And Now a Word on Eating
Funny where you get when you hop around the web. I started at Loobylu this morning, then jumped from there to French Toast Girl, where I saw a link to a diet that involved eating everything with chopsticks. The description of it reminded me of a book I read back in the mid-90s called Overcoming Overeating. I totally understood the principles, but it was really hard to let go and surround myself with food, to trust that eventually I'd stop wanting to eat everything if I realized I could have whatever I wanted whenever I wanted it.
Lately I've been following a modified Atkins plan. I didn't start with Induction (where you eat as much meat as you want and only 3 cups of salad greens a day for at least two weeks) because I only have about 10 pounds to lose, and because Induction is difficult for a semi-vegetarian (I eat fish). I lost about 4 pounds at first, but lately I've been bouncing around in that 4-pound range. Some days at the top, where I started, and some days closer to the bottom. So for weight loss, apparently I have to be more diligent about counting my carbs. The best thing about this plan is that I've managed to kick my addiction to candy and baked goods. I don't worry too much about small amounts of sugar in my foods, and I eat diabetic-friendly chocolate (sweetened with maltitol or sucralose), but I've cut out the overt sugars that used to make up the majority of my daily calorie intake.
Getting rid of sugar is great, but I've never really been able to get a grip on eating normal quantities of food. I like to eat things one-after-the-other too much. It seems almost impossible for me *not* to eat while I'm working, too. It's something to do when I'm stuck. I'm not sure that chopsticks will slow me down all that much, either, since I'm fairly proficient with them (Al's Korean relatives were impressed; they had been prepared to offer me a fork until they saw me tackle my sushi and soba noodles like a native). I've tried banning food from my cube, but that goes out the window during crunch times.
The trick for me really is determining whether I'm hungry, or whether I'm just bored or frustrated. Since I've been bored or frustrated most of the time since age 6—but rarely truly hungry—is it any wonder that I can't tell the difference?
Another Sweeping Generalization
I've been doing some research lately. I've come up with a hypothesis that I'm trying to verify—entirely through anecdotal evidence, which isn't very scientific, I know. However, it's all I've got right now. Here's the hypothesis:
Women baristas make better lattes than men.
I had noticed that sometimes I got really excellent lattes (creamy, smooth, comforting), and other times, they sucked (bitter, sour, scorched, unsatisfying). I thought about who had served me the good ones and who had served me the bad ones, and I came up with a commonality: women were behind the former, and men the latter. I think men tend to overheat the milk (regardless of the kind—whole, skim, soy).
I've been putting this hypothesis to the test, and so far it's holding up. The smoothness of the espresso varies and does not seem to be related to the gender of the barista, but men definitely seem to have their thermostats set permanently on extra-hot, and women lean toward "drinkable now." (This penchant for non-tongue-burning temperatures can be taken to undesirable extremes: I recently got a short decaf latte that could be called lukewarm at best. And yes, I got it from a female barista.)
Because the smoothness of the espresso varies, it's important to get the temperature of the milk just right. Well-steamed milk can even out a bitter shot, and it can make a smooth one sublime—the ultimate comforting beverage. Scorched milk can make even a smooth shot taste icky.
If I come up with further evidence to support my hypothesis, or—as is not entirely unlikely—I become obsessive and start cataloging various short decaf latte experiences in a database, I'll follow up. In the meantime, I'll be smiling whenever I see a chick behind the steamer at Starbucks.
Regressing
I want a chocolate donut. But really, I want a chocolate donut the way it tasted on a Saturday morning when I was 7, not the way it would taste now.
Light and Unsweet
So I walked into a Dunkin' Donuts this morning (my first DD trip in Philadelphia) and ordered a small decaf coffee, light. What I got was something so horrible, so undrinkable, that I began to wonder whether "coffee, light" means something different in Philly than it does anywhere else. It appears to mean the equivalent of "coffee, regular", which in New York (and, I thought, the entire northeast) means "cream, two sugars". I was under the impression that "coffee, light" meant "just cream".
If anyone knows of a "how to order coffee in various cities and actually get what you want" guide on the web, please point me to it. In the meantime, I will be ordering "decaf, milk, no sugar" just to be safe. Or perhaps, to be safer, "decaf, black".
Birds and Baking
I just returned from a really pleasant five days with my sister, her family, and my parents. I drove down to Maryland on Wednesday, picked up some last-minute Christmas gifts, mailed a few more, and then went to the local Giant supermarket to buy baking supplies. My super-kind sister was letting me use her kitchen to do my holiday baking, since mine is completely gutted.
After cleaning the Giant out of butter and sugar and cookie cutters, I headed to my sister's house. My plan was to make cashew cookies and sugar cookies on Thursday, and pumpkin cookies and bird ornaments on Friday. I found no one home when I arrived, but my sister had set up the kitchen in style: she'd put every baking item known to man on a tablecloth-covered fold-out table and set up her Kitchen Aid stand mixer on the counter. My sister rarely bakes, but she loves kitchen gadgets—which was great for me. It meant I didn't have to find the box with the mixer in it and the one with the rolling pin and haul those items down to Maryland.
I figured since I didn't have anything else to do while waiting for my sister and the kids to get home, I'd start on some Oreo snowmen. (I'd brought down some white fudge-covered Oreos and bought some spice drops for the purpose, just in case I had time to make them.) I cut 20 pairs of spice drop earmuffs and several orange slice noses and started glueing them on to the Oreos with frosting. Midway through, my niece arrived and asked to help, which was fun.
It was still early when we polished off the snowmen, and my sister mentioned that she'd be volunteering at the kids' school on Thursday, so I made a batch of peppermint brownies (ingredients also brought along just in case) for her to distribute, along with the snowmen, to the teachers and office staff. I doubled the brownie recipe, which was probably a mistake; they had to bake longer, and the center never cooked all the way through. Next time I'm sticking with a 1.5 batch, my usual amount.
Between baking the brownies and frosting them with a dark chocolate ganache, I went to the Weis Market in Hampstead to try to find the white chocolate chip cookie mix that the cashew cookie recipe called for. (Aside from being delicious, the main appeal of the cashew cookies, and why they've been made two years running, is that they're super-simple, not-quite-from-scratch.) Whereas the Giant had at least reserved a(n empty) spot for the white chip mix, the Weis didn't even stock it. Hmph. The cashew cookies would have to move to Friday.
On Thursday I had the house to myself from about 10am on, so I got to work on the sugar cookie dough. It has to be refrigerated, so I figured I'd make that first and stick it in the fridge while I worked on the pumpkin cookies. I find that my scratch recipe for sugar cookies is a little floury, and pre-packaged sugar cookie mixes are a bit sweet, so I make one batch of each and mix the resulting doughs together. This time I was paranoid about having enough cookies for the kids to take to school—I'd hate to get all done baking and find that I was two cookies short or something—so I doubled my usual amount. This means four recipes, or 144 cookies, if the recipes actually yielded the amount they were supposed to (which, in my experience, they never did). Of course, this time I was using the only three cookie cutters I could find at the Giant, which looked small to me but which were apparently the size you were supposed to use. Thus, the quadrupled dough did indeed yield nearly 150 cookies. The pumpkin cookies didn't take long at all, but I was running back and forth from cutting board to oven with the sugar cookies for the next few hours at least.
When I finally reached the end of the sugar cookie dough, I got to work making frosting for decorating. My original plan called for my niece to help me decorate when she got home from school, but it turned out that she had a pre-arranged doctor's appointment after school. My sister and her husband took her together, and, along with their son, ate dinner out after a little Christmas shopping. By the time they arrived home at around 7pm, I'd decorated nearly 100 cookies and was running out of steam. J and M ran up to their rooms to do their homework, but M came down a few minutes later to ask if I could save her a cookie to decorate. I said I could save her about 40. She came back a bit later and started smearing on frosting. J, who's older and therefore has more homework, came down later still, and I gave him my seat at the decorating table.
When all the cookies were decorated and the frosting was set, I counted out 32 cookies for each of them (just to be safe) and put them in portable containers. I think M got the box with the kid-decorated ones, and J got ones that I'd done. There were still three other containers left! It occurred to me that even if I'd had a kitchen to bake in, I didn't have anyone to give cookies to this year. Well, I take that back; I could have distributed some to our neighbors, the contractor, the plummer, and the tile guys. I was thinking of the people I've given cookies to in past years: my neighbors in Truckee, my friends in the Bay Area, and my officemates at Macromedia. My sister really liked the pumpkin cookies (though my brother-in-law, who has an aversion to raisins, wouldn't get near them—he wanted to know if I had anything in a chocolate chip), so I told her to go ahead and freeze them for herself. The rest of the sugar cookies we distributed among J's lacrosse team, the guests at my mom's Christmas brunch, and my sister's family.
