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.

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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.

Holly Daze

Well, I've been fairly lousy at keeping up with this particular outlet recently. I didn't even bother to celebrate (or even notice) that my last post before this one was my 500th post. And I am NOT one to miss out on an opportunity to celebrate something.

That said, I have my excuses (there are always excuses). The holidays were busy as all get out; I had out of town guests of various shapes and sizes; there were social engagements at every turn; we had to go to Paramus; we had a blizzard; I was short-listed for a Nobel Prize; it was chaos!

I'll fill in some of the blanks in the coming days, but for now, here are some headlines:

• Yo La Hanukkah - the annual Maxwell's 8-night orgasm of music and fun. We caught two of the shows: one was great, the other was unbelievably awesome
• Real Hanukkah - fewer latkes this year, but we still brought out the celebration for the Festival of Lights
• Alvin Ailey - I got to go to a few shows this City Center season, including by great good fortune both opening and closing night. Both were great, although Judith Jamison's farewell show was really over the top special and wonderful
• Julie! And her family. We had pizza and saw Lombardi. Nice.
• Davin! In town on a mission or three
• Wedding in Westchester
• Holiday music and movies - in both live and recorded form, it's an annual tradition and a half. This year's highlights included: the choral group Angelica on the UES; a Renegade Cabaret performance on 14th Street; Oy to the World, volume 13; The Bishop's Wife at Chome on Christmas Eve; Christmas in Connecticut with Kelly (at the beginning of the Blizzard!)
• True Grit in Bkln w/Dominic
• The Big Christmas Gathering
• Black Swan with Susan & Daniel
• The Big Parental Visit - delayed along with several thousand of our closest friends by the same Blizzard, but still very fun
• New Year's Eve - Ailey for the folks, Patti Smith for us (along with Sue and Steve and Beth B.) A splendid time was had by all, in spite of some in-crowd obnoxiousness (did they forget what show they were at?)

So - there that is. I'm sure I'm forgetting some really important stuff. More to come...

Thanksgiving Thoughts

Being thankful for friends is one of the most fundamental forms of gratitude for me; my family of friends is an amazing source of support, and I can't believe how lucky I am to have them.

Family family is also something to be thankful for; mine dealt with a rough event last week, and have been going through a lot in general, but all are well, thankfully. Please send good mojo as they swing through another transition.

Health is one of those things it's important to keep in your conscious gratitude too - it's all too easy to take it for granted until it slips. I write this as I fight off a cold with a carving knife and a machete.

Last night I finally went down the rabbit hole to the world of fancy phones. And now I know what makes those birds so angry...

Kanye's new record may not be quite as good as all the hype, but it's pretty effin' good.

If you have a taste for theater, you should go see Mistakes Were Made at the Barrow Street. Seriously, it works on a bunch of levels, is funny as hell, and you won't see better acting very often than you'll get from Michael Shannon.

I'm thankful I live in New York. And New Jersey.

Adventures in the Commonwealth

Yes, I've been away. But I'm back. For now...

Cory and I both have colds, but we're otherwise uninjured from our travels, except a slight burn on my arms, where I seem to have missed a spot or two with the sunscreen. But I am getting ahead of myself.

As you know, a few weekends ago we went to the Solid Sound Festival/aka Wilcofest at Mass MoCA. I've forborne posting on it here, partly because there's already SO MUCH out there on the internets about it. If I get truly inspired, maybe I'll jot down a few notes on the subject. Suffice to say, it was an exercise in awesomness.

The following weekend, we were back in the Bay State - saw the Sox get truly pummeled by the Blue Jays at Fenway. Ugh. Still, it was a beautiful night in a beautiful place, and we were with Molly, so that can't be a bad thing.

A relaxing couple of days later, we saw a couple of our Wilcofest comrades perform at the Church. My Own Worst Enemy, live and fully rocking, in spite of a cold that Sue brought back from the Berkshires. Hey... wait a minute... is that where we got this cold from? Suuuuuuue! (insert shaking fist here.)

