Faulty Sukkah

My Jewish attachments have many beneficial non-negotiables, or at least minimally negotiables. I follow dietary restrictions.  My weekly Shabbat has its protocols that shut down some of the urgencies of the other days.  The Jewish calendar mandates seasons, usually in the form of Festivals.  Each has its joys, some its burdens.  Passover foods, the Omer Count, a dairy meal challenge for Shavuot, and uncomfortable Tisha B'Av in midsummer, the assembly of people not seen in a while for the Holy Days, the Sukkah that follows, festivities of Hanukkah, fruits of Tu B'Shvat, and the merriment of Purim.  Most challenge me in some way, whether creating a dinner, cleaning house, learning a liturgy portion, or simply being in shul when that's not my preferred destination.

Physical demands only come twice.  Preparing my house for Pesach requires multiple trips between my home's first floor and the basement, mostly to bring sometimes heavy boxes of stored dishes and cookware upstairs, then back down again at the Festival's conclusion.  Washing them can be tedious but preparing the food glorious.  Sukkot requires me to build a sukkah, a flimsy transient structure with a few requirements to make the structure valid.  That Festival is in progress.

Building our sukkah has gone through a few transformations over many years, but having one for our family, and usually for guests, has become one of those non-negotiables.  These structures vary considerably in durability, though none intended to be durable, and in effort required to assemble them.  Mine has transformed from one of wooden beams and cloth walls to a more commercial frame of rust-resistant steel pipes connected by plumbing joints.  A skin of canvas then gets placed around the frame, held in place by bungee anchors inserted into grommets and wrapped around the steel tubes.

The sukkah's validity is established by its roof.  Traditionally, that must come from branches, mostly evergreens, sometimes parts of corn stalks, not always readily available.  The commercial kits, which we use in recent years, have a series of wooden slats that get rolled out over the steel tubing.  The fit could be better.

As my wife and I enter our senior years, the physical capacity to assemble this has waned.  It requires a step ladder, which I have, but which has weathered over decades.  The tubes do not always fit securely into the joints.  Always a two-person job.  And placing the prefab roof atop the frame exposes the limitations of its construction which leaves little leeway for lapses in placement.  I found the branches easier to place, though harder to find.  

And then we have weather, once assembled.  The structure resembles a box kite.  Over the years, brisk winds of the noreaster season have displaced ours.  This year the winds created a topless sukkah, no longer in conformity with the rules of construction.  

Construction has taken a toll on me.  While coping with medial knee pain through physical therapy, the ups and downs of the step ladder, the need to reposition myself to insert tubing into joints, thread the bungees through the grommets, and balance the wooden roof onto the frame has challenged my physical therapy progress.  NSAIDs have gone from PRN to q12h with some benefit, but not enough to postpone orthopedic assessment.

While having my own sukkah has been a seasonal non-negotiable, the toll it has taken requires me to reconsider.  I could hire a handyman and direct him.  Or with some luck, the ortho folks can restore my knee, though they cannot reverse some other aging features that hint maybe a ladder creates too much risk.  Communal sukkahs trace to antiquity, suggesting that individual ones so common in suburbia many have in another era exceeded the financial ability and physical capacity of our ancestors.  This year's effort brings me to a branch point, figuratively and literally.  The sukkah will come down more easily than it went up.

Eating Outdoors

My first costly home upgrade, now some 35 years ago when my son was a toddler, was to create a deck accessible through the back door.  It required little maintenance, though a minor restoration of the wood a few years ago.  Yet it never really fulfilled what I had imagined, a place with the sky above me to hang out and entertain.  Our sukkah stands there each fall, so we have a few dinners on a folding teak table and chairs, sometimes bringing out kitchen chairs or a card table.  But it's not been the dining area, seated or buffet, that I envisioned.  I bought an antigravity chair, which I use a few times a year, and have had a couple of umbrellas over the years which usually have their mechanisms fail before they are put to regular use.  When I had the carpenter do the restoration, it was again my vision to make this into an outdoor living space.  I planted flowers with good results the first year, less subsequent years.  But this summer I am going to upgrade its utility, primarily with dining.  The small round teak table failed after last Sukkot, so time for new dining.  I found four suitable chairs on sale at Target.  They fit in the back seat of my Camry and needed no assembly.  Then a table.  Since I won't be using it a lot, a low-priced one would suffice.  With some effort, I secured one at Boscov's, a square surface suitable for the four chairs from Target.  It has a hole in the middle for an umbrella, which I already have.  And with a flat box, it fit in the car.

