Blogging is hard!

To all three of you faithful readers who have been waiting for a blog entry (Hi mom!), I have to admit – I didn’t realize blogging would be so hard. Harder than feeding ourselves, even. A short rundown of our recent meals: Thai take-out, FreshDirect 4-minute fresh dining meal, bowl of noodles…. Not necessarily worth describing. All this while J is working on his soon-to-be released masterpiece: Fall Fiasco: Redemption story. A wise person told me to keep the blog entries short, so I thought I would take this short opportunity to tell all three of you that we really do plan to add recipes and useful information. In 2008.

Fall Fiasco

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Pan-Roasted Rib-Eye
Pan-Roasted Cauliflower
Pan-Roasted Brussel Sprouts
Wine

Saturday, Oct. 13--Today was the first true day of fall. The fact that we had to wait until mid October for a crisp, clear day--well, I don't like it. Summer overstayed its hot, humid welcome. Good riddance.

We had big plans today, thanks--as always--to H, who's always thinking ahead. Today, we had tickets to the Harvest Fest up at Stone Barns, a place we've been wanting to check out. It's a farm and local agriculture center situated on Rockefeller land near Tarrytown, just an hour out of the city. The owner is a chef/local-agriculture booster who has a restaurant there and another in the city, both called Blue Hill. (The pork tenderloin with spaeztle I had at Blue Hill in the city was everything I love about wintry food.)

So this was going to be a perfect opportunity to celebrate the season with a family trip up to the Hudson Valley. I was imagining Stone Barns as a cross between a mega-farm stand, a petting zoo and the Franklin Cider Mill back in Michigan. Farm tours and hayrides were on the bill, and even Martha Fucking Stewart was scheduled to judge a bake-off. I mean, did autumn really ever exist before Martha Stewart?

It was also our first trip out of the city since we sold our car, and I was excited to try renting a Zipcar. I went with V to pick it up at a garage on 62nd and Broadway. It was a little electric blue Honda (called a Fit Farnsworth, which I didn't like) that reminded me of the snug roadster we rented in Spain. Love the idea of the Zipcar--short-term rentals; you can reserve them online and pick them up at different garages around the city; and you wave your coded Zipcard over the tag on the windshield to unlock the transmission.

I also like the charming yellow-bike, communal ethic to it--don't leave the tank empty, don't leave egg salad under the seat. So when I opened the back-seat and caught a whiff of the stink emanating from the back seat, I took it hard.

Apparently, whoever used the Fit Farnsworth last had taken their own fall excursion. Apparently, they were in such a state of seasonal bliss over the squash and Indian corn and decorative gourdes they had picked up at the farmstand, well they plum forgot about the GALLON OF APPLE CIDER they left to ferment and explode on the floor of the back seat.

Imagine the biggest, smelliest foot ever. Now imagine marinating that foot in cider vinegar and aging it for a good while in the back seat of a Fit Farnsworth. And to fully appreciate just how insulting this was to me, let me just say that among the things I love best about fall is apple cider. Anyone who knows me knows how much I love apple cider.

But there was nothing to be done. No other cars available. So we rolled down the windows, hit the Saw Mill Parkway and headed up to Stone Barns.

But why belabor this? The Harvest Fest was a fiasco. The off-site parking was mismanaged. The Stone Barns staffers were nice enough but seemed unprepared for the influx of yuppies (ourselves included). Things seemed promising at the start--the trio of spit-roasted pigs; the sweet, crisp woodsmoke; the samples of squash soup and crunchy pickle slices. It all took me back to the fall trip H and I took to Chester, Vermont--the venison medallions at the inn, the Grafton cheddar.

But then V had to wait an hour to get her face painted. And the cookout line took forever. People got agitated--there were whispers that only one of the two lines led to the roast pig; the other one was for hot dogs only (guess which one you're in, pal).

