It's that time of year again

Last year, I didn't blog much about gardening despite ending up with a pretty rockin' garden. Energy that could/should/would have been spent on blogging instead went into the new puppy, dealing with the garden, dealing with the new house, etc, etc. Last summer was overwhelming.

My first priority was peas. I knew a "real" garden would take some work and planning and money and sun, but I could handle peas. (Please disregard the super-high-tech, dog-proofing twig fence; March 21, 2010):


The few that I got were pretty tasty. I didn't really "amend" the soil, and they didn't get as much sun as I'd hoped. And then Lucy (the new puppy) dug them up.

I brought a really beautiful strawberry plant home from the Union Square Greenmarket. It transplanted well into the sort-of-raised-bed (complete with amended soil) B created. But then one day I came home to this (June 25):


It was OK, though, because the rest of that garden had turned into this jungle (Lucy's in the back left. June 25):


We grew zucchini (July 7):


And purple green beans (July 7):


They turn green when cooked (Note super-duper-high-tech kitchen implement to keep half a bean out of boiling water; July 8):


An attempt was made at eggplant (July 7):


All seemed to be going well in Gardenland. Until... (July 12)


Something went wrong and bugs got into the zucchini. Not just the zucchini fruit, but into the vines themselves. I think they might have been some kind of borer. I remain the only person on earth unable to grow tons of zucchini.

Luckily, we had little hot peppers to distract us! Look at all those jalapeños trying to flip us off (July 12):


There was a tomato (July 12):


An ominous sky artsily framed with tomato blossoms (July 12):


And even more ominously, a wild dog with no regard for chicken-wire fences (July 12):


To be continued...

A three-attachment weekend

Over the weekend, I made:
Really fucking good plain ol' white bread - subbing local honey for sugar.
Lemon bars - with Meyer lemons I brought back from my parents' yard.
Butternut squash and apple soup - with more local veggies!
Lemon, cream and pepper pasta sauce - with more of those same lemons and Hudson Valley Fresh cream.

I used all three attachments that came with my stand mixer, and the immersion blender.

That was a tasty weekend.

(I also pulled up all but three plants in my little garden - the bok choy is hardy as hell and still going. It was such a bummer to pull up the tomatoes. Maybe they'll do better next year.)

Grape pie. Who knew?

At today's Greenmarket, I picked up parsnips, a rutabaga and onions from Dutchess County (it's possible I buy more local produce in the city than actually in Dutchess County); brussels sprouts, carrots and beets from some nice guys from Pennsylvania; eggs from New York (don't remember who my egg guy was today) and honey from those nice guys, near the Finger Lakes. But I made sure I didn't spend my whole twenty. Oh, no.

My last two bucks were spent on a slice of grape pie. How could I resist?

It looked a lot like a blueberry pie, and that's actually what the woman working the booth compared it to. Once I got back to work and my boss and I dug into it, I learned it was so much more. It was Concord grapes, cooked down and sugared, seeds removed but skins remained. Unfortunately (for me), it reminded me so much of Welch's grape jelly, but more pure and essentially GRAPE-y. I say "unfortunately (for me)," because apparently I hadn't had much in the way of actual Concord grapes to compare this to. I must say, I like the real thing better than the jelly.

I'd never seen this pie before today. This recipe, at Martha Stewart's site, doesn't seem too complicated to make.

Other Google recipe search results led me to this — a grape festival in Naples, New York! The last full weekend of September, next year, it's on.

Seriously?

"Last published on April 29, 2010"

I can't believe it. I mean, I can, since the evidence is right there, but that kind of updating (in)frequency is downright embarrassing.

This summer has held so many great food experiences, and my garden (I have a kickass garden!), but... in May I got a puppy who, in the course of teething, decided to chew through the photo uploading cable. And my camera needs a silly proprietary Casio cable, not a mini-USB one like, oh, everything else. And I have been too poorlazy to order a new one. Though a quicker solution would be to buy a USB memory-card reader. Sigh.

Once I've got pictures, I'll post. Promise.

Sweet treats

I am a serious sucker for sugar. Two things I've eaten this week:

A mini cheesecake from La Delice bakery, a couple blocks from work.

