Happy High Holidays

I'm a culinary jew not a religious one so I knew it was Erev Rosh Hashanah because I cooked a brisket and had the family over for dinner last night. But this morning I forgot all about the holiday and drove off early to Bala Cynwyd for my weekly tennis lesson. It wasn't til I was driving back through center city and noticed quite a few sedately dressed couples on the street all heading towards 18th and Spruce that it clicked. Aha, go to synagogue...that's what you're really supposed to do on Rosh Hashanah.

When I was growing up in Yeadon, it was a big deal to miss school and spend the day at services. For one thing, it was a chance to show off new clothes since no matter how hot the day, it was absolutely mandatory to wear a new fall outfit to synagogue. My friends and I would sit in the back of the sanctuary, well positioned to make an early exit before the sermon which was always excruciatingly boring and way too long. We'd stand on the lawn outside, gossiping and flirting, while we waited for our parents, still trapped inside, to give us permission to go home and really enjoy our day off.

Every year after lunch, my mom and I would change out of our dress clothes and go off to Loehmann's in Drexel Hill for some serious bargain shopping. That little excursion was what made the day really special for me. Somehow my mom, who was much more than a culinary Jew, felt that it was all right to go shopping on Rosh Hashanah but a definite no-no on Yom Kippur. I think I still feel the same.

Domesticity

I feel like a stay-at-home mom today which is weird because I didn't stay home when my kids were little. In fact, I loved going off to work where problems could be solved and nobody was crying.

Anyway, today I got up early and rushed out to Metropolitan Bakery to buy some challah for Rosh Hashanah dinner tonight. I had to be back early because a TV installer was coming to rig up a TV in the guest bedroom. (Yes, dear Kenny, there is a now a high definition TV on the wall in your room, a concession to which I gladly agreed now that you have decided to come to Philly for Thanksgiving.)

Upon my return, I morphed into a domestic diva whirling through the apartment. Changing the linens in my bedroom, setting the table in the dining room, plumping the pillows in the living room and, of course, cooking the brisket, prepping the veggies, making the broccoli salad and then cleaning up in the kitchen. At 4 pm, I asked myself, "What would a stay-at-home mom do now? Go for a run, read a book or scrub some toilets? Or...turn on Oprah!" Guess what I did...

Bragging Rights

How do you cook for e a party of 50 people? Well, thanks to my daughter I learned the secret. You turn on VH1 Soul on the TV and don't turn it off until the job is done.

This weekend I had the honor of assisting Liz aka Ms. Sweet Pea Nourishment as she prepared the food for a large party in honor of the Wilma Theater's 30th anniversary. My job was easy--I provided the kitchen and some four hours of slicing and dicing but Liz worked throughout the weekend creating a fantastic menu that used all organic ingredients sourced from local farms in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

By Sunday morning, my refrigerator was bursting with good things all ready to be assembled for the party.



By Sunday evening, it had returned to its normal state--bottles of water, some ancient containers of olives of and random bits of cheese.

The Not So Great Debate

Tonight I was supposed to go hear Mary J. Blige and Robin Thicke but the concert was postponed. So instead of getting dressed up and taking Patco to the Susquehanna Center with Amira, I sat on the sofa in my robe watching the debate with Steve. I'm sorry but I would have preferred and evening with Mary J.

Although I am head over heels in love with Obama and think McCain is suffering from acute senile dementia, I found the debate really boring. I certainly can't imagine that watching it would make any difference in how someone is going to vote on November 3.

Really Weird

I'm a pesco-vegetarian (Dr. Weil's phrase, not mine) but when the carnivores in my life and the holiday demand it, I am willing and able to cook, if not eat, meat. So today I took myself to the Reading Terminal Market, source of all good things in Philadelphia, to order my brisket for Rosh Hashanah dinner. (If anyone's interested in my brisket recipe which I can truthfully, if not modestly, say has won acclaim far and wide, give me a holler. In brief, it's amalgam of Julia Child and my mom, both distinguished cooks.)

After placing my order at Harry Ochs, I ran into my ex computer techie seated at a nook next to the meat counter. Now, I always knew he was weird--kind of goes with the territory of techno geek. For one thing, everytime I saw him, no matter how inclement or cold the weather, he would be wearing industrial strength sandals and shorts. Today was no exception.

I stopped to say hello and then suddenly noticed what he was eating. Spread before him on a piece of butcher wrap was at least a half pound of bright red, raw, ground beef accompanied by a stack of bright orange American cheese slices. While we chatted briefly he would roll a healthy serving of meat in a slice of cheese and pop it down the hatch. Yuck!!

Thank god I had already eaten.

Some Enchanted Evening

I went to New York today to see South Pacific. It was such a beautiful day that I walked all the way from Penn Station to Lincoln Center.

At the theater, I had an incredible seat--fourth row and dead center. I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE South Pacific and this production is fantastic. When I was a little girl, I danced around my living room as my parents listened to the original soundtrack with Enzio Pinza and Mary Martin. And one of the highlights of my career at summer camp was when I starred as Bloody Mary in the Camp Greylock for Girls production and brought the house down with my soulful rendition of Bali Hai. (I had auditioned for the part of Nellie Forbush wanting like all the girls to be the ingenue who washed that man right out of her hair but Joan Friedman, that goody-goody, snagged the part.) For years after, I couldn't take a shower without singing the entire score. I still remember the words to most of the songs. And they call me a cockeyed optimist...

Afterward, I met my BFF and sistah, aka Jane and Jeelu, for dinner downtown before taking the train back to Philadelphia.


Wait til I get in the shower tomorrow morning.

