Bread and Butter

Good bread and good butter go together. They are, as James Beard says, one of the perfect marriages in gastronomy, and they never fail to cheer me. The breakfast of cereal and milk and yogurt will never hold a candle to the simple morning meal of bread and butter with coffee. If you have the opportunity to partake in this perfect breakfast, by all means, do.  Because, you know, it's the little things.

Cowboy Bear Ninja

The winter in New York has been shockingly long, but today we saw our first sun. It was the first day I walked outside and really felt happy, like I didn't need a coat, and could just focus on the fact that I was out of the apartment, breathing fresh air. I ate leftovers for dinner - Greek food I made on Tuesday night - and settled into bed with a hot toddy. Heaven.

I'd like to share my recipe for this hot toddy, because it's the icing on my Thursday night. We got this recipe from our friends Adrian, Miguel and Matt. This hot toddy is called the Cowboy Bear Ninja.

1.5 shot bourbon (we like Jameson here at home)
1 tablespoon of cream honey
1 green tea bag (or chamomile)
kettle of hot boiling water

Pour the whiskey into a large mug. Fill with hot water. Stir in the generous spoonful of honey. Last, add the teabag and let steep.

This, my friends, is hello and goodnight.

It's a "Shoo"-in.

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I'll be attempting a few audience-pleasers in the kitchen. My father gave the Pennsylvania Dutch to me, so I'm going to surprise him with a home-made wet-bottom shoo fly pie. I have a feeling I won't have any problems with the flies, but I might be "shoo"-ing away a few humans.

R(ea(t)d This.

This book is the key to my destiny. It is the most inspirational text I've picked up in years. Not since oh, geez, I don't know, my first reading of Katherine Hepburn's autobiography? have I been this inspired. Well that isn't true, and it isn't the point. I would like to buy a copy of this book for everyone I know.

Moo Cluck

Moo Cluck vegan chocolate chip cookies are not the same as regular chocolate chip cookies. There are no eggs or dairy products in the ingredients, and even though it says there is real chocolate in there somewhere, neither of us could figure out where. We ate them anyway, after big bowls of really delicious roasted red pepper soup and some little grilled cheese sandwiches that were mostly just grilled spelt bread. I made my cookies extra vegan by eating them with a big mug of cold milk.

I haven't been cooking.

My colleague told me during his first year of teaching he lost 20 pounds. "I would go all day without eating running from place to place, getting this or that done," he said. Then by the end of the day he would be so hungry he would devour an entire fillet of salmon, a pot of rice, and finally get to work on a half gallon of Edy's pumpkin ice cream before bed. By the end of the week, he'd cleaned out Gristedes' entire stock of the autumn-flavored dessert, his body under such a hyperthyroidic stress-trance he seemed to burn twice the calories of what he consumed while consuming them. "That stuff is goood," he said, laughing gruffly with a vestige of laringitis.

Society Coffee

This is the story of New York City. One comes home to an empty apartment and goes out to a coffee shop named after the effort of people who are lonely to become un-lonely -- "Society."

I tried eating alone at first. I tried to cook dinner for myself. WNYC talked to me, loudly, as I sat at the kitchen table and read the rest of last weekend's New York Times, scooping up bits of egg with bread, then dipping bread in wine, then in olive oil, then eating sherbet out of the container. It was so boring.

Le Monde avec Mom

I am less embarrassed by my mother than I ever was. It must be around that time of my life. And of all the things she does that are impressive, this weekend kind of took the cake.

I just moved to Harlem, and despite, or perhaps because of, my Mom's own personal aversion to germs, I was granted a free floor scrub and shower scouring, as well as various hardware installations and a week of groceries and beer. I tell you once my Mother gets going I can't intervene; I have tried. So n return for her efforts I conceded her only request – that I attend my first Catholic mass in ten years, and afterwards, of course, accompany her to breakfast.

We brunched at Le Monde on the UWS because it was close to the church and I was getting tired of the usual Morningside breakfast fare: Nussbaum, which I never go to; Tom’s Restaurant, which is touristy and unappetizing and packed with college students; and that other place, I don’t know the name, but which is on the corner of 115^th and Broadway and has delicious French toast. I normally would have picked that one, but I had never been to Le Monde, and it was still early, and one should always try what one doesn’t know about, so we went, and at 9:40 we were the second patrons in the entire place, so I got excited thinking we’d actually eat soon and be on our way back to the park in time for a gander at the farmer’s market.