By Friday I still didn't have any white chip cookie mix, so I was planning to make some Toll House dough from scratch. My sister had some errands to run that I wanted to join in on, however, so we decided that I could skip the cashew cookies this year (especially given that there were already more cookies than anyone could eat). I would make the cinnamon bird ornaments that I'd read about in the December issue of Martha Stewart Living when we got back from the Amish market, BJ's, and Target, and M would help me decorate them after school. Unfortunately, I didn't re-read the recipe before setting out on the errands, or I would have realized that just the mixing, resting, and drying of the dough would take a minimum of 3.5 hours—and this didn't include cutting out the bird shapes with an Exacto knife. I got back at 1:15, wasted about 30 minutes cutting out bird templates (something I could have done while the dough was standing) and started working on the dough. The instructions said to mix together the 1 cup of cinnamon, 1/4 cup of applesauce, and 1/2 cup of white craft glue and then turn the dough over and over until it was smooth and dry. I did this, but I never got a dough to form. All I got was a crumbly mess. I added more applesauce and glue—and finally some water—but still got crumbs. I was ready to call it quits and declare that there would be no ornaments, but I remembered how much M was looking forward to decorating them. I ended up squeezing and kneading the stuff for about 30 minutes, spritzing it with water as I went, until I finally got a (precariously held-together) dough ball.
I was supposed to let it stand for one hour, but I figured all that kneading took 30 minutes, so I only let it stand for 30 minutes more. I was supposed to take a quarter of the dough and roll it to 1/4" thick. Of course, as soon as I hit this chunk of brown grit with a rolling pin, it crumbled to bits. I added more water, kneaded some more, and then alternately rolled and spritzed until I finally got the stuff to a bit over 1/4". I then set about cutting bird shapes. I repeated this scenario several times with each third of dough (I couldn't get it into quarters) and eaked out 13 birds. I figure I didn't get the 15 the recipe promised because I couldn't get the dough thin enough. Still, M and I counted all the people we needed to make ornaments for, and technically we only needed 12, so 13 was plenty.
I had put the first five birds in the oven as soon as possible, so they could start the 2-hour drying process. M came home from school with about 40 minutes to go on the first batch, so she helped me cut out the last few birds and set up the tiny beads and glitter that we'd use to decorate them. I explained the whole "smallest embellishments first" thing, and demonstrated how to tap the excess beads or glitter off so that it went back into the original supply. When the first batch of birds came out of the oven, we got to work. M had me squirt the glue for her the first time, but she quickly got the hang of the process and did another two birds all by herself. I have to say, her designs were nicer than the ones Martha suggested. (She's been an art prodigy since age 5, so this really shouldn't have surprised me.) I stuck to the Martha suggestions for my first two birds (a cardinal and a chickadee), but I tried the M method after that.
In between bird batches I had to go pick up Al at the train station. We thought M would have to manage the oven timer in my absence, but Al's train was delayed, so I had time to get the next batch out of the oven before I left. There was a further bit of a panic when Al got off at Penn Station rather than BWI, but he caught the next train down, and I eventually got him in the car for the 45-minute drive back to my sister's house.
When we arrived home M had showered and was in her jammies, but her dad let her put a big t-shirt on over the PJ's and decorate a few more birds. M got pretty absorbed in her art and forgot to tap the excess glitter and beads over the original supplies, which made things a bit messy, but I think the results were worth it. Her birds really were stunning. I'm kicking myself now for not photographing them all before we handed them out; I only have the cardinal I made as an example. She insisted that we leave a bird for Uncle Al to decorate, but he chickened out with the glue and just art directed while I did the actual decorating. His color and bead size choices were very nice, though, and the result was a lovely pale blue superfine glitter, green coarse glitter, and read seed bead finch.
The next morning M and I addressed and dated each ornament and set aside the ones for her three teachers before handing a bird out to each female relative at my mom's Christmas brunch. They were a big hit, and I could totally see why: they were beautiful. They smelled a bit more like glue than I'd hoped they would, but I figured the cinnamon smell was what would linger in a room. As long as no one stuck a bird up her nose, she'd never notice the glue.
I'm glad I stuck with the ornament project, but I'm thinking about writing to Martha to ask if she's sure about the ingredient proportions. Al is of the opinion that the craft projects and recipes in Martha Stewart Living are there for your reading peasure only; they're not intended to be made. Considering that I usually only drool over the projects and food photos in MSL and never get around to making any of them, he might be right.
Baking Up a Storm
Now that we have a functional kitchen, I've been cooking and baking like crazy. I've been testing out several muffin and coffeecake recipes on Al (and on my parents, who visited this past weekend), as well as making freezable meals like quiche and baked ziti. (The more we eat in, the longer I can afford not to work!)
I've never really been able to bake so frequently before, so I now have an opportunity to really test recipes—to determine what difference sifting makes, if any (so far, it seems to make for a lighter, less hockey-puckish muffin), whether futzing with the quantities of butter and oil change the taste markedly, and whether substituting buttermilk for half the milk in a coffecake makes it taste better or worse. All of these things may be obvious to good cooks, but they're less so to me, and I'm having a ball discovering well-trampled territory. I hope to be able to make up my own recipes before long.
Food Finds
I wanted to mention a couple tasty items I've come across in the past few months and that I've enjoyed again recently.
The rootbeer floats at Taylor's Automatic Refresher in the Ferry Building in San Francisco are the best I think I've ever had. The rootbeer is delicious, with a nice peppery finish, and the ice cream is smooth and creamy and has a fresh, authentic vanilla flavor. Best of all, the proportions of rootbeer and ice cream are perfect; most floats I've found elsewhere have had too much ice cream and not enough rootbeer. At Taylor's, you have a chance to eat a few spoonfuls of the ice cream, but there's still plenty of rootbeer to quench your thirst—and your curiosity. I loved trying to identify the faint herbal flavors that lingered on my tongue after each swallow.
Taylor's also has excellent garlic fries—better than the ones at SBC Park, IMHO. They're a bit thinner than the SBC/Gordon Biersch variety, with a better distribution of garlic. The result is a more subtle garlic flavor and fries that remain crispy all the way to the bottom of the cardboard basket. They're well complemented by malt vinegar (which can be found near the ketchup dispensers) and a bit of extra salt. Next time I think I'll try the sweet potato fries for variety... as long as someone else at the table gets the garlic fries. :)
On the eastern side of the country, the white pizza with spinach at the Fresh Grocer at 40th and Walnut in Philadelphia is not only delicious, it's also an amazing value ($1.60 per humongous slice, including tax). The crust is thin, buttery, and alternately chewy and crispy (think of a very thin pita brushed with butter and lightly broiled), and there's plenty of yummy cheese, garlic, and fresh (not frozen!) baby spinach leaves on top. For me, it's totally worth the nearly 20-block walk each way—and I can usually pay for a slice with the change at the bottom of my backpack.
One word of caution about this Fresh Grocer: While I've found the service at the prepared foods counter to be fairly good, it leaves something to be desired in the rest of the store—especially at the checkouts and the "customer service" counter. Employees seem more interested in picking up their paychecks and chatting with their colleagues than in waiting on customers. The lack of service attitude is appalling, really, even by Philadelphia standards. I wouldn't recommend buying groceries unless you're feeling especially patient and in good humor. One way to put a smile on your face: Eat your pizza first. :)
Ingredients
From the wrapper around the New Queen Anne Bakery custard bun I bought at the local Korean supermarket:
Ingredients: All trumps, Almond Flour, Full Strength Flour, Soft-Silk Flour, S-500, Cake Mix, Corn Flour, Honey, Brown Sugar, Sugar, Corn Syrup, Srawberry Jam, Raspberry Jam, Margarine, Butter, Egg, Cheese, Milk, Dry Milk, Cream Butter, Mayonnaise, Oil, Whip Cream, Baking Soda, Baking Powder, Yeast, Chocolate, Fudge, Chocolate Chip, Cocoa Powder, Cinnamon Powder, Apricot Filling, Almond Paste, Red Bean Paste, White Bean Paste, Coffee, Vanilla Flavor, Orange Flavor, Almond, Pecan, Raisin, Walnut, Chestnut, Sesame Seed, Peanut Butter, Ketchup, Tuna, Sausage, Corn, Salt, and Ham.