Well, we got our pig and kielbasa, with a little cup of kraut and creamy potato salad with mustard seeds. I gave H the kielbasa plate so I could squirt some mustard on the side. As for what happened next, I blame myself, really. I mean, why should I expect the cap on the squeeze bottle to be screwed on? If a torrent of yellow mustard splashed on the plate and rushed down H's coat sleeve and dripped onto sleeping E's ankle, it serves me right.

The pig: cold and not worth the trouble. V got a fine paint job and went for a hayride. I waited in another line to get her ice cream but got swarmed by a couple of bees who could've held their own around the trash cans at the Franklin Cider Mill. While H was being shooed out of the farm store, I caught some of Martha Stewart's evaluation of the bake-off entries. She was a dud--I'll never understand how she managed to make it on TV. But her deadpan reading of the backgrounders that accompanied each pie and tart, describing the provenance of each ingredient--"apples from my apple purveyor in Ossining"; "I cured most of the black walnuts myself and used pre-processed nuts for the rest"--was dead-on.

We managed to get back to the stink car with no problem and drove into Tarrytown/Sleepy Hollow to find ice cream for V. The Lighthouse Cafe, near the Hudson River, had vanilla with m&m's mixed in, and excellent coffee in homey ceramic mugs.

We made it back to the city in time to make dinner: a pan-roasted bone-in rib eye with roast cauliflower and the first Brussels sprouts of the season. The rib eye was about as perfectly cooked as I've ever done--a dark crust that gradually went to pink in the center. The cauliflower was OK. But the sprouts were undercooked. Just as well.

Posted by slowcooker

Peanut Butter

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Peanut Butter Sandwich
Seltzer

Sometimes things just don't work out. On Sunday, things were hopeful and we sat down and made a list of all of the delicious and healthy dinners we were going to have this week... I believe tonight was supposed to be "Indian Chicken with Cauliflower" - one of my favorites. But here it is 9:10 p.m. and I am all by myself with a table full of laundry. The slowcooker had a few too many projects this week and I had a few too many meetings and, really, it doesn't take much for our week to fall apart: no dish detergent, no cat food, even thought we order from Fresh Direct every third day. Seeing that I was going to be on my own, I rooted around in the fridge for awhile. A fridge full of depressing leftovers and string cheese. I briefly considered ordering out, but that seemed like too much effort (!), so I settled for one of my old favorites: a peanut butter and strawberry jam sandwich on whole wheat. The bread was the "soft" whole wheat - which I think is just like white bread - squishy, but brown. The peanut butter was the kind that separates, reminding me of my childhood (a childhood where I was deprived of Skippy) and the jelly was the divine "Bonne Maman" strawberry. A great sandwich - I washed it down with seltzer while hunched over the computer. It took under five minutes to finish this meal and before I could register that I was actually full, I realized that I needed to have a second sandwich to feel like I had actually eaten dinner. This time, I went with a foldover.


posted by cookie puss

A Primer

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"Appetizer"
Lasagna Bolognese
Spinach
Wine

Hallelujah.

It's only 9 p.m. on Friday night, and we've already cooked, eaten and put away the leftovers of our dinner with V. I've been up since 4:30 a.m., H and I have both had long weeks, and we managed to get home, feed baby E and coax her to sleep, make a kick-ass lasagna bolognese, drink wine, eat with V and get her into bed. Best parents ever.

Here's to the small triumphs: Layering pasta, spreading sauce and sprinkling cheese with my daughter. Watching her do a cook's pantomime with a sauce pan and wooden spoon, making "appetizer" with milk, yogurt, salt, cinnamon and--the secret ingredient--appetizer. A speckled Parmesan crust. Lighting the Shabbes candles and saying the prayers. More wine (a red Loire Cabernet from Ari). And trying not to laugh as V sat at the dinner table and enumerated--for our edification--all the bad words she knows: "what the hell"; "oh, shit"; "what the fuck."

You can see it in the empty casserole: It was a good evening.

posted by slowcooker