Oh, Canada

We went to Toronto for the first time on Canada Day Weekend (which intersects with 4th of July weekend, as it happens).  Charmed as hell to see this guy as the plane flew into the city airport.  

This year celebrates Canada's 150th birthday, so recognitions of that were all over the place.

Not content to have one night of parties for such a big milestone, there were concerts and fireworks several days in a row - we caught one incarnation.

Our first stop after checking in was the SkyDome (which is now named after a cell service company, I guess) for a Blue Jays/Red Sox game.  We missed the first inning and change because, well, we were coming to the game from Newark, but that did not spoil our day. The dome was open when we got there, but some rain started a few innings in so they closed it mid-game.

Our next stop was a brewery/restaurant, where we grabbed seats at the bar and got as much info from the fantastic bartender as we could about places to go.  

We walked our asses off, like you do when you're in a city you don't (yet) know well. Great city, many fab neighborhoods, super friendly people, really good food and drink, good public transportation, great street art, robust art & performance scene all around.

On multiple recommendations, we went to the AGO and caught, among other things, a show focusing on Canadian artists, with a particular eye on indigenous artists [as you can imagine, the whole "this nation was formed 150 years ago! Woo hoo!" story plays pretty differently among the indigenous population and allies].  Also caught a retrospective of Rita Letendre, whom I hadn't heard of; the show was an excellent, necessary corrective to that.

So yes, Oh, Canada - you're not perfect, and your dreamboat of a Prime Minister has made some sketchy compromises and gets off super easy because of his disastrous counterpart to the south, but you are a (relatively) open society with an eye on human rights, and what appears to be an open mind about truth and reconciliation with the people who have lived on this continent for millennia.

Plus, Toronto has an airport you can get to via a 90 second ferry ride, which is pretty bitchin.

Now is the Summer of our CSA

Social Summer is ending.  Meteorological Summer endures for a few more weeks.

Stewardship Farms has been our CSA this year.  For Labor Day weekend (which is and must be about Labor), I'm posting some photos of recent food from our farm share.

Ok, it's true that the depth of field on some of these shots is pretty lousy.  And yes, it's further true that I could not keep myself from taking a bite of the fish in the last image before snapping a photo.  My guess is that you would have been in the same boat, if you had been there.

Thankful

I am thankful for a lot (overwhelming evidence from all quarters to the contrary).  So, while we can't and shouldn't ignore the reality (as opposed to the cartoon pageant version) of the Pilgrims or the rest of the European occupation of this continent and the one to the south, we can still make use of a national opportunity to express gratitude.

Small dinner, as Thanksgivings go, with Bruce and Caroline from the building, and Caroline's brother and his girlfriend.  Lentil soup, mussels, turkey roulade, roasted root veggies, mashed potatoes, green beans, brussels sprouts, sweet potato pie & pine nut tart for dessert.  We shared the cooking tasks, and it turns out that the brother is a wine distributor, so there was a bunch of that flowing.  Much to be thankful for.

Put together a thanks-themed disc for the hosts.  Didn't think they'd cue it up for the event, but toward the end of the night they did play it. If you want to play along at home, this year's offering worked out to be:

Vince Guaraldi - Charlie Brown Thanksgiving Theme
Nancy Marano - Thanks A Million
The Silos - A Few Hundred Thank You's
Led Zeppelin - Thank You
M.T. Thomas/CSO - Thanksgiving and Forefather's Day movement from Charles Ives' Holidays Symphony
The Beatles - Thank You Girl
Sinéad O'Connor - Thank You for Hearing Me
Johnny Cash - Thanks A Lot
The Books - Thankyoubranch
Alan Titus/Norman Scribner Choir - Gloria/Trope: "Thank You" from Bernstein's Mass
Talking Heads - Thank You for Sending Me An Angel
Big Star - Thank You Friends
Bonnie Raitt - Thank You
Sly & The Family Stone - Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)
My Morning Jacket - Thank You Too!

Quick! Look over there!

Aaaand the upload of that last post didn't work and now it's more than a week later.  Ugh.  Here, look at these photos of a pie and a pup and think of something nice:

 

While we're at it - the dog in that photo is in need of some serious mojo on the health front.  Cast any healing spells you know; send out any vibes, prayers, or simple good wishes, because he's the best and we want him to stick around a good long time, dammit!

1/4/14

Just a few words to ring in the New Year/celebrate this numerically rare date.

