A: More bars. Especially wine bars. The fact that there are two wine bars (and another two in the works) within a two block radius is not enough. Instead of one bar for every fifty people, I want a 5:1 ratio. There are a lot of alcoholics with expendable incomes here. I love when I want to go and sit and chillax with a glass of wine, I have to put up with elbow to elbow crackers drinking wine like it’s a Roman orgy. I love the fact that at midnight I could go to a dozen places and get a $100 bottle of wine and yet my only option for food is the diner or bodega snacks.
All these wine bars and I still cannot get a sangria slushie. Fucked up.
I got a new job, which I will start next month. It’s in Mahattantown and has three stars from The New York Times. I ate there last night and didn’t get the shits. That’s my test: If a place gives me the trots it makes The List.
This is what happens when you order anything raw from Blue Ribbon in Brooklyn.
My friend and I came up with a time killer / conversation starter / drinking topic based upon the Seinfeld episode with “Fusilli Jerry”. That krazy Kramer build a mini of Jerry made out of dried fusilli pasta. Because Jerry is “silli”. So when I’m out with a group of people I like to assign them what pasta shape they would be based on aesthetics and personality.
Here are some celebrity examples I came up with:
Mario Batali would be ravioli, because he’s big and full of good stuff.
Christian Bale would be penne, because he’s versitile.
Paris Hilton would be bucatini because she’s a stick who is hollow inside. Burn!
I’m fucking lazy and don’t feel like summarizing the shit for you. It involves neighborhood bar crawls (Manhattan and Brooklyn) and festivals and brewery tours and food and um, getting torn up.
“Here in the city there was food everywhere. The cobbled streets of the fish market were lined with great baskets of big silver fish, caught in the night out of the teeming river; with tubs of small shining fish, dipped out of a net cast over a pool; with heaps of yellow crabs, squirming and nipping in peevish astonishment; with writhing eels for gourmands at the feasts. At the grain markets there were such baskets of grain that a man might step into them and sink and smother and none know it who did not see it; white rice and brown and dark yellow wheat and pale gold wheat, and yellow soybeans and red beans and green broad beans and canary-colored millet and grey sesame. And at the meat markets whole hogs hung by their necks, split open the length of their great bodies to show the red meat and the layers of goodly fat, the skin soft and thick and white. And duck shops hung row upon row, over their ceilings and in their doors, the brown baked ducks that had been turned slowly on a spit before coals and the white salted ducks and the strings of duck giblets, and so with the shops that sold geese and pheasant and every kind of fowl.
As for the vegetables, there was everything which the hand of man could coax from the soil; glittering red radishes and white, hollow lotus root and taro, green cabbages and celery, curling bean sprouts and brown chestnuts and garnishes of fragrant cress. There was nothing which the appetite of man might desire that was not to be found upon the streets of the markets of that city. And going hither and thither were the vendors of sweets and fruits and nuts and of hot delicacies of sweet potatoes browned in sweet oils and little delicately spiced balls of pork wrapped in dough and steamed, and sugar cakes made from glutinous rice, and the children of the city ran out to the vendors of these things with their hands full of pennies and they bought and they ate until their skins glistened with sugar and oil.”
I stumbled upon this blog devoted to writing about being the wife of a chef.
The description: “This blog is set up as a place for wives, girlfriends, significant others, and anyone else stuck to a chef to come together and chirp to each other about how to deal with the nonsense that goes along with being the wife of a chef. I was struggling to live with a ghost of a husband who I never saw until I met two other chef wives that literally saved me. It was with that, that I realized there must be more who need love and support too, right? So here you go chef wives-this is for you.”
I’m not sure if this blog sets my gender back fifty years or not. Maybe it’s the misuse of the word “literally”. Is there a blog for chefs who happen to have female genitalia?
Lady Iron Chef isn’t so much about cooking as it’s about cooking to win a man.
You may know of my disdain for commercial, out of season tomatoes. Well tomato season is finally upon us and I have five tomato plants growing in my backyard. I only wish someone woulda told me I was an idiot for trying to grow beefsteak tomatoes. That fucking thing is taking over my backyard. Asshole.
Here are some edible weeds that are growing in my garden. If you see these growing in public, nab them!
This is purslane. It looks like jade and has a nice, fresh, citrusy taste. Matches well with tomatoes or just toss it in your salads. It even grows in sidewalk cracks!
This is oxalis. Growing up, I used to eat the leaves off my lawn, which I called lemon clovers. At Alinea, they served the pods. Crunchy, which a nice pop of lemon. They love to grow under my tomato plants.
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