Funny, I didn't taste the peanut butter. Or the ham.
Chantico!
I've never been a fan of Starbucks' hot chocolate—or of any hot chocolate that's made with syrup, for that matter—but today they've introduced something they call a "drinking chocolate" (very European), and it's outstanding. The banner ads for the drink, called Chantico, refer to it as (if I remember correctly) "a cup of chocolatey chocolateness, with extra chocolate on top." That about sums it up. They serve it in little 6oz. cups, which is plenty—it is indeed very intense, and those 6oz. pack 390 calories.
I sampled the stuff last week at the Starbucks at 34th & Walnut, but my Starbucks (the one at 20th and Market) didn't get it until today, so I only got the full-size serving this morning. I was thinking as I drank it (without the lid; somehow, it tastes better that way) that it was so chocolatey that it'd be hard to drink two in one day, but of course by the afternoon I was craving more. I came up with this reasonable home-made facsimilie, which is less expensive but more labor-intensive:
4 squares Trader Joe's Pound Plus Bittersweet Chocolate
4 oz. 2% milk
Melt chocolate in a 1 qt. saucepan over very low heat, stirring frequently until smooth. Meanwhile, heat milk in the microwave for about 30 seconds. When chocolate is completely melted, pour about 1 oz. of milk into pan and stir until chocolate is completely smooth again. Repeat, adding 1 oz. of milk at a time. Leave on heat for another minute or two until chocolate is hot. Pour into small mug and enjoy.
This, of course, is just the way I made it; any good-quality dark chocolate would probably work just as well, as would whole milk instead of 2%. I imagine that 1% or skim, however, wouldn't be quite the same.
Black & White
While at the Reading Terminal Market this morning afternoon (I keep thinking I'm getting out in the morning, but really it's usually around noon), I stopped at the Metropolitan Bakery stall in hopes of getting a cream cheese brownie for later. It's an intensely chocolate confection, and the closest thing to an Andronico's Adult Brownie that I've found out here. Anyway, the tops of the cream cheese brownies looked a bit brown to me, so I opted not to get one.
While scanning the display for an alternative, something that looked like an oversized Oreo with fluted edges caught my eye. It was labeled "Metro Cookie," which wasn't much of a description. I inquired, and was told that it consisted of two chocolate butter crisps (I'd call them wafers) with a filling of mascarpone cheese. The top wafer was sprinkled with huge sugar crystals. It was only $1.50, compared with the $2.00 cream cheese brownie, so I bought one to try.
I'd just stashed the bakery bag in the bottom of the stroller when I realized I hadn't had breakfast. I retrieved it and began noshing on the cookie. Absolutely delicious! It was a very unique taste, and quite satisfying as a breakfast item—especially since my breakfasts usually involve chocolate of some kind. The cheese filling was a perfect accompaniment to the chocolate wafers, and the sugar crystals were wonderful on top. I've never seen this cookie at the Metropolitan Bakery before, but if you spot a plate of them, I highly recommend spending the $1.50.
Update, 01.28.05 ~ I asked about the Metro Cookies at the Market today and was told that they usually arrive on Wednesdays (which would explain why I haven't seen them before—I usually go to the Market on Thursdays or Fridays—and how I happened to get one on the 19th).
Incidentally, Austen experienced his first snowfall today. It started as we were on our way to the Market, and it was coming down hard (and sometimes sideways) by the time we returned home. Of course, he slept through the whole thing. I propped him up near the sliding glass door when we got home, however, so he could see the marvelous white stuff.
We just went out again a little while ago to get some cards and photos at the CVS, and I must say that although I love our stroller (it's really just a frame for the carseat), for the first time I wished we'd gotten an all-terrain model. It was very difficult to steer in the inch or inch and a half of footprint-packed powder that covered the sidewalks, but then again, most people were having trouble just walking in the stuff, so I guess the stroller didn't perform too badly. And of course having something to lean on helped me keep my footing, which was nice. As tough as it was to push the stroller, I don't think I'd have preferred the Baby Bjorn in this situation, since it would have impaired my balance rather than improving it (and I still don't have a coat that's large enough to go around both me and the Bjorn, so in 25° weather, one of us would surely freeze).
My Diet Doesn't Consist Entirely of Chocolate
If the seafood department of your local Whole Foods (aka Fresh Fields/Wellspring) has smoked salmon salad, I highly recommend getting a small container of it. It's delicious stuffed in raw yellow or orange pepper quarters; the crunchy, watery sweetness of the pepper perfectly offsets the saltiness of the smoked salmon and capers. It's also good stuffed in half an avocado, or rolled up in a whole wheat tortilla with avocado slices.
Vignettes of Enjoyment
Things I'm enjoying but don't have time to write individual posts about:
John Adams, by David McCullough
Honeymoon With My Brother hadn't come in yet at the library, and I was in the mood for more Revolutionary generation reading anyway after finishing Founding Brothers, so I picked this up at the branch library off Rittenhouse Square (called the Philadelphia City Institute branch, not Rittenhouse, strangely enough) last week. I was a bit worried by its size, and that it might be as dry as the Benjamin Franklin biography I tried to read for six months in 2003-2004, but it's so wonderful that I can't wait to get in bed every night to read. It got me on the first page, and it's been just as absorbing since.
Fage Total 2% Yogurt
Man, this stuff is fabulous, especially with a spoonful of strawberry jam. At $1.69 (a whole $1 more than regular yogurt), it's more of a weekly treat than a daily indulgence, though I'd consider trading a Starbucks coffee for the smooth texture and incredibly fresh taste of this yogurt.
Iron Chef America
All the drama (and most of the kitsch) of the original, plus incredible food facts and breathless foodie enthusiasm from host Alton Brown. This second try at an American version of Iron Chef really hits the mark, managing to impress, inspire, and inform while whetting the appetite. (And thankfully, William Shatner is nowhere to be found.)
MT-Moderate
I've pretty much vanquished comment spam on all my blogs with a combination of moderation and MT-Blacklist... which means that the spammers have turned to trackbacks to propagate their filthy casino, porn, and pill URLs. I went to Jay Allen's blog to see if there was any news on the trackback spam front, and I found a post where he mentioned MT-Moderate. It overlaps with the built-in MT comment moderation, but since it's possible to remove the comment moderation module and only use the trackback moderation module, it turned out to be exactly what I was looking for. And it plays nicely with MT-Blacklist. There's probably some unneeded rebuilding of entries (since the trackbacks that MT-Blacklist would normally remove from an entry never made it there), but all in all, a good, easy-to-use solution for managing trackback spam.
The Nightmare Scenario, Continued
So as I was saying, it's pouring here in New York, and pouring rain wasn't part of the plan. I am wearing a skirt and neoprene flipflops. I suppose as raingear goes, these choices aren't so bad; the skirt material doesn't absorb water, and neoprene is what wetsuits are made of, so that's something. At first I was a little weirded out by walking through NYC puddles in almost-bare feet, but when the curb cuts disappeared under 2' wide, 6" deep white-water rivers I figured there wasn't any use worrying about germs anymore. I was literally ankle-deep in them, with the non-absorbent skirt plastered to my calves.
Austen, meanwhile, was managing to stay mostly dry beneath the rain cover on his stroller. I had to tilt the seat back a bit to keep him from trying to pull the cover off and eat it, and the (as far as I'm concerned, unnecessary) airholes at face level let in some of the downpour, but for the most part he seemed to be enjoying himself. At least, that's what passersby told me.
I never did make it down to the Magnolia Bakery (though I did get a couple cupcakes at Billy's yesterday; I just wanted some Magnolia ones to compare) or to Tea & Sympathy to stock up on Typhoo Decaffeinated, and I never did find an Adidas store (I want to see if I can find some lime green sneakers). In fact, I only made it 10 blocks before I caved and came here, to the conference hotel. I am finally mostly dry (except for my feet), and Austen's on his second nap. Al's preso is over (I saw about a third of it before Austen woke fully from his first nap and wouldn't stay still and quiet), and he just needs to make some calls before we leave. Sadly, it's still raining, so there's not much we can do in the way of kicking around before we head up to his brother's.