This Holiday Season was up and down, to say the least.  To cut to the most important chase, my Grandmother died last Sunday at the age of 91.  It wasn't what you'd call unexpected, but the grief has been nonetheless profound.  At the same time, there is a lot of life there for all of us to celebrate, and as my dad put it: "By now, she'll be directing the choir up there."

That said, there was a lot to celebrate in general too.  A fantastic T-Day in the Catskills; wonderful Thanksgiving and Chanukkah celebration with Joe and Andrew in L.I.C.; great music from Lucius at Bowery Ballroom and Yo La Tengo at the Bell House (though of course those shows gave me more than a few pangs of a different kind of grief over Maxwell's and the YLT benefit shows); stunning Shaw from the Bedlam company; impressive original work (again) from the Representatives; brilliant poetic theater from Dominique Morriseau and the LAByrinth in Sunset Baby; another moving musical from the Public with Fun Home; Mark Rylance's Richard III to bookend the Twelfth Night we caught last Thanksgiving week in London.  Good movies and friends and New Year's Eve with Les & Megan in the Village.  And the warmth of the Christmas celebration in New Jersey cut through both my and Cory's colds.  (Well, kind of.  We're still struggling to shake those off a week and a half later...)

Speaking of London I haven't even gotten into this year's (well, last year's, at this point) trip!

So, just a little on that now - a few shots from early in the trip, and one from the end of it.

The Saturday after we arrived, we took a walk over Tower Bridge to visit the Maltby Street Market, where we enjoyed, among other things, some food and libation.

Little Bird gin bloody mary.

And on the last day of the trip, we took a trip to the National Portrait Gallery.  Here's a shot Cory snapped of me and my rally beard with a picture of Will Ferrell.

Miss you, Grandma.

4th of July (weekend) Madison Square Park

Before this "Hundred and Ball Sweat degrees" heatwave, it was, well, still really hot.

To get through it last weekend, we were back in the Old Country.  The weekend before that, we Honored America by sticking around and watching fireworks.  And on Sunday, I took a stroll to the park and had a beer and read the paper, then Cory joined in and we had concretes.

 Sondheim and Chicago vied for stupid puns to be included in the title of this post.  Instead, I just went with a decidedly post-Sandy Springsteen reference.

A fine afternoon by the Shack.

Monday Remedy

Say you had a busy weekend.  Say you had a houseguest (a great one!), plus a more-than-usually satisfying audition you helped a friend with, and an art opening, followed by going to a show at Lincoln Center, and then Sunday you played tennis in Central Park and then gave the final performance of the show you were in, then met friends and went to another show from the same festival your show was a part of, then saw another out of town guest.

Of course, that's just one way to have a busy weekend.  You probably have your own ways of doing it.

Then on Monday you might go back to the office or the shop or the salt mine or wherever you work.  You're feeling ok, but you've been beating back a cold and maybe you didn't really get as much sleep as you'd have liked and you haven't had a chance to rest rest for a while, so you have a perfectly ok day and you get a lot done, but you don't really click into gear. 

But on the way home you might stop by that fancy grocery on the corner which for some reason gives you a really good price on shiitake mushrooms.  So before your girlfriend comes home, you mince up some garlic and onion and put it in a bowl with oil and a Malaysian spice blend (which may or may not have been created by the artist who made the show you went to on Saturday) of turmeric, cumin, cayenne, coriander, cinnamon, and some other herbs and goodies, plus a few dashes of that insanely spicy naga jolokia sauce you got when you were in the Keys, and you marinate the chicken breast you brought out of the freezer this morning in the mix.  Then you decompress from the day for a while, which is nice.  And the gal comes home and you let her do her own decompression while you go back in the kitchen and put on some good music and whip up some wild rice and chop those shiitakes into strips, sear and stir fry the chicken and then put in the mushroom strips, and you finish it off with a shot of liquid aminos and give one last stir, serve on a bed of greens and top with crumbled bleu cheese and dressing.

I'm calling that a remedy to a Mediocre Monday.

Plus we got to watch the premier of a very cool show that Cory worked on!

Big Week, part two (the Food Episodes)

More on last week's happenings:

Tuesday was an epic dinner at a fancy restaurant.  The kind of meal I don't get very often.  And by 'very often,' I mean 'ever.'  Friends took us out as a Big Thank You to Cory for a Big Favor, and it was incredible: course after course of the most amazing food.  Even the dishes made from ingredients I don't usually like were great - cranberry 'snow' with beet puree? Bring it.  And the stuff I do like?  My brain and body almost exploded.  Oysters unlike any I've ever had, poached lobster that made me question my place on earth, an egg cream that made me pine for days that never really existed. (An egg cream can do that?  Apparently it can.)