The next day after breakfast it was off to Martha's Vineyard. That's right: it's not just for Presidents anymore. But you knew that, because you saw it here last year. This year's stay was different, in a number of ways. And we'll count those ways in posts to come, but for now I'll start you off with a couple images of what the first couple days looked like through the window.

Please do not confuse this with a complaint! We had a wonderful time the whole week, and I'll share some photographic evidence of that in the course of the next several installments of our adventures.

Lost and Found

I've been pretty busy with rehearsals and a bunch of other things lately, so my input here has been on the sketchy side. And I won't be able to catch you all up on everything now either, but in the spirit of putting something out there...

Cory and I hosted a party for the finale of Lost last weekend. We don't qualify for the most serious category of Lost fan (those would be the ones who have whole blogs devoted to dissecting the inner workings and mythologies of the show), but we took it seriously enough to do some cooking and put together some design elements.

Our notion of design for a party was not nearly enough for my sister Lori, however. Although she has never seen a single episode of Lost, she insisted that we 'theme it up' a notch or two, and put in more of an effort than would have occurred to us.

Cory ordered some custom M&Ms. BIG UPS to Cory for the notion, and seeing it through! If you know the show, these are pretty cool; if you don't, they're probably just baffling.




The inscribed candies got little bags to be handed out to the partiers. The skull image goes with the show at least a little bit ("Adam and Eve" in the cave; the general sense of foreboding and rampant death in the last few episodes)




And the simple Black and White candies went into coconut shells.



We also got a pineapple to fit with the Pacific Island theme, used the top as a centerpiece and skewered chunks with toothpicks decorated with banners Lori made, inscribed with character names.


Stole this photo from my sister, as I somehow managed not to get any shots of the pineapple spread.

Check out her work! She picked out the tropical paper, and we gave her a list of names (with the name crossed out for characters who were dead in one timeline or another.) She used special paper and ink for the names of the "Candidates." Pretty good for someone who has never seen the show, and doesn't care about it at all.



We made a fish stew. Lori helped a lot with this on the sous chef end, but she doesn't really like fish (as in - she runs screaming from the kitchen when seafood is cooking), so she didn't stick around for the completion of that.



It was a good stew - I used cod and mahi mahi in a garlic lime marinade; peppers, onions, tomatoes, scallions, cilantro; coconut milk made it extra-special island-y; and the secret ingredient was oil simmered with annatto seed. Yum.

Also a special blend of spices, including a hands-across-the-water conjunction of hot sauces.



Here's the food table before people arrived. The dips haven't been put into the bowls yet, and a lot of food was yet to come.

This shot gives a sense of the party in action.

Off to the left is the corner of the now-fully-loaded food table. You can see the platter with Lia's corn, black bean and quinoa salad, and the sesame-peanut sauce that went on Daniel and Susan's buckwheat noodles. Sadly, I did not get a shot of Sherin's broccoli-mango salad or Shannon's bread bowls, but trust me: all was extremely tasty!

Also, Sherin put together a game of Lost Bingo. She gathered a bunch of possible events of varying likelihood, and arranged them into a bingo board to check things off as they happened. They were really great!

Cory had the first winning card. She won a mango! Here's the Great and Glorious Card of Victory:

I love this shot - lots of joy in the faces of Shannon, Leslie and Cory.

'Twas a fun party. Maybe see you at the next one - in another life, brother.

Birthday at Blue Hill at Stone Barns

Much to share. Not much time. SO - I'll put together bit by bit as I can, and post it when it's some kind of finished.

Last weekend was Cory's birthday. Which is, of course, one of the most festive occasions of the year. How fun that it coincided, this year, with Passover and Easter. AND the Final Four!

So we did all kinds of things, the grandest of which had to have been our trip to Blue Hill at Stone Barns. Which was, in a word, amazing.



