the beet goes on

The KinderCluster

2012-01-24T23:53:00.000-05:00

For years and years and years, I have resisted, with excruciating difficulty, taking pictures of that urban* phenomenon I call the KinderCluster. The KinderCluster is that group of little kids, often from a daycare or preschool, that you spot walking down the street en route to or from the park or just out for a change of scenery. Usually they are paired up in two parallel lines (think: Madeline), often holding hands or sometimes on either side of a rope, gripping it for security. One teacher usually leads them while another teacher acts as caboose.

By definition, the KinderCluster is so cute it hurts me in my gut.

And of course I have resisted taking photos of my favorite public sighting because, well, taking pictures of strangers' children can result in someone coming over to break your camera over your head. So I don't normally do it. Except for today, when I came across this:

This was a variant of the KinderCluster as the kids were, in fact, clustered around the body of a hand-crafted Chinese dragon made of crepe paper. Hailing from a neighborhood public preschool, they were staging their own tiny Lunar New Year parade, walking laps around the block, taking turns wearing the dragon head and leading the pack.

As they chanted "Happy New Year!" in English heavily accented by Spanish and Vietnamese, a teacher rhythmically banged on a small drum as they stopped periodically to readjust the dragon head, which seemed to keep slipping off the wearer. As they beamed at pedestrians and proudly showed off their dragon, the excitement was palpable. And really freaking adorable.

While I could no longer contain my photo restraint, I did try to be subtle, which is why the pictures aren't so great. And they don't capture a fraction of the cuteness I witnessed. But trust me: there was a whole lot of cute parading around the block this afternoon.

Happy Year of the Dragon! May it be filled with joy, prosperity, and frequent KinderCluster sightings!

__________________
*I think of KinderClusters as urban phenomenon because I only ever see them in cities, but I imagine they might be in the suburbs, too. Or even rural areas! And if not, they should be.

Thundersticks!

2012-01-02T11:29:00.000-05:00

I was having lunch with Joel back in August, telling him about the menu I was planning for an upcoming baby shower. I needed one more appetizery dish, and while I was thinking maybe a crudité platter or stuffed endive leaves, Joel described his family's go-to potluck dish.

It's basically meatloaf baked in a hollowed-out loaf of sourdough, he explained. You bisect the loaf, yank out the insides, pack the bread shell with meatloaf, bake it, and then watch party guests elbow each other in the eye to get to the most delicious dish on the table.

There are a few tricks to making it, he made clear. First, you have to use Soy Vey to flavor the meat. It's a bottled teriyaki-like marinade, and it makes putting this dish together fast and easy (and tasty). Second, you use the bread innards in the meatloaf. And third, you've go to bake the loaves directly on the oven rack, tempted as you might be to use a baking sheet.

Them's the rules.

Beyond that, I put my own spin in interpreting his family's signature dish. I used ground turkey instead of beef and added in a healthy heap of cilantro and squirt of sriracha to take the Asian flavors a little further. And since I needed finger food for my spread, I used a baguette to yield ideally portioned two-bite pieces. I also made a simple dipping sauce of mayonnaise and sriracha which you can make as spicy or not to your liking.

It's a dish that's fairly easy to make, has a certain intrigue ("How'd that meat get in there?"), and is mighty tasty; all it was lacking was a name. I was considering "Bullseyes" or "Benjamine Bites" (in honor of the family who inspired the recipe). But that first night I made and served them, as I was in the kitchen cutting up and arranging a plate of them, party honoree Jed casually strolled through.

"I think you should call them 'Thundersticks'," he said offhandedly.

Thundersticks!

And so Thundersticks! were born.

I allow a generous 3/4 pound of meat per baguette, so if you use a particularly thin baguette like I do (I use Acme bread whenever I can), you'll probably have leftover filling, which you can fry up l like a burger (use the sriracha-mayo sauce with it, or mix a little miso paste and lemon juice into mayonnaise for another great condiment), or make meatballs and enjoy them with noodles in broth.

Thundersticks! are the gift that keeps on giving.

Thanks to Joel for the inspiration and Jed for the name. And to everyone who's bellowed "Thundersticks!" at the mention of them. It's kind of hard not to.

Thundersticks!

makes about 48 pieces

2 baguettes (sweet or sour, but I always prefer sour, and as narrow and hard-crusted as you can find)

1 1/2 pounds ground turkey (dark meat is better than light)

2 large eggs

1 small white onion, grated on the large holes of box grater, juice reserved with onions

1/3 cup chopped cilantro leaves

1/2 cup Soy Vey

1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper

2-3 TB sriracha (or more to taste)

2 cups mayonnaise

Trim the ends off the baguettes and cut them into quarters so you have 4 short baguettes. Gut them, digging out the soft part with your fingers and saving it in a large bowl. Set the baguette shells aside.

Chop or shred the bread innards into small pieces. They don't have to be crumbs, but they should be small. Add in the turkey, eggs, onion, cilantro, Soy Vey, pepper, and 1 tablespoon of the sriracha. Mix thoroughly; mixture will be a bit loose and wet.

Preheat the oven to 375ºF. Tear 8 lengths of aluminum foil slightly longer than the length of a baguette shell. Use your fingers to stuff each baguette with the filling, pushing it in from both ends of the baguette and packing it as densely as you can.

Wrap each baguette piece tightly in a piece of foil. Bake in a single layer directly on the rack (not on a baking sheet) for 40-50 minutes, turning once about 20 minutes into cooking. The Thundersticks are ready when the internal temperature reads 165ºF.

Remove them from the oven and allow to cool for 5 minutes. Carefully unwrap the hot sticks and allow them to cool for another 10-15 minutes to allow for easier cutting. Cut each stick into 6 equal pieces about 1 inch wide.

Mix the mayonnaise with 1-2 tablespoons of sriracha and serve alongside the pieces of Thundersticks.

West Side Story: The Sing-Along

2011-12-31T22:45:00.000-05:00

I can't pass up an opportunity to see "West Side Story" on the big screen. And when it's at San Francisco's historic Castro Theatre, and when it's a Sing-Along to boot? Well, just try and keep me away. Or don't. Because you can't.

The goody bags we got upon entering the theater were filled with several tools to help us participate fully in the Sing-Along experience. A clicking noisemaker to anticipate action. A tiny American flag to wave about during "America." Exploding streamers to release when Maria and Tony have their first kiss. And inflatable bats to whack each other with whenever Officer Krupke and Lieutenant Schrank appeared on the scene.

In fact, before the movie started, Krupke and Schrank themselves coached us on just what we needed to do, including hissing whenever someone was mean to the androgynous character Anybodys and whistling "My Country 'Tis of Thee" along with the Sharks. And then, accompanied by the Mighty Wurlitzer, we ran through a round of "I Feel Petty" to get warmed up.

So I have this minor problem whenever I see "West Side Story": I cry convulsively through pretty much the whole thing, starting at the overture. The sight of the changing colors of the background of a very abstract Manhattan sends me right into sobs, which can work against you when it's a sing-along. But since I can't sing, I guess it kind of works out.

My friend Ted was seeing the movie for the first time. And at the Castro of all places! We had a great participatory audience that whooped and hollered and snickered tried to warn Tony not to stop the rumble. I think Ted would have been easily converted in any case, but the Sing-Along surely guaranteed that he'll have the soundtrack in his head for days.

During intermission (remember when movies had intermissions?), Ted got popcorn, and some folks in the audience bopped each other with the bats between texting and snack bar visits (the bopper is way in the back and hard to see, but she's there!).

When Tony and Maria got fake-married, we blew celebratory bubbles supplied in our goody bags. The ones I blew don't show up in the picture; it was quite a feat of coordination to blow bubbles and take a photo in a dark theater at the same time while trying to shield the light from my live-view screen.

And cry simultaneously, of course.

Each time I see "West Side Story" I want to learn every last step of Jerome Robbins's choreography. And that urge has only become more intense over the years, ever since I was six and wanted to be a Jet or a Shark. It never mattered which, so long as I got to carry a comb in my back pocket and chassé into a tourjeté on the sidewalk.

The sun had set when we left the theater, and with the music and choreography so fresh in my head, I wanted to scale Cyclone fences and do grand jetés all down Castro Street, and I might have, had I not been so worn out from all the crying. Seriously. It takes a lot out of you. So I took a picture instead.

It's how I got my kicks tonight.

The Beet Goes Bundt

2011-11-15T18:19:00.001-05:00

It occurred to me recently that for a blog named "the beet goes on" there isn't much talk of beets. There hasn't been much talk of food in general, come to think of it, and I haven't posted a recipe in a very long time.

But today is going to be different! It turns out that Tuesday was National Bundt Day, and with some incentive from The Food Librarian and her incredible 30 Days of Bundts, I am seizing this opportunity to say something about both beets and bundts.

Oh, beets! I do love a good beet. Red beets, yellow beets, chiogga beets. Raw beets, roasted beets, even boiled beets (just please, not the canned ones). I know there are people (including someone who shares my genetic material!) who hate beets in any form. These folks say that beets taste like dirt. I just think they taste beety. And sweet. In any case, I think my favorite thing about beets is peeling the cooked red ones with my bare hands. I know I can use gloves or a dishtowel, but I love walking around with red hands for the rest of the day.

Oh, bundt cakes! Last year I bought my very first bundt pan, and I made a persimmon olive oil cake that was my favorite thing to bake that fall. Like the Food Librarian, I'm not a fan of frosting, so the appeal in bundt cakes is the abundance of cake with little or no frosting, which I usually eat around. I just want good cake. After all, cake is my favorite food. Give me a tender crumb and a nice hit of vanilla or chocolate, and I don't need one drop of frosting.

See how's there's barely a sheen of ganache on that slice of cake? That's my kind of cake.

Do you also see how there's a little piece missing from the bottom of the back end of the cake? I ate it.

So beets and bundts? A few months ago, the folks at tiger in a jar posted a short film about baking a chocolate-beet cake, and I've had the dreamy sequence in my head ever since. Go pop over there right now and watch it. (I'll be here when you get back.) That film was so gorgeous I wanted to recreate the exact same ethereal experience for myself. The cascade of vanilla extract. The smooth stirring of the batter. The snowy confectioner's sugar. Ethereal.

Alas, in my kitchen, life is a little less ethereal and a lot more clunky, and without all the delicate dishes and antique utensils.

But I took on the recipe-- even thought I don't have the jaunty French sailor shirt nor the mysterious feather sitting on my non-existent rustic, reclaimed-wood table (really, go watch the video)-- and and made three minor adjustments: I used bittersweet chocolate instead of semi-sweet because it was what I had on hand, and I had to use the bundt pan or else why would I even baking a cake on National Bundt Day? Also, I made chocolate ganache to finish the cake, mainly because I needed to use up some chocolate. Other than that, I followed the recipe, which is a rarity for me, even when baking.

