excellent labels.

This cow graphic is even better than Elsie the Cow.

I purchased none of the above. they just gave me joy and I hope that they give you some joy as well.

Red shirts and a red dress

2026-08-03T23:18:24.040-04:00

The other day my husband and I saw something beautiful.

We were waiting for a bus in Washington Heights near the George Washington Bridge. On the corner of 181st Street and Broadway there was a man who had built a castle for himself out of garbage next to an overflowing garbage can.

Then I noticed two men wearing red George Washington Bridge Business Improvement District (BID) shirts interacting with the man in the garbage encampment.

They spoke to him gently and one of the men shoveled the garbage mountain into a large trash bin on wheels. They bantered with him and checked to see which part of the garbage mountain could be bagged up and taken away.

At one point one of the workers handed the man a folded bill. A few minutes later, the man selected two small bags from the mountain of garbage and walked away.

I was struck at how the BID workers exactly struck the balance between respecting the humanity of the garbage-castle-man and the right of the people in the neighborhood to NOT live with a garbage castle on their corner. I loved how their gentle and persuasive manner allowed the man to walk away without an angry confrontation.

While the last of the cleanup went on I thanked one of the red shirted BID workers for the gentle yet persuasive way they had worked with the man. He gave me a fist bump.

And now, a new topic.

I needed a new summer dress. I wanted something that was cool enough to wear on a swelteringly hot day and also didn't need to be ironed. Fabric Mart supplied me with the perfect solution. They were selling tubular cotton knits for two or three bucks a yard. For those of you who are not sewing geeks like me...

Commercial knitting machines are essentially big versions of the toy below. I grew up calling them knitting knobbies.

Here is a slightly more complex version of the same thing.

Most knit fabric is made on a larger, more mechanized version of these simple knitting machine.

So I had a couple of yards of 50 inch wide red cotton knit. (No, the color makes no difference at all.)

The fabric is 50 inches wide. My shoulders are not 50 inches wide. I will show you what I did with paper diagrams because I didn't take photos of the process. Forgive me.

I folded the tube of red cotton into quarters. I took a dress that fits and folded it in half and lay it on top of the fold. The cotton knit had very little stretch. The dress I was using as my pattern is pretty stretchy.

There are people who can figure out a mathematical formula to determine how much larger my red cotton dress needed to be. I am not one of those people. What I can do is guesstimate. So I shifted the stretchy dress that I was using as my pattern away from the fold and cut out the bodice.

I was feeling very lazy so I just cut the bodice out until the hipline.

I decided to have the width of the dress below the high hip just be the full width of the fabric.

I cut out the dress and sewed up the seams. It needed darts because it was too baggy and looked really unflattering. This is what the dress looks like inside out. I think that the actual dress is easier to understand than the paper dress cutouts.

This is what the dress looks like on my body.

The belt is one I have owned since the 1980s.

I liked the challenge of making the dress in the simplest way possible with as little sewing and cutting as possible. It works. I don't have to iron it and it will keep me cool on the hottest and muggiest of days.

This isn't a fancy dress. It just a utilitarian one that will be useful for a couple of summers. Not bad for the price of a subway ride.

Hanoch's tallit---still unfinished but on my dress form.

2026-07-30T21:31:43.781-04:00

And now---some images of Hanoch's tallit which will give you a sense of what it will look like when it is done.

It is wrinkled and thready and the edges are not yet finished.

But at least you don't have to use too much of your imaginations to get a sense of where I am going.

There is still one painted stripe left to add and probably a few more rows of ribbon.

There are still miles of silk to cut onto bias strips and stitch together to cover the raw edges. I still have to make the atara and edge that and the pinot. It's closer to done than it is to not done.

Progress on Hanoch's tallit and the end of a very long era

2026-07-29T23:31:45.038-04:00

As of Sunday evening, the calligraphed and painted stripes

all were properly edged.

I am loving the mix of colors. I hope that Hanoch does as well.

One of the painted stripes will not have text.

I started adding the stitched and ribbon stripes to the tallit.

I am really pleased with the ribbons that I embroidered.

And now...the end of than era.

My former across the hall neighbors and our family were pretty close during the years they lived across the hall. Our collective children wandered back and forth across the hall between the two apartments. We all had many adventures and meals together.