I blame Sam and my BFF Jenessa, because when I was antsy on Tuesday, they Facebook-peer-pressured me into dreaming about cheesecake. I had to do it. The good, kinda healthy, news is that it wasn't as tasty as I'd hoped. It was drying out. Though I probably won't get cheesecake from that bakery again, there are many more cheesecakes in the sea...

(Why yes, those are bottles of wine in the background. No, I do not drink at work. Usually.)

So then yesterday, when I found myself with a little extra time at Grand Central before my train, I wandered downstairs to the food court"dining concourse," and Magnolia Bakery. Until recently, Ciao Bella gelato was my early-evening, pre-train sugar fix. No more. I am crazy addicted to this:

Magnolia Bakery's Blueberry Jamboree.

Now, I have no idea why this is called a Jamboree, as I have never seen Boy Scouts nor Animatronic bears gathered around it, but last night was probably the fourth time I've bought it, and the fourth time it has knocked my socks off but the first time I have not brought any home to share with B. Doesn't hurt that it's also one of the least spendy things at Magnolia. Here's the recipe. You're welcome, in advance.

;)

"Gardening" update

Well, we've been in the house a month this week. There are still boxes to unpack, but during the bouts of dry weather we've had, I've been able to work a little bit in the yard.

The lone length of fence that seems to get the most sunlight was overrun by maple seedlings and saplings, so it's taken some work to clear that out. As soon as I cleared one section, I mixed some potting/garden soil in with the dirt that was already there, formed the dirt into mounds about 2 inches high, and got my peas in the ground. There were frost warnings the past two nights, but 1) peas should go in the ground as soon as it's workable, and 2) because we're so close to the (temperature-moderating) river, we can usually disregard the frost warnings after April 15.

If you know me, you probably won't be surprised that *I* was surprised that "pea seeds" are nothing more than dried peas.

The week before we moved, in late March I guess, I started these little Home Depot seeds in a mini-greenhouse plastic-eggcrate-looking kind of kit. We bought one "kitchen herbs" one, with basil, chives and parsley, and one "pepper selection" (or something) one, with two hot peppers and one kind of sweet pepper. Each species got two pots. On one end of the herb container, the basil is growing and is overdue for transplanting... One chive sprouted on the other end, but has since withered. In the middle, where I thought I'd see parsley, nothing so far...

With the pepper one, two pots on the same end are doing really well and are probably ready to be transplanted. The middle pots have slightly smaller sprouts bursting through. The third set hasn't seen any activity yet. I actually have no idea which peppers are which, because although I wrote the plants' names in Sharpie above them on the lid, I rotated the lid at least a few times in the watering process... So I guess we'll see how those turn out.

I meant to start lettuce like, oh, I dunno, maybe two months ago. I still haven't done it. It's frustrating, but I hopeknow it will get done when the time is right, after I feel like I've contributed enough to getting the house in order.

Other things we've bought that need to get in the ground: asparagus shoots(?), two kinds of grapevines (this will require more clearing of the baby maples), and seeds for purple green beans (ditto), tomatoes, squash (I think?) and bell peppers. Maybe I go a little crazy with the seed-buying... but I get excited and can't help it! We've been looking at dwarf fruit trees, too. But we can't do those until the hulking, behemoth trees in the front get taken out.

In other kitchen news... Haven't been cooking nearly as much as I'd like. Especially lacking in kitchen time are new-to-me dishes, and some of the good stuff I made during my last months in SLC. (I'm lookin' at you, lentils, onions and rice. I'm lookin' at you, teriyaki chicken.) I keep saying it'll happen once we're settled in — seriously, there's no shelving below head height in the pantry — but I just need to make that happen. A few days ago, I cooked an entire meal from things we had on-hand, and it felt like a big accomplishment. How sad is that?

One of B's relatives gave us a $100 Williams-Sonoma gift card. It may take a while to get used, because I want to save it for something "good." I'm not sure what that means, really, but I just want to make sure that it's not wasted on froufy dish towels or gourmet croissants, when we could really use "x." Does that make any sense? What would you get with it?

Old friends, new restaurants, and a little bit of a tangent

Emily, a girl I went to high school with, and have since become friends with, is visiting New York this week. Out-of-towners are always a good excuse to try eating at restaurants that I otherwise would probably not venture to, whether it's because they're expensive, out of the way, or time-consuming (i.e., too long for work lunch).