I'll start with a shot of my three lovely companions. Yes, I felt pretty lucky to be traveling in that company. Someone mentioned that this shot has a sort of Sex in the City vibe. Or maybe Sex in the Country is more apt, since we were on a farm, after all.

The restaurant is set up on the grounds of the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture, and Dan and David Barber grew up near the original Blue Hill farm in the Berkshires. The intent is to provide astounding food, expertly prepared from natural/organic ingredients and served in a beautiful setting by people who know how to take care of you. And that's what we got.

First we took a walk around the farm, which operates year-round, partly thanks to a vast greenhouse which provides yields throughout the year. This shot is a little still-life from within that greenhouse.




And here is a shot of some of the denizens of the pig barn.



And one of the chickens who was strutting her stuff. This barn had egg-laying hens; the barn with the roasters wasn't open when we were there.



Nice profile of the lovely Miss Kim.



The light in the back blows out this shot, but who doesn't like a sheepdog and his sheep?

Now this photo does not do justice to this sow. The hugheness of that animal just does not translate. We saw a number of these hogs on our walk through the woods.

Kristin and Kim laughing beatifically.

When we finished our walk we stopped by the gift shop and made our way to the restaurant, which, as promised is a (beautifully) refurbished barn.

I have been insanely busy with the show I'm working on (opens next weekend, ladies and gentlemen) so I don't have it in me to write the food porn that this meal deserves, but I'll paint some broad strokes.

We were met by the hosting team, who showed us into a spacious, airy room, where we were attended by a crew of the best servers I've had the pleasure of experiencing. As far as we could tell, every single one of them had seed-to-plate knowledge of the food, and took their jobs very seriously without being overserious in their attitudes. In addition to the general knowlege, flashes of true expertise came through as well - for instance, the Captain was a trained somelier; he isn't the somelier of Blue Hill, but his knowledge is such that he handled general and specific questions in a way that someone who isn't a real oenophile (like, say, me) knew what he was in for, and was better able to appreciate it as a result. Across the board, the service was very formal and precise, but without any touch of the pretension or snobbery that can sometimes take an otherwise excellent meal to a place that's less comfortable than it wants to be. On the contrary, everything that happened while we were there seemed designed to increase our comfort level, from the space, to the pace, to the seasonal cocktails, to the knowledge and demeanor of the waitstaff, to the wine, to the food.

To the food:

Omigod omigod it was good. Everything local, everything fresh, everything amazingly delicious.

I'm not going to break it down course by course (there were many courses), but believe me, this was a meal I'll remember for a long long time. Rather than present a traditional menu, they give you a list (updated daily) of dozens (hundreds?) of ingredients and then follow up with a series of questions - about preferences, allergies, sensitivities: the Captain knows what to ask and how to ask it, and having done so, works with the kitchen to bring dish after dish of just what you want, whether you knew you wanted it or not.

When we mentioned to the waiter during one of Cory's trip to the ladies' room (this meal took well over 4 hours, without dragging for a second) that we'd like a candle placed in her dessert to celebrate her birthday, he looked at us with patient tolerance and explained that of course he'd heard us wishing her happy birthday and everything was taken care of. As it had been taken care of all along.

Kim grabbed this shot of the candle moment. It's a train wreck by real photographic standards, I suppose, but I really like it.

So there that is, at long last. More birthday fun to come...

Winter Weekend - the Continuing Adventures of Marguerite

When last we saw our noble heroine she was facing the elements in her new do, pimped out in every sense of the word by Dustin.


Here she is seen from the house above.

The gals made her a name plate while there was a walk further out onto the lake (you knew that all this was taking place on a frozen lake, right?)


Her nickname was made official by twigs in the snow.

Some images from the lake walk:


Snowmobile tracks.


Shadows of our crew.


Finished creating his woman of the night, Dustin worked on inscribing his own name in the snow in a poignant moment melding the permanent and the fleeting.




