Yes, happy birthday to me and all the other birthday boys and girls around the world.
It’s odd to think how old 45 seemed years ago. Now that I’m there, I’m finding it pretty darned delightful!
Looking forward to dinner tonight at The Riverdale Garden. Yummm…
Anyway, happy birthday to us all!
k.
Quick, before I go to bed.
Busy day. Up @ 6 to go, yes, back to Ikea to order the new cabinet for the kitch and pick up some shelves (which look great, pix tomorrow – “sure, I’ve heard that one before” – shut up). Cabinet is coming 9/14 or something like that. Whoo hoo! Another day of multi-boxes from Ikea!
Got back home ’round 1:30. (Had no Swedish Meatballs, didn’t feel like having them stick around all day inside me screaming, “Let me out! Let me OUT!”) Found the blinds had arrived. Put up the shelves on the island, but first had to cut them – very badly, but fixable (bless you Ikea and your idiot-proofness!) – to size. Jamie installed the new upper rod in the closet to double the hanging space – for when I’m ready – no silly, just kidding – so we can move some of the clothes out of the computer closet!
Found it near impossible to install the blinds as there is an existing wooden header/valance which will be lovely at hiding the blinds when they’re in the up position once they’re installed, but makes the installation process difficult. Will be less difficult when I buy a bit extender thingy for our drill.
Found that we hadn’t thought out the solar panel for the living room project very well. The panels run on a track. The track needs to hang, in our case, above the decorative molding framing the window. We chose the 63″ length without accounting for the 6 or so inches extra needed to hang the sucker. So either the panels will be 6 or so inches short of the bottom of the window (don’t think so) or the unit is going back to Jacque Penné and we’ll just get two more blinds which, in the end, will be far less intrusive and the decision we should’ve made from the start.
Jamie hung some of our food/eating pix in the kitchen. The Mets won.
We went to The Riverdale Garden to make a reservation for my birthday dinner on Wednesday (45, how did that happen?!). It’s a great restaurant, really fresh, local ingredients, a fairly inspired chef, and for my b’day dinner, the 15 course tasting menu. So I like good food, so sue me.
Then a stroll to the Johnson Ave. area, the bustling(?) center of our little corner of the world. Stopped in at a great pub, An Beal Bocht Cafe where they’ve got Guiness on tap, a friendly staff, great music and an all-around good feeling. I sense we’ve found our new hangout.
After a couple of Guinesses or Guinei, as Jamie says, we stolled up to Johnson Ave. proper and had an excellent dinner at Salvatore’s of Soho. Jamie had the Penne Puttanesca, which he loved and I had the Italian Sausage and Broccoli Rabe, which was excellent. Definitely a go-back place.
Then we walked home, Jamie to bed and I to the computer. All in all, a brilliant, productive day!
Tomorrow we paint the floorboards. Fun…
Nite,
k.
Minutia. That’s what life is about right now. That’s what’s keeping me from writing. That’s what is ruling my life.
Where to hang this picture? How to arrange the drawers in the kitchen. (And I must say that they are arranged beautifully. Having made, just the other night, the soup previously mentioned in these pages, I found everything within easy reach, readily accessible. What a joy!) Where to put the tchotchkes, on a shelf, into storage, in the garbage? Curtains or blinds or shutters. (Solar panels on the main living room window and solar blinds on the rest was the JC Penney answer to that one.) Etc and etc and etc…
It was an eventful, busy day. Our super Super installed the new faucet on our bathroom sink. We were going to tackle it ourselves but found the rusted connections and aged pipes somewhat daunting. Our floor guy came by to install the threshold between the living room and the kitchen. This was a difficult task as the height along the 12 foot run varies between 1″ and a quarter inch less and a quarter inch more. Lots of shims and Liquid Nails and in the end, the thing looks beautiful. And finally, the arrival of the Sears plumber to hook the refrig up to the water so Jamie can finally have his longed for water-and-ice-in-the-door. I have to say, it’s quite lovely and convenient. As much as I bust his ass about it, I’m glad we went that route. And while all that was going on, J was doing laundry and I was installing knobs on the kitchen cabinets. We finished off the day with three margaritas and a really good meal at the local Mexican restaurant. I was pleased to discover that our previous, first, rather disapppointing, visit seems to be the exception; tonight was great.
And the the Mets won.
A very good day all around. Now Jamie’s in bed and I’m soon to follow ’cause:
Tomorrow, it’s again the first bus, for hopefully the last time for a long while, to Ikea to pick up some remaining whoo-ha’s. Ya know, a couple pully-outy things and more handles for the kitchen, some cool lights for the hallway, possibly yet another book case, though none of the ones lining our walls at the moment are Ikea, I do need somewhere better than the lovely milk crate to store my music.