Michael and Andrea (our dear neighbors) had a car and shopped at Costco years before Costco opened a store across town. At one point Andrea bought a whole lot of boxes of Crystal Light in lemonade flavor. Andrea became allergic to Crystal Light.

So, twenty three years ago Andrea gave us more than 25 boxes of Crystal Light. We stashed those boxes all over the apartment. There were boxes on high shelves and hidden on cabinets all over the apartment.

For some reason we all became fond of drinking Crystal light when we were sick.

For reasons lost in the mists of time, we all called it Melonade. Boxes went with our kids when they went to camp and when they moved into their own apartments.

The other day

My husband opened up the very last little packet of Crystal Light from the very last box. The Melonade era of our lives has come to an end. It was a good twenty three years.

Some Random Thoughts

2026-07-24T13:02:24.397-04:00

Wednesday night was the beginning of Tisha B'Av, the Jewish national/religious day of mourning. We chant Eicha/ The book of Lamentations. As various members of my community led the reading, many of us softly chanted along

The text particularly spoke to me this year. We are living through difficult times. I was struck this year by how deeply familiar the text is. Verses and verse fragments are part of our liturgy. So many of the verses expressing loss and grief are inscribed on gravestones. Snippets of the text are incorporated into Hebrew poetry both hundreds of years ago as well as in contemporary Hebrew/Israeli poetry and song.

And of course the longing for the return to Zion that is encoded into our religious DNA.

It was a moving evening.

And on a completely different topic...

I am writing this post on a bus that left from the Port Authority Bus station. Hold on to your seats. The bathroom was spotless and smells clean. The Port Authority bathroom is no longer a terrifying place. Totally shocking .

And one last topic.

Everyone who reaches adulthood eventually has to deal with some sort of a chronic health condition. Mine is Lymphedema. If you want you can look it up. Anyway, I have had it since I am 14. Several years ago I discovered the wonders of plugging myself into pneumatic boots that pump the lymphatic fluid out of my legs

Last week the compressor for the boots died.I am awaiting the paperwork for my new pump and boots to go through. I had forgotten how achey my legs were before I began using the pneumatic boots.

I am counting the days until I pick up my new set.

Shabbat Shalom to all of you.

Pocket book repair and progress on two tallitot

2026-07-21T17:14:20.915-04:00

My mother never took a pocketbook to synagogue on Shabbat or holidays. To her, a pocketbook meant that you were taking money or your car keys to synagogue. Both would have earned a sniff from my mother. My mother always took along tissues in her pocket or in the cuff of her sweater because she had terrible allergies and a tissue was always needed.

Decades ago my late friend Fred told me that he grew up in a family that was irreligious. Fred, as an adult felt drawn to greater observance. He once told me that he married his ex wife because he was so impressed she knew that that it wasn't proper to take a pocketbook to services. He laughed ruefully because he discovered that this was ALL that she knew about Jewish observance. ( And no, the marriage didn't last).

All of this is a long introduction to the fact that now I carry a pocketbook to services every week. I have a pretty severe sesame allergy. I have to take along my Epi-pen because after services every week there is a kiddush-- a light, or not so light meal. I usually am pretty good at figuring out which foods can kill me...but not all of the time.

I have been buying vintage evening bags and pocketbooks to hold my Epi-pen, housekeys and tissues, because like my mother I need tissues.

Last summer I had a hankering for a pocketbook similar to the one I had at some point in junior high school or high school. It may have been a hand me down from one of my older sister. It was a straw hard sided bag with leather findings. Don't forget I grew up outside of Boston, it was what ladies used during the summers.

Anyway, I found what I wanted on eBay. I was delighted with it.

Clearly the sort of bag one might wear with Pappagallo shoes or a pair of espadrilles.

Unfortunately, the last time I used the bag, one of the rivets that anchors the leather strap on the back of the bag broke. I looked on Amazon for replacements. I could have either purchased three rivets for ten bucks or fifty for the same ten bucks. Yes, I purchased the fifty, because perhaps I might need big brass rivets.

I had to unstitch the lining from the straw.

and then replace the rivets.

I was unable to remove the rivet on the lower left, so the slightly smaller rivet will remail until it breaks.

Re stitching the lining to the straw was quick and easy.