It's a funny thing, rain. I grew up on the east coast, and I've been back here for almost two years now, but still I never seem to expect it. Instead, I expect the endless sunny (or at least non-rainy) days that grace Northern California from mid-April until November.
Chelsea, Saturday Afternoon
I'm not sure if I explained properly yesterday why a downpour in New York was the nightmare scenario, so let me address that omission before I talk about what we did today: Basically, a downpour meant that I was trapped—with Austen, and without any of the tools for entertaining him or giving my arms a break that I'd have at home. Being wet as well just made things even less comfortable.
Today dawned better and brighter (and cooler and clearer). Al, Austen, and I were up early, so we walked down to H&H Bagels and got some breakfast for the household. On the way there and back, we stopped to pet about a zillion dogs, and I remarked to Al that if we ever move to New York I'm going to get a dog just to ensure that I get out early every morning. New York is so cool in the morning before everyone is up.
After snarfing down the yummy bagels, we took the subway down to 14th Street and walked toward the Bleecker Street playground. On the way we stopped at Mary's Off Jane for a mojito limeade (a little too tart for me, but very fresh—a couple packets of sugar would have smoothed it out nicely) and a slice of devil's food cake with "American buttercream icing" for later. (I just tried it now, and it was excellent: The cake was dense and chocolatey but still cakelike, very similar to my Aunt Judy's Black Cake, and the frosting was fluffy and sweet, a perfect balance of butter and sugar.)
At the playground Austen got to try his first swing; he was a little wary at first of being released into the black rubber contraption, but after a few pushes from Al, he really got into it. I have to say, whenever I have the opportunity to visit a playground in New York, I think how lucky are the kids who get to grow up here.
After the playground we had a delicious lunch at Mi Cocina on Hudson Jane. I had the Frijolades Oaxaqueños (spelling approximate) and a strawberry lemonade; like the mojito limeade, the lemonade was too tart, but the entree—two white corn tortillas stuffed with queso fresco and covered with a black bean sauce and a pepper-studded cylinder of scrambled eggs—was mouth-wateringly wonderful. I can still taste it in my mind. YUM. We then ambled over to a part of town I don't think I'd ever been to before this visit, surprisingly: Chelsea.
We crossed through the old meatpacking district to the bike/skate/pedestrian path that led to the Chelsea Piers and then walked out onto the piers themselves. Cool complex! If it weren't for the fact that I don't think we could afford to live in Manhattan on one (or even one and a half) incomes, I'd be scanning the real estate section right now. (Of course, I can picture myself living in lots of cities; our visit to Vancouver actually *did* spur me to scan a few real estate listings there. :) I love the West Village, what I've now seen of Chelsea is intriguing, and my brother-in-law's neighborhood up in the 90s between Central Park West and Columbus is also charming. I think it'd be as hard to narrow down what part of the city I'd want to live in as it was when I tried to move here back in 1995 (I overshot then and landed in Norwalk, CT).
We didn't get to stay in Chelsea long, as an approaching thunderstorm chased us back up to the West 90s (I'd left both the umbrellas and Austen's rain cover out to dry in the apartment, and I had my fill of rain yesterday, so I wasn't eager to get caught in another downpour). I hope to explore more of Chelsea and the West Village next time we come up. If nothing else, I'll be going back to Billy's for the cupcakes—and, if I have room, down to Jane Street for a giant slice of cake from Mary's!
Food News
All kinds of food items to share today, from the gastronomical delights of our last hours in New York this weekend to local Philadelphia finds. First, New York: Al and I got up early again on Sunday (though not quite as early as on Saturday) and made it out for another morning walk, this time with Al's brother Carl for company. We walked down Broadway to the Starbucks at 81st, where I ordered a cappucino and (as usual) got a latte. The coffee was smooth and the milk heated to perfection, however, so I didn't complain.
From there we crossed the street to Zabar's, but since it was only 8:30 and Zabar's opens at 9am on Sundays, we weren't able to browse or buy. Instead we cut over to Amsterdam so Al could get a bagel sandwich at Barney Greengrass. On the way there (at 83rd, maybe? somewhere between 81st and 86th, anyway) we passed what appeared to be a new outlet of Le Pain Quotidien and picked up a couple pain au chocolates, a blueberry muffin, and a banana chocolate chip muffin. Al then got his bagel sandwich ("for $11, this better be the best bagel sandwich ever"), an extra plain bagel, and a package of Tate's chocolate chip cookies, and we headed back toward the apartment.
Luckily the street we chose to walk down was the same one that Tris and Henry had taken to walk toward us, and we ran into them about halfway up the block. We determined that we had enough baked goods to have a breakfast picnic, so instead of going home, we went to the hippo playground (real name: Safari Playground) in Central Park to eat at the picnic tables.
I had the banana chocolate chip muffin (wonderfully dense and flavorful... but how did they manage to get the batter so yellow—and so completely devoid of those little brownish-black fibers that are the hallmark of banana bread?) and a couple bites of Al's bagel, which was piled with three slices of the freshest-tasting nova lox I've ever had. Al declared the sandwich to be absolutely worth $11. Austen, meanwhile, noshed on a bit of his first-ever NY bagel (the plain one).
After breakfast, we played with the kids for a while in the canoe and among the hippos, and then we climbed up to one of the treehouses and chased each other around. (Had to burn off breakfast so we could make room for lunch!)
And speaking of lunch... As soon as we'd had a proper rest back at the apartment, we trekked back down to 83rd and Broadway to eat at Artie's. We'd been promising Henry a bowl of matzoh ball soup all weekend, and it was time to make good on that promise. (All that promising had given Al a craving for matzoh ball soup, too.) Instead of the cheese blintzes I'd planned to order (and which I'd so enjoyed last time), I decided at the last minute to get chocolate chip pancakes instead. (I later completed the chip trifecta by having a Toll House cookie bar for dinner.) Al got the soup, a potato knish, and a chocolate egg cream, and both of us noshed on the communal cole slaw and pickles the water guy had brought to the table. We agreed that the cole slaw was excellent—creamy-tasting but not dripping with sauce—but we split on the pickles: I prefer the "new" (half-sour), and Al prefers the "old" (full-sour). I don't mind trading a little bitterness for extra crunch.
Artie's is popular with the stroller set
The chocolate chip pancakes were yummy, and the matzoh ball soup and egg cream very filling, so Al got the knish to go. We ate it for dinner when we got home, and I can say without reservation that it was the best knish I've ever had. As I said to Al, "this knish is to ordinary knishes what Mama's falafel is to ordinary falafel"... which brings me back to Philadelphia food news. I've been meaning to mention Mama's here (though Al has been begging me not to, lest it get more crowded than it already is :) for a while now; it's the best falafel I've had since college, when I used to haunt the Gyro Wrap on Broad Street in Athens, GA. Most falafel is dense, hard, and sometimes dry, while Mama's is crispy-crunchy on the outside and tender and moist on the inside. I could eat the falafel balls with no toppings or salads whatsoever and enjoy the heck out of them, but the fact that both the Mama's Sandwich and the Mama's Platter come with hummus, tahini, cucumbers, tomatoes, and a wonderful, slaw-like cabbage (not to mention a homemade pita baked in a special oven from Israel) make them absolutely heavenly. Try the sandwich or platter with a grapefruit drink (I forget the name of the one we like, but it's in a clear, nubby bottle with an orange cap), or make your own grapefruit spritzer with equal parts unsweetened grapefruit juice, Sprite, and plain or lime selzer. Very refreshing! Oh, and if you get a chance, try a "cigar"—a miniature egg roll-like snack that's filled with a potato mixture—for an extra $1. It was the perfect antidote to my knish craving on Monday night.
Sadly, I discovered yesterday that another Philadelphia food find (and hip hangout) is no more: Hamburger Mary's on Chestnut Street (and the Dragonfly Lounge above it, home of the city's best Lesbian dance party, according to Philadelphia Weekly) is now closed. We only got to eat there once, but I've been making a homemade version of their bleu cheese (veggie) burger ever since. HM's had avocado on it, but since a good, ripe avocado is usually hard to find when I have a craving for the bleu cheese burger, I make mine without. The recipe is simple: microwave a Boca burger for 90 seconds while you toast a sliced Kaiser roll. While the burger rests, spread bleu cheese dressing (I like Marie's) on each side of the roll, and then squirt a bit of ketchup on one side and a bit of mustard (I like a grainy horseradish version I buy in Canada) on the other. Stick the Boca burger in the middle, slice with a serrated knife, and enjoy. It's messy but oh so delicious.
