Solo Tuesdays

I love food.  I say that but really what I mean is that I love to cook. I love to cook food.  I know because I do not get the same enjoyment out of going to the local store and buying roasted beets and eating them as I do when I slow roast some golden beets for an hour and half and toss them with some lemon and balsamic and serve them with a little salad made from their own spicy green tops.  Somehow, when I make dinner I go into a moving meditation of sorts.  It used to happen to me when I would bake.  And still to this day, when I really need to process something mentally, the only thing that frees me is baking…it’s so methodical and sweet and seemingly selfless.

I didn’t always love food.  I used to view it as an enemy.  I didn’t like a lot of things and I often found that I gagged over the texture of certain foods thereby needing to eliminate them from my diet and further limiting me in my early gastronomical ways.  I used to proclaim to my friends that my greatest wish was a pill we could take to receive all of our nutrients instead of having to eat. Of course this was a long time ago and during my vegan days.  As I look back, it’s really no wonder I gagged so often on my food, I mean how much tempeh and quinoa can one person eat?  I slowly added things to my diet: cheese (a god send), dairy in general, fish, mushrooms,…meat.  I’d be lying if I said I eat everything today.  But, I do try everything, at least once.  It is my new lease on life I’ve had for the past few years.  It’s so much more liberating to say that I don’t eat lamb because I’ve tried it every way possible and unless it’s Frenched rib chops then I don’t seem to care for it.  Or, I only eat pork or beef if I cook it myself or if I know the farm it came from. Or, chicken is still a definite no!  It’s so weird and they’re so damn cute those chickens! It feels okay to say these things because now I have actually tried them.  It’s better than not liking something because of your latest neurosis…ugh!  Why do so many neurosis have to manifest themselves into these bothersome eating issues?  But I tell you what, my greatest fear is exactly what I used to dream of…a pill to have to take to receive all my nutrients instead of eating food.

How did this culinary revolution come about for me?   Well, I guess a lot of things happened at once.  I realized how unhealthy I felt because although I was vegan, I wasn’t eating any vegetables really.  I was so concerned about getting non-meat protein into me that I had forgotten about things like fat, oils, and vitamins from veggies!  I actually would eat a bag of microwave popcorn with some spoonfuls of peanut butter for dinner.  Then one day I was working at a new restaurant…and the chef put up family meal and I will never forget it.  It was roasted arctic char and vegetables.  Nothing fancy but there was no other option. And it was on a plate…with a lemon wheel just to make it look all pretty.  And I ate it.  Without missing a beat!  Ate the whole damn thing like a recovering anorexic who just found some graham crackers in the trash, and thought no one was looking so she went for it!  Oh! So! Hungry!  Soon after that, the floodgates were open! I mean, it would take me another 7 years to eat meat but…a whole new world was open.  A world where I didn’t have to commit to this monastic vegan lifestyle.  And with the addition of dairy meant  I could bake and with the addition of fish meant I could go to people’s houses for dinner or actually have the balls to open a cookbook because at least some of the recipes would apply to me. 

And so just that happened.  I started reading cookbooks and food writing with great passion. I “got it” just a little bit more when I looked at the dining section in the paper…and my memories served me well.  I remembered having seen Julia Child and Dinah Shore when I was young somewhere.  I remembered my grandmother cooking.  I remembered that my mother made her own baby food for my brother.  And more and more I found that I was happiest reading about food and inspired by reading about food.  I would lay on a towel in the park in the sun reading about food until I couldn’t take it any more and would pack my things up and head to the grocery store just to go home and cook.

My biggest inspirations were, of course, Julia Child and MFK Fisher.  I mean my god!  What joy they had for food.  Maybe it was more than that.  Maybe it was that they were these lively sexual women who also ate…and I wanted that…for myself. Reading that when Julia Child landed in France she said the air reeked of Shallots.  I would giggle.  Reading that MFK Fisher would peel a tangerine and put the segments on the radiator for a few minutes to dry them slightly before eating them because the effect was almost like candy…I died…I swear…it’s the best thing I’ve ever read.  Or, Amanda Hesser writing that she made a pact with herself that even when dining alone to, at least, always use a real cloth napkin…no matter what!  These are things that I think about on a daily basis. 