As you can see the bag was made in Hong Kong. I am guessing that it is from the 60s, but it could be from the 50s or as late as the 70s.

I am glad that the fix was relatively easy.

I have not just been doing pocketbook repair.

I painted text on Hanoch's tallit

I also have been working on Jess's tallit.

That's Psalm 29. I will probably go back and outline all of the letters.

I am very pleased with how I constructed the ribbons.

Bit by bit both Hanoch's tallit and Jess's tallit are heading towards the finish line.

Yellow skies and a bit more work

2026-07-15T20:58:25.132-04:00

Normally I associate the smell of a wood fire with delightful things. I have fond memories of walking home from the Quincy Center Station on cold wintery evenings when I was in High School and smelling the lovely homey smell of fireplaces warming homes along my cold walk home.

I also associate that wonderful scent of woodfires from the special bonfires at camp. Today though, we woke up to the scent of wood smoke but it wasn't something homey or celebratory but it was the sickly smoke that has been blanketing us from the forest fires in Ontario.

The air feels heavy and sickly. The light is a heavy ochre color.

It isn't quite as bad as the it was a few years ago when the sky was orange from the smoke and it felt like the end of days. I hope that these fires are soon quenched.

I have managed to get a few more miles of ribbon embroidered.

I leave you with a shot of shadow from a friend's house.

A small adventure and progress on Jess's tallit.

2026-07-09T15:15:50.984-04:00

Yesterday we went on a little adventure---to Hoboken.

It's the birthplace of Frank Sinatra. I don't know how many people would choose to make Hoboken a day trip destination but we are a sucker for old cities so off we went with our friends Alfie and Judy.

One of us was in need of a nap and stretched out on the grass in Frank Sinatra Park for a nap. The rest of us watched this photoshoot with a quinceañera and her parents.

The dress was impressive. The girl's parents wrangled the dress up and down the promenade. The girl wore crocks and ankle socks under the dress. Her parents acted as stylists arranging the skirt for every shot.

After naptime was done, we walked to the Hoboken Terminal. It is a pretty fabulous building

that was created when train travel wasn't just transportation but was an EVENT.

I am going to pause here to complain for a moment---no, not about our lovely day in Hoboken but about the fact that Blogger has decided to make inserting images into this blog much more difficult than normal. I am not including the cursing portion of composing this blog post.

The other day, I produced this embroidered ribbon to use as a border for one of the text panels on Jess's tallit. What you see below is the finished product that is a last stage of a multi stepped event.

First, I stacked the light blue ribbon over the ivory ribbon. Then I embroidered the pale blue leaf motif. After that, I embroidered the dark blue scallop on the right side of the leaf motif and then did the same on the left.

I suppose that I could have stopped there. I wanted the ribbon to look a bit less flat and have just a tiny subtle bit of glimmer.

I used a very fine bronze colored Lurex thread in a three-step zig zag .It's barely noticeable, but when Jess moves it will glow.

I went back and did the same thing on the other side of the ribbon.

Then I sewed the embroidered ribbon onto the text stripe---of course with another embroidery stitch.

This is what it will look like on the tallit.

I went through a similar process with a different text stripe.

I am building this tallit bit by bit.

There is lots more work to be done. I love how each big task is made up of small doable smaller tasks.

All the pretty things, or at least some of them

2026-06-30T18:26:39.861-04:00

I haven't been posting much lately. I was sick with a bad cold which lost me a week in the land of the living. So let me atone for myself by posting some pretty things.

I was reorganizing some of my stash of vintage linens and pulled out a couple of pieces to share.

I can't figure out the date for the pretty centerpiece below. The pale yellow is a little unusual.

The combined pulled thread and wrapped embroidery is awfully attractive.

The piece is bordered with chain stitched botanical motifs. If any of you have a sense of where this piece lives historically or it's possible geographic origin I would love to hear from you.

Continuing on the theme of geometric pulled thread work, I own three of these lovely linen batiste placemats. They will probably live on one of our glass fronted cabinets in the future.

The lace trimmed hankie below needs a tiny bit of mending. This looks like Italian lace to me.

Clearly this isn't a nose honking sort of a hankie but the sort one tucked into an elegant handbag to dab an eye.

I baked a pretty bread while I was sick. It was a fennel and barley bread and had a great shattery crust.