A summary:

In November, I went to Brasserie with another high school acquaintance, Amy, and her husband, Derek. I hadn't seen her since high school graduation and we didn't so much get along, in those days. Thanks to the modern miracles of MySpace (R.I.P.) and Facebook (and maybe some growing up on both of our parts?), we have become quite friendly over the past few years. Regardless, I still kind of wanted to show off and go somewhere impressive for lunch. Silly? Probably.

Brasserie was recommended by a couple people at work. Shiny, modern, expensive, but apparently with good food. I took the 6 train up there, and although it was great to see her (and meet him) and reconnect, I don't think any of us was impressed much by the food. For $27, I expect more something from a lobster club sandwich. Thanks, Derek, for buying!

In December, my former co-worker at Starbucks and all-around awesome chick Caroline came to NYC to see her friend do some standup comedy. In true Caroline and Catherine fashion, there were all sorts of directional miscommunications, but we ended up at a cheap bar in TriBeCa, where friends old and new and drunk and jet-lagged had burgers and beer. And we made good use of the pub's crayons to draw all over the butcher paper table covering.

Past two friend visits, totally authentic to each of the relationships. Also, now I wouldn't hesitate to go to a dive with Amy and Derek. We just had to get that out of the way. Next time, I'll buy.

But then... Last month, my BFF from junior high came out to NY with a friend. I think I'd seen N once or twice since 8th-grade graduation, but she looked pretty much the same. Just thinner. Very thin. I am always a little suspicious when planning lunch with a thin person whom I don't know very well. Our trip to Les Halles proved why. This place, just up the street from work, is the former home of the gonzo chef Anthony Bourdain. It garnered rave reviews from my coworkers about the reasonably priced, pretty damn good, unpretentious, bistro food.

How bad is it that I have to think really hard to remember what I got? I was dressed pretty business-casually. Something about the visitors screamed "tourists!" — the shopping bags? the heels? They just seemed less than enthused to be there, and I wasn't the only one picking up on it. The dining room was not packed, but service was pretty inattentive (for a fairly popular place that has at least as many regulars/locals as it does tourists, I am used to more here in the city). My old friend ordered — wait for it — a salad. Her friend got, I think, a croque monsieur, but mostly ate the fries. After reviewing the online menu, I am remembering the "Merguez, Frites, and Salade" I ordered. Everything seemed fine, and the table bread was good.

* * * time out * * *

I'm reminded as I write this that there is a fundamental disconnect between me, someone who loves food and enjoys savoring and sharing flavors, and gets excited about little things like the seasoning in the (quite tasty) Merguez sausages, and people who eat only because they have to survive somehow, and grazing on grass simply isn't efficient. My boyfriend once made that observation about his brother. Funny thing: My boyfriend is the former; my ex-husband, the latter. I know that I shouldn't judge, it's not their fault we speak different languages, but maybe for those people I should stick to coffee dates? (But I get just as worked up about coffee. Sigh.)

* * * time in * * *

So the girls just picked. In my perfect little "let's get together for lunch," we would have ordered wine, and an appetizer (I sensed this would not be a good first time to order escargots), and compelling lunches that we couldn't have found many other places, and certainly not at these prices. Then our tipsy selves would pass around the plates and try everything. And then, of course, dessert. There's always room for dessert at "I-haven't-seen-you-in-15-years" meetups. At least in my little made-up world. It's possible the service would have been just as meh, but at least we the diners would have had more fun.

And then, the visitors were bad tippers. Oh well. Then they were scared of the subway. Oh well, again. (I know that there are people with fears and anxieties over so many things, but this was just, I dunno, exceptional. Too much for me to just go with.) We didn't hang out again while they were here. I guess it's nice to get together anyway, and see how the 8th-grade BFF-ness still aligns...

So then yesterday Emily hops on the subway (her answer to my query on her comfort level with subways: I've done a bagilliion subway systems so just tell me which line and I'll be there! Nothing could be harder than Tokyo..partly because theirs is in Japanese.). I'd been thinking about hitting a cheap Indian buffet in the neighborhood, but then we passed Bagel & Schmear, home of the best tacos in New York. We each snagged a trio of those, as well as a black and white cookie, then sat in the sun at Madison Square Park and caught up.