Today is Tuesday.  Tuesdays lately have been a solo day for me.  A day where Schmoo is at work and I have off.  It sounds lonely.  And truth be told, it is a few of the minutes here and there but all in all I need this time to myself.  I spend the greater portion of my day, my week, my life caring for others.  I manage a restaurant caring for about 50 employees, balancing the needs of my staff and the hundreds of guests who choose to dine with us everyday…and they expect to be cared for too.  I care for my boyfriend.  I care for our apartment  or at least I try.  I care for my friends in my spare time (not much to speak of there) and I care for my cats one of which is nearing death on a daily basis but aren’t we all? I oscillate between  the need to hang out with my friends I never see, my boyfriend I can’t get enough of, and spending quiet time with myself to write or read.  Tuesday is my day to do it all.  Last Tuesday I hung out with Linda and that was great.  Tuesday is also my meatless day and so I made us a veggie dinner of Dal with aduki beans, coconut, apples, lime-butter, ginger and scallions.  We drank Champagne (duc de romet) and sat outside for the first night of the spring!  My favorite moment  was  when I was grating fresh turmeric into the dal…Linda toasted me and said “thank you for loving food”!

Thank you Linda!

This Tuesday…I am by myself.  And it is my meatless Tuesday.  I was tempted for a split second to walk down to Cobblestone Foods and order some beets and other roasted veggies to bring home to save time but I put my foot down.  I knew that I would feel better if I made myself something.  So, armed with my desires from the latest issue of Saveur, I went to the grocery store.  I made the Fennel baked with milk.  I also had the dandelion green salad with anchovies!!!  (we’re not counting that as meat right?  I mean I pulverized the hell out of them and made them into a bloody paste and whisked them into olive oil for a dressing).  And I poured myself some Pouilly Fume (a perfect accomplice to my veggies) by Andre et Edmond Figeat “Les chaumiennes” 2008.

And I set a little spot up for myself with a place mat, a fork, a knife, a glass of wine, and...a real cloth napkin. 

And I took my time eating in solitude.  Thinking of the flavors.  Thinking about the rest of my night ahead of me. 

Thinking that I can’t wait to make Chocolate Puddle Cookies for dessert.

True Wine Connoisseur (nothing over $20)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qa2kR4h6xf4&feature=related

Ummm...Are you fucking kidding me?  This is great!  I'm watching all his reviews on you tube right now. Just wanted to share!  I actually can't top this so I've nothing more to add.

I Blame It All On James Bond

So...yeah this is a re-post, previously found on Snooth  a wine-website that I did a couple of blog entries for years ago.  But, I was flipping through some old writing and found it and it made me laugh. So, I thought I'd re-share it with you.

I Blame It All On James B

POSTED BY CAROLYN IN GUEST BLOGGERS

I blame it all on James Bond. Really I do. Because that is where it all began. My interest in vintage cars, my penchant for international travel, my fascination with gadgets I don’t know how to work, and my love of a man in a suit (I’m a sucker for a double Windsor knot and a set of sexy cuff links).

But what I’m really talking about here is my obsession with Champagne.

I think for most people, Champagne is something you celebrate or toast with. Maybe something you enjoy on New Year’s Eve and probably don’t think about again for the rest of the year. There’s the type of person who might order a glass while she looks over the menu at a restaurant, appreciating the aperitif quality of the bubbles… but she probably doesn’t fuss too much over which Champagne she is actually drinking. Then there’s me. I drink it everyday. And I care, as if the balance of the world depended on it, what it is, who made it, where it comes from (within Champagne, of course) and what’s in it.

James Bond cared too.

Most of us remember that Bond loved martinis. If you do remember his penchant for Champagne you probably know he preferred Bollinger. My favorite moment is actually in Dr. No (1962) when James shows up to have dinner with Dr. No who is trying to impress Bond by pointing out the 1955 Dom Perignon, noting that it would be a “pity to break it.” James Bond, smugly and coolly, responds that he actually prefers the ‘53 and sits down to dinner.

There are beautiful and light Champagnes that are great as starter drinks (Bouchard Inflorescence), there are complex ones that can be thought over all night (Jacques Selosse’s Subtance or Pascal Doquet 1997), there are rounder, heartier Champagnes that benefit from food (Charles Ellner Seduction 1999). I also think of Champagne as the perfect finish… lightens the sweetness of your dessert and matches perfectly with Red Velvet Cake (Pierre Gimonnet et Fils or Egly Ouriet Rose). In fact, I think it is also the perfect beverage to sneak into a movie theater on a rainy afternoon, even if you have to drink it out of plastic cups (Billecart-Salmon Brut).