So hopefully soon, I’ll remember to write about the actual move, which was exciting and wacky, as all moves are. And it’s about time I posted some new pics in the Renovations gallery; why, it’s almost a finished product! How’d that happen?
Lotta sweat, lotta bruises, lotta swearing and a whole lotta love. I can’t imagine having done this with anyone other than J.
I love my husband and I love my new home.
Nite,
k.
Just a quick round-up of happenings this week in the life of Jamie & I.
Yes indeed, as of the late afternoon of June 21st, Jamie & I will finally be homo-owners. I can’t think of a better way to celebrate Gay Pride. Who needs a parade?
Nite,
k.
I just had to say, before I go to bed, that one of my greatest pleasures lately is watching the berries grow on the Mulberry tree at the side of our building. They’ve gone from flowerbud to flower and now to green berries all over the tree.
Soon, they’ll be their wonderful deep purple. Soon, they’ll be dropping off the tree staining everything under them. Soon, I won’t care for the Mulberry tree at all, it will just be that tree with the annoying berries that get all over the place.
But for now, I’m enjoying the simple miracle of nature, ever producing, creating, growing.
Gotta hold on to that thought when I’m slogging through a carpet of mushy, inky mess.
Nite,
k.
So tomorrow is the kickoff of the Big Apple BBQ.
This is a big deal for Jamie and I. How far the mighty vegetarians have fallen. Well, as they say, everything in moderation… Except for occasions like tomorrow.
Fourteen champion BBQ purveyors from across this great land of ours with their pits running at full smoke! And since it’s going to be hot and humid tomorrow, I mean that in all its permutations. All right in tony Madison Square Park. Hundreds, if not thousands, of folks walkin’ ’round with plates piled high with brisket, pulled pork, short ribs and sausage.
Oooh, sausage. Jamie and I usually disagree on who serves the best brisket, but we are always in full agreement that the best sausage, probably in the world, comes from The Southside Market in Elgin, (hard “g” as in goat, not as in the liquor) TX. Great Gravy Marie is their hot sausage good. You can order it online for delivery, but we never have. It’s a treat we get to experience once a year at the BABBQ. Someday we’ll make the pilgrimage to Elgin and try it out in their restaurant; a worthy expedition, and probably the only thing that would get me to TX.
I did note from the BABBQ site, that our other fav, Smokey O’s from St. Louis, MO, will not be there this year. We liked their brisket a lot, we loved the woman who ran the place, and we especially loved the reaction you got when you told someone that you’d had BBQ’d snoot, which is a Smokey O’s specialty. “What”, you ask, “is BBQ’d snoot? It couldn’t be…, could it?”
Yes, Virginia, yes. It could. BBQ’d snoot is the meat from around the pig’s snoot (odd that I keep typing snot), flattened, deep fried and served with BBQ sauce. Think pork rinds from a different part of the pig. Last year’s were less cruchy than the year prior. I think I preferred it that way, while Jamie preferred more crunch. But alas, unless a trip to St. Louis is in our future, and since I doubt we’ll be doing any baseball stadium trips this year, we’ll have to go snootless this time ’round.
This is a two day event and usually we attend both days. This year, however, since the Tony Awards are on Sunday night, we’ll be skipping the second day. This is a painful sacrifice but a necessary one. It’s about an hour from where we live to the BBQ. And since we’ve given up TV (more on that some other day), we’re watching the Tony’s in midtown. We’ll undoubtedly want a rest between events and well, that’s just too much travelling for entertainment. So we’ll eat our fill on Saturday. Rest up on all Sunday during the day and then head to Luxia/Mont Blanc for our Tony viewing pleasure.
Now, truth be told, we don’t usually watch the Tony’s. But this year, our favorite duo Kiki and Herb are nominated for their Broadway show in the Special Theatrical Event category. Oddly enough, the only other nominee in the category is Jay Johnson, the ventriloquist, for his show The Two and Only!. It is odd for so many reasons, but the one that strikes me as oddest, at the moment, is that Kiki and Herb’s show had to close to make room for Jay Johnson’s. Kiki and Herb could’ve extended their run but the theatre was closely booked. So Kiki got kicked out of the theatre to make room for puppet boy. An interesting contest indeed. And, to be fair, I do hear that The Two and Only was quite a good show and Jay Johnson is not a boy. Not that he’s a girl, he’s just a bit long in the tooth to be called a boy.