The last time I saw Emily, she was visiting Salt Lake for work two years ago, and our dinner turned all romantical when a car hit a pole a couple blocks from the restaurant. The power went out, and the whole place was candle-lit and, well, romantical. We hadn't seen each other since high school, and we weren't even friends then, but we had a freaking blast! So maybe that's why this time was easy-peasy, too.

So, taco-lunching with me must not have been too bad, because when I got out of work and got out of the post office much more quickly than expected, we met up again at Union Square and headed for a dessert place (at lunch, she'd mentioned some fancy-schmancy dessert place with a gargantuan menu, and I started Yelping "dessert bar" when I got back to the office).

Dessert fans, meet The Spot. On a funky street in the East Village, a sign proclaiming a sweet retreat will call out to you, like an angel's voice in the wilderness (or something). (I tried to post pictures, but that didn't work, so other people's photos are linked instead.) At any rate, I had the Yuzu Eskimo ("oreo, strawberry, raspberry foam"). The menu neglected to mention the edible glitter! But there it was. Apparently, I'm not the only one to have been captivated by it. Really, I thought I was having a blonde moment... The dessert was unlike anything I've had before, and I'd have to say that that is probably this Spot's greatest strength. They're unique, just like every other dessert tapas bar in the East Village — except that I haven't yet tried any of the other ones. :)

Emily got the Chocolate Banana Pudding ("caramel, cocoa soil, vanilla chantilly"). It was good, just maybe not as experimental as we'd hoped? Regardless, we dipped into each other's dainty little plates freely. (The Spot was, unfortunately, out of the Ovaltine and Kabocha Roll we were both intrigued by.) They have a ton of different selections, including a half-dozen cupcake flavors, ice cream and sorbets, weird and right-up-my-alley toppings such as palm and basil seeds, and my if-I-were-on-death-row-this-would-be-my-final-meal, the $48 omakase dessert tasting menu.

My cousin Jamie is visiting next month, and I am going nuts trying to figure out where we will eat while she's here. She is definitely in the former, food-lovin', passionate-eatin', group. There are so many places and concepts we could try while she's here! Aaaaackkk!

Once we've been out and about, and proper pictures have been taken, you'll read about it right here. But now that this is ridiculously long, I pledge to break restaurant visits into their own posts from now on.

Teeeeensy update

Got the house, with big backyard. Need to map it out a bit.

Seedlings for three hot peppers and three herbs (basil, chives, and uh, something else) started.

Seeds for peas, beans, and red sweet bell peppers purchased.

So excited!

Sorry to have been so absent. I have tons of ideas scribbled down for posts, including a roundup of lunch-spots in my work neighborhood. Can you believe that the best tacos I've had in New York (by far) are from a place called Bagel and Schmear? Well, believe it.

Garden porn

This story has me really anxious to find out whether B and I got this house. I am itching to map out garden space in my (hopefully) new big backyard! There's something about dirt between the fingers that just feels so good... If I'm already really excited about the first three plants mentioned, it can only get better.

:D

Happy New Year!

I wish I had some kind of exciting food-related resolution to share with y'all, but I don't. I wish even more that I had some kind of exciting culinary accomplishment to share too, but alas, I don't.

BUT! In the great battle to do more on the weekends so I don't have to do as much on weeknights, I had small victories yesterday. B and I did massive groceries, and it was awesome to see how few of the items on the conveyor belt were NOT processed. (Is beer considered "processed" food? Kraft doesn't make it, so I'm going to go with NO.) I made lasagna (with lots of extra veggies) that is more than a week's worth of lunches. I started Jenessa's vegan bread last night, but it went in the fridge because I decided to not wait hours for it to rise. While cutting the veggies for the lasagna, we chopped the ones for tonight's chicken curry. They're in a bucket, just waiting to be dumped into my birthday saucepan.

B's folks gave me this saucepan for Christmas; it was too, too generous. But I love it already, all the same.

The holidays were fine; ate a lot of good food. B made eggnog from scratch — raw eggs and everything! It was good. He used this recipe (not the gorgonzola one). It was a hit with the neighbors, with whom we spent Christmas Eve. It was fun to make it, just for the novelty, but what a pleasant surprise when it turned out tasty!

Sorry, I sucked all month. No pictures. Oh wait, there's one. But it'll have to wait. Suffice to say: I found the elusive mangosteen.

Eat. Drink. Be Merry.

I was reminded today of some people's obsession with nutrition, as opposed to healthfulness.