Finally, I forgot to mention that Austen has also tried yogurt and ice cream in addition to his regular fruits and veggies. I've read that you're not supposed to introduce yogurt until 9 months and other dairy products until 1 year, but he seemed so interested in Al's ice cream on our trip to Vancouver and my yogurt last month that we let him have some. Both dairy products came right back up within a few hours, so we're going to wait until September to try again. In the meantime, Austen has lately been making a meal of his feet; I saw him try to shove his toes in his mouth last week without success, but on Monday he finally got the hang of it, and he's been noshing on baby toes and doggie shoes ever since. Yesterday he also tried a bit of my Kaiser roll and seemed to enjoy it. Ummmm, white bread: just like paper, only better.
Princeton
After really enjoying my last (and first) Princeton visit on Father's Day, Al and I decided to spend a weekend here. We're staying at the Nassau Inn on Palmer Square. I chose the place for its location and hoped for a bonus of charm; I'm not sure we've really gotten the bonus, but the location *is* great. Our room reminds me strongly of the one we stayed in at the Jameson Inn in Lakeland, FL on our honeymoon, though I believe this is the original early American design that the Jameson was attempting to copy. I like the copy better; though the top sheet on the bed here is excellent, the bottom one, inexplicably, is scratchy, and the bathroom is a bit grim.
We've already been out for a little walk around town to scout dinner options, and while wheeling the stroller around in 95° heat we formed our plan for the rest of the weekend: go to bed early, get up when Austen does, walk around the town and the campus early in the morning when no one else is up (and the temperatures are lower), and hide in the room or in air-conditioned cafes when the heat is on. Oh, and to buy these pants:
Just kidding! I did buy a pair of pink capri golf pants recently because I thought they were funny as well as comfortable, but I draw the line at whales. Anyway, back to scouting dinner: We saw a place called The Ferry House on Witherspoon whose specials sounded yummy, but neither of us really needed a full dinner, and the idea of putting more dining room-appropriate clothes on our sweaty bodies did not appeal. Instead we opted for an ice cream pastry at Halo Fête followed by take-out from Olive's.
Halo Fête claims to be America's first ice cream patisserie, and they're probably right about that. The idea is interesting—traditional French pastries made with ice cream and sorbet instead of pastry cream, custard, and curd—and the execution amazing, but as someone who loves pastries and could take or leave ice cream, I'd rather have the regular pastry than the ice cream version. As it turned out, the pastry that Al wanted was the one I also would have picked (a cashew caramel dome), so we decided to share. I only had one bite; the caramel was a bit too sweet for me, and I hated the nuts. Al loved the nuts, but declared the dessert, on the whole, ordinary rather than sublime. Overall impression: Better to look at than to eat.
Next stop was Olive's, a mediterranean take-out/bakery on Witherspoon Street. Al went right for the carne asada sandwich with avocado, which they kindly heated for him, but I had a harder time finding something I wanted. I finally settled on a small container of cucumber, tomato, feta, and red onion salad and a slice of peasant bread. Al also got a blueberry muffin with lemon glaze, and I a miniature raspberry almond cake. Now that was sublime: yellow/white cake layers with raspberry jam filling, a traditional buttercream icing, and toasted sliced almonds around the outside. Really, really excellent. The salad too was very good, Al really liked his sandwich, and the muffin was on par with the Mmmmm Muffins ones Al gets in Vancouver, "only more homemade-tasting."
It's a Beautiful Day
Austen found his voice recently—and it's very shrill. Sometimes he babbles pleasantly, saying things like "ay ya ya ya ya ya" and "hey da da da da da", and it's super cute. Other times, he SHRIEKS. Loudly, shrilly, earsplittingly. It's annoying enough at home, but in public it's stressful in the extreme. I'm horrified and embarrassed that I might be bothering other hotel guests, restaurant patrons, and driving range golfers, and that I can't get him to stop. I used to think, "geez, can't you shut that kid UP?" when I heard toddlers shrieking in stores, and now I know that the answer is NO. I also understand why those mothers didn't even seem to be trying: Because as a parent, you have to tune some of the shrieking out in order to preserve your sanity. You know there's very little you can do, so you save the little amunition you have for when it actually might do some good.
So anyway, after collapsing, exhausted, onto the bed last night at 7:30 and failing to convince Austen to (a) sleep or (b) stop shrieking, Al finally took him and let me conk out. They apparently jumped up and down on the couch for a while, and then Al snuggled Austen in next to me for his bedtime nursing at 8:45, and then got in bed himself at 9. We got up early, as planned (though Al and even I could have used another hour or so of uninterrupted snoozing)—early enough to get into PJ's Pancake House on Nassau Street for breakfast before a line formed out the door. From about half a block away I saw a large guy standing in the doorway with a cigarette, and I muttered to Al, "who smokes in the doorway?" As we approached, prepared to dash around him quickly to avoid the cloud of stale smoke, he said, "two? You can park the stroller right out here..." Apparently this was PJ, or at least the owner or manager of the place.
He ended up letting us take the stroller inside, where we folded it up and stashed it next to the table to avoid blocking the aisle, and PJ (or whoever he was) brought us a little baby seat that attached to the table. (We'd seen one like it on our NYC weekend when a couple brought their own to a Korean BBQ place on West 36th Street.) It was totally perfect for Austen; he got to sit at the table right next to me, but the sides were high enough that he couldn't quite reach onto my plate. Instead he amused himself with my empty creamer containers while we ate. I said to Al that this could possibly be the best meal I've had with Austen in attendance, even though the chocolate chip pancakes weren't quite as good as (though they were more expensive than) the ones at Artie's. The best thing we ordered between us was on Al's plate: the "mashed browns", which contained peppers and onions. The coffee was also quite good, especially with cream.
From PJ's we started our tour of the Princeton campus. I already knew the stroller-friendly routes to the bookstore and the train station, and those for the most part also turned out to be the shady routes. We got a couple shirts for my sister's kids at the bookstore, walked down to the train station and had a rest on a bench there, and then walked back up to Nassau street via Alexander Street. By that time Austen had fallen asleep, so we sat on a bench between Mercer Road and University Place to give him time to snooze. From there it was to the CVS to buy a couple miniature notebooks for me to carry with me, and on the way back we passed the coolest little table and chairs outside Nassau Interiors. Both of us liked the set instantly, and the price was very reasonable, so we bought it on the spot. I'll drive back up on Monday to pick it up, as there isn't room in the car at the moment.
We detoured down Tulane Street on our way back to the hotel on the advice of a sign, which pointed toward The Little Chef pastry shop. An worthy detour, I'd say, as it led to a wonderful little shop full of French pastries baked by a gentleman with an actual French accent. I should have asked his name and where he was from, but I didn't. I did ask if he did all the baking himself, and he said yes. We purchased an apple-apricot brioche (a small bite of which I've just taken, and so far, so delicious) and a chocolate croissant for later, looked in another furniture store for a baby-safe ottoman/coffee table for our living room (the glass one with the pointy metal frame that we have now is really Austen-unfriendly), and then returned here to the room. We're about to go out again for lunch and a drive around the area, so there'll be more food news later...
Stuffed Marlin
With all the cute little restaurants that Princeton has to offer, we somehow managed to eat at the same one twice today. Just after I last posted, we went across the street from the hotel to Teresa Caffe, where I had the pasta special (it's a pasta that I can't pronounce the name of, but it looked like rigatoni) and a glass of Merlot (I know, I know—that line from Sideways kept running through my head about how "WE ARE NOT DRINKING MERLOT!", but I had a craving for a glass of red, and the choices were limited). Al drooled a bit over the linguine with clams but decided he wasn't hungry enough to eat it, so he ordered the salad special.
Both dishes were very good, on par with the kind of food I'd expect to get in Napa restaurants. The wine was OK, not stunning; I might have appreciated it more if it was the kind of wine I actually wanted. What I was looking for was a light red, the kind that's more transparent ruby than dense purple. I know I've had a wine like that in recent memory, but god knows what it was. [I know that any wine connoisseurs who happen to be reading this will probably be groaning at my ignorance; if you have any wine suggestions, feel free to comment.] Even better than the pasta, surprisingly, was the dish of olive oil dusted with Teresa's signature rub (apparently also used on their meats) that was served with foccacia, crusty white bread, and chips made from what I assume was day-old sundried tomato bread. It was amazingly tasty on the foccacia, and I dragged some of the white bread through it before dunking the bread in my pasta sauce. Yummy.