But as the waitress poured coffee and chatted to us, I looked cautiously over my mother's shoulder and spotted danger. The mother/father/daughter trio beyond us, the only other people in the place, were looking around with hungry eyes. “Just so you know,” the waitress said, “they are making fresh hollandaise, so that’s why your breakfast will take a little longer. It’ll be fresh, but it’ll be a little bit.” She had a voice like Kathy Griffith’s.

“That’s ok,” we said to her, because that is what you say, and she went away and we went back to guzzling coffee and fidgeting with various table items.

Ten more minutes passed and nothing. Ten more. Halfway through our third cups of coffee we had a game of speculation going good as well as a hypersensitive bout of the giggles. “The cook never showed up,” Mom said, setting the jittering coffee cup back down on her saucer. “He isn’t here.” “This better be worth it.” I stared jealously over my shoulder at the plates of bagels and lox being consumed by four blonde tweens and their mother at an outdoor table, my stomach growling. “We should have ordered something non-hollandaise,” I said, watching the team sleepily gathering their bags and heading off to do whatever mothers and daughters looking that happy and healthy and sated do on Sunday mornings after they've been properly nourished.

When the eggs Florentine did arrive, it was all over for me. All of it. It was like getting a much-needed haircut on the house, or like taking the wrong exit and having a fit only to find out you are exactly where you needed to be in the first place. The eggs were huge and puffy and beautifully poached, their whites soft and whipped back, as if dropped like batter from a spoon. The yolks, when gently cut into with the side of a fork, ran out perfectly over the spinach and English muffin, which was buttered and toasted and still maintaining soft whiteness. The hash browns hadn’t a speck of grease, but were just crispy and seasoned with something aromatic but not overbearing. I saved half of the meal to eat for dinner tonight, after my mother left me. “After this Florentine is gone,” I said to her as we gathered our things to leave, “I am back to being my own Mom.” And now I am. And somehow I’m certain I’ll never eat Eggs Florentine that good again.

The Recipe, straight from Dad

Best Bloody Mary:

In a tall mixed drink glass, fill half to two-thirds with ice cubes. Add good vodka to about one-third level in the glass. Add V-8 with full sodium content (not the Low Sodium variety) to within about a half inch of the top of the glass. Add about a tablespoon of lemon (not lime) juice from either a real lemon or from a Realemon. Shake about twenty drops of McIlhenny's tabasco sauce, several shakes of salt, and about twenty twists on the pepper mill, with it set to medium fine grind.

Now shake shake shake your Mary. Add celery sprig, and don't drink more than two of these in one night.

not getting work done, part I

My father insists his Bloody Mary recipe is a secret ("never order a Bloody Mary out, it will be less than half as good as this"), but I will tell you: Stoli, Tabasco, fresh ground pepper, and whatever you do, do not add Worcestershire sauce.

makin pretty food, or makin food pretty?

Want the recipe? LMK.

best breakfast cabbage

Breakfast, to me, is anything that makes you stop feeling hungry enough to get on with your day. Still it is usually a trial. I am picky. Cereal, for instance, has maintained a highly unattractive status for many years. Oatmeal and its implied fix-ins are often too much trouble. Fruit is ok, but not by itself. Yogurt is good with fruit, but there isn't any in the house.

Skipping coffee altogether, which usually entertains me during my indecisive breakfast session in front of the open fridge, I decided on a half head of red cabbage and some light cream. Quartered the cabbage, then quartered it again, then sauteed in butter over medium heat with one side of each quarter down. After about 5 minutes flipped them so the other side hit the pan. Poured in the cream, covered it, lowered the heat very low, so that it maintained a gentle simmer, and cooked for 15 minutes. Sprinkled with salt and fork-served the wilty leaves into the mouth. Braised breakfast, this was called. Braised best breakfast.

and things on which to spread it

Breads n' Spreads looks on the outside like one of those clinics you can find in a strip mall somewhere, flanked by a Subway and a Baskin Robbins, shoved in beside a Christian bookstore; a clinic lacking insignia save for the hyphenated name of the doctor printed on the door. For those who know the truth about it, though, it actually serves excellent lunch.

After today I write in praise of Brian's turkey and provolone on toasted bread with red pepper spread, and the cold potato leek soup I ordered, which tasted like a hybrid of what I imagine ranch dressing and pure vegetable broth would be if: 1) they were mixed well, 2) if the vegetable broth was made from the juice of the crispest, cleanest, freshest cucumbers and zucchini in the countryside, and 3) if the whole thing at the end was sprinkled delicately with chives.