Wednesday night I had off.  Sort of.  I took advantage of the freedom to do prep for the dinner I made for Valentine's the next night.  I knew I wouldn't be able to get home until later than ideal on Thursday, so I needed to cover some ground ahead of time.

Here's the thing about that: we don't usually do much for V-day.  We acknowledge that it exists, we mention it, we wish each other the happiness of the day, but we don't historically make much of it.  And by 'historically,' I mean 'ever.'  Or, more precisely, 'so far.'  But this year was a little different.  For whatever reason, we decided to have an extra-special-nice dinner in.  So I did a bunch of prep on Wednesday and when I did get home on Thursday, I did my magic in the kitchen.  

And for kicks in the wake of our other-worldly meal on Tuesday, I put on my best 'fancy waiter' as I'd bring out the courses.  You know: weight slightly forward, hands gracefully floating the dish to the table, describing it in a hushed throaty half-whisper.

This is a Perfect Valentine Manhattan, adapted from the classic recipe with Hudson Manhattan Rye, Dolin Dry Vermouth, Carpana Antica Sweet Vermouth, peychaud and orange bitters, and Morello cherries.

Watercress soup, with a whiskey cream. (This was actually an exciting discovery, and is a strong contender to be T-Day worthy...)

Haricots verts (ok, they were green beans - hey, I'm in 'fancy waiter' mode.) in a Kürbiskernöl and lemon glaze.

Roasted fingerling potatoes with tarragon and thyme.

Filet mignon with mushrooms, adapted from a recipe by James Beard.

Vermont ice cream, made with milk from happy cows and rich organic chocolate.

Ok, I punted on dessert and went with Ben & Jerry's.  Still, it was a pretty good meal.  A Happy Valentine's Day.

No visual stimulation for you today - I haven't been feeling the 'take pictures of food' thing lately. I'm sure I will revert.

Stay tuned...

London, Continued

The London trip was spurred on by a need to bring Thanksgiving to the Brits.  Well, more accurately, to bring it to a couple of our American friends who are living in Britain for a few years.  T-Day-ers, no less, and a couple who used to live in Plymouth, Mass. at that - so it was particularly urgent that we help them get their turkey on to celebrate the Mayflower Pilgrims.

We had a fantastic time.  This is not surprising, of course, but it is pleasant to report.  These shots, like most of those that I've posted so far, are from the first day we were there - Thanksgiving Day, strictly speaking, but not the day we had our Feast.  No, that day we only had incredible meat pies on a walk through Borough Market, Pints at two fab pubs nearby, and a brilliant Tapas meal to wrap it all up.  The days of London being known for bad food may be behind us for good.

. 

Not bad for the evening after an all-night flight.

Last Weekend: or, The Much-Needed, Absolutely Essential Return of T-Day

Yes, it was time once again for the Best Holiday of the Year to roll around.  T-Day made its triumphant return, to Cape Cod this time.

I did not take many photos this year, and those I did were on the phone camera rather than the camera camera, but here's Ye Olde Cape Cod Beauty in action:

We didn't know how much we needed it until we were there, but we really had to get out of the City in the wake of the Storm and the emotional agita of the Election.  [Do I need to tell you how much more tolerable it was to deal with the removal of our car and the reconstruction of the 'boken knowing that We the People had won victories for women, gay rights, reform of drug laws, access to health care, and so on?  I don't think I do.]  

The drive up was late and great.  We left after work last Thursday.  Definitely emotional pangs picking up the rental car.  Yes, yes, I know - it's just a car, an inanimate object.  Sue me for having a sentimental weakness for her.

I will paraphrase an email I wrote to the T-Day crowd: 

Lola was hit by Sandy, Lost in the Flood, shot down in a Meeting Across the River (although that probably actually refers to the other side of the river), caught in My City of Ruins, drowned in the Land of Hope and Dreams, and probably a half dozen or so other Jersey Strong Springsteen songs that would make some semblance of sense.

I'm not saying I'll never mention her again, but here is the last photo I took of her, going off to the Scrap Auction for Charity in the Sky:

Not for nothing, there is a wrong way to do this.  We had a very good experience with the NPR/Car Talk donation program, but not before we had a very bad experience with these other guys.  To recap: these guys good; these guys very, very bad.

But I digress.