A company sent the magazine a resveratrol-packed chocolate bar that claims to have a bajillion times as many antioxidants as red wine, blueberries, açai and goji berries and chemotherapy combined (or something like that). This bar will cure your as-yet-nonexistent cancer, just by you looking at it. It will lower your blood sugar. Then it will save the world.

I have thought for years that a relative of mine has orthorexia (only I didn't know it was called that until recently), and I wonder how much it is compounded by her work in the nutrition field. When I was a youngster, I remember, she was making almost-no-fat meals out of a cookbook by Dean Ornish, and I noted aloud that his name sounded suspiciously like "denourish." As the low-carb fads came around a few years ago, she tried those as well in attempts to get her "numbers" (cholesterol levels, blood sugar, other leading bad-stuff indicators) down. All this, mind you, for a 5'1" woman who I've never seen weigh more than 115 pounds. I'd be surprised if she's been over 100 in the past five years.

She has developed a type of pre-diabetes (as I understand it), and feels betrayed since she has always "done everything right," and she doesn't "deserve" this. (Do people with full-blown diabetes "deserve" it?) Well, she's never enjoyed just chilling out. Her blood pressure has been high despite exercise. But then, she won't exercise because it makes her lose too much weight. She's so fixated on this constellation of numbers...

I can't imagine living like that. Not eating this food or that food because it's a "carb bomb" (as she called a Thanksgiving dish my brother prepared last month). Have a taste, and enjoy it, and a glass of wine, and enjoy it. Watch those blood pressure numbers fall. And don't buy in (literally and figuratively) to ostensible "health foods" just because they market to your anxieties. If you want chocolate, eat some damn chocolate. And enjoy it.

A life spent tripping over numbers and eating by "rules" just doesn't sound that fulfilling to me (although one friend in particular manages her diabetes exceptionally well, and eats pretty well too). Yeah, I've gained 20 pounds back since moving to New York. I chalk that up to eating and drinking more, and exercising much, much less. And I'm trying to find a balance there. But I'm not going to turn to fake, "value-added" food to save me.

Of course there are soooo many people who are legitimately struggling with disease (e.g. diabetes) or weight as a real health and lifestyle problem. And I hope that each of them finds the combination of lifestyle factors that work for them to be happy, and healthy, and pain- and disease-free. But it's a slap in the face to people who have actual problems to see someone who is basically fine counting calories and agonizing over a "carb bomb."

So eat real food. And enjoy it.

Home sweet garden

If I figure out a way to buy a house in the next year, it will be because I want a real food garden. I'll probably end up spending all of my money on plants and seeds and garden-y stuff, and I'll crash on the floor of a woefully underfurnished room in a sleeping bag.

But I'll have squash next year, dammit!

Would having chickens be going too far?

Guess I should get the yard first, before I think of the chickens.

This book has done a number on me.

A victory, of sorts

That looks so gross. But it's *my* gross. Thyme and parsley from my little pots that sit on the kitchen floor. The rest of it is fixings for chicken stock, which will become chicken soup tonight.

Last night, I finally got the chicken (his name was Gary, by the way) in the slow cooker with onion, carrots and celery. The recipe called for a parsnip and another vegetable I can't remember. Didn't have them, so I ignored that part. I feel really ridiculous for needing a recipe to make chicken stock in the first place. I mean, really. It's hot chicken water. How do you screw that up?

The recipe also called for a bay leaf, parsley and thyme. Alright, I thought. I have a package of bay leaves that have been in the back of the fridge for almost a year. It's dry in there, and they still look great, so I used a couple. You can sub extra bay leaves for a parsnip and that other mystery vegetable, right? Totally.

It was exciting though, to find that the parsley that hadn't been growing so great outside has really done better since I moved the pots inside about two weeks ago. So that's in there, kinda hugging the right side of the slow cooker insert.

The thyme, well, it hasn't done so hot since the move. It was in a pot with some insane, ravenous chocolate mint, and I think the mint might have screwed things up for the whole pot. Roots running around the perimeter of the pot are a bad thing, right? At any rate, the mint seems to have burned itself out, and there were still teeny sprigs of green thyme. They're in the mix too, right on top. Poor baby thyme. You get your own pot next time.

So it's all sitting and stewing as I type. Hopefully the joint's not burned down when I finally get home tonight, and making soup is easy. At least I don't need a recipe for that.