Their recipe calls for 1 1/2 cups of brown sugar.

In the video, the cake maker fondles the brown sugar, letting it tumble from her fingers. I didn't do that though I did think about it for a minute. It seemed a bit gratuitous without someone there to film it.

I was pleased with the cake and the process of making it, though it is a wee bit labor-intensive, what with all the cooking and puréeing of beets. The batter, which I sadly didn't get a photo of, is a deep but vivid red, and I was surprised the cake didn't turn out redder than it did.

Here's the whole cake. This picture makes it look like a doughnut, but believe me: it was a big ole bundt.

That'll learn me to throw a fork in there for perspective.

The cake was gently sweet, incredibly moist, and had a lovely texture. If I thought really, really hard about it, I could taste the beets, but I wonder if one of those beet haters would be more sensitive to the flavor. This is a cake I would make again, maybe next time with a little more salt and and couple tablespoons of cocoa powder, just because it's always nice to find an excuse to use cocoa powder.

The recipe is right there under the video that you watched. You did watch it, right?

I hope you had a good National Bundt Day 2011! Mine couldn't be beet!

Read Me a Story

2011-11-12T21:02:00.001-05:00

It took over eighteen hours of training, a few more hours of research in the library, and a good deal of flop sweat, but it's now official: I'm a fully trained volunteer for the Books for Wider Horizons program through the Oakland Public Library. That means that soon, I'll make weekly visits to a public preschool in Oakland where I'll read and sing songs with the kidlets.

Cultivating a love of books and reading to children? Could there possibly be a better volunteer gig out there?

No. Nope. Negatory. I really doubt it.

But eighteen hours of training?

Yes, I know it sounds like a lot of time, but I wish it had been twice as long.

And here's why:

This is Gay Ducey, our trainer and storytelling mentor. She's the children's librarian at the Rockridge Library and an acclaimed storyteller. She's also modeling the tote bag I got as a graduation present from the program.

And I am her newest fan.

This woman knows her way around a children's story time. She doesn't just teach us how to choose a book to read but she also shows us how to hold that book for maximum effect. She is a endless source for songs, rhymes, fingerplays, and folklore. She teaches us to entertain, breathe through the fumbles, let loose, and, above all, have fun.

And in the moments when we feel doubt, when we wonder if we are really cut out for the job, if we are engaging enough or animated enough or if we can carry a tune, Gay will say repeatedly and earnestly and with complete sincerity, "You are sufficient as you are." That we need no embellishments, adjustments, modifications. That just our showing up is what is important.

Tell me that's not better than therapy! I found myself having to resist the urge to crawl into her lap and ask her for cookies.

So after many hours of learning the finer points of story reading, Saturday was our last day of training, when each of us performed an abbreviated story time for the group. In preparation, I spent the week prior listening to Raffi CDs and reading picture books out loud to the cats. I scribbled out some crib notes and had my book ready.

There were some tummy butterflies, I have to say. I have no illusions of being able to sing, and back in my nannying days, a three-year-old screaming, "No, Nessa! No, Nessa! Don't sing!" only served to confirm my suspicions that I should not, in fact, be singing in the presence of others, even if I'm only trying to sing "Bingo."

I've had a bit of a complex ever since.

But I had the best adult audience I could have hoped for that day, a room full of fellow trainees who were all in the same boat that I was (though some of them actually could sing). It was nice to look out and see Rachel and MB, for example, who brought Hello the Hippo and The Big Hairy Spider, respectively, to assist in their story reading.

And Irene, who sang "Good Morning" from "Singin' in the Rain"-- my all-time favorite movie-- as her opening song.

She rocks a puppet, a book, and a funny hat (not shown) like nobody's business.

At the end of our day, we were gifted children's books to take home. I got a book and CD of Latin American songs and fingerplays. I'm practicing reading and singing in Spanish, which can't be worse than my singing in English. Wait. Can it?

The lesson of the day: It really doesn't matter if your voice cracks or you forget the words or you're a little out of tune, so long as you're having fun. The fun part is what matters. I will keep telling myself this, even when the kids start screaming in Spanish, "No, Nessa! No cantes!"

Potlucky

2011-10-21T16:29:00.001-04:00

When I started submitting recipes to food52.com, I couldn't have possibly foreseen a day, two years later, when I would travel to Seattle to meet some of my fellow home cooks on a bright and glorious fall day. But that's what happened recently when a few Pacfic Northwesterners and I gathered to meet one another outside of the Internet. Naturally, some tasty edibles made their way to the table, where we ate and chatted and got to know the cooks behind the online aliases.

Sharon and her daughter, Krista, welcomed us into their home, and we converged on it with armfuls of delicious, homemade food.

Adrienne's roasted beet and hazelnut tarts hit the table (and my stomach) first, their tender crusts melting in my mouth.

Soon after, Krista served up Bette's juicy sausages stewed with peppers and onions onto fresh rolls,

while I gobbled up more than my share of Linda's tasty bean, spinach, and feta wraps.

If you think you don't like prunes, try Sara's pickled ones. They were the most delightful prunes I've ever had.

(They're hard to see, but they're in that jar, which is really kind of amazing considering I had to sit on my hands to keep from eating all of them.)

Ever had a savory cobbler? Hannah's baked roasted root vegetables were full of tender, earthy beets and baked with a cheddary biscuit topping.

Yeah, I said, "cheddary biscuit."

My sister Veronica's prolific garden provided the sweet cherry tomatoes that filled the bite-sized polenta cups.

They made you want to stuff a bunch in your mouth, all squirrel-like.

And I brought one of my favorite dishes to make and eat, Melanzane sott'olio all'eoliana, otherwise known as marinated eggplant.

I've been obsessed with it since I first tried it on a trip to Italy.

Between courses, we cooed at Tom the Cat,

but we didn't wait long before we hit the desserts.

Sara's food52-winning Pear Rosemary Danish was a perfect mix of fall flavors, and it was just sweet enough.

I fell hard for Hannah's chocolate chip cookies, which now rank very high on my cookie list.

(There are some pumpkin oatmeal cookies there, too.)

Adrienne's coconut macaroons were little balls of delight,

and leave it to Linda to tempt us with chunks of marshmallowy rocky road.

Sharon, who lives not far from the Ballard Locks, wisely suggested that we take a stroll after our meal. The sun was out, the sky was bright blue, and I don't live in Seattle, but I imagine that one must strike while the proverbial iron is hot, so off we ventured to take in the day.

We all thought about rolling ourselves down the hill like all the little kids were doing, which wouldn't have been hard after our meal.

Here we are all along the waterway! Bette, me, Adrienne, Sara, Veronica, Hannah, Sharon, and Linda, with Krista behind the camera.

Home Cooks' Tour 2011!

Hannah blissfully basked in the sun,

and Veronica grew the mother of all hipster moustaches.

It was the perfect day for strolling and making new friends.

On our walk, we talked about ourselves and our interests-- all the stuff that's hard to glean from our online presences. I learned that Sharon once lived in Ethiopia (she gave me her personal stash of berbere that came straight from her peeps in Ethiopia!) and that Adrienne has big plans for a gluten-free café (which I will happily roadtrip back to Seattle to try).

What amazing company I keep on food52!

Eventually we arrived back to the home of our generous hosts, where we hydrated with Sara's shrubs.

Walking, talking, laughing, and sharing cooking and food stories can really take a lot of a gal.

I was partial to the plum and star anise one, but I definitely made sure I had some of the blackberry one as well.

When it was time to go, Bette and I were on the same wavelength. She brought delicious little fruitcakes for us to take home (which, apparently, she thought was hilarious).

And I made containers of granola.

We could really only eat so much at the actual potluck, you know.

Gigantic thanks to the lovely Sharon and Krista for sharing their home with us.

And thanks to my new friends for feeding me well and sharing their time with me.

Thanks also to food52.com for giving us a place to meet virtually. Without it, we never would have met for real. It's one thing to find a great recipe and make it at home, but it's quite another to have the person behind the recipe cook it for you.

We're already scheming when we can make it happen again.

Bulking Up

2011-09-28T01:28:00.000-04:00

When Rainbow Grocery opened in San Francisco in 1975, it was run by volunteer members from an ashram who wanted to provide affordable, whole, natural foods to the community.

Since then, it's seen many changes in its staffing, organization, and location, but it's always good to know that you can see a bit of its history when you walk in from the 13th Street entrance, where the sign from the original store presides over the melons.

If that sign does not scream "hippies" I don't know what does.

Here are some things I love about Rainbow:

The cool mural at the front of the store,...

...the bins for donating food and children's books, recycling cork, and reusing bags,...

...the gorgeous produce section,...

...the piñatas!...

...the trays of fresh baked goods, like these chubby, stuffed bombolini...

...the table of cheese samples at one of the best cheese counters around (hint: there are samples of olives at the olive bar as well),...

...the fanciful wine section...

...and the kitchen and housewares department that carries, along with all the essentials for a well-equipped kitchen, great extras like these super cute bento boxes.

But the real draw for me is the bulk section-- or sections-- of which there are several.

There are the bajillion jars of herbs, spices, and teas that greets you at the front of the store.

And there are the grain, legume, and flour bins that come with handy information about what exactly it is you're buying and how to use it because really, how often do you come across sorghum or teff?

There are buckets of peanut butter, almond butter, and hazelnut butter; buckets of honey and miso aren't far away.

And there's even soy sauce and olive oil on tap.

And maple syrup, too!

If you need bulk nuts, fresh ravioli, dried mushrooms, vinegar, olives, cocoa powder, granola, tapioca starch, Mexican oregano, Mediterranean oregano, dried chamomile, coffee, seaweed, pesto, or even shampoo, Rainbow's your place. And there are another several hundred items that you can buy a little or a lot of, which is great when you're not really sure if you are going to like umeboshi paste, but now you can get just a little and realize how delicious it is.

The bulk section is my favorite part about going to Rainbow, and over the years, I've learned not to go without my holy trinity of bulk shopping: storage containers, blue painter's tape, and a fat Sharpie.

I love my labels and my containers. Well, what I really love is how they keep my oats from spilling out all over the cart, and how they stack neatly, and how they make it possible for me to store and get easy access to them at home instead of wrestling a jumble of plastic bags and tags that are too small and squished up to read.

But please do not be misled into thinking this makes me an organized person. It does not.

I'm happiest going to Rainbow when I have a big list to shop for, but on this day, the list was short. You might say I was feeling light-carted.

Or you might not.

But I can promise you this: if I ever run into you in the bulk section, I'll let you use my tape and markers.

I'll meet you at the sunflower seed bin!

The Sharpest Knife in the Drawer

2011-09-18T14:41:00.000-04:00

Confession time: I've never learned to sharpen my own knives.