Brian's sandwich also came with an herbed penne salad, featuring black olives, sundried tomatoes and prettily chopped red onions. My soup came with a warm roll, which I had to eat simply because I haven't received a warm roll with anything I've ordered out, I don't think, since I was eight. We drank rounds of tall glasses of cold Snickerdoodle coffee, trying to bite the ice cubes that floated at the top. The ice really did look delicious; the cubes were made of coffee instead of water, and looked like big bobbing blocks of chocolate. All food was served on the kind of ware you only see in Anthropologie catalogues.

a cement hole with indoor yelling

Moving day is bad for everyone. Moving day with full-stop traffic in 90 degree car with no air conditioning is worse. After enough moving days, you become prepared for it all. The tribulations come less as a shock.

What I was not ready for were Pennsylvanians on the interstate. In New York, if you are standing at the Metrocard machine and your debit card just won't swipe, and you turn around and look whoever it is behind you -- the first person in the traffic jam you've caused-- in the face and give an earnest "I'm sorry," they will give you a nod back and say "it's ok." If you put your flashers on in Pennsylvania, however, or linger in the left lane, they'll flip you the bird, man. They will. It's rather shocking.

It is my fault, of course, that I packed so haphazardly as to allow for a jar of minced garlic to spill all over some box in the backseat. It is my fault that, while driving, I decided to stick my hand back there and try to figure out where it was, which of course led me to find it and then freak. out. when I pulled my hand back and it was covered in garlicy goo, and which of course was the reason that I slowed down in the left lane to a creepy 40, and swerved a bit, too. I know, I am ashamed.

The lessons to be taken away from this are many, including the food-related thing that it's important to take your time -- with cooking, with reading recipes, with sharing meals, with eating them. And when packing to leave a place, keep the minced garlic behind.

Aromatic vegetables etc.

This week's recipe photos turned out great.

tender corners, shaped like washington state

A lot of people have moved to Washington in the past eight years. The 2000 and 2008 census reflect a near 600,000 individual accession, versus Pennsylvania's 167,227 and New York's measly 513, 981.

Sartre's food blog

Our most basic pleasure drives: food and sexual gratification. Thomas Aquinas understood that these drives are in themselves wholesome because they're aimed at what is basically necessary for human life. But Kafka and Nietzsche spoke outwardly of their aversions to sex. And yet, were they not "generative?"

It seems to me there are two ways of being in the world -- I have seen it enough -- those who are born to romp and to eat, and those who find alternative nourishment; those who "regenerate" by contemplation, by asserting a voice into a crowd. It used to seem impossible to exist in both groups when I first came to New York. I became thin and severe, a pilchard sort of fish. But then I found Sartre's cookbook.

a word to the wise.

Omelets should assist rather than hinder the salience of egg. Do not even think of adding meat; it is out of the question. Vegetables, on the other hand, belong to another family entirely, with a different leader. Their leader is neither better nor brighter than the leader of eggs and meat; the two are just on opposite ends of the spectrum. When we have tried in the past to have two leaders within the same family within the same omelet, it ended in bad flavor. Again, so did today's chicken-and-egg experiment, save for the serendipitous pun.

some ideas you have when you're delirious are actual good ideas.

As I write this I'm half delirious, like Kathy Fagan writing "Little Bad Dream Charm." I haven't ingested anything all day except a few teaspoons full of bittersweet powdered cocoa, and two Dixie cups of white wine. So now I'm sitting here, heart pounding, with a multigrain boule, made into a delicious sandwich with 2% Fage, sliced tomatoes, oregano and olive oil. This sandwich is seriously in the top 5 best ideas I've ever had while out of my mind. Do not gchat or call for the next 30 minutes.

taking food pictures less seriously

Exhibit A: last night's dinner.

There is only so much to a picture of bouchons au thon, you know what I mean, or like, chocolate cupcakes. A premium photograph of a chocolate cupcake makes the cupcake look appealing, resulting in a desire or a small unfettered anxiety about finding said dessert and inhaling it. But what does this cupcake taste like? Yes, I mean the one in your photograph, oh pristine food-photographing blogger. I have seen beautiful chocolate cupcakes before, and I've made them from your recipe, and they tasted like foam, or one time oatmeal. This should never happen and it proves the flaw.

I would rather interpret the quality and taste of food by how it's been written about, versus the aesthetic appeal of the photograph per se. There is something to be said for people who can do this, who can write engagingly about making/eating food, hence making that food seem irresistible. I believe this recipe really worked for them because they are able to recount the feelings they had as they were eating it and making it. Julia Child has done this. Molly Wizenberg has done this. I have respect.

My calculated declination in food photography over the next few weeks will be in effort to improve my own food writing, starting......now, featuring (above) shoddy photograph of what I ate for dinner last night (post haste), including blurry background glimpses of the disheveled laptop-centered life I lead, not failing to include the occasional cameo of a used Q-tip.