Though today was about as hot as yesterday, it was much less humid, so after lunch we modified our midday plan slightly and took a drive instead of holing up in the hotel room. Our first stop was the driving range in Cranbury, where we hit a couple buckets of balls and tried to keep Austen from shrieking (I discovered that letting him play with a club helped, as did the old standby—holding him).
From the driving range we noodled around a bit, taking the long way back to Princeton via a route that passed a Pennsylvania Dutch Farmer's Market. It was similar to the one that used to be in Westminster, Maryland, only a bit smaller, and we arrived just in time to buy two pretzels, some fruit, two jars of pickles for Al and two half-sours from a barrel for me, and an excellent root beer before the place closed. I ate the two pickles on the spot and about a pretzel and a half over the next hour, along with some Haribo raspberries that I bought yesterday at Ricky's Candy, Cones, and Chaos on Nassau Street. Not exactly the most nutritious dinner... but that's basically what it turned out to be, since about fifteen minutes after I finally stopped munching pretzels and raspberries, Al declared that he was hungry. He wasn't able to forget about the linguine with clams and wanted to go across the street to Teresa again.
We did just that, only this time I got the salad, and Al got the pasta (though it was me who got the wine again, this time a peppery Cabernet that also didn't fit my light cherry flavor craving). I had the Insalata Farrauto, a small spinach, granny smith apple, and gorgonzola salad (hold the pine nuts, since I'm allergic to them) which was perfect for my overstuffed-with-sugar-and-starch stomach. I think I would have sliced the apples rather than diced them so that it would be easier to get a little of each flavor on the fork at once, but other than that small criticism, the salad was very good. There was no foccacia in our bread basket at dinner, though there was some sundried tomato bread, so it seems that my assumption about the lunchtime chips was correct. Though I missed the foccacia, I'm secretly glad it was left out, since I don't think I really had room for it anyway (and god knows if it was there, I would have eaten it).
Al's Linguine Vongole, of which I had a small taste, was outstanding—so much so that I'm actually considering eating at Teresa a third time this weekend, before heading home tomorrow. Aside from the red pepper flakes, which were a pleasant surprise, it tasted exactly as Al had hoped it would, so he was very, very happy. Sadly, I have no pictures of super fresh clams on a bed of garlicky al dente noodles to offer; I was busy keeping the Boopster's hands off our plates rather than taking photos of them. (The high chair was not as appealing to him as it was at lunchtime.)
Since it was still early and we were too stuffed to go to bed anyway, we decided to take a walk down Nassau street to investigate some of the other restaurant options (for future reference; obviously, we couldn't eat any more tonight!) and hopefully burn a few calories in the process. Almost every place we passed was packed, every outdoor table filled with diners, interesting-looking plates, and buckets of BYO wine. On the return trip, as we prepared to cross the street in front of Ivy Garden, I had to resist the urge to poke Al in the ribs when we were passed by a gentleman wearing THE PANTS. I was just thinking that his looked like they had marlins on them instead of whales when I heard him say, "gah, I got a spot of duck sauce on my pants." I assume it was his wife who responded, "nobody will notice, dear—they'll just think it's a marlin."
Tuna Curry... Who Knew?
Thanks to ratphooey for tipping me off about Trader Joe's Tuna Curry (Yellow). When she mentioned it, I first thought (a) she'd added the tuna herself, and (b) that she meant Indian curry, but I discovered that (a) the tuna's already in there, and (b) it's Thai. It's also delicious, especially with some Trader Jose's Harvest Hodgepodge frozen vegetables thrown in. I've tried it with TJ's frozen Jasmine rice (good), but I like it even better with the little microwaveable rice bowls I get at the Han Ah Reum (and which I assume are available at other Asian markets as well). Yummy!
Tuna Curry Update
I'd been thinking that the TJ's tuna curry might taste even better if the extra veggies I'd been adding had a chance to soak in their own curry bath, so over the weekend I bought a can of coconut milk (the premium kind) and some green curry paste and mixed them with the remaining half bag of Harvest Hodgepodge vegetables, a couple dashes of fish sauce, and a couple tablespoons of brown sugar. After heating this mixture through, I stored it in the fridge for use with the TJ's curry.
On Monday night I scooped out some of the veggies and a little of the sauce, mixed them with a packet of the Yellow Tuna Curry, and served it over the Korean steamed rice. Yummy! I started to wonder, however, whether my green vegetable curry might taste even better mixed with the Red Tuna Curry. I hadn't tried the red variety yet because when ratphooey recommended this gourmet bargain ($1.39!!), she'd mentioned that she preferred the yellow to the red. I think I would have, too, were it not for the special vegetable preparation, which, when mixed with the Red Tuna Curry and served over the TJ's frozen brown rice, totally knocked my (and Al's) socks off. We thought at first we might miss the potatoes (which are a tasty feature of the yellow variety), but the flavor was so good that we didn't. The brown rice turned out to be the perfect platform for the dish, better than both the TJ's frozen jasmine rice and the Korean steamed white rice.
I'm looking forward to experimenting with different combinations of vegetables, curries, and rices, though I really do think the proportions I used last night were perfect. The trick was to scoop out the vegetables from the green curry, but not very much of the sauce—whatever clings to the vegetables when the mixture is cold is about right when using only one packet of the TJ's red curry. When I heated the curry mixture (separate from the rice), it came out looking exactly like what you'd get in a Thai restaurant.
Incidentally, when I calculated the cost of the meal, the total came to about $3.50—for both of us. Can't beat that with a stick.
Openings and Closings
A few weeks ago, I walked Al to work and then continued walking southeast toward Society Hill. I was on my way to check out a place my babysitter recommended called Homemade Goodies (on 5th between Lombard and South), but I figured that on the way I'd stop at The Inn on Locust and ask to see the bathrooms. I practiced my speech as I walked: "I know this is going to sound insane, but we're thinking about remodeling our master bathroom, and every time we talk about the design, my husband says, 'I wish you'd seen the bathrooms at The Inn on Locust, because that's exactly what I want.' So I'm wondering: Would it be possible to see the bathroom in one of your rooms?"
It might surprise my friends and readers to learn this, but I'm actually kind of shy/chicken when it comes to talking to strangers. I'd much rather keep to myself and interact with others only if absolutely necessary. After four blocks of practicing my speech, however, I was prepared to march up to the front desk at The Inn on Locust and sound like a total nut. Imagine my disappointment-mixed-with-relief when I arrived at Locust and 12th to find a padlock on the door and a business card from a real estate agent taped to the glass. I contemplated calling the agent, since I now wanted to ask another question besides "can I see the bathrooms?" (which I assume are still as they were): What happened?
I know businesses fail—heck, most businesses fail—but as someone who hopes to open a business someday (more on that in a future post), I find myself wishing that more of the failures would post an explanation in their windows rather than a "thanks for your patronage," a For Rent sign, or a real estate agent's business card. I want to know what happened, to learn from others' mistakes, to understand the business environment in my city. I'd love to know the story behind the closure of Hamburger Mary's and Club Dragonfly; it always seemed busy at lunchtime, but perhaps that wasn't enough to keep it going. Would it have done better in the Gayborhood? Would The Inn on Locust, which was smack dab in the middle of the Gayborhood, have done better in Hamburger Mary's location? Perhaps the spillover from the nearby nightclubs, which would have been a boon to Mary's, were what doomed a boutique hotel full of business travelers who needed to get some sleep? I guess I'll never know.
In any case, the title of this post is Openings and Closings because Mary's and The Inn on Locust aren't the only businesses along my usual walking routes that have closed recently—and because several new and interesting businesses have sprung up to take their places. The most important opening (to us, at least) is Aya's Cafe, which took the place of Nick's Pizza on Arch between 21st and 22nd. We've been watching the new commercial stoves go in, the sign go up, and the interior get redecorated for the past couple months with much excitement. We love our neighborhood, but we've been saying since we moved in that if we could change one thing, it would be to add a small, independent restaurant or two. Aya's is exactly the kind of place we had in mind.