It's partly because I'm sure I'll inadvertently destroy my knives, and it's partly because I've worked in an industry where trained professionals I trust can do it for me for the price of a six-pack (or two).

But when I found myself without co-workers to turn to, I had to seek help, which came in the form of Hida Tool in Berkeley. It's been around for almost thirty years, with a reputation for quality and service. And they have a knife-sharpening service whose waiting list can be over two weeks long!

I wasn't thrilled about having to wait, but I took their popularity as a good sign.

I brought Luis with me to the small, quiet store in North Berkeley, and the first sign I knew I would love it came in the form of its welcoming committee, a lazy, gray cat whose name I asked but then promptly forgot, but it was Japanese and had something to do with nature, like "lazy river" or "quiet mountain."

Or maybe it was "blurry mammal."

Anyway, I was mesmerized the staggering amount of sharp objects packed into the store. Many of them were familiar household tools like kitchen cleavers and gardening shears. Some were angular and small and look like they were highly specialized. I wasn't sure what they were, but they seemed like they could be woodworking tools. Or primitive dental instruments.

There are lots of Japanese products that come with cute packaging...

... and an entire section of mallets. Luis was kind enough to model one for me. I thought this mallet looked particularly good with his crazy eye.

Did you know that there is a whole subset of hoes called ika hoes, or hand hoes?

Hand hoes! Who knew?

Service at Hida Tool is top-notch. My knives came back to me like new. The workers are friendly and helpful, and when I asked if they have knife-sharpening classes, they said no, but they could teach me how to do it anyway. I should take them up on it, and buy one of their lovely sharpening stones while I'm at it, but I'll still want an excuse to take my knives there for regular sharpening.

Or I suppose I could just go and play with the hand hoes.

Thank you, Hida!

Pie Day!

2011-08-04T13:55:00.007-04:00

I hope you got invited to Portland's Pie-a-palooza 2011.

If you did, you would have been able to taste all kinds of delicious and beautiful pies like Dereth's chocolate chip caramel icebox pie and Veronica's strawberry frangipane pie.

Dereth and Veronica hosted the second annual pie day in the park, so if you didn't get that invitation, you can take it up with them.

An invitation would have given you access to Brendan's gorgeous grape pie/galette...

... and to Vincent's Moroccan pastilla and Darin's shepherd's pie, which proudly represented the meatier side of pie.

You could have tried so many pies! Sweet pies and savory pies, fruity pies and chocolaty pies, tried-and-true pies and first-go, experimental pies. There were pies made with lemons and eggs and carrots and sweet potatoes and pork and apples and bourbon-soaked cherries. Not all in the same pie, of course.

You might have even had out-of-state pies, like Linda's fantastic blackberry-raspberry pie, all the way from Seattle!

There were lovely summery pies...

...and pies that were really chocolate tarts.

There was my sister who made a smash-hit avocado-lime pie.

She also happens to make the cutest of cutie pies.

Sara brought a decadent German chocolate pie,

and Darcy crafted a rich avocado-pistachio pie. I watched her grind the pistachios with my very own eyes!

Wait. That should be, "I, with my own eyes, watched her grind the pistachios." My eyes couldn't grind a pistachio if they tried.

If you brought a pie, you could enter the raffle (winners to be announced at 3:14-- pi time, of course!),

and if you wrote a pie-ku, you could enter twice!

Friends gathered, chatted, snapped photos, and ate lots and lots of pie. And occasionally grasped their bellies and groaned a little.

Yasue's bacon-covered macaroni-and-cheese pie nearly caused an up-pie-sing,

and Linda's pizza pie was a hit with the kids and adults alike.

A few of us who had only known each other virtually through the recipe site food52.com finally got to meet in person, revealing our true pie-dentities!

Hi, hardlikearmour, lapadia, and vrunka!* (And thanks to Zach for the photo!)

Eventually, the dozens of pies began to dwindle as we neared the end of pie day and the limits of our stomachs.

Pie-ticipants of the event were obliged to do one thing: take home some pie!

There was plenty to go around.

Soon we were left with just pie detritus (de-pie-tus?).

Well, pie detritus and a eye toward next year's Pie-a-palooza.

My advice to you: make sure that next year you get in-pie-ted!

*If you want to check out some great recipes, may I direct you to hardlikearmour's Patatas Bravas with Double Garlic Aioli, lapadia's Raspberry-Coconut Custard Pie, and vrunka's Orange Cardamom Fig Newtons? And by "may I direct you?" what I'm really saying is "GO MAKE THEIR FOOD NOW!" Your stomachs will be happy you did.

Swap 'Til You Drop

2011-07-27T14:34:00.001-04:00

After years of thinking about making homemade fruit leather, I finally did it! I spent two days pitting plums, cooking them down, puréeing them, and dehydrating them in a low oven, and after some trial and error, I had fruit leather, which I rolled up in wax paper and took to the joint Blue Chair Fruit Company and Punk Domestics food preservation swap.

The event, held in North Oakland at Blue Chair's spiffy headquarters, wasn't just any ordinary food swap; this one was billed as a free-market exchange where your jars of homemade pickled okra might be the key to acquiring someone else's jars of meyer lemon marmalade, where supply and demand are represented by apricot jam and plum fruit leather.

We set up our wares and samples on tables and made little signs so everyone would know what we had to offer.

I wasn't sure how much to bring, and for a moment I was worried when I walked in carrying my little basket of fruit rolls and saw a table already stocked with dozens of jars of jams and pickles.

But there was no need to worry! It was a free market after all, so it didn't really matter that I didn't have a lot to work with. I would barter with what I had and just see how far it would get me.

I had my eye on quite a few items, like Grace's Montmorency cherry spoon fruit...

...and Lisa's pickled nasturtium capers with horseradish (her homemade nocino was also mighty tempting, too)...

...and Liz's foraged olallieberry jam, which was so thick it was almost chewy.

Sean from Punk Domestics thanked us for coming and gave us the green light to go ahead and start swapping.

I'm happy to report that my fruit rolls earned me those gorgeous cherries and that amazing olallieberry jam. I also got my hands on some boozy strawberry jam, Seville orange marmalade, and pickled green beans.

What a cool way to stock a pantry!

My inner food voyeur was awakened by the event. I loved the chance to snoop into the kitchens and cooking minds of the other eight preservers, who shared tastes of everything from rhubarb liqueur to salt-cured olives. What a great outlet for the canning- and preserving-obsessed, whose cupboards spill over with the literal fruits of their efforts.

I'm lobbying for more swaps in the future; there is no doubt there are more goodies where those came from. And I'll happily be whipping up more fruit leather so I can get my share.

Batter Up!

2011-07-14T17:18:00.002-04:00

I entered my first cake contest!

Spoiler alert: I didn't win.

Another spoiler alert: It was still really fun!

The neat folks at Omnivore Books in San Francisco hosted the event. Oscar the Oyster welcomed us.

He's just so jaunty in that toque!

To enter the contest, all you had to do was show up with a cake. Or if you didn't want to bake, you could pay five bucks at the door and just eat cake till it came out your ears and then vote for your favorite.

My cake took a spot on a table with some very handsome contenders.

I made a coffeecake with cocoa nibs, hazelnuts, and homemade plum jam. Unlike most of my competitors, I did not go for aesthetics. In fact, I had hacked mine up into tiny pieces before I'd even arrived. Apparently, I should have waited.

It didn't seem to stop people from eating it, though.

There were three tables brimming with cakes, and the crowd continued to pack itself in around them. Eventually there were about one hundred people and thirty cakes!

That's not a bad ratio, but in a perfect world it would be the other way around.

The excitement in the air was thick like buttercream frosting as eager cake fiends piled samples on their plates. You know how people go to one-trip salad bars and manage to construct gravity-defying towers of lettuce? Well that's how it was at this event, only with cake instead of croutons and bacon bits.

A diverse array of cakes were for the tasting. There was chocolate cake, carrot cake, strawberry cake, coconut cake, peach pie cake, fondant-draped cake, fancy cake, tall cake, an apocalyptic cake, and a whole bunch more I couldn't even get a look at-- let alone taste-- because I was busy serving up and talking up my own cake.

As tasters jostled each other, making their way around the room, there was much hushed whispering and mental noting of favored entrants.

Some clever entrepreneur would have made a killing selling cartons of cold milk on the sidewalk.

Forty minutes into the competition, the tables were littered with cake detritus...

...but people kept trickling in, and eventually, my cake plate had only crumbs left on it.

It was hard not to succumb to the effects of overcaking. Even those who carefully paced themselves were clutching their bellies and looking a little sugar-shocked. But still they managed to vote, and after the final count, this beauty took the prize:

Christina, the cheesing champion, scored half of the money collected at the door, plus a membership to The Bakers Dozen.

Well-deserved, Christina!

(How much of the cash do you think she's going to spend on butter and quality baking chocolate?)

I had a couple of requests for my recipe and a few nice strangers saying a few nice things about my cake, which were great consolation prizes. I had so much fun that they were just... icing on the cake.

(Feel free to groan.)

Off the Grid

2011-06-08T23:33:00.000-04:00

Last week, T and I showed up to the first North Berkeley Off the Grid way too late. By the time we arrived less than two hours into the event, almost all the trucks had run out of food entirely, and the two that were left had unappealingly long lines and menus with most of their items crossed out.

So instead, we had a great dinner at Cha Am down the street and figured we could try again.

This time we arrived just before start time, and the lines were already growing. By the time we left an hour later, the place was swarming.

T waited at the Hapa SF truck for lumpia, pancit, and sisig, and I took my place at the Brass Knuckle truck. It took over half an hour to order and get my Notorious P.I.G., but at least I had some great entertainment from little Lila who danced around with a bag on her head.

(I only know her name is Lila because her mom must have called it out about six thousand times, though now that I think about it, maybe her name wasn't Lila because she seemed to mostly ignore the woman. Or maybe she was just being two.)

T and I made ourselves comfortable on the curb and wasted no time digging right in. T was particularly excited about the sisig, which seemed to be made of parts of the pig other than the traditional head. It was tasty, though a bit dry, but all the dishes from Hapa SF tasted of fresh, quality ingredients.

The hands-down winner was the Notorious P.I.G.-- a sandwich of roasted pork, Swiss cheese, pickles, and "parsley herb orgasmica" on a rosemary waffle (!!), and it came with fantastic french fries. It's one of those dishes that made me have to think about eating slowly because otherwise I would have gobbled it down without appreciating every amazing bite.

We had the stubbiest lumpia I'd ever seen, packed tight with ground pork and water chestnuts. Mexican Coke and a grapefruit Izze kept us hydrated.

From our patch of curb, we mostly could see other people waiting on endlessly snaking lines...

... but we had a primo view of this little guy, who played the adorable card like a pro.