It's been too long...

I used to blog in the mornings or early afternoons before leaving for my 4 or 5 p.m. shifts at the newspaper. I'd make coffee, maybe an egg or some yogurt concoction, then settle in for a morning of paying bills and snuggling with the dog and reading blogs and news. A couple days a week, I'd go for a hike with my puppy, Leo, either up Mount Beacon down to Dennings Point. Once in a while, I even made real food, like bread or scones, before heading in to work.

But then I got a day job—my dream job—for which the hours are Monday through Friday, 9 to 5. I catch the train at 7 in the morning and get home around 7 at night. I love everything about it.

The pace of the work suits me—no more 11:28 p.m. anxiety attacks while someone wants to change a headline and my boss is telling me to just send the page.

I'm smitten with a good deal of the content—the best hot cocoa in the world, anyone?

I learn something new every day—even if it's just that ATMs at Duane Reade are fee-free to me.

The train ride is often breathtakingly beautiful—pink fog rising from the Hudson this morning, stellar sunsets for the past two months (not anymore, of course, with the expiration of daylight savings time).

I'm exposed to things I'd never have the chance to try anywhere else—a fancy-schmancy French wine from 1995 that showed me what "elegant" means. Balsamic vinegars from Italy that poured like motor oil, aged 12, 25, and 100 or more years.

But getting home at 7 means that adventurous cooking goes on the back-burner (so to speak), a little bit. After two months in this schedule, I think I'm getting used to it, and will be able to figure out a routine that involves more cooking. Once my weekend days opened up, I got roped into (often literally: we climb) more adventures in the great outdoors. Now that the weather has chilled substantially, I look forward to spending more days in the kitchen. That said, I've saved a fair bit of money by making quick dinners at home, even if, like last night, it's just mashed sweet potatoes and stir-fried frozen veggies with Asian-inspired seasoning. That was on the table before 8, and I even played ball with Leo for a while.

I did some freezer-oriented cooking a month or so ago. I had really ambitious plans one day to make vegetable lasagna, butternut squash-apple soup, sweet potato chili, a spicy carrot-cabbage Chinese kimchi kinda thing, and ... and I can't remember what else. I took a picture of the table laden with all the food I planned to cook that day. I'll put it up here when I get home (if I remember).

It probably goes without saying if you know me, but I didn't quite get through everything on the table. I got the lasagna and chili done and frozen, and the butternut squash roasted (it's easier to prepare if it's cooked first). We went through the lasagna pretty quickly. There are still two big yogurt containers full of chili in the freezer. Unfortunately, the squash didn't get made into soup until its already-roasted freshness was already questionable, and it just tasted "off" no matter what I added to the soup. Also unfortunately, that will finally get chucked tonight so I can use the big pot for chicken soup.

There's most of a roasted chicken in the fridge, see, and I don't want it to meet the same fate as the squash. Since B and Leo will be at B's parents' place tonight to celebrate his sister's birthday, I have an empty kitchen to work with. Can't wait!

Coming soon... A roundup of some of the awesome and not-so-awesome (but usually cheap) places I've had lunch since starting the new job, and thoughts about agriculture/farming/conscientiousness since reading Barbara Kingsolver's "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle." It's amazing. And what happened to that garden on the back deck, anyway?

Results may vary...

I made stuffed, fried squash blossoms last night from this post at thekitchn.com.

Mine did not look anything like theirs (the photo, above). It's possible, though, that what mine lacked in looks, they made up for in flavor...

Drool-worthy summer inspiration

It's really hot. Like, sweating-while-sitting-still hot. Yeah, I could turn on the air conditioner, but it's all the way upstairs and any move away from this seat would be just. too. much. effort.

So this'll be a roundup, of sorts.

Cruising Thekitchn.com this morning, I have been so inspired by posts about and gorgeous pictures of salads: cabbage, macaroni, beet... I was reminded of what a geek I am when I saw this book, On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, by Harold McGee. I literally drooled while I was reading the post. Maybe the science-y stuff in this book could explain exactly what neurotransmitter synapse caused me to salivate over a reference work. Or, I might just be a sleep-deprived nerd.