James Bond taught me that you can (and should) drink Champagne anytime. And while its innate luxuriousness and sexiness is obvious (James Bond would never drink or do anything unsexy), I think there are two real lessons here:

1. Champagne is wine and has fantastic pairing capabilities and should be enjoyed equally on its own as well as explored with various food flavors.

2. Life is short. Drink Champagne. It’s sexy and will make you feel glamorous.

I consider myself lucky. I fell in love with a man who loves Champagne as much as I do. In fact, one of the first questions I ask “wine” people is “If you were a wine what would you be?” To this, my boyfriend responded Champagne. Specifically, he responded with one of my favorite Champagnes. Good answer.

Of course, it doesn’t hurt that he looks great in a suit.

HairPie

I was reading a book on writing.  Right there, that’s already weird statement.  But some of us do it, you know.   I personally am working on a book, and therefore am working on an outline and therefore a proposal.  Those are the boring things so yeah,  I was looking for inspiration.  I flipped through an old writing exercise book and I stumbled across this entry that was to write about school lunches when you are looking for material.  School Lunches, the teacher says, were this horrible zone where we revealed ourselves.  It was during school lunch that we found out who we were and who we  really went to school with.  Whether or not we had a twinkie indicated if we were okay or not.

Ummm… yeah, maybe if you went to school with Alice Waters or somebody like that. 

Where I went to school it was a different story.  Everybody did the school lunch thing which was this nasty greasy pizza square and french fries and chocolate milk every day.  I brought my lunch.  BROUGHT.  But, I was embarrassed that I did so.  So, I ate my lunch in silence and solitude in a stall in the bathroom after lunch.  Sometimes I would space it out throughout the day.  I would drink my juice after homeroom.  Eat my homemade “energy bar”  (thanks mom) after lunch and eat my apple in the halls towards the end of the day.   Maybe on some level, I knew that the food I had would be subject to ridicule but I also understood that I didn’t want to eat the food offered that most of my peers gobbled unsuspectingly.   What I do know is that lunch hour, itself, was awesome.  It was the one moment in the day (a whole hour!) where you got into fights, made up from fights, maybe did some homework, talked, and argued and read and had an whole hour to do what you pleased.  And at the end of the day, if you didn’t want someone to know who you were, you could make up an alibi or an alias or discard your food for something else so everyone would think you were normal for an hour while you were on display and then everybody would be released back to the wild to be themselves truly for the rest of the day.

I disagree that school lunches are the place where “they” find out how maladjusted you are. School lunch hours allowed you to create a new you.  I really feel that school pictures were the one area where they could catch you in the lie. You can hide from the school lunch…you can, I know.  You can pretend to be busy or in love, or have a stomach ache or something.  You can trade your stupid healthy food for some delicious processed item or you can use your allowance to buy your disgusting grease laden meal just to save face if that’s what your into.  Or starve yourself and eat in the bathroom, like I did.  I was literally fearful of the food they served in the cafeteria (and now as an adult I have learned rightly so).  But pictures?  No escape!  Oh my god.  Nothing struck fear into a kid like me more than this.  I always felt misrepresented as it was.  But nothing was a banner of truth of how much or little your parents actually loved you as the school photo.  And for me, this was a  nightmare.  We, as kids, were never on time for anything.  We were the only kids of divorced parents in our school (it was early for all that) and we were always getting shipped back and forth from one parent to the next or to or from our grandparents.  We were always in disheveled, wrinkled clothes.  We never had all our appropriate things with us.  I can’t tell you how many times I went to school on Monday from My dad’s place not knowing that I wasn’t going to be at “home” first and so I wouldn’t have the “right” notebook etc.  I was a mess.  Top that with my hair.  Add the school photo day into the mix and what would you get?…Tears!  My hair.  My god.  As an adult it causes me so much grief I think back onto being a kid and I laugh at the struggle. Seriously. 