The first round of dessert was a "Must Love Chocolate" cannolo made by Roamin' Cannoli and sold by Hapa SF. It's hard not to love a dessert stuffed with TCHO dark chocolate and espresso.

Round two came not from a truck but from Masse's Pastries down the street. We walked by the store just as they were putting up a big "CHURROS" sign and didn't need much persuading after that. The fried, barely sweet dough was uncharacteristically light and airy but delicious nonetheless, especially with the dark chocolate dipping sauce, which I ended up eating all by itself.

(Note the piñata-like "CHURROS" sign waving in the background.)

We got enough food that there are a couple of midnight snacks left over in the fridge. It was great to see the event supported by so many people, but as tasty as the expedition was, I'm not sure I want to face the hordes again.

Though that pork and waffle sandwich will probably make me reconsider.

Choreography

2011-05-31T16:04:00.006-04:00

The best part about going to the Treasure Island Flea on Sunday wasn't the gorgeous view of San Francisco from the middle of the Bay.

And it wasn't that sneaking suspicion we were going to a party.

Nor was it watching Maxine splurge on mango bubble tea and thread bracelets in red, green, and yellow.

It wasn't even capturing a photo of Tony with his dreadlocks tucked neatly under his cap.

(And it certainly wasn't the mediocre, overpriced food that was so unremarkable that we didn't even bother to snap photos of it. No it wasn't!)

The best part was watching this little bit of choreography that took place under Treasure Island's newest resident, the forty-foot-tall sculpture of a dancing woman.

It started off somewhat understated...

...before it began to pick up speed.

They implemented a bit of suspenseful drama...

...before letting it all hang out in an exuberant finale.

Encore! Encore!

I'm on Probation

2011-02-02T00:35:00.002-05:00

For the last four weeks, our Christmas tree has been sitting out by the side of our house, untouched by the sanitation workers who, for some reason, wouldn't take it away on designated tree pick-up days. Bedraggled and balding, it's been dragged to the sidewalk and back twice now, and today I finally decided to put it out of its misery.

The plan: hack it to bits and offer it up to the green waste receptacle.

Being someone who believes every gal should own her own stocked tool box and electric drill, I usually feel pretty well-equipped to deal with most household fix-it situations. But my wrench and pliers weren't going to help much with the tree, so I headed to the Temescal branch of the Oakland Public Library to find some help.

The tool lending library is teeming with, well, tools-- tools and lots of people there to borrow them with the swipe of their library card. Rakes and shovels, axes and wire strippers, butt markers (what? what?) and mortar hoes (pardon my French).

To dismember my tree, I just needed a saw and some pruning shears. But since I'd never used the tool lending library before, I was put on probation while I prove I can take care of the tools I've borrowed and return them in a timely manner.

But they did give me a little "HOW TO" sticker to show my pending acceptance into the world of tool sharing.

My first loaner was #4470, which the library guy referred to as "snippers." I snip, snip, snipped off the branches of the tree before attempting to saw the tree into pieces with...

...#4410, otherwise known as a hand saw. It worked fine despite missing a screw that holds the handle in place and despite the remaining screws falling out intermittently.

Pretty soon all the branches and three, big chunks of the trunk were in a big pile.

I loaded everything into the green waste container, including the all-compostable cranberry-popcorn garlands strung on cotton thread that we made to decorate the tree.

The tools have to be returned in a couple of days, which means that if I find anything else to saw into pieces, now's the time to do it. Though if I pass muster, I'll be taken off probation, and then I can regularly join the throngs of laborers who show up to borrow a vibrating sander, Fresno trowel, magnesium bull float, or nipple extractor.

But maybe I should find out what those things are first.

Sunday Sweets

2011-01-10T00:51:00.002-05:00

Today was a sweet Sunday.

It started with this irresistible nugget: The San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival's auditions are open to be viewed by the public, which means that for very little money, you can see a spectrum of dance that you can't see anywhere else.

This year, Zellerbach Hall on the UC Berkeley campus hosted.

Since graduating on its very stage nearly nineteen years ago, I haven't been back very often. But today was a gorgeous day to go. Cold, but gorgeous.

The schedule for the auditions was posted outside. Ten bucks bought a day's worth of in-and-out privileges, allowing you to be that kid in a candy store, except the candy is dancing, and you can stuff your soul silly with it.

Perhaps you've been lacking a little Mohiniattam from South India lately? Maybe you'd like to get a feel for how to cut a rug in Peru, Upper Egypt, and Zimbabwe? Then this is the event for you! The dances are international, but the dancers all live here in the Bay Area.

Pretty sweet!

We were drawn in by the first group we saw, a Haitian dance ensemble performing Kongo, the women dressed in a vibrant rainbow of huge, billowing skirts which formed exaggerated arcs as they dancers twirled across the stage. It was a stunning visual.

Too bad there was no photography allowed (of the performers, I surmised), so all I got was this picture of an empty stage.

Between acts, we moved to the mezzanine to get a new perspective, which included a nice, elevated view not only of the stage but of the a ridiculously cute three-year-old, tow-headed, bespectacled boy whose head bobbed up and down to the music and who said (I quote this verbatim), "Those are the bendiest girls!" when I asked him if he'd seen the acrobatic Chinese girls who had performed earlier.

After a couple of exhausting hours of watching dance, we naturally got a little hungry. At lunch, Maxine skillfully built a structure out of sugar packets while her father threatened, with a menacing finger, to knock it over.

Afterward, we stopped by Tara's Organic Ice Cream, just to lower our body temperatures a little more with a bit of literal sweetness. Max and T achieved this with coconut ice cream and caramel sauce while I opted for black sesame.

This was my first trip to Tara's, and, as I'd been warned, it opened up the sweet, frozen, dairy floodgates. I'm already strategizing how soon I can go back.

I caught T trying to lay a little sugar on his offspring, but she was probably still a little miffed about the whole sugar packet deal. Understandably.

Dessert-bellied, we wandered over to the East Bay Depot for Creative Reuse where we expected to see bins of art supplies, piles of egg cartons, and shelves of VHS tapes, but we were a little more surprised to find, well, our new best friends:

I think I might give them a ring.

'Bye, sweet Sunday! Come back again soon!

Sooo San Francisco

2010-11-27T01:43:00.006-05:00

After a fun and sweaty Rhythm and Motion workout at ODC, I had some time to wander through the Mission, a neighborhood I haven't spent time in in years. I headed to Commnunity Thrift, the store where you can shop for second-hand clothing and household items and support local non-profits at the same time.

Before I knew it, I was in the book section, pawing through the cookbooks, when I saw this sign:

A porn section in a thrift store? That is sooo San Francisco.

Walking up 18th Street past Bi-Rite, I saw a bubblegum machine. Well, sort of. Instead of dispensing bubblegum, it popped out seed bombs, little clusters of flower seeds with directions to throw them into "sidewalk cracks, vacant lots and parking medians"-- any gray spaces that could use a little brightening up.

Greening the city? That is sooo San Francisco (with a fat dose of Berkeley thrown in).

At Tartine, I waited my turn in a line that stretched out the door on a Friday afternoon at 3 o'clock. I squeezed into a place at the communal table with my slice of devil's food cake and waited for the barista to call me over for my mint tea.

I waited, but not as long as the folks at the table who waited for their sandwiches, which finally emerged on crispy slices of thickly cut bread deep with grill marks, oozing Humbolt Fog Goat Cheese and bulging with Niman Ranch pastrami.

Local meats and cheeses, housemade bread, and a huge, wooden slab of a communal table? Très, très San Francisco.

I sipped my tea and nibbled at my cake and tried to read The New Yorker, but the scene was ripe for people watching. The preponderance of bangs and asymmetrical mullet/pixie haircuts on women and scruffy beards and skinny pants on men made me think momentarily that I was in Williamsburg (as in Brooklyn, to clarify). Tourists sitting next to me planned a trip to Union Square, other toursits across the table spoke Cantonese and marveled at their pumpkin pie, and girlfriends searched their souls over steaming bowls of cappuccino.

Cake, tea, and The New Yorker? Yeah, it's pretty San Francisco.

But with a little dose of me thrown in.

Bookvasana

2010-11-14T02:07:00.014-05:00

How's this for brilliant?

Take one sweet, little yoga studio in Sacramento on a Saturday afternoon between classes...

...and add books. Lots of books. And all for the taking.

Pay five bucks (donated to the SPCA) and bring one book to get you in the door (though it looked like everyone brought at least a bagful). Add your books to the appropriate piles (memoirs, novels, non-fiction) and then take as many books as you like, swapping at will.

Brilliant, yes?

Just help yourself!

It was a hotbed of temptation for those with a history of book hoarding.

And today, I definitely let history repeat itself, starting at the cookbook table (duh), where I scored two books that have been on my radar lately: Secret Ingredients: The New Yorker Book of Food and Drink and The Williams-Sonoma Entertaining Cookbook.

I also snagged some Willa Cather, Ernest Hemingway, and Anne Lamott, a Thai cookbook, and my very own Merck manual, which I cannot believe I have not owned until now.

The longer I lingered, the harder it was not to keep piling up the books. Good thing I had help getting that heavy box to the car! It came in the form of Tony and Tami, who I will refer to from now on as TNT.

The best way to follow up a fruitful book swap is with good friends and good food, so TNT and the latter T's husband Jed and I yapped over sandwiches and noodle salad at Cafe Bernardo followed by whoopie pies and lemon tarts at Magpie.

Friends, books, food. Brilliant!

Baked in the Bay Area

2010-10-21T20:29:00.010-04:00

I know I just moved back to the Bay Area a few weeks ago, but I am ready to move again.

If Omnivore Books on Food in Noe Valley needs a roommate, I'll have my bags packed in the time it takes to cook a two-minute egg.

(You do the math.)

The tiny bookshop is filled with books, new and vintage, all about food. It hosts readings by all sorts of notables in the food world. Alice Waters, Thomas Keller, Frank Bruni, and Deborah Madison have all made an appearance; Diana Kennedy and Madhur Jaffrey are on their way. It even has eggs, laid in nearby Tomales, for sale at the counter.

Eggs at the counter! I'm all over this place.

But it gets even better.

On Tuesday, I got a taste of Brooklyn when two of my favorite bakers, Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito from Baked in Red Hook came by to share some banter and brownies with a crowd of fans.

They passed out their signature brownies, dark and intense, before their talk began.

T was a good sport listening to all the baking fanatics talking about Jell-O molds (the staggering number of recipes that exist out in the world), Cher (apparently one should never attempt to make the prune-chocolate cake in her cookbook), how much people are willing to pay to have brownies shipped to them (a lot), and making caramel sauce (and how it can be the nemesis of some bakers).

After a very amiable chat, I grabbed my copies of both of their books and lined up to have them signed.