Reading through my favorite food blogs, instead of getting into the kitchen and making something refreshing like a kickass spicy Chinese cabbage/carrot/pickled chili salad, reminded me of this article at the New York Times last month. I hope I'm not becoming one of those people who are "out of the kitchen, onto the couch"; reading about food instead of doing something with it. I don't even own a TV, so maybe I'm somewhere in the middle? Believe me, I'd rather be cooking. It's just that the kitchen has no air flow. No, it's worse: It has negative air flow. All the hot air in the apartment goes there to hang out, and like some dinner guests, it doesn't know when to just leave.

I have had a fair amount of food interaction this summer:

In July I made awesome strawberry-sour cream scones (recipe here). It was still raining every day at that point, so using the oven was not so painful.


My vindaloo spices. I think getting them prepped for the cooking is my favorite part of making that dish.


The Latin American festival at Beacon's Riverfront Park:


Where I come from, "Latin American festival" likely means a huge event with a ton of Mexican food, with at least one vendor for each of the country's distinct regions, plus Central American and South American booths. Roaming mariachis, and the Chilean folk music Inti-Illimani guys, and the Peruvian pan flute players, and tiny wrinkled Guatemalan ladies selling brightly colored cloths. So it felt strange to go to a smallish event, with booths mainly representing Caribbean nations such as the Dominican Republic and Cuba, and Puerto Rico of course. Welcome to New York, Cali girl... Of course the food was amazing. This was actually the second of two plates B and I shared (and maybe Leo got some too).


I had a rare weekend off after the hecticness (hecticity?) of the past few weeks, and I needed to get out of town. B found a bouldering area near a lake in the Adirondacks. I stuffed a bottle of wine in my backpack for Saturday night. It was worth the extra weight.


Wild blueberry bushes covered the area where we camped. The ones I picked Sunday morning were just what the Quaker Instant Oatmeal needed. (Well, it needed a lot of help, but the berries were a great start.)

Comfort food

photo source

I'm nearing the end of a pretty trying 10-day stretch. There have been some lows, but to be fair, some highs too (including meeting extended family in Boston). This afternoon, I only had a few minutes to concoct something to eat between finishing errands and leaving for work at 3. It was raining and at only 70 degrees felt a little chilly (how pathetic, I know), so I wanted something comforting...

I cooked a Chinese stir-fry last night and made extra rice. There were leftover garlicky-gingery sautéed veggies from something else a few days ago. Perfect.

After I mixed those and heated them through, I cracked an egg over the top, stirred it and put a lid on the disgusting-looking mixture, then took the dog out. (I'm all about being efficient.) When I came back in from the rain, the egg was cooked perfectly. Added a little sriracha and soy sauce and I was set... (Then I made an egg for Leo. He's the most spoiled dog ever, I swear.)

I'm not sure why I have an Asian comfort food. It's not like I had a sweet little grandma whipping up congee for me (although mine did have lemon drops). You'd think it'd be something like mashed potatoes and beef stew or something, with my Euro-mutt roots. Of course, those sound good too.

Lately, some readers have e-mailed comments to me... Why not post them instead and share your favorite comfort foods? I'll make cookies for the most unusual one.

More fermentation education. (Guess I really like the rhyming.)

photo source
A kind soul gently pointed out today that a few posts down, in my rambling tale of the sauvignon blanc trip to the wine store, I incorrectly said that a Sancerres wine I bought was from the Bordeaux region of France.

Sancerres ≠ Bordeaux.
Sancerres = Loire Valley.

I have no doubt the woman at the wine store told me the correct one, but it got lost in the overwhelming amount of geographical information she imparted attempted to impart.

I could have gone into the post and edited it to be correct, and just pretend I never got anything wrong ever, but how lame would that have been?!? I started this blog as I was learning about cooking; now that I'm learning about other ingestible substances, I might as well document this process too, right?

Of course.

I Googled the wine today and this blog came up:
brooklynguyloveswine.blogspot.com
I love this guy, and not just because we have similarly constructed blog names. He has this to say about my not-Bordeaux Sancerres:
The 2007 Christian Venier Touraine Le Gautrie Sauvignon, $17, Savio Soares Selections ... was lovely, although not as stunning an example of Loire Sauvignon Blanc as Venier's VdT is as a Cheverny.

Brooklyn Guy described Venier as a Loire hipster-natural-wine-biodynamic-producer.
Anyone who can use "hipster" in a serious discussion about wine has my vote.