It was made with a lazy sourdough starter (a bit of bread dough that hung out in the fridge for several days)

Bagels were also baked during the haze of sick.

We all went out for Father's Day

and ate lots of meat.

You can tell that we are all related because well all stopped to take photos of this inscription on a Catholic School.

We all assumed that she is the patron saint of those HGTV shows where the designers decorate an entire house in grey and declare it cheerful. We also thought that we might evoke Saint Blandia when a meal, unfortunately, is all white.

We did love the abandoned movie theatre with excellent terracotta work.

I am working away on making trim for two different tallitot.

It feels like miles of embroidery.

In reality it is only 12 feet per ribbon.

Not a mile, but a whole lot of stitching, especially because most of these ribbons require several passes of embroidery.

I made an outfit, a smock dress and a pair of big-butt pants for the baby of a dear friend. Our kids grew up together.

Yes, that's another embroidered ribbon near the hem of the dress. I love this pant design for babies. There is lots of room for diapers.

I made the outfit out of African printed cotton. I love the print. The baby's mother was really happy with the outfit.

We drove onto a wonderful sunset the other night.

Last week I needed to purchase the ribbon that you saw that I embroidered. I didn't take photos of the racks of Petersham ribbon. I am sharing most of the aisles of zippers, but not all of them.

This wasn't even the complete stock of zippers.

Today I had a doctor's appointment. The building was decorated in a Mayan Moderne style.

I didn't even know that WAS a n architectural style.

This fabulous mosaic faces the elevators.

The terrazzo floors aren't too bad either

Even the radiators are pretty.

This little gem of a building was across the street.

This one was a block south.

So that's the pretty wrap up for the moment.

But one last note before I go. If you post a comment here for the sole purpose of driving business to your commercial site. I won't post your ersatz comment. Nope. Not even if you comment on multiple posts a day, or if you comment multiple times on the same post. I won't post your comment that is intended to drive eyeballs to your business even if you say something nice about a post that I have written.

On the other hand, I love hearing from real human beings with actual comments.

Street Friends

2026-06-08T16:34:30.146-04:00

I don't know what it is like to raise children outside of New York City.

When my kids were little, I spent huge swaths of my time in the playground with my kids .During that time I developed intense friendships with the other mother's and sitters in the park.

We knew intimate details about one another's' lives. We would share struggles with infertility or health or behavioral issues our children were struggling with. We might know about issues that one or another was going through in our marriages. We didn't always remember last names.

Often I would run into one of these friends as we were pushing strollers up and down Broadway or walking our kids to and from school or their various afterschool activities. Those moments on Broadway were a chance to catch up on our lives to share and solve problems together. As we and our kids grew older we might talk about struggles getting into the right middle school or a kid having issues with drugs or mental health issues or our own struggles with ailing parents or spouses. Many of those friendships have spanned decades. I don't necessarily see those women as often these days but there is a deep bond between us.

Over the intervening decades, there were times when our kids might be in school together, or Hebrew school or we might be saying kaddish together. Most of those deep conversations took place intensely as we were going between one place and another. We didn't need coffee or a meal for the real conversation to emerge.

Last night I heard that one of those moms who has been part of my life for the last thirty five years is in a coma after a terrible stroke.

I hope that I can be of help to my friend and her son in the time moving forward.

Not sewing, but a repair

2026-06-04T12:12:05.116-04:00

My feet are, as or dear friend Father Blute, used to say, "My cross to bear". Unless they are perfectly shod, they get cranky and let me know what is wrong in no uncertain terms.

I have owned the boots pictured below for many years.

I bought them , a vintage pair of Larry Mahan boots at an online auction. They are really comfortable. Unfortunately the delicate snakeskin on the foot part of the boot has begun to break.

I had repaired two other pairs of boots

a couple of years ago by covering broken leather with leather patches put in place with barge glue.

I did the same operation again last night, but instead of using the thin and flexible metallic leather that I had used for the patches above, I pulled out a heavy olive green skin that I had purchased somewhere a really long time ago.

Last time I draped newspaper over my boot tops to create a pattern. This time I was more clever and taped strips of painters tape over the boot parts that needed to be patched. I carefully peeled the blue painters tape off the boot, then taped THAT to newspaper and used that as my pattern. I think I got the idea from videos showing how to make a corset pattern. It took longer to type all of that out tan to actually do the pattern making task.