Though difficult to get out of the back seat and transport to the deck, really a two-person job, I managed.  Made in China.  People who guided the machines that stamp out the parts and package them probably aren't paid very much.  The engineers who designed this were not likely MIT Alumni.  Parts all there.  Instructions a long way from obvious.  Wrench they provided was no help.  And my own tool box was missing the socket wrench that I needed, but my wife found another.  Not easy to assemble, but done and stable.  

Still need to install the umbrella, another two person effort.  And for fleishig meals I will need a tablecloth, a specialty item with a hole in the middle to accommodate the umbrella pole, and hopefully with a zipper so I don't have to keep removing and reinstalling the umbrella to clean the tablecloth.

And then we have grills.  I've basically given up on gas grills in favor of simpler charcoal.   I have one, rarely used.  It's fleishig.  I wanted a tabletop one, selecting something suitable from a Shop-Rite ad.  Unfortunately, this destination of the Kosher consumer has swooned in customer service.  The grill that would satisfy my needs only appears in the weekly circular.  It's not really available in the stores for people to purchase.  I had to go to the Walmart, ostensibly to replace my milchig mini-chopper with one that their online site indicated was in aisle G2 at my store.  Baited and switched.  They had a different model for $10 more.  But while there, I looked at patio dining tables.  Not displayed.  But the department had tabletop grills.  For $14.99 I could not go wrong, so I got one.  I could either designate it milchig for my patio or fleishig to make dinner in a park.  Decide on first use, but it still needs assembly.  And I can always get a second one, either for milchig on my deck or fleishig by transport.  But I think for now, grilled tuna and eared corn at home on my deck would be the better choice.  I have an insulated cooler and a wooden picnic basket, so preparing home food to eat in a park then transporting it in a container would be more suitable for as often as we might do this.

So my option for outdoor dining approaches reality.  Then actually eat outdoors.

Sukkah Guest

After a few weeks of irritations and rejections, feeling mostly let down both by people I know and by those who really have no obligation to me, I judged it time to move onto new people.  OLLI provided some, as it always does, though more reacquaintance than new friendship.  Same with attending synagogues other than my own, though at RH services I expressed my appreciation to their Torah reader, who I had never approached in all the years going there, for standing aside so that somebody else once a member but now a visitor could have his turn. 

When I created my current semi-annual projects, I included having three dinner guests.  Periodically I would jot on a scrap sheet who I might like to have and for what reason.  The sukkah is designed for guests.  It's construction, sometimes its expense, exceeds the capacity of everyone to have one.  I also have non-Jewish friends who lack familiarity with the tradition.  I went that route last year, and again now, with a relatively new medical friend with second degrees of connection suitable to my wife agreeing to join us for shabbos.

If anything energizes me in my retirement years, it has been planning and creating special dinners, which usually follow an occasion to justify the effort.  And so I began just as soon as my invitation was accepted.  Start by confirming guests' dietary restrictions.  Then a sheet of paper divided into eight rectangles for the individual dishes.  I always make challah if shabbos or yontif, a different bread if not.  I like making bread, always edible, not always elegant appearance as it too often flattens on the second rise.  There are different sections for appetizer and soup, though I wonder if both are really needed.  I find the soup more versatile, both in its selection and in its ability to introduce the rest of the menu.  Always a salad and if I make one needing a dressing, I make my own.  Entree for outside guests has been in recent times whole roast chicken.  The NYT made Mark Bittman's process for this publicly available.  It's been flawless the two times I made it, and there are different variations.  Whole Kosher chickens are readily available, though they take up a lot of room in the freezer while waiting to be used.  Precut chicken is also mostly available and stacks with other things in the freezer.  It combines easily for chicken cacciatore or doro wat. And as much as pastilla, or Moroccan chicken pie challenges me, its steps are more tedious and outcome too uncertain to place on a guest menu.  I usually make a kugel, though with some of the more liquid versions of chicken, a layer of rice beneath will work better.  And there is a vegetable.  And I invariably make some variation of cake for dessert.