My hair is crazy.  Imagine having thick hair.  Now imagine having coarse hair.  Now imagine having a curly perm in that thick, coarse hair.  Now, imagine that perm growing out or worse, imagine that perm only “taking” on one side of your hair…forever.  My hair is sort of curly, wavy,  thick, and it definitely has a mind of it’s own.  I get dreads after two days of not washing my hair.  If I brush it, my whole head looks like the end of a broom that has been electrocuted, so I don’t brush it ever.  If I let it go, I look like I just climbed out of the jungle.  If I spend my hard-earned money I look like a million bucks with Korean straightened hair, so long and shiny and straight but this only lasts until water or sweat find their way to the hair follicle. As a young adult I always fantasized about a man running his fingers through my hair, combing it.  The reality is that his hand would get stuck half way through.  The bigger reality is if I had just it straightened, I might actually backhand him for touching it at all.  This “peace of hair-mind” is  not something, even  at 36 years old that I can accomplish on my own…I’ve tried every brush, every blow dryer, every de-friz serum…(my boyfriend usually sings 80’s hair band songs while I try to straighten it because it just seems to get bigger and bigger) imagine a 10 year old with an even thicker version of this hair (because it has thinned out, thankfully as I’ve gotten older) and imagine having one side of your hair sticking straight out and the other flat and frizzy at the same time and standing on line for your school picture feeling that this was not fair, these people you were standing on line with were going to be flipping through the yearbook decades from now and this hair was going to represent you forever.  And you know, that if the cards were stacked against you properly you would have parents who loved you enough to do something with this ungodly head of hair…I mean how dare they let me loose with this hair.  My unorganized, distracted parents letting me loose with my skinny self, with unruly hair in pictures forever, like a wild mountain child.  This is much worse than being caught without a twinkie or worse an organic carrot bread thing your mom made with apple sauce instead of butter… 

Thanksgiving Pie

HOLY SHITBALLS!!!!  I just received a confession!  It was actually Sinclair who threw out "accidentally" my chipolte peppers.  Saboteur!!!  Please continue reading...

I don’t eat Turkey.  Even though I started eating meat a few years ago, I cannot seem to bring myself to eat birds.  They just freak me out, like eating a terradctyl or something.  So, my thanksgiving traditions have usually been about other things like the side dishes and oysters and champagne (strangely this year is I think the FIRST that involved no champagne or oysters).  But the most important part of Thanksgiving for me is the pie!  I love pie.  Actually, I should say that I love to bake pie.  I love making crust and tweaking my recipes until they are perfectly mine and now part of my tradition.  Making this pumpkin pie every year with the sounds of the Macy’s Thanksgiving day parade in the background on tv really makes me feel safe and homey no matter where I have lived when I make it.  The smell of the spices cooking signals something internal in me that it’s officially the holiday season.  This year it was a little different.  It was just the two of us…me and Schmoo.  And it was great. 

The night before I roasted the pumpkin, after getting the knife stuck in the pumpkin and panicking for about 45 minutes.  In this tear soaked time, I was not only questioning why I wanted to start the pie after working all day and night but also thinking of some of the more hilarious Thanksgiving misgivings I’ve been a part of.  I thought of a thanksgiving back in the late 70’s when my uncle and I set up a cassette recorder and placed it under the “adult table” so we could find out what was really going on.  For years afterward, we kept the secret of this tape safe and just between us.  We were convinced that one day we would be able to use “the evidence” as blackmail for something we needed desperately when the time seemed appropriate.  I thought about one of the years that Bryan and Sinclair hosted Thanksgiving and Bryan and I cooked just about everything imaginable, and he “accidentally” threw away my chipolte peppers that I was going to use for my sweet potatoes and the whole rest of the evening I was convinced of sabotage.  I thought of the year I spent at my ex-in laws and noticed that they served a dish they called a “pretzel salad” that seemed to consist of red jello, pretzels, and marshmallows all congealed together.  When I asked the grandmother about it she said she never eats it herself but always makes it because it looks so pretty on the plate.  I thought about my years of tofurkey, or carb fest dinners when I didn’t eat meat.  I thought about all the years I worked at a restaurant on Thanksgiving!  I thought about drinking whisky from a flask at the parade and watching one of the balloons come crashing down on broadway.  And I thought about the future and wondered what sort of things will be my traditions when I have my own family.  I’ve spent thanksgiving with a lot of different people.  Sometimes at my home, sometimes at others, sometimes with family, sometimes with friends, coast to coast, year to year only two things have remained the same: Schmoo and this pie.    Enjoy!

Carolyn’s Maple Pumpkin Pie (originally swiped from Martha Stewart about 10 years ago but it’s been adapted and molded over the years and now it’s mine.)