We rolled into the Big T-Day House at about 12:30 Friday morning.  Hugs, food, drinks, banter started right away and lasted for four days.  Also pinochle, poker (for the first time at T-Day! I did alright.), a Murder Mystery Role-playing game (another T-Day first.  Turned out I dunnit.  I also invented a drink called the Dead Louie.  Recipe available upon request.)  And even yet still more food.

This year featured the central turkey meal, naturally, and the increasingly count-on-able Shrimp Bahaiana, Rosemary Bread, Kentucky Chocolate, etc.  I made a sweet potato soup, but didn't take a photo of it.  It looked just like a pot of soup.

I did consider the frittatas I made the morning after the big meal to be suitably photogenic.

This is the meaty-one, with two kinds of linguica (many thanks to Rich!)

And here's the veggie one, after it was cut. 

Both had onions & shallots, peppers, portabella mushrooms and plenty of cheese.  The veggie one also had olives to fill it out a little.  No potatoes or turkey, because in an attempt to minimize leftovers we only made two turkeys and about 7 pounds of potatoes.  The potatoes were gone the night of the Feast. The minimal remains of the turkeys were scraped from the container by the time I got the veggies chopped.  So be it.

And that's that.  All hail T-Day.

In Other News...

We spent last week with George. Remember George?

In addition to his adventurous side, we found he was quite a discriminating aficionado of al fresco dining.

But he hasn't lost touch with his fierce side.

What There Was...

...in terms of food.

Shrimp and Grits (with bleu cheese and gorgonzola)

A certain amount of roast beef.

Not pictured here are the sweet potato soup, the Yassa garbanzo beans, or the collard greens.

For dessert, the old standards: mom's peanut brittle, bûche de noël, peanut blossom cookies.

Here's the bûche after the evening got the better of it. Looking a little tired in this photo, but it was pretty damn good, if I may say so myself.

Holiday Festivities

Are you rockin' the Holiday action? I know you are.

Quick rundown of some of what's been going on:

Hanukkah Nights 2 and 7 were spent with Yo La Tengo - great shows, natch. Please send lots of good healing mojo to Ira the K.

Christmas Eve in Dumont with Cory cooking and eating the Feast of the Seven Fishes with Cory's Italian Family. All went well in spite of a small, shall we say, disagreement with a can opener.

Christmas morning I woke up way too early and couldn't fall back asleep for a long time, so I watched the last hour and a half of Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. Of course I did.

Later on, after waking up for real and having some steak and eggs (for some reason, I was craving a cowboy's breakfast) I called the folks and the grandfolks and then it was out to Paramus for Christmas presents and dinner with Cory's Extended Italian Family. Jollity ensued.

Boxing Day was chill; bit of running around looking for a place serving brunch food in the 'boken on a day that wasn't technically a weekend day but sure felt like one. Wound up at the diner. Later on, caught War Horse at the cinema up the street from BoHome before going to Maxwell's for dinner and the show.

And now it's back to work. I'll leave you with this holiday message from the world of Pop.



If my eyes and the internets don't deceive me, this is a poster from 1972 wishing "Season's Greetings from Ardent Records" We can only hope it's the real thing.

Celebrate

In honor of Thanksgiving, which will see me with my family for the first time in a looooooong long time (since high school? Is that possible? I can't think of a time since then that I spent Thanksgiving with my blood relatives except for Freshman year of college, and that was when Dad came out to Boston to have Turkey Day bachelor-style):

And also in honor of Carrie, with whom I saw La Boheme last night, and who I think would approve:

Kitchen Therapy

We can safely agree that whatever this is (and it isn't much) it is not a home-improvement blog. But I have been doing some work on Bohome, and so I thought I'd share some of that.

The most major and most recent project has been to re-do my kitchen floor. Now, lest you think that I'm handier than I am, let me hasten to add that by "re-do" what I mean is "put carpet tiles on." So we're talking about real work, but not the kind of thing you need to go to trade school to learn how do to.

Here's a shot of the bare floor once I got all the furniture off of it and gave it a good cleaning.

Doesn't look that bad in this shot, but if you've been to my place you know that these particular planks of hardwood bite back.

These photos come from my phone, so they're not up to snuff, but that little gouge in the wood gives you the beginning of an idea of how splinterrific that floor can be. After years of doing a very sad dance with my landlord(s), I finally accepted that this situation would not be handled by them, and would not take care of itself. So, with a lot of help and encouragement from Cory, I picked a place that sells good product and did some research and ordered samples and we went to the FLOR showroom in Soho and picked out colors. The tiles were delivered on Friday, and I got down to business.

