Gourmet Sorbet and Pipernilli
Sorbet from Gourmet Sorbet and cookies from Pipernilli closed out our Black Friday this year with a bang. We had already done a good job of enjoying ourselves and avoiding the anxiety and crowds of shopping on the first day of the Christmas season. We spent the afternoon at the Jewish Museum (more on that in a moment), and then had a nice dinner at home of lamb skewers with mustard onions along with some Thanksgiving leftovers (more on that in a moment, too).
Months ago, when we were planning my mother-in-law Eileen visiting us for Thanksgiving, we came across information about the Jewish Museum hosting a Chagall exhibit, and knew that would be the perfect thing to keep us occupied on Black Friday.
Chagall Exhibit at the Jewish Museum
For those who can’t place Marc Chagall, he was a Russian Jewish artist who studied in Paris and was exiled during World War II twice, first in France and then in the United States, before returning to France after the war. We think of him for his surrealistic, expressionistic paintings with splashes of color and his use of recurring icons like a cow playing a violin and a wedding couple. But in this exhibit, we saw him wrestling with harrowing images, the persecution of the Jews by the Nazis, and great personal loss like the sudden loss of his wife. I found the exhibit gripping and emotionally powerful.
Just next to the galleries displaying Chagall’s work was one of a fashion exhibit called “Three as Four: Mer Ka Ba.” Fantastic corsets hung around the room, but what really drew the attention was a pyramid in the shape of a star in the corner of the room. We discovered that it was possible to go inside the pyramid: multiple mirrored sides created a fantastic fun house atmosphere.
Inside the Mer Ka Ba pyramid
After the museum, we piled into two taxis and headed back downtown to our apartment. When I say “we,” I am talking not just about Therese and I and her mom Eileen. Therese’s brother and his wife and kids were also unexpectedly in town for the holiday, and so they were involved for a lot of the weekend activities. My niece and nephew Hope and Dan had to work on Black Friday, but bro and sis-in-law Sam and Cyndi came along to the Jewish Museum. Dan met us back at home for dinner.
The one dish I had left out of Thanksgiving was the lamb skewers, so they logically became the star of Friday’s dinner. I had made the accompanying mustard onions two days before, so they were ready.
Mustard Onions
This dish was another one from the Food and Wine article about Chef Sean Brock and his quest to reinvigorate Southern cooking. He went to Senegal to search out the origins of Southern cooking, the part of the cuisine that was brought from Africa by Black slaves. Apparently, simple lamb skewers with lots of mustard onions to munch with them is a popular dish in Senegal. We dressed up our skewers (sorry, no picture), marinating them with not just peanut oil, but also hoisin sauce, and then including yellow and red bell pepper and onion squares on the skewers. These were a hit, enjoyed immensely alongside leftovers from the previous day’s feast – mashed potatoes with bacon, brussel sprouts and sunchokes.
Then came the star on the Black Friday Christmas tree: the lovely vegan desserts from Pipernilli and Gourmet Sorbet. I had bought the cookies – a box of samples of all the varieties Pipernilli creates – the previous weekend. And Nicole Cardone of Gourmet Sorbet had dropped off a variety of sorbets recently as well. Therese and I love these, but I thought it would be fun to share them with our family of discerning foodies and see what they had to say about them.
In short, the cookies and sorbets were a hit. With the sorbet, the biggest hit may have been the passionfruit with lychee, followed closely by the summer cucumber white wine mint variety. I still love the pumpkin streusel, and tasting the apple cider pear for the first time, I thought that one was quite good as well. My sister-in-law Cyndi loved the coconut chai. So you can see there wasn’t one variety that didn’t get some of the love.
The cookies were not quite the smashing hit that the sorbet was, but those of us who munched on them traded many appreciative nods. There were a couple that I particularly liked. For example, the “dainty dots” which are infused with fresh strawberry and vegan white chocolate were a revelation. The strawberry flavor snuck up on me and I found myself saying “oh wait, there’s the strawberry! Wow!” I also enjoyed trying one of the more savory varieties, the 14-karat cake.
Sorbet and Cookies save the day!
I don’t mean to preach when it comes to Black Friday. For those who embrace the mission of beating your fellows to the best deals of the season, it is a necessary evil, I suppose. But for the rest of us, it is a blot on the season of joy. Surely, there is a way to start the season off with a day that smacks less of desparation and fear, to give more honor to the true mood of the season, while still allowing those who wish to outgun their neighbors for half-priced video games and discount shoes. While we struggle to find that happy medium, most of us will try to make our own Black Friday. And this year, I think we did a pretty good job with that.
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