13/4 cups pumpkin pureed. (one small pumpkin roasted for about 45 minutes at 325 cut in half with olive oil rubbed on cut halves will yield 1 3/4 cups puree).

1/2 cup good quality maple syrup

1/4 cup maple sugar (available at whole foods and the like)

1/4 cup sugar (either white granulated or sugar in the raw)

1/2 cup heavy cream

1 cup low fat milk

4 eggs

2 tablespoons flour

1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

1/4 teaspoon ginger

1/4 teaspoon ground coriander seed

1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

Piecrust for two pies.  Use the second piecrust to make fall leaf cut outs to decorate the top of the pie. 

In my years of baking and sharing recipes with friends and family, I’ve learned that piecrust is extremely personal and apparently private.  I get that now, but once upon a time I did not.  One of the first years I had spent thanksgiving at Bryan and Sinclair’s, I dared to ask Bryan for his recipe for his delicious pie crust and he looked at me with an expression that I can only describe as the one that Joan Crawford wore before she hauled off and knocked Christina flat on her ass in Mommy Dearest and he pretty much said get your own damn pie crust recipe.  So…get your own piecrust recipe bitches!

1. prepare pie crust at 400 degrees for about 12 minutes. 2. Heat pumpkin in a heavy pan stirring often.  3.  Add milk and cream, stir to smooth but do not let it boil.  4.  With your mixer, beat eggs and sugars until smooth then add dry spices. Beat in flour, then add maple syrup.  5.  Beat hot pumpkin mixture into egg mixture.  It should be hot but not so hot as to cook the eggs.  6.  Carefully pour hot filling into hot pie crust. (valuable life lesson:  pour most of filling into pie crust then return pie dish to center of over rack and using a ladle pour the rest of the filling in…otherwise you end up spilling filling all over your oven as you slide the pie into center of rack).  7.  Bake at 400 degrees.  Every oven is different.  Your pie is done when the outside edge of pie filling is firm and a little puffy but the center is still jiggly.  8.  Remove pie and let cool on a rack (the pie will continue to cook or “set” outside of oven).  9. Once cool completely store in the fridge until about an hour before serving.  10.  I use leaf shaped cookie cutters to make decorative crust topping.  See photo!  11.  I serve this with fresh whipped cream (with a healthy dose of rum or cognac or whisky whisked into the cream).  

My Forking Heroes!

How many of us have dreams?  How many of us have ideas?  How many of us have tried and tried to make it happen until one day we took a look around us and realized that we weren’t having any fun trying any more?  Well I know a couple of ladies who have put the fun and inspiration back into dreams and ideas. 

Forking Fantastic hits the bookstores today people!  A heartfelt, finger-licking congrats to Tamara Reynolds and Zora O’Neill the authors of Forking Fantastic!

One of the things I absolutely loved (read: now miss dearly) about my few years living in the wild, wild west  was  that everyone had dinner parties.  Everyone has parties and they don’t take place at bars…well not always at least.  And people shop for and cook and bake…in their homes!  They bring cookies to work and talk about what they made for dinner over the weekend.  Everything’s easy breezy and all about good people chilling out over a glass of wine (or many bottles perhaps) and good times.  In that spirit my friends, here in New York, created  the now infamous “Sunday Night Dinners”  which was in its’ origins a simple gathering of fabulous friends and fabulous food…the almighty dinner party.  It slowly became known as a moveable feast, an underground restaurant of sorts, and just a plain ol’ wacky  good time…the location changed, the menu changed, the guestlist changed, but the ladies stayed true to one thing…fucking amazing food and fun!  Along the way they took pictures, they blogged about the mishaps and successes, they sent out invites with the menu that usually made you smile and always made you hungry, and they cooked…and apparently someone else (besides us) paid attention!  And now they have a book! 

Oh but this is, of course, the simplified version of the story.  The one fit for family story hour.  What some of us are priviledged to know is a little bit more of how they got here.  I don’t want to give too much away…we’ll  save that for their Vh-1 behind the story special in a few years…but what I will tell you is a lot about how awesome I think they are and a little about how magical life is.