I didn't love the olive green with the orangy brown leather.

Then I remembered the amazing shoe polish I had purchased.

This incredible product deposits color on leather. I had used it to refresh an old leather jacket. I saw that you can also use this polish to dye leather. it took about three coats of the polish with a fair amount of buffing between layers to turn the olive green black. I used the barge glue to adhere the dyed leather to my boots.

I then darkened the snakeskin just a bit.

My shoe repair place is great at replacing heels and sols. They don't do a great job on the boot uppers. I love that I will have several more years of wear out of these comfortable boots. As soon as a new tube of glue arrives I will tackle another beloved pair of boots that I was worried that I might have to ditch.

A purchase with extras

2026-06-01T20:38:55.667-04:00

I love old sewing books. I know that there are lots of women who love to buy shoes, or clothes or jewelry or fancy kitchen equipment. I love to buy old sewing books.

I will often go through the sewing book auctions on eBay to see if there is something that I want to add to my collection. A week or so back I bid on this book published in 1975. I liked that it had diagrams and sizing charts for children's clothing. There is currently a crop of young relatives that I have been sewing for.it is useful to have such a book for when I make the next batch of gift-garments.

I won the auction.

The book arrived yesterday. I opened the package. The book was well wrapped in cardboard.

Inside the cardboard there was

this excellent booklet from 1941 with directions for lots of different crochet, knitting and embroidery stitches as well as directions for at least a dozen projects.

Tucked into the 1941 booklet was

this instructional booklet for making crochet toys.

I was already delighted by all of the extra goodies tucked into my purchase. And like the late night TV ads used to say...Wait!! there's more!

There is just under a yard of this patriotic/nautical cotton poly fabric that I would guess is from the 1970s.

Wait!!! there is even more!!!

A sweet note from the previous owner of these sewing goodies.

The seller was an old age home helping it's residents deaccession their things.

Each item in this package made me happy. The whole kit and caboodle is just the best thing ever.

Work was accomplished today!!!

2026-05-29T19:06:07.242-04:00

Our 25lb bag of flour was decanted into gallon bags .

Some of that flour was turned into eight challot.

Those challot got baked.

Two chickens got cooked. They are flavored with lemon and lime juice and some spices.

I no longer remember which spices I used.

The beautiful okra i bought yesterday is now looking like this.

The sweet potato fries are nhot pictures. perhaps they were feeling shy.

A salad is yet to be made.

And a bit of work even got done. Please ignore the passive voice. It has been a busy day.

For your Shabbat Listening pleasure---a song about Jerusalem from the mid 1950s.

and a romantic summer song.

Shabbat Shalom!

Train Part 2

2026-05-28T09:11:49.307-04:00

I had planned to write a detailed post about the rest of our train adventures. But I think that instead I will do a quick photo dump.

But before I do, a quick introduction. Any of you who know me, either just as a reader here or as someone who knows me in person, there is nothing that makes me happier that seeing beautiful things.

We traveled through landscapes that made me understand while people might worship mountains.

So may of the mountains that we passed were simultaneously rising out of the ground and eroding at the same time.

We learned that Coloradans have a custom of mooning the AMTRAK train as it goes by.

This was just one of many times we were mooned while going through Colorado.

It was impossible to not think of the people who crossed these mountains in wagon trains.

Eventually, we got to the Pacific Ocean.

This wasn't the fastest or least expensive way to travel. It was, however, pretty wonderful.

A surprise!

2026-05-27T16:56:26.219-04:00

My doorman just let me know that there was a cache of sewing supplies waiting for me in the lobby.

It was a laundry basket filled to the gills with spools and cones of threads, two to three dozen zippers, many of them long separating zippers, a pair of dressmaking shears,

an excellent hip curve ruler

and most of a roll of four inch elastic.

A hip curve is one of those nice to have tools that I haven't been willing to spend money on. The zippers are the kind of thing that are expensive to buy and are great to have on hand. Four inch elastic is just the thig for a lovely wide waistband.

Dust can be hard on thread

and can cause breakage. I will see what is salvageable and what is not.

I just discovered that this fabulous haul came to me via a cousin who had a hoarder tenant. One never knows the proportion of treasure vs. trash that shows up in such hauls. I rule this haul to be enough treasure to be a win.