Anyway (or as David Milch writes it in any script he pens, “anyways”), I’m just hoping that the Special Theatrical Event is on the actual broadcast and not in the non-broadcast “we need to give out these creative awards but who cares” section. As a former theatre techie, I find the dismissal of the creative awards maddening, but I also realize that most of America couldn’t give a rat’s ass about the Tony’s anyway, so keep it short for America. Anyways…
Ok, so there’s the weekend. Big meat in a tony park and Tony’s midtown of the Big Apple. Fun filled and jam packed.
But first, we’re getting up a 6am tomorrow to do the laundry. Will the glamour never end?
Nite,
k.
No really, this post is about a recipe. A real recipe, not an excuse to sidetrack into a paean to the unfathomable forces of the cosmos that have brought together, like so many disparate and seemingly uncombinable ingredients, the elements that are this wonderful soup that is my life.
No, I shan’t do that. No, this post is about a recipe. A recipe, as it turns out, for soup.
But first, let it be said that the thing I think I will miss most when Jamie and I move to our new home, is the Greenmarket that occurs every Saturday nearly right outside our door. NYC has done an amazing job getting these set up all around the City and indeed, while we are not moving more than 15 minutes north and thus will still have easy access to our market, it won’t be as easy. It will now take more planning than, “Lets go downstairs to the market.” Boo hoo to us, indeed. Sometimes you do get used to the convenience of things.
But plan we will ’cause we must have our Patrick Farm milk (a thing of beauty, cream sitting clotted on top waiting to be shaken back into an unhomoginizable, delicious slurry) and eggs. Our Patrick Farm friends also sell yogurt that a neighboring farm, Evans Farmhouse makes; life wouldn’t be the same without it.
Oh and all the cut-and-picked-this-morning fruit and produce. And the organic cheese maker, and the free-range turkey (hot Italian turkey sausage!); well, as the song goes, “Never can say goodbye”.
Oh, soup, you say? There was something said about soup? Ok, ok, I’ll leave my orgiastic organic reverie. But I’ll bring with me the asparagus. It’s in bountiful season just now. And it make a delicious, phenomenally easy, soup.
I came across the recipe in the current (June ’07) issue of Food and Wine (p.106). It is incredibly good as is, but being the kitchen tinkerer that I am… Here’s the updated version:
Asparagus Egg Drop Soup Unnecessarily Dressed Up
2 TBS Extra Virgin Olive Oil (EVOO for the RR fans)
1 TBS Sweet Butter
1 medium Onion, cut in half lengthwise and then thinly sliced from top to bottom
3 cloves Garlic, thinly sliced and matchsticked
1 ear fresh Corn, kernels cut off the cob
4 C Chicken Broth or Vegetable Broth if you prefer
1/3 C White Wine
1/2 LB Asparagus, cut on the diagonal into 1″ pieces
2 Eggs
Salt and Pepper
Fresh Nutmeg
1/4 C freshly grated Pecorino Romano or better still, the old hard rind of same, about 2″ square.
Heat the Olive Oil over moderate flame in a 4 quart sauce pan. Add the butter and let melt and foam. When the foam dies down, add the onions and garlic. Stir and cover. Let cook gently for 3 minutes, then add the corn kernels. Season with salt, pepper and 8 grates of nutmeg (a good 1/4 tsp) stir and cover for about another 5 minutes when the onions and garlic should be translucent.
Add the broth and wine and bring to a gentle boil. If you are using an old cheese rind, add it in now to soften and disperse. If using the cheese rind, gently boil for about 10-15 minutes, breaking up the rind from time to time with a wooden spoon. If not using the rind, you can either bring broth mixture to a higher boil right away, or let it boil gently for 10-15 to marry the flavors.
When rind has dispersed, bring soup up to a higher boil and add the asparagus.
While that cooks, only about 30 seconds, gently mix the two eggs in a separate bowl. Do not scramble; just mix them around enough that the yolks are broken and semi-combined with the whites. Season with a bit of salt and pepper.
While gently stirring the soup, gradually pour the eggs into it in a figure eight pattern. Do this slowly. And then let this cook about another 30 seconds until the eggs are cooked through.
If using the grated cheese, add it just at the end and stir.
That’s it. Eat and enjoy. Jamie and I often eat just this for dinner. You could definitely serve 4 using smaller portions.
I hope someone tries this and that I’ve been clear enough, a recipe writer I’m not. It’s an amazingly simple but outrageously delicious soup. In fact, we had it earlier this evening. Now I’m out of asparagus until this Saturday’s market. *Sigh* Thank God I bought enough yogurt to last the week!
Nite,
k.
