September

                                        

Mr. Eliot may believe that April is the cruelest month, but for me September is its match.  On this second day of the month, Fall in the air from yesterday's rain--the hurricane Ida blowing by us at a distance-- the lightness of sky and breeze is most welcome after the last few weeks of sweat.   Still, memories sleeping uneasy under the skin of summer rise again.  

Soon it will be the New Year. COVID phase 3, as it's called here, means High Holy Days services by video and small home celebrations, and Kaddish without community.

And yet, you know, there is something very peaceful about that.  To be sure, we miss having a table full of friends and family to entertain and be entertained by...stories, old recipes, new recipes, new traditions, old traditions, the complicated issues of life, historical and present.   But the day will be quiet and memories given their full attention. 

Jude Lobe, Sun flowing through trees

 I am even now looking out to the sun shimmering here and there as the wind blows its filters; I imagine the same for Rosh Hashanah day, a pleasure of introspective  reflection usually reserved for the solitude of Yom Kippur.

The menu for dinner is the same, no matter how few we are.  There will be apples and honey, matzoh ball soup (perhaps along with Alexander's carrot soup, which he likes to make whenever we are cooking together), baked fish--trout, salmon, or grouper in a glaze--and a noodle pudding.  I will order my round challah this afternoon from the bakery that makes our favorite.  Like Thanksgiving (which Rosh Hashanah is, in its way), the celebration at home, of home, centers us as we contemplate the strangeness of this new season, the impossibility of the passing one.

Goodness knows, we could use centering.

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Noodle Pudding

8 oz. fine egg noodles

1 cup cottage cheese

1 cup sour cream

1/2 c. finely minced onion

Salt to taste

1/2 tsp nutmeg

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Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Cook noodles until soft.

Meanwhile, saute onions in a little butter.

Drain noodles and mix with cottage cheese, sour cream, onion and salt.

Pour into buttered baking dish (about 1.5 quart).

Sprinkle nutmeg over top.

Bake until brown and light crust forms on top.

Cut into squares to serve.