The sun sinking on our endeavors.

There was more sledding; Aaron whipped Shannon around on a little snow saucer, to universal delight.


The light caught Lora nicely as we got ready to go upstairs.


But Jacquie had a pensive moment as we left Margie to her own devices...

We went up to the house and had an evening of fun and frolic. We played a game called Ex Libris (which, beside being fun, provided the opportunity for that first photo I posted here last week.) We played a couple games of Celebrity, which was a new experience for Lora. Won her over, as it wins over pretty much everyone. We had a delicious meal of grilled tuna steak and tilapia, couscous and salad. We used the phrase "That's what she said!" a ridiculous number of times. We finished the bottle of Jameson and did a good job on the wine and beer too.

Before going to bed, I went out to the porch and saw Margie, alone in the darkness after whatever she'd been through that evening.



Was Jacquie right to have been concerned earlier? Had Dustin thrown our Marguerite to the wolves, while we amused ourselves inside? Had we failed in the responsibility creators should have for that which they create?

These questions were between Margie and the moon. We ended the night keeping those thoughts at bay, rolling out the cot and sinking into the sofa. The next morning we made coffee and Lora made french toast and we played a tie-breaking round of Celebrity. Marguerite made it into the game as a celebrity name. Was that enough? Had she transcended her tawdry beginnings? Had we redeemed ourselves in her eyes and the eyes of the world?



The last shot of tequila was sacrificed to the gods.

Winter Weekend - the Legend of Marguerite, part one.

Ok, very late entry, but a while ago I went out to the Delaware Water Gap for a short weekend-o-fun with Aaron and Shannon. Jacquie and I drove out Saturday morning - nice to have such lovely company! - and I came back on Sunday afternoon in time to make dinner with my sister. In between those drives were a lot of great food, plenty of drink, games of various shapes and sizes, and some good old winter frolicking.

So without further ado, here's the visual representation of the occasion.

First, portraits of our hosts:


Aaron


and Shannon

Dustin and Lora had been there since the night before, with a couple other guests who left before we arrived. So Jacquie and I had a period of acclimation before the serious merry-making began. Aaron regaled us with tales of the strange and wonderful as we had a chili lunch.

Then we went outside for fun in the snow. There is a hill beside the house that we used as a tricky-to-navigate but not too perilous sled run. Don't have any shots of that as I was too busy trying to steer various sleds around trees, bushes, posts and water mains to take photos.

Then the creative forces took over, and it was decided that a snowman must be created.


'Twas a group effort, naturally.

It was soon decided that our creation was to be a snowwoman rather than snowman.

Dustin took it upon himself to fashion the gender characteristics:

He presented himself as a self-styled breast-whisperer, but I suspect he had more insidious plans in mind...


And while Dustin was snowboob obsessed, Lora worked on other body parts.


She started to take on a life of her own early on.


Finishing the hat.


Taking shape.


Shannon's artistry was essential. Note the pasties - Dustin was not alone in the cause of tarting her up.


We recognized that her arms were a little outsized, and Jacquie took on the job of performing the needed surgery.



I leave it to you to interpret the nature of the closeness Aaron was going for.

At this point, there was some general discussion of the direction this gal was going in. Was she on the path to degradation? Could she attain glory? And what about that hat?

Some more snowcrafting took place, and for a while we were in the realm of the fantastic. Jacquie gave up her scarf, extravagent ears blossomed, and there was even the appearance of a horn:


I think it was Lora who exclaimed: "She's a Vulcan Unicorn!" But Shannon put an end to that with a quick "Duh... There's no such thing."

In the end, Dustin had his way and sexualized glamor won out. He and Jacquie conspired to create the perfect coif and celebrate a triumphant debut for our newly sprung snow nymph, whose name turned out to be Marguerite, or Margie for short.


Making magic.


Ready to take on the world.

That's it for now. Tune in tomorrow for more on this fab weekend, and the continued Tales of Margie...