And T was there with his iPhone to capture the happy moment.

They are such nice guys. I met them briefly once before when they were doing a cooking demo for a food event in New York. I told them about how much I miss going to Baked and how happy I was to see a little bit of Brooklyn in San Francisco.

One of their recipe testers made a towering apple caramel cake that tasted like fall.

Renato and Matt signed lots of books...

... while I eyed a couple of leftover brownies. Leftover brownies? Who ever heard of such a thing?

The smiling woman on the right in the picture is Celia Sack, the owner of the store. I'd be smiling like that, too, if I had that much deliciousness coming through my store on a regular basis.

See you soon, Omnivore! Clear out a drawer for me!

PBA (Public Burrito Announcement)

2010-10-16T11:59:00.005-04:00

A burrito should look like this:

See how it would be possible to hold and eat it with one hand? See how it stands up all by itself? How it's not just a tortilla draped over rice and beans and served on a plate with a knife and fork?

New York, are you listening?

I love you, but your burritos are a disaster. Don't even get me started on your pellet-like, oddly yellow rice, the mushy salsa, the bland, tough meats or worst of all, the oversalted, undercooked beans.

I tried more times than I should have to find a decent burrito in New York City. I came very close when Dos Toros opened up near Union Square, but even then, it was agonizing to watch the lackadaisical pace at which the burritos are assembled. Go to Pancho Villa in the Mission in San Francisco, and you're waiting a long time if your burrito takes more than fourteen seconds to prepare. In New York, you have time to re-watch the first season of "Mad Men" while your lunch is rolled together.

I could go on and on about the sad state of burritos in New York, and I often do. But I'll stop now.

For now, anyway.

Let's just look at that burrito again, a little more close up:
It brings a tear to the eye, it does. Or maybe it's only because I spent the last five years looking at burrito atrocities.

I won't say that this chorizo and potato burrito from Picante in Berkeley is the best burrito in all the world, but you sure as hell can't knock its structure. And, to be sure, it was delicious.

This concludes my burrito announcement/tirade.

Until the next one, anyway.

Transitive Properties

2010-10-05T00:56:00.015-04:00

I rode AC Transit for the first time in memory today.

I maybe, maybe rode it twenty years ago, and it was probably a fluke, and I'm sure I didn't enjoy it. And I'm probably making up that whole scenario because I don't actually remember riding the bus. I just like to think that, in the name of ecological responsibility, I at least tried to.

Growing up, I never acclimated to riding the bus. I've always hated the bus systems in the Bay Area. I never really felt safe or oriented or confident about navigating the routes, and there was always some way to finagle a ride in a car anyway. I mean, who would get on the bus unless they had to? Didn't we have cars just so we could avoid riding the bus?

It was on a trip to Paris in the early '90s that I began to warm up to buses. As much as I loved riding the Métro, it mostly runs underground. Riding the bus meant being able to get from one place to another and see the sights at the same time. Who wouldn't love catching a glimpse of the Eiffel Tower while crossing the Seine from her seat on the 63?

When I moved to New York a few years ago, I surrendered my car to a friend reluctantly but out of necessity, knowing that managing a car in my neighborhood in Brooklyn would be more hassle than it would be worth. I bought my unlimited MetroCard and became, with regards to the subway, very proficient very quickly, riding the trains with actual enthusiasm, fascination, and a sense of freedom. Just try reading The New Yorker while navigating city traffic from behind the wheel; it's a lot easier to do while kicking back on a Q train.

Like Paris, New York has a lot to show off as well. So to help me take it in, I decided it was time to go superterranian and master the maze of bus routes there, or at least in my neighborhood. You can't see the arch at Grand Army Plaza from the tunnel of the 2 train, but on the B41, you can breeze past it, right under its grand shadow. I learned key routes, and despite the vagaries of traffic-- both the flow of vehicles on the road and the flow of riders on board-- I learned to love riding the bus. Many times, I even preferred it.

Just for the sport of it, I could do a round trip to Bay Ridge on the B37 (before the line was eliminated last June), and the Q35 got me to Jacob Riis Beach and back at least half a zillion times. I was always guaranteed a good view, whether it was of the street or of the characters surrounding me. Having to stand and do the rush-hour jig with my fellow straphangers just added to the experience, though I'll be the first to admit that nabbing a seat, preferably by the window, was always my goal.

I came to love public transit in New York so much that I was somewhat crushed by the idea of having to rely on a car again in Oakland. (Yes, I will have to rely on a car in Oakland because public transit's limited hours won't accommodate my work hours-- we're not in a 24-hour town any more.) But this afternoon, with an appreciation for buses that I didn't have when I last lived here, I waited for the 72 on San Pablo Avenue and, for two dollars, rode the straight, twenty-minute shot to El Cerrito to meet my mom for dinner.

It was a peaceful, uneventful ride on a sparsely populated bus. The bus was clean, but it had a lot more graffiti than I generally see on buses in New York. I overheard friendly banter between the driver and a regular rider; some people were coming home from work with an armload of groceries; a woman chatted to her friend on her cell phone in Spanish. Best of all, I could sit back and let my eyes wander and even shut for a couple of minutes when I felt tired.

And the signal to request a stop? A pull cord, just like the ones that are featured on the newer buses in New York. And the sound they make? A distinctive "ping!" that makes me think I could be pulling up to the corner of Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues.

But instead of stopping in front of the Atlantic Terminal, I'll be disembarking at the corner of San Pablo and University to visit the east Indian markets or at Shattuck and Vine to eat Zampanos from The Cheeseboard Collective, leaving the car behind when I can so I take a load off and enjoy being in transit.

All in the Farm-ily

2010-09-22T19:25:00.014-04:00

Urban agrarianism is all the rage. Why, I can hear the neighbor's chickens clucking some mornings right here in North Oakland. Reports of rooftop beekeeping are all the buzz (har!). And my neighbor and I are about to embark on a gardening project in the backyard involving not much more than planter boxes and a lot of good intentions, seeing as we both sport The Brown Thumbs of Death, as I like to call them.

So you can imagine my delight at coming across a unique brand of urban farm, not three blocks from my house: the donut farm.

The donut farm is brought to me-- um, us-- by Pepple's Donuts. They make doughnuts and other pastries at the store just around the corner and sell them all over the Bay Area. This morning, T and I got the scoop on the goods from Josh, who was the keeper of the vanilla cake doughnut.

"Doughnut keeper" would look really good on a résumé. I am not being facetious.

He told us that the doughnuts are vegan, using all-organic ingredients that include a mix of wheat and soy flours in all the cake doughnuts.

And depending on the doughnut, there could be the addition of chocolate. Or maybe coconut. Or, if you're lucky, both.

Some are made with lemon and poppy seed. Others with salted caramel, fresh blueberries, or fresh strawberries.

Cinnamon sugar is used liberally.

And for those needing a caffeine fix, there's coffee in the glaze and in the doughnut itself.

They make coffee in liquid form as well, and in the near future there will be sandwiches and other non-doughnut fare.

And, I should mention, those doughnuts are quite tasty.

Maybe I'll munch on a few while I work out plans for my own garden. I envision herbs and kale and squashes. But I'll leave it to the doughnut farmers to continue to cultivate their sweet, deep-fried crop; I'll be there at harvest time.

How to Succeed at the Farmers' Market Without Really Trying

2010-09-15T13:03:00.022-04:00

I went to the Berkeley Farmers' Market on Derby at Martin Luther King, Jr. Way this afternoon. It's the same market I used to frequent when I lived a few blocks down from it twenty (ahem) years ago. Only now I have a much greater appreciation for the locally farmed produce, baked treats, and other goodies offered there-- and an extra few chins to prove it.

One of the first vendors I saw was Blue Bottle Coffee. It was just like being in Williamsburg, except with the hipsters replaced by hippies and the sleek, airy, high-ceilinged hot spot replaced by a cart.

Getting reoriented with the market, I came up with some helpful guidelines to make your trip there as pleasant as possible.

First, don't put the tongs in your mouth.

I know it's awfully tempting to put the tongs in your mouth, especially when you consider the rest of the East Bay putting the tongs in their mouths, too, but resist the urge.

Take samples of crunchy, grassy peas from the marked sample baskets...

...and definitely from the nice people who have tastes of Mexican chocolate ice cream...

...and use a tiny spoon to scoop a taste of meyer lemon yogurt from the vibrantly topped ceramic yogurt tubs from St. Benoît.

Bring your bottles to refill with Kombucha at Cultured where you can also pick up all kinds of fermented goodness.

Stop at the giant bin of padron peppers at Riverdog Farm. Remember how taken aback you were that in New York, the peppers were selling for about $8 per pound, up about $2 from last year. And then see this sign and nearly spit with shock.

Long for the time when you were aghast that they cost $8.

Pick up a cantaloupe smaller than your hand, and coo at it like it's a tiny baby animal...

...and then do the same with a minuscule head of cabbage (no, it's not a giant Brussels sprout).

Gasp at Blue Heron Farms's gorgeous bunches of cayenne peppers, and decide on the spot that you are going to make homemade Tabasco sauce, even though they aren't tabasco peppers and you aren't entirely sure what making homemade sauce entails. Make a mental note to make a google search as soon as you get home.

Oh, and buy a handful of padron peppers because at Blue Heron they are beautiful and only $6 per pound, not $14.

And lastly, accept the sample of dry-farmed Early Girl tomatoes from Dirty Girl Produce. Say "thanks," and nonchalantly continue to walk along, absently popping the tomato in your mouth. Bite down. Chew. Taste. Let the magnificently sweet tomatoness register on your tongue. Freeze in your tracks, whip your head around, and exclaim to no one in particular, "Holy shit!" Observe several people around you nod and smile in agreement and understanding as you seamlessly make the transition from someone who was not in the know to someone who now is fully embraced by the glory that is this tomato.
But you're not done yet. Now, don't even ask how much the tomatoes cost because it's not going to be good (see previous $14 padron pepper situation), and you just don't want to know, and if you knew you'd talk yourself out of them. So quick like a bunny, buy a few because you know you won't be able to get them out of your head if you don't.

Tuck the tomatoes (yup, they all but cleaned out your wallet) into your canvas sack along with the peppers and the two bunches of dinosaur kale you picked up a couple of stands away. Keep your fingers crossed that tomatoes will make a few more showings because they are crack in the form of fruit, and you are now addicted, and you would willingly commit felonies to get more.

Now you can make your way out of the market. But before you go, snag a pecan chocolate cookie from Phoenix Pastaficio-- just to bring yourself down from all that tomato excitement.

Bid the market farewell, and tell it you'll see it again next Tuesday.

Pastravaganza!

2010-09-14T21:40:00.000-04:00

In my correspondence to Matt, I had initially referred to his first outing to Katz's Delicatessen as "Pastramipalooza." In an immediate follow-up e-mail, I apologized for my use of the hackneyed "-palooza."