We tried Aya's, which is a Mediterranean BYOB, the first weekend it was open. They had a high chair for Austen, gave him his own bowl of baby carrots to nosh on (most of which he just dropped on the floor), and did a pretty good job of keeping plates, glasses, and silverware out of his reach despite the limited table real estate, so thumbs-up for baby-friendliness. The decor is really warm and inviting—a big change from Nick's—though I found the banquette that runs the length of the restaurant a little too high. The pillows that formed the backrest were great, but I couldn't sit with my feet flat on the floor (nor could I lean my elbows on the table comfortably, though I know that's considered bad manners anyway). I tried to balance the weight of my legs on my toes, but the edge of the banquette still bit into my thighs, and my back was sore from the balancing effort by the end of the meal.
As for the food, I had the stuffed mushrooms as an appetizer (I didn't need so much cheese, but the mushrooms themselves were very good—similar to the kind I make for parties), and I think Al had a salad. For entrees, I had the grilled salmon, and Al had linguine with clams. The salmon had a wonderful kabob-like grilled flavor, but it was overcooked for my taste and slightly fishy. The cous cous it was served on was nutty, buttery, and just plain excellent, however, and the grilled red peppers were great (I wish there were more of them than the green and yellow squash, which didn't grab me the way the peppers did). Al's pasta was also a bit overcooked; I like all pasta al dente, but especially pasta that's served with clams. When your flavoring is chewy, your pasta should be, too. Caffe Teresa in Princeton gets it just right: When in doubt, lean more toward undercooked than over. Other than that complaint, Al reports that the dish was tasty. The best thing we had was the rice pudding we shared for dessert, which was served icy cold and sprinkled with ground pistachios. Creamy and refreshing.
We left thinking that we'd surely go back, if for no other reason than to encourage a local business, but I notice we haven't been in a hurry. This is the problem with restaurants that are convenient but which don't serve food that knocks your socks off: You want them to stick around in case you need them, but it's hard to patronize them consistently when you don't love the food. Such was also the case with the Teriyaki Boy at Market and 20th, which closed this week; it was nice to have a fast food sushi/teriyaki place on the way home from Al's work—especially one that was open past 5pm—but the food wasn't so good that we wanted to go all the time. We're sad to see it go, but it was even sadder to see it empty all the time. I hope something even better ends up in its space.
Another sushi (and perhaps tapas?) place we kept thinking we'd try but never did, Cha Cha Sushi (on 19th), closed a couple weeks before the Teriyaki Boy. We lamented the missed opportunity for about five minutes, or until we realized that a new place called Devil's Alley had opened up almost simultaneously around the corner on Chestnut. Now there's a place we'll be patronizing frequently. We went for the first time last week, mainly because Al had noticed that they had a platter of three BBQ sandwiches on the menu (one each of chicken, pork, and beef). The trio of BBQ sandwiches was an appetizer (Devil's Alley also serves a BBQ sandwich entree, but that's limited to only one kind of meat), so Al chose a bowl of beans and the grilled sweet potato steak fries from the long list of side dishes to flesh out his meal. I had a really bad toothache that night and couldn't imagine eating a big meal, so I ordered a grilled caesar salad, which the waiter explained was a half a head of romaine thrown on the grill—"it's warm, not cold"—and then served with caesar dressing, parmesan cheese, croutons, and sun dried tomatoes.
The grilled romaine was FABULOUS, the BBQ sandwiches were huge (far bigger than their appetizer status would have suggested), and the sweet potato fries (with the blackened bits trimmed off) turned out to be the perfect dinner for Austen (Al couldn't finish them anyway because he was so stuffed from the sandwiches). I had assumed that the restaurant wasn't particularly baby-friendly because we weren't offered a high chair—and I was offered a sharp knife with which to cut my salad despite the fact that Austen was strapped to my chest in the Bjorn within easy reach of any utensils (I declined in favor of eating the leaves with my fingers)—and this almost prevented us from returning with Val on Thursday night. Memories of that grilled caesar salad kept floating through my brain, however, so we decided to go again despite the hardship of having to hold Austen.
As it turns out, Devil's Alley does have high chairs, they're perfectly OK with patrons parking strollers in front of the hostess stand, and they do have some wait staff with common (or at least kid) sense. This is a good thing, because I'm now totally hooked on the grilled goodness (or devilishness). My second salad was slightly smaller than the first, but every bit as tasty; the grilled vegetable platter we got to share was not extraordinary on its own, but it was excellent with the side of chipotle ranch dressing that came with Al's special, the dry-rubbed wings. I plan to ask for a side of dressing next time I order the grilled veggies. I'd definitely have another glass of the Forrestville Riesling, and I can't wait to try some of the sandwiches and more of the sides. For his part, Al is sad that the wings were only a special and not a regular menu item, but the bright side of that is that he'll definitely get to try something new next time.
I know I've already covered a lot of territory in this post, but I have one more opening to mention before I sign off—one that hasn't quite happened yet. In late winter the Midori Mart, a Japanese/Korean grocery and fresh fish market that had been between 21st and 22nd on Chestnut when we first moved to Philly and that had moved a block east not long after, closed its doors and posted a sign in the window. Not a "for rent" sign, not a "thanks for your patronage" sign, but something more encouraging: A "Korean restaurant coming in April" sign. When the end of April approached, a new sign went up that said "Open in May". In June, that sign came down, and newspaper went up. We've been passing by periodically, looking for signs that the venture is still on, that a restaurant really will be opening sometime soon. This week I saw one: A new sign that said "Waiter/Waitress Wanted." Woo hoo!
Can You Believe The Size of This Sandwich?
I have a couple photos from my random sojourn to Ocean City, New Jersey on Friday that I'll probably post I've posted to Flickr, but I wanted to post this one here. It's the shrimp salad half sandwich I got at the Kibbitz Down the Shore deli. I gave the top slice of rye to Austen and ate the rest with a fork.
Backlog: Boston
It's time to clear my backlog of scribbled-on-hotel-stationery notes, most of which pertain to our trip to Boston on the 7th. Al had a meeting there on the 8th, and we decided to make a weekend of it so Austen and his godmother could meet each other, and so the three of us could have a little family vacation. The drive there was pretty easy; Austen didn't cry at all, and we made good time despite a stop at Stew Leonard's in Norwalk, CT to see the singing milk cartons and buy bagels and snacks. (Sadly, I don't think I took any photos at Stew's.)
Stout @ Legal
We stayed in Kennett Square, next to MIT, the first night. By the time we got all checked in it was nearing Austen's bedtime, so we ate dinner at the nearby Legal Seafoods rather than searching for a unique Boston eating experience. (I like Legal, so I didn't mind.) On our way into the restaurant, I saw two people drinking pints of stout at a patio table and said to Al, "oooh, I'm going to have one of those." So when our waiter came to take our drink orders, I said, "do you have a stout on tap?", knowing that they must, but not assuming that it would be Guinness (you never know when a local brew is going to be available.) He replied, "sadly, no." I looked at him for a second; surely those hadn't been pints of root beer. I know a stout when I see one. After a pause, he said, "the closest thing we have to a stout is Guinness." I think I was still looking at him with that slightly puzzled, slack-jawed expression when I said, "OK then, I'll have a Guinness." I'm still puzzled by this exchange, and now I'm craving a Guinness again...
No 2T at MIT/Pete's chocolate
On Thursday I had a chance to walk along the Charles River/Memorial Drive as well as down to Harvard Square while Al was at his meeting. The weather was warm but dry—lovely for walking, and for stopping at playgrounds to push Austen on the swings. I took a bunch of photos on the walk, including a couple that I can't bring myself to post of some hateful anti-Asian graffiti on a park bench along Memorial Drive. I was reminded of how racially divided Boston can be, and of one of the reasons I was glad to leave back in 1984. Aside from the bench bigotry, the views along the Charles River at 9am were beautiful.
After the walk along Memorial Drive, I stopped at the MIT COOP to get Austen a t-shirt to add to his collection of college swag. Sadly, Austen will not be aspiring to MIT at this age, as they had no sizes between 12 months and 3T. (Austen's somewhere in the 12-24 months range, depending on the brand of shirt. His Stanford, Penn, and Princeton shirts are all 18 months, and they're getting snug, but the 24 month Boston Red Sox T we got him later in this trip is kinda huge.) It made me wonder whether they didn't order very many apparel items in Austen's size, or whether parents start thinking of MIT for their children when the kids are between 1 and 2 years old, leading to the store selling out of those sizes.