There's No Place Like Home

I never am so glad to be back in Philadelphia than when I return from Utah.

Steve and I went for a few days to visit Mo. I bravely wore my Obama pin throughout our stay there, wanting childishly perhaps to show my colors and fully expecting to see a landscape dotted with huge McCain/Palin signs. Surprisingly, there were none. I guess there's no need to spend the money and spread the word in a state that is so solidly in the Republican camp. I didn't experience any dirty looks or hostile comments. Instead, a few courageous souls in Salt Lake City whispered that they liked the button.

Ogden, a suburb of SLC, where Mo lives, is a weird place. The mountains are just 10-15 minutes away and everywhere you go there's a spectacular view of them pasted against a brilliant blue sky. (We didn't see a cloud for the three days we were there.) But the city and its environs are a series of featureless, cookie cutter developments strung together by strip malls and big box retail outlets. It's only when we drove through the canyons or over the North Ogden Divide where the houses are set apart with ample space to breathe that you get a sense of what might have been before the super highways changed things forever.

Mo lives in a tidy house in a development of tidy houses that all look the same. There are children--mostly blond, it seems--playing everywhere, bikes strewn across the lawns, dogs barking in the back yards. All the garages seem to hold at least two cars--one of which is a large SUV or truck--motorcycles or dirt bikes and a full complement of sporting gear. Many of the houses, Mo's included, have basketball nets in the back. One afternoon, I strolled through the development and saw just one vegetable garden but that had a compost bin, a promising sign. Most houses have green, well tended lawns with tame little islands of shrubbery and flowers set carefully within or along the houses.

Mo and Steve shot baskets and I sat on the deck reading. I looked out over his back yard to a landscape of identical rooftops all sprouting direct TV dishes set against the rugged and majestic mountains that loomed on all sides.

Like I said, Utah is a weird place.

I Love My New Car Sooooooo Much

Isn't she adorable? I've been waiting for her since early June. And today, at last, Giul kindly drove me to the dealership and it was love at first sight for Chessie and me. I've named her after a similarly adorable car that Liz and I drove through Sicily about four years ago. Of course, this Chessie is totally up to date, politically correct and environmentally friendly. She's a Prius but she'll always be my baby.

Am I Going Crazy?

I am trying to make sense of this whole Sarah Palin thing. Ok, everyone agrees she's a ruthless, scheming politician, the ticket's designated attack dog, a real "barracuda." Yet because she's a Republican and an evangelical Christian passionately opposed to abortion, nobody's calling her a bitchy feminist, nobody's asking her who wears the pants in her house.

This is really where it gets weird to me. Does this mean, ladies, that we have truly come a long way, baby, now that there is a vice presidential candidate who happens to be a female but is a consummate political hack with no obvious credentials except her fierce ambition and her ability to shamelessly but effectively lie, distort and misrepresent the issues?

Have women made it now that we have our very own Dan Quayle?

I need help!

A Night on the Town

Summer in the city. The nights are warm and the streets are full of all sorts of people.

Last night I went out to dinner with Liz and Amira. Along the way we met a roving troubadour in a motorized wheelchair who serenaded me on Market Street. He had a great smile and an even better voice. What a lovely way to start the evening.

Politics can be sooooooo depressing.

We are governed by crazy people. Literally crazy people. I tried watching the convention in St. Paul--why I don't know--but turned it off after a few minutes each time not in disgust, more in disbelief. Those people are truly insane.

I'm voting for Obama--I'm praying for Obama--I but the process is so horrible and distorted and evil that I wonder how anything good can come out of it.

I scour the blogs each day in search of hope but this paragraph from Charles Pierce, a regular contributor to Eric Alterman's site says it all to me:

"I have no hope for the next 56 days. None whatsoever. Reality's relevance was lost somewhere between Invesco Field and the Xcel Center. We're going to get lofty post-partisan dreariness from both presidential candidates, and a vicious 1992 culture-war brawl under the radar, which will be thoroughly deplored in public by the people who profit from it most. I shouldn't have to watch Karl Rove tell me about the American people and how they vote. I should get to watch Karl Rove being hauled off in chains to Danbury. The major television networks will curl up into a ball roughly five minutes from the start of the first presidential debate. The whole campaign is now going to be conducted on the level of pure mythology. If they had any intellectual honesty whatsoever, the people on TV would dress in white robes and divine the campaign through the movement of waves and the burning of laurel leaves. For a minute back in the spring, it seemed like the country was ready to admit to itself that it poisoned itself with bull***t over the past seven years and was prepared to issue itself a corrective. Not any more. We're back to "personality" and "character" and "narratives" and all the other stuff that keeps anyone from thinking about what's really at stake here."

I need a drink.

What the...

Check out this blog from P Diddy. And, yes, folks, I know who P. Diddy is...

Arriverderci Otisfield

My last day in Maine this summer was absolutely the best day in Maine this summer. A brilliant blue sky with not a cloud in sight. A brisk breeze from the north--fresh Canadian air--causing white caps on the lake. Sitting on the deck, listening to the trees in the wind felt like I was on the deck of a ship going on a happy journey to a beautiful place where Sarah Palin wouldn't force her 17 year old daughter to get married!!!!

Bob and Jane and Steve and I played tennis...if you can call it that. Jane's hip was bothering her, Bob's bum knee kept him from running and Steve swaddled himself in a wide elastic belt that supposedly would protect his back but that made him look like some kind of weird sumo wrestler. Not a pretty picture. Well, there are worse ways to waste time than to play a set of geezer tennis on a gorgeous Maine day with our best friends.