"You should have said 'pastravaganza' instead," came the reply.

Indeed.

But really, I could have gone a number of ways.

Matt also suggested "Pastramboree."

But we were in it for more than just the pastrami. This was Matt's first trip to Katz's, and there was much to sample.

"Matzohmania" might have been a good alternate title.

"Tonguetacular" might have been fitting.

"Latketopia" would have worked, too.

We could have gone with "Salami-rama" but we had enough food as it was.

Matt got some nice shots on his iPhone, which he hopes someday will have a Russian Dressing app.

He even attempted to get a shot of the decidedly unphotogenic chopped liver, of which there was much (over there on the far left in the clear, plastic container).

We washed our spread down with Katz's-branded selzter water and a Dr. Brown's Cel-Ray soda.

I wonder what decorations the five-pound cheese platter comes with. Glitter? Crepe paper garlands? Mylar balloons? Maybe next time I go, I'll bring $74.00 and find out.

Despite the scorching heat and our overflowing bellies, we managed smiles for the camera on Houston Street, right before we headed down the block to stop for some whitefish salad at Russ and Daughters.

You might say our outing was a veritable gastronomic Jewbilee.

Okay. Maybe you might not.

A Peck of Purple Produce

2010-08-30T11:21:00.001-04:00

Saturday morning at the Grand Army Greenmarket was set under a glorious, blue summer sky. Brooklynites were out in full force, going elbow-to-elbow to find the sweetest ear of corn and the crunchiest Kirby cucumber.

While I'm usually found hanging out near the peaches and the bundles of fresh sage and mint, my eye this morning was drawn to the proliferation of purple around the market.

There was a sea of purple eggplants at Evolutionary Organics.

They had purple peppers, too.

The lavender people were passing out sprigs of lavender as usual. They were so fragrant, I could smell them from three stalls away (the lavender, not the lavender people).

Buzzard Crest Vineyards brought early season grapes, heralding the approach of fall. I sampled and immediately fell in dizzying love with the Jupiter grapes, which were so grapey and irresistible I had to buy a precious handful.

The blackberries at Phillips Farms were fat and bursting. I tucked a couple of boxes into my little mesh Chicobag (having paid for them first, of course). Oh, and I might have made a move on the sample plate more than once. But certainly not more than three times. I swear.

The baskets of plums from Williams Fruit Farm overflowed...

...and pretty purple flowers abounded at the flower stall.

There was so much purple all over the place, I half expected Prince to come around the corner. But he didn't.

Because this ain't Minneapolis, folks.

This is Brooklyn.

Softening

2010-05-06T08:26:00.002-04:00

I always complain about the weather when it starts to turn warm. Here in my favorite megalopolis, the onset of spring signifies to me that 1) I need to stock up on tissues for allergy season and 2) a hot, humid summer is around the corner.

I am not a fan of the high temperatures; I have always maintained that I'll take two winters over a New York summer anytime. So as locals start donning open-toed shoes at the first sign of clear skies and temperatures above 65º, I scowl, and I furrow my brows, and I get kinda grumpy.

But then I see sights like this, right there on Columbus Avenue outside of Lincoln Center, and I can't help but soften a bit. Amid the pedestrians and the traffic and the hubbub of the City, a patch of sweet, perfect flowers thrives. And if it weren't for spring, they wouldn't be there.

So I've gotta give credit where credit is due. Thanks, Spring! And achoo!

Happy Ending

2010-01-26T12:47:00.002-05:00

Last week, Tony and I-- full of sushi and chicken katsu donburi-- were waddling out of Geido, one of my favorite restaurants, when we saw something a little unusual for the neighborhood: a grey and red parrot climbing the security gate of a clothing boutique.

There was a police officer and some other person on their mobile phones, looking up at the bird who was clearly lost and disoriented and probably a good deal freaked out. And likely cold. It is the middle of January, after all.

Despite my general aversion to non-deep-fried birds, I felt sad for my little avian brethren. I know I don't like being lost, disoriented, or cold. And I thought about the bird owner at home, fretting and feeling anxious.

But there wasn't much I could do; at least it seemed that the animal control folks would be on the case. So on T and I waddled into that chilly night (made a little less chilly by a stop at The Chocolate Room for hot chocolate floats).

So fast forward to Monday. I was leaving my shift at the Park Slope Food Coop when I stopped to look at the community bulletin board in the stairwell. Amid the ads for life coaches and used bikes for sale and rooms for rent was this:

Gracie!

Now while I didn't know the exact whereabouts of Gracie four days after I saw him, I did know that New York's finest had been involved at some point. When I called the number on the flyer to let them know their beloved pet might be in the care of animal control, I got great news: Gracie had been reunited with her owners the day before.

Lora, his owner, was predictably happy and relieved.

And seeing a happy ending in this sprawling, sometimes merciless megalopolis made me happy and relieved, too.

Signs from God

2010-01-13T22:09:00.005-05:00

Eva and I were already brimming with pork from Fette Sau when we decided to head to the G train, agreeing we weren't going out of our way to find dessert. The dry-rubbed pork ribs were kind of dessert enough already.

As we bundled ourselves up from the cold on Metropolitan Avenue, we walked past a sparse but brightly lit storefront. On the window was the word "cupcakes."

Clearly, we were being given a message.

We were still standing on the sidewalk looking at each other with amazement over stumbling upon dessert so easily when the woman behind the counter poked her head out the doorway into the freezing air outside.

Would you like some free cupcakes? she asked.

You could have knocked us over with an icing spatula.

My verbatim answer was Yes! Do we look like idiots?

And with that, not one, not two, but SIX cupcakes were packed into a little, pink bakery box. We had two big and four tiny cupcakes between the two of us.

According to the proprietor, Cupcakeland had just opened two days ago, and they were trying to "make friends" in the neighborhood.

I wasn't about to tell her I don't live anywhere near that neighborhood.

We dug in as soon as we got on the train. Truth be told, we ate just one of the baby cupcakes each. I'll be doling out the rest to neighbors tomorrow. Too much of a good thing can give you a stomach ache. Especially when you ate three dinner rolls with your pulled pork and spicy sausage and baked beans and sauerkraut and potato salad and washed it down with a cherry soda.

Thanks, Cupcakeland! Your cupcakes were grand! And if you had a website I'd link to it!

How Swede It Is

2010-01-12T21:41:00.004-05:00

I haven't been to an Ikea since 2006. One didn't exist in New York when I moved here, and when it finally did open a couple of years ago, I stayed far away from the hype and the crowds and the temptation to buy things I didn't need.

But I needed an adventure, so I boarded the #61B bus to Red Hook and was dropped off right at the entrance to Sweden's greatest contribution to mass production itself:

Now, a trip to Ikea in and of itself is not that much of an adventure; thanks to our friend standardization, if you've been to one Ikea, you've been to all (or most, at least). The adventure part for me was a trip to the cafeteria, where the infamous meatballs waited for me, piled high on the steam table.

I considered other options, like the chicken fingers and the broccoli-cheese soup, but for my first dining experience at the axis of pre-fabrication, only the meatballs would suffice. To my disappointment, there was no Swedish Chef-- only a rather grumpy woman who looked like she'd plated enough meatballs for one lifetime.

The normal portion of meatballs is huge: fifteen of them! I got the serving person to lovingly slop just ten on my plate, and I even got a little discount for getting the smaller portion, note to you all krona-pinchers out there.

I took my plate of meatballs, gravy, mashed potatoes, and lingonberry sauce to a window seat, where the view was wonderful, Statue of Liberty and all. I'm not sure why there was a yellow school bus in the parking lot, but I sure don't remember field trips that involved shopping when I was a kid.

I wasn't exactly excited about my meal at Ikea. After all, those köttbullar are rumored to be made from the sawdust off the warehouse floor! Wait, did I start that rumor? Anyway, they seemed benign enough. Possibly tasty, even.

And the innards seemed okay.

So my first taste of Ikea's signature dish? Well, the meatballs weren't nearly as bad as I thought they might be. They reminded me of frozen dinners I used to eat (and love) when I was a kid. And the lingonberry sauce was a nice touch. But the mashed potatoes were a disaster.

That's right. Disaster.

They had this really odd, smoked-meat taste that made me think I was about to find a piece of bacon in my potatoes. And the disappointment didn't come so much from not ever finding that piece of bacon in my potatoes but rather from eating something that wasn't supposed to taste like liquid smoke.

Blech.

IKEA FOOD: Don't eat the mashers!

As I walked out, I saw this panda who had a table all to herself...

...and where you might find me next Wednesday night: There's just no way I can't try them. Right?

Ikea equips shoppers with all the tools they'll need for a successful visit.

And despite the already low prices, there was a SALE! SALE! SALE!

The arrows keep you on the path, lest you wander off, lured by kitchen stools and light fixtures.

I wasn't actually at Ikea to shop, despite the tantalizing displays and prices. I breezed confidently past the Ektorps, Skänkas, and Kvartals, awed by the sheer volume of do-it-yourself furniture and headed down to the self-serve housewares, where I committed to taking nothing with me but pictures.

For instance, a picture of more wine glasses than you can shake a stick at. You can get a stick and you can stand next to those glasses, but that's all. That stick won't shake.

How about a stack of silicone ice cube molds...

...or an even bigger stack of plastic food trays?

Ikea toiletries? Yes, and there's shampoo, too, but it was out of stock.

Ikea is warehouse-shopping at its finest, cheapest, most disassembled.

By the cash register, there was a table of items that shoppers made a zero-hour decision to leave behind. It included a pink hippo, lighbulbs, a whisk, and some peanut shells, which don't look like they can be put back together with all the allen wrenches in the world.

I managed to leave with nothing but a ten-pack of batteries (hey, it was two bucks) and a few super cute hand puppets for some of the smaller people I come across in my life.

On my way out, I found my favorite Ikea treat of all: soft serve! Hot dogs were offered for fifty cents, but I was still recovering from the meatballs, thank you.

I ate my ice cream in the lobby where I pondered the mural made by students at P.S. 27.If this is what Ikea has to do to get in good with the neighbors, then I guess there are much worse ways to get in good with the neighbors. The one on the bottom left reads:

Oh Mom, you are as sweet as an ice cream cone
You do my hair in corn braids
and when I am sad you make me hot bowls of soup
You even love me

Tell me I didn't think that poem was so sweet that I didn't almost choke on my dessert. Because I almost did.

Back out in the sub-freezing day, it was only mid-afternoon but the sky was already turning pretty colors.

I strolled down Erie Basin Park, built by the Ikeans as part of their deal to set up shop in Red Hook. I learned where not to fish...

...where to recline...

...where to park my (non-existent) bike...

...and how far I have to go to get to Tierra del Fuego.