After a decently long nap (by Austen) at the hotel, during which I wrote a few more 9-month observations down for posterity, Austen and I departed for Harvard Square. We found a playground on Broadway and stopped to play on the swings, but we didn't stay too long as the swings were in full sun. This was probably the first time I noticed that Austen understood some of what I was saying to him: When he tried to remove his hat, I said, "Austen, you have to leave your hat on if you want to play on the swings. No hat, no swing." He stopped tugging at it and left it on.
From the swings we continued on to Harvard Square, where I bought Austen two Harvard t-shirts in size 2T and something called Chocolate Caramel Knowledge for myself at the Harvard COOP. The latter turned out to be a gourmet chocolate made by the Pete of Pete's Wicked Ale, and it was DELICIOUS. Reminded me of the Kaluha truffles I used to get at the mall when I was a teenager. Well worth the $2.50 I paid for it, as the four fat discs of coffee/caramel-filled 61% chocolate will last several hours (or several weeks, if you're Al). After eating one disc of chocolate to tide me over until I could get some lunch in my stomach, I found the perfect spot to sit and enjoy an excellent spinach, goat cheese, and spiced pecan salad and a pint of Guinness while feeding Austen apples and blueberries (no high chairs available, so I fed him in the stroller). I wish I could remember the name of the place; it was on the corner of Mass Ave. and something, near the Adidas store. (The third photo below is of a different place on Mass Ave. that also serves Guinness; I thought the "cheaper than gasoline" sign was funny. :)
Al and I met up again after his meeting was over, checked in at our next hotel in Waltham, and then drove out to Needham (where I grew up) to meet my best friend (and Austen's godmother) for dinner at Not Your Average Joe's. I actually found the food to be very average, but the decor was nice—much nicer than Gino's Pizza, which is what was in the space when I was a kid—and of course the company was great.
Walden Pond
On Friday morning Al suggested we go for a walk around Walden Pond in Concord. I wasn't super into it, but I also had no real objections, so I said OK. It turned out to be really lovely and peaceful, and carrying the boopster around the 1.25-mile loop in the Bjorn was good exercise. Al was a bit disappointed to see the wire fences lining the path, which weren't there when he lived in Concord back in the 80s, but I didn't find them too distracting. I'd rather have them—and preserve the woods around the pond for future generations—than see the woods and shoreline eroded.
We saw several people kayaking, canoeing, and swimming, and passed several folks strolling and fitness walking in the woods, but we always had more than enough space to ourselves. I think an important factor in our positive, peaceful experience was that we went on a cool, cloudy Friday rather than a sunny Saturday, when the beach on the pond is often mobbed, according to Al.
Lemon Slush
On Saturday we took the T in to Fanueil Hall, where we had a very underwhelming fried fisherman's platter and lobster roll. We decided that since we'd been to FH and the surrounding Quincy Market several times before, and the food this time had (literally) left a bad taste in our mouths, we'd walk somewhere else. Al suggested the North End, which I think I'd only been to—or rather, through—once before, when I walked the Freedom Trail as a kid. There we immediately found a bakery with a nutty, nougaty Italian delicacy that Al really likes, and not long after that we found the ultimate lemon slush. I am not a slush/water ice person, but this one was fantastic—exactly the right texture and flavor. I can't remember the name of the store where we got it, but it's at the corner of Salem and Parmenter Streets.
Walden Grille mussels
On Saturday night we cruised around the Concord area for a while, looking for a place to eat. We finally settled on the Walden Grille as the only real possibility after perusing the dinner and bar menus posted outside. I thought I wanted to order off the bar menu, and Al thought he'd like something from the dinner menu, so they seated us in the bar area, in which both options were available. As it turned out, I ordered from the dinner menu, and Al ordered from the bar menu. :) I got an arugula salad with grapefruit wedges, bleu cheese, and (I think) a passion fruit vinaigrette and an order of steamed mussels. I think Al got a french dip.
The salad presentation was a bit odd; instead of wedges, I got two huge slices of grapefuit. The taste more than made up for the basic, almost unappetizing presentation, however. Someone at the table adjacent to ours ordered the same thing I did, and she complained at first that there was no dressing for the salad. The waitress assured her that it had been tossed with the dressing in the kitchen. The patron insisted that it was missing, and asked for dressing on the side... only to discover that she had indeed been eating a dressed salad. "This dressing has NO TASTE. It tastes like NOTHING," she said to her companions. Personally, I loved the light flavor and thought the salad was dressed perfectly. The passionfruit really highlighted the arugula without overwhelming it, and it didn't clash with the cheese or the grapefruit.
Regarding the mussels, the woman at the adjacent table and I heartily agreed: they were EXCELLENT. The first time I ever had mussels, at Eastside West in San Francisco's Marina district, they defined the experience for me—and I've been chasing that perfect combination of tender, not-too-chewy, not-at-all-fishy mussel meat and savory broth ever since. Ladies and gentlemen, I found it at the Walden Grille. WG's version was different in many ways from Eastside West's, but both made me want to eat every last morsel and then soak up as much broth as possible with bread (I had to ask for an extra slice). I'm not sure if the woman at the other table was on a low-carb diet or just didn't want to fill up on bread, but I heard her ask for a spoon. Good choice, though Al's leftover batter-coated french fries also tasted amazing dipped in the tomato-y, garlicky broth. One thing you should note if you are semi-vegetarian/fishitarian, like me: The version of the mussels listed on the menu includes chorizo; I asked for mine without. I heard the woman at the adjacent table tell her companions that it was the chorizo that made the mussels so good (and it may indeed impart something special to the mix), but I can tell you that I was in as much rapture as she without it.
So to summarize: The presentation of the dishes at Walden Grille may have been careless, but the taste and quality of the food was excellent, and the service was fast. There was no baby seat for Austen, but neither were there any complaints when he made a total mess. Oh! And the prices were very reasonable. Give it a try.
A Taste of Fall
These are REALLY, REALLY yummy:
1 package Trader Joe's pumpkin bread/muffin mix
1/3 c. fresh pumpkin, bought at farmer's market yesterday and steam-roasted this morning, pureed
1 T. oil
2 T. Trader Joe's pumpkin butter
2 large eggs
1 c. water
1/2 bag semi-sweet chocolate chips
Mix according to package directions (fold dry into wet), then stir in chips. Grease 18 muffin tins (or use liners) and fill each 2/3 full. Bake 16-20 minutes at 400°.
Note: I made these with all pumpkin butter and no fresh pumpkin the other day, and they were tasty, but the fresh pumpkin gives them a buttery, homemade, OH SO DELICIOUS flavor. Plus, the excess pumpkin puree will make several meals for Austen.
When Life Gives You Lemons, Call Your Husband to Come Home Right Away and Then Make Lemon-Colored Frosting
Get Up, Stand Up... Scare Your Mom To Death
I was saying in an e-mail to Valerie tonight that I only seem to have time these days to write about Austen's milestones OR mine, not both. (Hopefully our new twice-a-week babysitter will help me remedy that, though part of the reason I searched for a sitter in the first place—so I could attend open hockey sessions at UPenn during the day—will also generate more hockey blog material with which to keep up.) In any case, since Al is refusing to switch from Monday Night Football to The Apprentice: Martha Stewart on TiVo, and I've lost interest in the game because I've already won my two fantasy league games, I have time to blog about Austen stuff right now.
I mentioned that Austen's been getting on all fours and wiggling around a lot but rarely going anywhere (except backwards), but the other day I actually witnessed him crawl across the bed to get to my nightstand. Al didn't believe me that he'd crawled —or at least, he wanted to see it with his own eyes before he'd confirm than an actual forward crawl had occurred. On Saturday he got his chance: While we were waiting for a table at the Rock Bottom Brewery, Al set Austen down on the floor...where he crawled around in a circle and then over to me. It's weird that his crawling skills seem to be developing in tandem with his walking skills (which are really getting good—he's now taking independent steps between the furniture instead of securing a handhold first).
A quick aside to mention our experience at the Rock Bottom Brewery before I continue, mainly because I know if I don't write about it here, I'll never write a separate post about it. We thought it was a fluke when the service completely sucked the last time we ate at the King of Prussia Rock Bottom, but it now appears that it's company policy (a) to understaff the dining room, making for long seating waits despite the many empty tables, and (b) for servers to take drink and appetizer orders and then return 10 minutes later, sans drinks or appetizers, to take entree orders. Both last year's visit and this one had us imploring the server to PLEASE bring us our drinks before putting the entree order in. Sadly, at this visit they'd also run out of the house-brewed root beer (at 4pm!), whi