יהי זכרה ברוך

2026-05-24T16:34:20.857-04:00

I was planning to write my next post about more of our train travels. However this weekend I learned some news that I really need to write about.

I was probably nine or ten the first time I met Lisa Fliegel. She went to Solomon Schechter along with some of my friends who had recently transferred to my school, I lived in a universe where one had to be contained and follow the rules. Lisa was a giant presence. I had never met a girl my age who was THAT funny, THAT outrageous. You just knew that if Lisa showed up in a room the PAR-TY had arrived.

I knew that Lisa's mother had died when Lisa was in elementary school --and despite that Lisa was always the most fun person in the room.

Lisa went to high school and was involved with Young Judaea with my closest friends. We attended some of the same parties. We hung out in the some of the same living rooms. She was the most essential friend of some of my dear friends.

When I went to college and during those early weeks when you try to figure out common ground with people you have never met before---knowing Lisa was just a good connector, because Lisa knew everyone and everyone adored her.

After college when I was working at my synagogue, Ansche Chesed I once answered the phone after everyone else had gone home. It was Lisa. She was cold calling the synagogue to see if she could get some help navigation the Jewish social services system in New York. Her older sister, a mother of young children was dying of cancer ( just as their own mother had so many years before). I let Lisa know who I was. I did my best to connect Lisa with people who could help her sister and her family. She may have even stopped by in person.

I knew that Lisa was mostly living in Israel during those years. I knew that she was such a gifted artist that her kibbutz sent her to art school. I knew she was involved with making a Fliegel's flight that was a charming overview of Jewish history. My kids LOVED this video and watched it over and over.

Lisa became a therapist and developed a specialty working with traumatized children. Right after October 7, Lisa returned to Israel and worked with children from the Gaza corridor area who were evacuated to hotels in Eilat. You can read about her work here.

I learned the awful news of Lisa's sudden death from a stroke this weekend. I thought about the photo Lisa had posted of herself. She took the photo of my dear friend Rachel at her recent wedding. Rachel looked beautiful. Her face was full of so many emotions. It was such a moving photo.

Perhaps in the comments of that post --I can no longer find that photo) Lisa posted a selfie. She posted that this was her feeling at the occasion of her beloved's Rachel's wedding. Lisa's photo had a tear rolling down her face. It wasn't a tear of sadness about the occasion but she was just so moved. So that is the last image I have of my dear Lisa..

יהי זכרה ברוך

On the train --Part 1

2026-05-21T16:58:32.779-04:00

I know that I haven't posted for a couple of weeks. A few things made posting difficult. One, was that it is actually difficult to compost a post on my phone. It's time consuming and more than a little difficult. Another issue was that my camera's battery died and I hadn't brought the charger with me. My phone takes OK, not great photos. I am so used to taking photos with my camera. My camera is an extension of my brain. I had to adjust to not having that tool available.

So, enough with the excuses. Our plan was to take the train from Chicago to San Francisco. We decided that given that it was a trip for a special occasion, and also given the reality that we both get up at night to use the bathroom, that it made sense to go first class and spring for a roomette with it's own bathroom and shower.

We tend to be budget travelers and it was lovely to get first class service. You are instructed to arrive at Union Station early

It's just a beautiful space.

Inside the first class lounge

.Because we were first class passengers we got to sit in the first class lounge that had fancy coffee machines and lots of snacks for us to pack along for our trip.

When it was time to depart we were all escorted down to the track and to our car.

Our roomette was small.

We left Chicago and went past industrial landscape that felt familiar.

Soon, the landscape reminded me of those described by Laura Ingalls Wilder in the Little House books.

We chased the sunset as the train rode west.

We went to sleep. I woke up to see the dawn breaking from our window.

I will have to continue this account of our train travels after Shavuot and after Shabbat.

I did make this cheese and home made noodle dish---a cross between a blintz and a lasagna and our kids are bringing the rest of the meal. I still have to finish unpacking and getting things ready for this evening.

The Tiffany Ceiling at Marshall Fields

2026-05-07T00:24:19.578-04:00

My husband suggested that we walk into the former Marshall Fields, now Macy's. Why not??

The first stretch of the store looked like any other old fancy department store. We of course walked through the makeup department.