No adventure to Red Hook would be complete without a trip to my favorite bakery, Baked. I had a slice (and by slice I mean massive slab) of citrus cake with coconut frosting.

I had a giant, steamy mug of ginger tea to go with it, and let me tell you, there is no better combination than those two things together. I dare you to think of a better pair. You know what? Don't bother. You can't do it. It's impossible. Surrender to the citrus cake and ginger tea. I did, and I'm a much happier person for it.

That's why I'll be back in Red Hook again soon, eating cake and strolling through the park and probably not ordering the meatballs and definitely not those mashed potatoes but maybe-- maybe-- trolling for some sleekly designed Bergsbos and Bekväms.

¡Sí se puede!

2010-01-07T14:50:00.010-05:00

When I moved to New York, I knew I would be giving up certain elements of California living that I had become quite attached to. Temperate weather. Driving a car. Looking west and seeing the Golden Gate Bridge. Hills. Fog. The pecan praline cookie at Sweet Adeline Bakeshop. Berkeley Bowl and Rainbow Grocery. Amazing Mexican food coming at me from every direction.

But I was headed to my favorite megalopolis, and I knew that of all those things I was leaving behind, there was at least a chance that I could maybe uncover a good burrito somewhere in these five boroughs.

Turns out it was a very small chance.

The burritos in this town, well, suck.

I've found some great tacos and huaraches, thanks to the Red Hook Ball Fields. But a good burrito? Aquí no existe.

I've seen some consistent problems with the burritos in these parts. The rice is this hard, flavorless, and oddly separate, à la Uncle Ben's. The salsas are bland and made with mealy, pallid tomatoes. The meat fillings are often dried out and either tasteless or aggressively salty. The black beans are overwhelmed by epazote or are tragically underseasoned or undercooked. Tortillas don't get pressed or steamed or even warmed up. In general, flavors just seem flat, dull, old, stale.

And, for the love of frijoles, nobody can roll a burrito in this town to save their vidas. The edges of the tortillas are just sort of folded over each other, but the burrito isn't rolled tight, as it needs to be. I have not once, in four years in New York, been able to eat a burrito with one hand. But I'm always given a fork and knife to eat my burrito with.

Who the hell wants to eat their burrito with a fork and knife?

¡Dios mio!

I should say that I have all but given up trying to find a good burrito in this town, and I've learned to be particularly weary of any burrito billed as "California-style"-- that will ensure that I'm in for a disaster. Each successive burrito experience becomes an exercise in frustration, which only serves to stoke my ire over the poor quality of something that is pulled off with widespread success in lots of other places.

Don't get me started on abortion rights, religious zealotry, or bad burritos. Unless you've got a lot of extra tiempo on your hands.

(In all fairness, I came close to a good experience at Calexico recently, where the meats were juicy and flavorful and the salsas were interesting, but waiting twenty minutes to get my food when I'm ordering at a counter and my food's being dropped off to me on a tray and the burrito still isn't rolled right? Think of the riots that would erupt if burrito preparation took more than forty seconds and any respectable California taqueria.)

So when I saw this article in the New York Times about Dos Toros, I was, understandably, skeptical. But what made me think twice was the mention that the owners of Gordo Taqueria in Berkeley, my home turf, are the proprietors of this new place. And though it's been many years since I've indulged in one of Gordo's signature quesadillas, bulging with meat and oozing with cheese, I have only happy memories of eating there.

I could see the steam table of fillings when I walked up to the counter. The meats looked juicy, the salsa looked fresh, the guacamole was bright green. I ordered a carnitas burrito with guacamole, and at nine bucks, I could see how my agitation level would be off the charts if the burrito failed to perform.

I watched the folks behind the counter begin to assemble my burrito. The person who pressed my tortilla (score one for the tortilla press!) exuded absolutely no culinary confidence whatsoever-- he handled that tortilla so gingerly I thought he was about to sing it a lullaby. It seemed from the way that he scooped my black beans and rice that he hadn't been working with long-handled spoons for very long either.

I started to worry-- just a tiny bit.

But then another guy took over, adding in the meat, and he piled on some glistening chunks of juicy pork that fell to pieces at the touch of the tongs. He layered on sour cream and guacamole and a nice pile of pico de gallo. And he put a little container of hot tomatillo salsa on the side for me.

I meant to watch him roll the burrito, but I was distracted by paying the cashier, so it was with a bit of trepidation and low-grade anxiety that I took my burrito to the window seat and set it on the reclaimed-wood counter and peeled back the foil wrapper, holding my breath, like Charlie Bucket did when he opened the Wonka bar that he bought with the money he found in the gutter.

And...
...ta da!

A burrito wrapped up snug and tight, just as god intended.

I picked that baby up with one hand and felt a surge of optimism and hope.
It felt heavy. It felt like it was tucked together well. It smelled great.

With the first, delicious bite, my angst dissipated. The rice was moist, the salsa was flavorful, the beans were of the right texture and did not stand out because of poor seasoning, the guacamole was creamy, and the pork was, well, fantastic.

And the proper rolling! For a brief moment, I imagined I was in San Francisco.
I added in a little of the tomatillo salsa, which had a hefty kick to it. But really, the burrito didn't need the extra seasoning. It was muy sabroso just as it was.

My idea was to eat half the burrito and save the other half for later.

Guess how that plan turned out.
Now relieved that access to a decent burrito is as easy as hopping on the Q train, I practically skipped out of the taqueria, blissful, quite full, and giving muchas gracias to the burrito gods.

¡Sí se puede!

Testafy

2010-01-05T23:51:00.002-05:00

I broke a rule tonight.

I had dinner at franny's with James, Robert, and Robert's mom Rita.

Oh, that's not the rule I broke. I'm allowed to have dinner with them whenever I want.

And really, it's what I didn't do at dinner tonight. I didn't order the pork cheek and beef tongue terrine they've got on the menu there. And I always order it. Because it's delicious. And I love it.

I've had it many times. It has most-favored status amongst the staff. It's also lovingly known as "testa"-- Italian for "head"-- so called for the cheek and tongue parts from which it's made. The terrine is studded with whole, black peppercorns that turn soft and eatable as the terrine is made. A thin slice of it is served warm on a warm plate with two slices of olive oil-drizzled, rustic, Italian bread that's warmed in the wood oven.

The slice of terrine always comes with a garnish. Like the pickled fennel I had over the summer:

Or the salsa verde I had a couple of summers back:

Tonight the garnish was pickled grenada peppers, which smell like a spicy tropical fruit, floral and fragrant. But I don't have a picture of those peppers because, of course, I didn't order that dish tonight.

I'm not sure how it happened. It just did. Or should I say "didn't"?

I feel like I've failed the headcheese community somehow.

In any case, dinner was amazing, every bit of it, as usual: the molten-hot potato croquettes, the juicy tangerines with olives and horseradish, the zippy meyer lemon spaghetti, the white pizza with creamy ricotta, the flawless fior di latte gelato, the perfectly textured panna cotta.

It's good stuff.

So good I forgot to order the terrine. I guess that's easy enough to remedy if I just go back and get two.

And don't think I wouldn't.

New Amsterdam Market

2009-12-25T13:30:00.002-05:00

At the site of the old Fulton Fish Market, under the cover of the South Street Viaduct, on the shore of the East River, on the morning after the season's first snowstorm, the New Amsterdam Market set up shop, five days before Christmas.

Lots of people came out in the knee-high snow and freezing air to sample and buy wares from local producers of breads, meats, produce, cheese, wine, and many, many other edibles.

But of all those people, there was just one I was interested in:
Eva!

Eva recently relocated back to New York from Germany, which is really good news for me. And my tummy. Eva is always down for a food adventure, and the New Amsterdam Market would certainly qualify as a food adventure..

We scoured the market and did a good amount of damage, despite our rapidly numbing extremeties, eating lots of lovely treats to warm us up.

We found msmen, brought to us by the folks at Hot Bread Kitchen.

There were stacks and stacks of the thin, flaky Moroccan flatbread, heated to order. There sure were a lot of them.
But we only ate one. Crazy, I know.

We nibbled on bits of chocolate from the Fine & Raw chocolate folks whose agave-sweetened confections live up to their name.

I bought a bag of dried kelp from She Sells Seaweed. I plan to make it into some of the sesame-seaweed brittle I sampled there. Know why?
Because it was delicious. Duh.

We ordered ice cream from The Bent Spoon-- one scoop of eggnog (spiked with rum and Courvoisier) and one scoop of refreshing "peppermint shtick" with little bits of candy throughout.
It might have been below freezing outside, but we weren't above eating ice cream before noon.

Provisions market was selling Neki's granola. If you haven't had, get it. It's good stuff.

Seeing that homemade quince paste from Saltie made me want to put together a cheese plate, stat.

The view was pretty.

The spicy pork rinds from Old Field Farm were looking good, too.

And Eva and I aren't too hard on the eyes either, if I may say so myself.

Quality Meats set up shop there with a fleet of sandwich presses making duck confit "hot pockets."

They were served with a cranberry apple relish on the side.

And Eva and I certainly relished every last bite of the steamy, hot duck tucked into all those flaky puff pastry layers.

A couple of tables down, Porchetta served their eponymous sandwich, in mini-version.

The meat was as juicy-tender-fatty as I remembered it when I last had lunch there.

Eva is a good friend. You can tell because I trust her enough to let her hold the sandwich while I took pictures. I don't give up my pork to just anyone.

We chased our snacks with hot apple cider from Breezy Hill Orchard, and not a moment too soon as I was really missing having feeling in my fingers.

We passed on the gingerbread people, cute and large as they were.

We didn't buy any of Juniper Moon Farm's wool either, thought it might have been nice to stuff skeins of it into my coat for insulation.

The eggnog samples from the Organic Valley cooperative was rich and tasty and Eva's first taste of it ever!

We bought slabs of pork rillettes and pâté from Old Field Farms. We didn't buy the slab of pancetta. I know, I know. This story seemed so credible right up until that last statement.

The next market has yet to be scheduled, but I plan to be there when it happens, with that amazing view of the Brooklyn Bridge and all the deliciousness up for grabs.

And with any luck, I'll have my dear friend to accompany me.
Welcome back to New York, Eva!

A Bite at Ben's

2009-10-08T22:30:00.002-04:00

This summer I had the pleasure of dining at Ben's Chili Bowl, the landmark restaurant in Washington, D.C. By "dining" I really mean that I had breakfast, and by "breakfast" I mean that I ate two chili dogs, lots of potato chips, and a container of cole slaw washed down with a thick vanilla shake.

I had thought that one chili dog for breakfast would be fine.

But I felt like I couldn't leave without trying their signature dish: the half-smoke, named for it's half pork, half beef content. Smothered with chili sauce, raw onions, and mustard, of course.
*burp*

Excuse me.