Time to go make dinner... Tonight's wines are from Whitecliff Vineyard, just up the road in Gardiner, New York.

Turns out....

Turns out that in the following sentence, from the last post, I was merging two fruits:
I remember seeing some spiky melon that I think ends in -iya when I lived in San Diego.

Thanks to flickr.com user Mixed Masala, we can see them side by side:

On the left, the thing that I thought ended in -iya but is actually -oya (cherimoya). On the right, some spiky melon (kiwano).

I didn't see these strange, exotic fruits while in the city.

(Insert big eyeroll at my expectations...)

I found them yesterday at my supermarket in the 'burbs.

Frozen treats save steamy day.

I went down to the city for a Tuesday night concert, but once I knew I could bring a backpack in with me, I decided I was on a mission. A weird produce mission. Specifically, I was looking for the beautiful, exotic, alluring mangosteen, but really, anything new would do nicely.

I got in to Grand Central a little after noon, and needed something to tide me over for a few hours:

Subpar lo mein from Feng Shui in Grand Central. It was unbelievably salty and I didn't finish it. That never happens. I should have just stuck with my tasty GCT standby, Cafe Spice.

A few hours later, after hanging out with a good friend until she had to go to work, I was hungry again. Getting your eyebrows threaded for the first time is a surprisingly effective way to work up an appetite.

I wanted to take one of the green trains (4? 5? 6? I'm still learning, folks), so I headed back down to GCT to first snag a refreshing blast of Ciao Bella, where, in the past, I'd had a revelation of mint gelato (it tasted like fresh mint, not mint flavoring!), among other flavors. I ordered the papaya-crème de cassis, expecting unicorns to come charging out of the cupcakes at one of the bakeries and flower petals to rain into the food court, and for world peace to be achieved and cancer to be cured.

It didn't quite live up to that. I was so meh about it that I didn't even take a picture. Of course the papaya-crème de cassis gelato was okay, but I have really high expectations of Ciao Bella. Unicorns, people. I demand to be blown away.

Several hours and a walk to and fro on the Brooklyn Bridge later, I had made my way to Chinatown. It was probably about 6:30, and I wondered after the fact whether it was late enough that I missed the really weird (to me, you know) produce. I really wanted to find mangosteen... Hell, I don't know if they're even in season. Dragonfruit would have been cool. I remember seeing some spiky melon that I think ends in -iya when I lived in San Diego. It was not to be - I could ID pretty much everything I saw. (I'm no expert; there just wasn't that much.) Note to self: Don't worry about the Brooklyn Bridge. Just go to Chinatown with hours to kill.

Fruit and veggie stand in Chinatown. I was probably there later than the really intriguing markets would be open and/or have really intriguing produce.

I wound up with lychees (which I seem to recall my dad ordering at a Chinese restaurant in the East Bay, where we lived til I was 11)...

Lychees. I don't know what to do with them, yet, other than chill, peel and pop 'em. Maybe some kind of granita?


Starting to make up for earlier: barbecued pork buns, or char siu bao, from Excellent Dumplings in Chinatown.

I demolished those buns.

I walked and ate... Classy. From Chinatown I hoofed it up to the DessertTruck...

Dessert Truck scene

... where my day redeemed itself immediately, and wholly:

Lavender-peach sorbet, with crème frâiche, almond meringue and fresh berries. Unbelieveable. Best six bucks I've spent in at least a month.

From Dessert Truck to Webster Hall, every spoonful of that amazing concoction contributed to this stupid grin spreading across my face. Suddenly, the Brooklyn Bridge blisters and ridiculously heavy backpack (why did I buy so many damn lychees?) seemed a million miles away. Lavender-peach sorbet, with crème frâiche, almond meringue and fresh berries = SALVATION IN A CUP.

Concert. Pete Yorn. Eye and ear candy.

The show ended with time to spare before I had to get back up to GCT for the 12:08 train home. I could grab a slice of pizza, I thought, or... I could go to Daydream (which I keep wanting to call Dreamberry, a la Pinkberry frozen yogurt).

Half original icy, half pomegranate tart frozen yogurt, with ripe (yay!) mangoes and blueberries. Found this place after a concert in April. It hits the spot even more on a steamy late-July night.

Snapped this at a station as I was making my way north:

Someone loves breaded, fried pork cutlets more than I do.

dessertforthemorningafter