Soon we saw that the store was organized around a central court. Then we looked up.

If I had any less self control I would have lain down on the floor to just take in the ceiling.

We took the elevator upstairs and admired the ceiling some more and took more photos.

We continued on with our day and saw lots of other truly wonderful buildings. Before we headed back to our hotel we decided to visit the Tiffany ceiling one more time.

We went back to the store to admire the ceiling again. A salesman from one of the makeup counters asked us if we wanted to see the mosaic ceiling closer up. He pointed us to an elevator bank and told us that we could view the mosaics from the top level of the store.

We followed his directions.

We were rewarded with and even closer and more wonderful views of the ceiling.

My parents' dear friend, Father Blute, once told my sister, that he felt that beautiful things served as proof to him of the existence of God.

I don't know if I exactly agree with Father Blute most of the time on that point. However, that Tiffany ceiling might just sway me to that belief.

On the Road

2026-05-06T20:14:27.456-04:00

Well, if you love architecture, come to Chicago.

Yesterday we just wandered into buildings that appealed to us.

We couldn't have had a better day.

Typing posts on my phone is kind of annoying. I will do my best despite having an entire post disappear into the ether earlier today.

A blog salad

2026-05-01T16:21:58.064-04:00

If you came by today to see what I am cooking for Shabbat dinner, I am sorry to disappoint you. We are eating at a friend's to celebrate Tanta Marcia's birthday. I did make two chicken for the birthday dinner.

They were made at the same time as the chicken below but have been in suspended animation in our freezer since last Friday.

I delivered the chickens to our friends' apartment. They live in what is known locally as a "post war" apartment, that is, post WWI. I noticed the lovely tile floor as I waited for the elevator outside of their apartment.

The tile shapes are bog-standard. The color of the tiles and the the herringbone ground give these tiles a medieval flavor. There was a a big revival of medieval style in the post WWI years.

The lobby floor is in a similar theme but in a more rusticated form.

Tanta Marcia's celebrations continue tomorrow and I made some focaccia for tomorrow's lunch. (Some is actually an understatement.)

Last night I baked a bread and I share it because it was extra adorable.

As a bread it wasn't bad either.

A dear friend has a birthday so I painted a scarf for her.

The scarf is a lovely wool gauze. I may be purchasing more for gifts for others.

Seeing the pretty tile floors a few blocks uptown made me look at the floors in my elevator with renewed pleasure.

I worked on redesigning the elevator interiors. Working with the elevator contractor was mostly annoying. Most of the annoyance falls away when I see this.

I designed the elevator floors to match the mosaic floors in our hallway.

I end this post with yet another thing I didn't buy at the thrift store.

If I had normal feet I would have bought these boots in a heartbeat.

I just love the witchy go-go boot vibe. If I owned such boots I would have to make a crushed patent leather jumper in red to wear with the boots. Of course the jumper would need giant brass grommets.

Shabbat Shalom to all of us.

A blast from the past

2026-04-28T17:36:50.489-04:00

There are times when a photo, not even of people but a particular image can make me recall a specific time and place and the people who I was with, with more clarity than a photo of actual human beings.

Sunday I got together with a group of my college buddies. Some I hadn't seen in about thirty years. One I had seen within the last decade. Others I hadn't seen since I graduated from college in 1982.

We ate. We went for a walk where we encountered this crabapple tree.

We looked at old photos. We went though our college yearbook and remembered friends, both living and dead. We talked and talked and ate some more.

What we didn't do was take photos. Perhaps this harkened back to our days together when none of us, even those who loved photography had a camera that always lived in our pockets.

So my old friends and I communicated as we did in our youth, no selfies, no group shots. We did however, pay attention to what each one of us was saying.

Whenever I see this photo,

I will remember the day and my friends.

Sad sign of the times

2026-04-21T15:30:00.005-04:00

Ok, it wasn't just that I had two funerals and two Shivas in one week.

Such things happen. There are weeks when our community is hit with a sad crop of deaths.

The really sad part for me, was that our local funeral home pictured above, with the lovely staff and the sainted doorman had to hire an armed security guard to protect us all while we were attending the funeral of an eighty eight year old man who was paralyzed for the last several years.

This isn't about us. This is about the people who hate us.

Truly sad.