As a consequence, and not surprisingly, I waddled out of Ben's Chili Bowl that morning, a belly full of one of the best breakfasts in recent memory.

Tony, on the other hand, had made a more traditional choice for breakfast-- french toast...

...with bacon and eggs...

...and a side of toast to boot.That Tony loves his bread. Yes he does.

That meal was three months ago, and I still think about that morning, and how blissfully I chowed down on those dogs. They were not only delicious, but they were also served up in a veritable D.C. institution. Ben's has seen its neighborhood through the last fifty years, from the Civil Rights Movement right on up to gentrification. It's a fixture of the community, a small, family-owned business that has found a way to survive and thrive through decades providing not just a hearty meal but a sense of constancy and stability.

They know who helps contribute to their success.

They let Bill Cosby and the Obamas eat there for free!

They're proud of their president.

They work really hard.

And their chili did, in fact, make my hot dog bark.

Though I've been there just once, I really grooved on the vibe of the place: the friendly service, the buzz of the workers, the stream of families coming in for breakfast on a lazy Saturday morning. So when I heard the news that the restaurant's founder, Ben Ali, died yesterday, I was sad. Restaurants like his, that serve not just as a place to eat but as a cornerstone to a community, are harder and harder to come by these days.

Thanks, Mr. Ali, for serving up delicious chili dogs with a little bit of history and good vibes on the side.

Beach Bums and the Last Hurrah

2009-09-27T12:29:00.017-04:00

It's official: summer is officially over. Done. Eighty-six. No más.

In general, the onset of fall is very good news to me. I hate summer. Well, I hate summer in New York City. It's hot. It's humid. It smells awful. And it makes me very, very cranky.

But summer this year was just a bit more tolerable. Weather-wise, it was atypically mild. We had a few spells of sticky-hot days, but overall, I didn't feel like I would asphyxiate from the humidity every time I walked out of the house.

It's a refreshing way to spend a summer, free from the fear of asphyxiation.

Another refreshing way to spend the summer: go to the beach. A lot. Preferably with Tony. Which is what I did a lot over the past couple of months.

Jacob Riis was our beach of choice. It's known as The People's Beach, named for Jacob Riis, the journalist-photographer who helped expose the plight of the have-nots in New York City over a hundred years ago.
Tony and I have been there about a half dozen times now, on sunny days, on overcast days, on torrential storm days.

And on nap days, of course.

We took pictures of ourselves lying on the beach. Some were more successful than others. This is an example of a less successful one.

We also checked out Rockaway Beach, where the surfers hang out. It's just a couple of miles north of Riis.

And at Rockaway Taco, we ate chorizo tacos and deep-fried plantains with guacamole. But not before we took pictures of the menu.

The sun shone brightly on Rockaway that day. You can tell by the squinty faces. We were happy to be on the beach, but we sure were squinty.

It was a breezy day, and I needed my hoodie. The water was a bit too cold for swimming, but I played back and forth between the blanket and the shore, stopping to write in the sand along the way.
Rockaway Beach was nice, but with the boardwalk and the projects in the background, it felt a lot more urban than Riis.

At Riis, I could forget I lived in an urban center. There, I swam in the Atlantic Ocean for the first time, playing in the waves and watching Tony do his best imitation of a dolphin, which he kind of looked like as he dove into the surf.
Wish I'd actually gotten a picture of him doing that.

While we did our fair share of lounging and soaking up sun, there was a lot of playing on the sand as well. Cartwheels, backbends, jumping up and down. And trying to get this shot, which is a lot trickier than it looks. I nearly fell over several times.
And not falling over just because I tend to do that. This was falling over with a photographic purpose.

There are many reasons to love Riis, but the basketball courts might put it over the top for me. We brought a ball and shot some hoops, and by shooting hoops I mean that I ran around the court, double dribbling and lobbing granny shots and missing 99% of my attempts.

Tony, though, shot for three.

While I flailed around a lot.

On Thursday we squeezed in one last trip to Riis, and under the hot sun, ate peanut butter sandwiches, took this season's final dip in the Atlantic, and shot a few more bricks.

I can almost see myself looking forward to summer again.

Almost.

Cello Mello

2009-09-25T13:35:00.008-04:00

Tony and I had a very busy day.

We started off by zipping into Midtown to see the boy-geniuses behind Baked, possibly my favorite bakery in my favorite megalopolis, make an appearance at the Bon Appétit Supper Club and Café. That's Renato Poliafito on the left and Matt Lewis on the right. Long story short, it was easier to get a photo of them on the live-feed screen than it was to take a picture of them, even though we were sitting mere yards away from their cooking demonstration.

Samples of their yummy Peanut Butter Crispy Bars helped ease that disappointment, though. As did their warm, friendly dispositions. Nice guys, those two.

Now go to Baked and get a cupcake. Really. Go. Now. They're the best.

Maybe finish reading this blog entry first, though.

Now good and hungry, T and I raced off to Daisy May's BBQ in Hell's Kitchen. We ordered a tray full of mac and cheese, baked beans with burnt ends, pulled pork, creamed spinach, mashed potatoes with red eye gravy, and some Kansas City Sweet & Sticky pork ribs.

We ate mightily. We were already getting a little worn out from running around on such an unexpectedly warm day. And now we had a food coma to boot! But our day was only just beginning.

But wait. Let's look at those side dishes again. Creamed spinach. Oh. Yes.

Anyway, our bellies now brimming with barbecue, we shot up to Washington Heights, where Tony, who had just washed down lunch with a quart of sweet iced tea, was miraculously able to mount an elephant with practically no damage to his person.

Our goal in taking the A train all the way to 181st Street was to make our way to the famed Little Red Lighthouse under the George Washington Bridge. Which we did manage to do. Eventually. After a couple of wrong turns and a good amount of backtracking and hill climbing and trail navigating.

Not like we couldn't use the extra mileage given how much barbecue we needed to work off.

And at the end, we were rewarded with the sight of the cutest little lighthouse we ever did see!

Plus a beautiful view of the Hudson and the wilds of New Jersey.

We definitely busied ourselves. We took lots of pictures, including pictures of ourselves taking pictures...

... and of ourselves not taking pictures...

...and of us moving ninja-like (or surfing?) over the path...

...and of cartwheeling...

...and of reflections of things in sunglasses...

...and of the sky and trees as seen from lying on a picnic table...

...and of the George Washington Bridge from that same perspective.

Finally, after all our running around, we plopped ourselves down on the picnic benches to stop and take a long breath. And then, most unexpectedly, just as the breeze began to kick up and cool us off, we heard the faint sound of music-- of strings-- and, following the low, deep tones, we spied a cellist playing on the shores of the Hudson.

Ask me why I moved to New York, and this is the answer: Because here is where I will find a cellist playing on the shores of the Hudson, right next to the Little Red Lighthouse, in the shadow of the George Washington Bridge on a sunny, breezy Wednesday afternoon in September.

A mellow, magical end to a fun, bustling day. Thanks for the serenade, Samuel!

Gnocchi Dokey

2009-09-13T12:02:00.006-04:00

When Tony was visiting recently, we made gnocchi.

Well, really, he made gnocchi.

And that was fine with me.

See, he's not terribly well versed in things culinary (his feelings are not hurt when I say this), but when I cook, he's always thoughtful enough to ask, "Can I help you?"

I always take him up on his offer. But what he doesn't realize is that I'm pawning off on him some of the more tedious food preparation tasks I'd just as soon pass on. Like grating mounds of cheese. Or halving a pint of cherry tomatoes. Or hulling a quart of strawberries. Or whipping cream by hand.

Yeah, that was a good one.

He thinks he's helping, which, of course, he is. Helping me free up my time in the kitchen to do the really fun stuff.

Like getting the dough together. I boiled the potatoes and smooshed them with a fork, and then I added in a little bit of egg and a little bit of flour and worked it lightly till I had dough. I rolled out long snakes of it, and then cut it into nubby little sections, and then I let my favorite prep cook take over.

He dutifully took each gnoccho, one by one, and rolled it over the gnocchi board, creating ridges in the dumplings that would eventually help the sauce to stick nice and good.

He did it over and over, channeling his inner Italian grandmother and becoming more proficient with each roll of the dough.

With occasional pauses to re-flour the board, T had all that dough worked in no time. Like he'd done it his whole life! Like a pro!

This left me open to do the fun stuff, like taking pictures of him making gnocchi.
Remind me to make him wear an apron next time.

We had a lot of dumpling going on.

And all I had to do was warm up the pork ragù that I'd made earlier, dust some freshly grated parmigiano over the top, and tear up a few leaves of basil.
And then dig in, of course. With my indispensable right-hand-gnocchi-man.

Bridging the Gap

2009-08-26T20:36:00.008-04:00

It's not like I don't spend a lot of time on the Manhattan Bridge. My two favorite subway lines, the B and the Q, which I ride frequently, both run right over it. I go to DUMBO (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass) with some regularity and, when I'm there, always look up at the bridge in awe and admiration. And if I walk just a block away from my apartment, I can see it from Flatbush Avenue.

It's pretty cool, that Manhattan Bridge.

But until this week, I'd never actually walked on it. It's just one of the eighteen million things I have on my ever-growing list of things to do here in my favorite megalopolis. This week, though, having Luis here as my houseguest provided just the right impetus to finally make it happen.

We'd spent the morning in Chinatown eating dim sum, buying pork buns, and sipping bubble tea on Canal Street. And finding rambutan. Rambutan!
He had a plane to catch in a few hours, and it was a warm, lovely day, and heading back to Brooklyn over the Manhattan Bridge seemed like the perfect last-minute sightseeing expedition.

So I snapped a last couple of pictures and headed to the bridge.

One of my favorite things about riding the subway over the bridge is that it runs right over Chinatown, and the views of the rooftops and graffiti are sooo New York.

I've always been fond of this particular act of graffitum, and now I have my very own picture of it!

The Manhattan Bridge doesn't get the notoriety of its sexier big sister, the Brooklyn Bridge. But it should. It's all gorgeously suspension bridgey, a little more industrial looking and sort of stoic but with all kinds of pretty detailing.

It was a perfect day to walk the bridge. There was lots of sun. And lots of really, really loud subway trains running right by our heads and causing a slightly unsettling amount of vibration underfoot.

But that didn't stop us from doing our best Spider-Man impersonations...

...though we kept web-spinning to a minimum.

From the Manhattan Bridge, the view of the Brooklyn Bridge is quite grand. I cut it down to size a little in this picture, though. It's nothing personal. I was just playing with my focus a little.

And since it would have been silly to walk the bridge for the first time and not cartwheel on it, of course I cartwheeled.

Wheee!

Now who wants to walk the Williamsburg, George Washington, and Triborough Bridges with me?