Step one was to put down base lines. The instructions gave very detailed info on how to do this in a regular rectangular room with four even walls and corners. Guess what, folks: that ain't my kitchen.

I used the stone base of my (certifiably antiquated but lovely and very functional) oven as a guide for the base lines.

Then it's a question of taking stock and coming up with some design notions and color pattern ideas.

What's wonderful about these FLOR tiles is that you don't need to staple anything down, or even use adhesive on the actual floor; you just put some little sticky circles face up on your base line, and on strategic corners. I played around with form and function, weighting the areas where I do the most work with food (and therefore do the most spilling) with darker colors.

And here we go! New kitchen floor for the Bohome...

My main beef at this point is that there's an area in the entryway where the bottom of the door goes too close to the ground for even this thin carpeting to fit (a combination of an ancient, uneven floor, and door that could probably be stand a re-hanging.) After the fire a couple years ago, they put up metal doors on all our apartments, so I can't plane off the bottom edge; I just need to leave a little space uncovered. And I may cut some carpet to fill some of the nooks and crannies around the edges that are still bare for the time being. But all in all, I'm pretty happy with how it came out.

Come on by for some barefootin' in the 'boken!

Equinoctial

Happy First Day of Spring, everybody!

So far, I've been celebrating by not even leaving the apartment, but that just seems wrong, so I'll shift gears soon. but first I wanted to say I hope you all had a good winter (as uncooperative as the weather tended to be) and that you're in good health (no small wish in this era of earthquakes and tsunamis and wars and floods).

This week was a full one, with networking and socializing on Monday, a kind of a night off on Tuesday, Lucia di Lammermoor at the Met on Wednesday (great! It's part of the HD broadcasts too, so you can catch it at a theater near you...), The Motherf**ker with the Hat on Thursday (which evening included dinner with a couple of my good friends who had somehow managed not to be in the same room with Cory until now), the Premier of the Mel & El webisodes at Ars Nova on Friday (featuring yours truly as a Mean Man, according to the credits; my bitchy gay character was rechristened by Kevin and Carl as one of the Mean Girls. I'll take the career boost.) and the Martha Graham Dance Company at Jazz at Lincoln Center last night (featuring the company of out-of-town guests from both Virginia and Italia)

Whew!

How do we do it? The secret is to sacrifice cleanliness.

Anyway, it's clearly time to change over the wallpaper photo on my phone from the snow-covered branches outside our window to something more printemps. I'll try to grab something this afternoon.

Night Off

It's thunderous in Nuevo York. We just watched a viddy (Dream of Life) on our only night off this week, and now the thunder is raising a ruckus. We have to clean up from dinner before we crash - very good simple meal: brown rice pasta with red sauce with lots of garlic, onion and mushroom, green salad with mushrooms and kalamata olives, a surprisingly excellent sourdough, and some predictably excellent cheeses to round it out. Oh, and some a Wisconsin beer I've never had before called Eastside (don't know why, but it's kind of hard to get non-mass-produced Wisconsin beer out here). I also got us a bottle of acqua minerale because I've been thinking about Rome, in part because our Roman friends are coming to NYC in a couple days.

Anyway, it's good to have a night off sometimes. Rain will turn up as we sleep.

Some Kind of Sunday

Ok.

I have my Packers t-shirt.

I have my GO PACK GO sign.

I have all the fixings for a big vat of chili.

My friend (from Green Bay, no less) who is hosting the party is putting together a big spread of Wisconsin cheeses to make grilled cheese sandwiches.

There will be beer.

One of my best friends who is doing very well in acting is THERE in Dallas playing in a 'celebrity' flag football game and gets to go to The Game too.

That is all. Carry on.

Oh wait, one more thing:

Go Pack GO!!!!

Glancing Back

Well, this one's behind the times...










Full spread included: pumpkin lentil soup (Joe); those collards drying up above (Cory & I); cranberry bread (Eric & Shirin); brussels sprouts (Deborah); quinoa (non) stuffing (Cory & I); bakery-fresh chardonnay bread (Eric & Shirin); cranberry sauce (Sherin); sweet potato rounds (Deborah); potato & onion casserole (Eric & Shirin); soy-sauce-and-honey-glazed turkey & gravy (Cory & I); cookies (Joe) and pumpkin mousse (Sherin) for dessert. And a bunch of stuff I'm sure I'm forgetting. Oh - and beer, wine and cider brought by all and sundry!


Oh, and here are Eric and Shirin, sitting pretty. There will be a player-to-be-named-later playing for that team come the new year! Mazel Tov, guys!