While American food gets imported from everywhere with most of the world's climates represented, seasons remain important to me.  Gazpacho or other cold soup in the summer, apples in the fall, root vegetables in the winter, and asparagus for Seder in the spring.

While cookbooks have become obsolete, the online recipes being far more plentiful and individually searchable, I've never lost my fondness for the books.  I've also acquired my own favorite things to make.  I like phyllo.  Apple cake and nut tortes can complete any meal.  Slabs of beef have gotten too expensive, even for guests, and don't always have the reliability of preparation of poultry, but when on sale, I like making pot roasts.  Salads have drifted to mostly multicolor Israeli salad or cucumber salad.

I also like to mingle ethnic origins of what I make.  My ancestry, genetic and culinary, is Eastern European, though the Hungarian and Polish contributions differ.  I find a place for Middle Eastern, less for Far Eastern or African or British.

So, I've begun.  Eight rectangles.  Jewish apple cake for dessert for sure, all else open, but jotted my favorites in each category.  Surfed my favorite cookbooks.  Sampled Sukkot menus on the web much less plentiful than menus proposed by food mavens for other occasions.  And not get so focused on the food as to neglect other means of making our guest as welcome as we can.

Shattered Ladle

Periodically I make an elegant dinner, this one for a VIP visiting a sukkah for the first time.  Menu planning went thoughtfully, including an assortment of savory and sweet, regional classics gone global, followed by a dish and utensil washing orgy.  I made Harira, that lentil-chickpea soup of Morocco of not subtle though not pungent spicing which traditionally gets served when the sun goes down during the month of Ramadan.  While the sukkah depends on its flimsiness it can also be an elegant setting merging teetering furnishings with elegant decorations and elaborate service.  I took out my fleishig tureen for this occasion.

I forget where I purchased this or for how much.  While I rarely make a soup that warrants special service, this harira did.  The tureen has a simple round appearance with handles.  It usually sits in the far reaches of a cupboard, needing a step stool for retrieval.  Its lid handle illustrates its simplicity and discounted nature, snapping off shortly after purchase and neer achieving restoration with multiple attempts at superglue.  This time I used rubber cement with a better result, though again temporary as it separated again when washed.  While I rarely use this item for its intended purpose, I always regarded it among my favorites for its appealing visual simplicity and its function.

To my horror, the porcelain ladle fell from counter height and shattered beyond more superglue.  A search of amazon.com offered a comparable ladle for $27 which may be my best option.  But with the lid handle repetitively breaking it may be better just to get a new tureen, though I plan to keep what I have, repair the lid handle once more, and keep the option of a ladle replacement, which from economics may still be the best option, at the forefront.

Replacing the tureen might be another option. There are elegant tureens, many displayed at the Campbell Soup Museum, now closed but with the tureen collection now partially displayed at Winterthur.  Elegant ones made of bone china can be purchased for four figures.  For much less I can replace one on eBay, though to keep it  kosher, it would need to be new.  I'd like a new one, but for as often as I use it, replacing the ladle and offering the lid holder a trial of Gorilla glue may still be the best options.  I will make soup for Thanksgiving, not that I really want to make soup as much as force a decision.

Sukkah Canvas

Each sukkot, we erect a sukkah, which is supposed to endure the elements for a week.  After many years of faulty construction, including one when my edifice blew away like a box kite, we bought a pre-fab model that has served us flawlessly.  It has a metal frame, designated connectors, a roof that can be reused from one year to the next, and a large piece of light blue canvas that wraps around the frame to create the walls.  Not that hard to put up, even easier to take down.  We have been storing it on our deck, so it is exposed to the elements most times.  The frame does okay, but after a few years the canvas, which measures about 7x30 feet, has gotten grungy with mildew and a few tears.  Time to clean it, but who does that?  I took it to my usual laundry around the corner, very capable Chinese fellow with signs in his shop suggesting that he could clean anything.  He took one look at this, shook his head, could not even give a referral someplace else.

Maybe it goes to a carpet cleaner.  I could try.  A commercial laundry?   I queried the distributor for suggestions but not heard a response.  Maybe buy a new canvas.  Maybe just accept the weathered look as part of the ritual of living in the sukkah for a week.