See…one day I started working as a manager of this restaurant you may have heard of, The Tasting Room.  A, now sadly closed, restaurant in which the lives of all the employees who came and went will forever, sickly be intertwined due to our passion, loyalty, and integrity and absolute love we had for this place.  And one day, this lady…a lively, redheaded story teller was totally holding court at Family meal…telling a story and holding everyone captivated whether  they realized it or not, because she was so fucking loud.  You could actually hear her laugh from down the street…and I thought she was hilarious.  We kept eyeing each other in that way that two people realize they know each other from a previous life do.  Are you an actor?  Are you a singer?  Are you a dancer?  Where did you work before?  Oh, did you ever work here?  What about there?  No?  How about there?  And finally.  Finally…we tracked it back to almost 10 years earlier.  Was it really that long ago?  Maybe 9.  And we figured out that we worked with each other for about 2 months in a place that shall go nameless because the scars it left on us are already indelible and unforgettable enough (I will tell you that in the 90’s in NYC almost everybody spent time in this place and it was commonly referred to as BootCamp).  And we bonded over hideous memories of our past work experience.  The funny thing is that in the 10 years between we both traveled and moved and worked in a million different places to only land in the same place…working at a restaurant together with a ton of creative ideas and trying to see which one would stick.  She told me about her Sunday Night Dinners.  Often when we worked together, she would talk to me about the menu planning or some funny story about what happened at last week’s dinner. I talked to her about writing about food and wine.  I shared with her some of my ideas for stories and blogs.  She told me about some of her ideas for food shows and guidebooks.  But mostly, we told stories, we drank, and we laughed.  And then one day she quit.  She went to go be a wine buyer. She had a French speaking assistant, I’ll never forgive her for that!  We stayed in touch.  I went to Sunday night dinners.  The instructions are to bring the cash donation and a bottle of wine.  Marisa and I showed up with two brown grocery bags full of vino and we had already been drinking champagne all day…it wasn’t pretty but we had fun.  Then one day Tamara  came in to see us at The Tasting Room, in the afternoon before we were open and she walked into the office and announced she and Zora were getting their book deal.  “And now all we have to do is write it.”  And with that, I thought.  Life is great.  If you do something that is fun and inspiring people will enjoy it and if you do it your own unique way…there is always a story.  And I truly believe that in life my favorite people are the ones who always know that there is a story and they can’t wait to tell it to you.  And most importantly, they laugh at their own jokes!

So here’s to Zora and Tamara!  Here’s to ya’ll getting over to their website and/or amazon and purchasing the book right now.   And here’s to genius redheads stickin’ together!  And mostly, here’s to dreams and ideas!  

On another funny note:  the first restaurant that Tamara and I worked at many moons ago was also the place where the owner , knowing I was a writer, asked me if I wouldn’t like to have Ruth Reichl’s job one day and write about food and wine (Ruth was at the time the Ny times food critic and of course went on to write hilarious books and is the editor in chief at Gourmet).  I laughed.  See, at the time, I wrote “serious” drama.  I have since met Ruth and not only think she’s a genius and way cool but would fucking kill for her job.  How’s that for laughing at your own jokes?

http://forkingfantastic.com

Peaches and Cream

It's been a funny year for me.  People I know have come to live in NYC, people I haven't seen for a really long time have visited NYC and some really important people in my life have left NYC.  One came back.  One is thinking about coming back.  And one just left.  Being a New Yorker myself, whenever people leave this city (including myself a few times) I always think of the passage in the Allan Gurganus book "Plays Well with Others" where the narrator says (die hard fans please forgive my loose quotation here)..."there are four days in the life of a new yorker.  the day you first see it.  the day you move there.  the day you move away.  and the day you move back."

This, of course, pertains to non-natives.  But,  I'm just sayin'...seriously.  It is hard to live here.  It is hard to not live here.  But, sometimes you just gotta go.  And people say oh, things will stay the same, we won't change, the city will always be here, we'll always be friends.  And I'm here to tell you that is not always the case.  People change.  New York changes.  We move on, we forget, we don't answer the phone or return that email and then all of a sudden you realize it's been a week or a month or a year and you loose touch with someone you love.  I mean especially in the restaurant business, we work day in day out with people for years and the second they leave it's as if it was all a dream.  But.  Every once in a while.  Every now and again, you get caught between the moon and New York City, you meet someone and you know in your shriveled black heart, down in your little broken toes, you know that you will know that person forever.  

And I know that at some point.  Like, when I'm 103 and she's 91 that Megan Uber and I will still be stuffing our faces with peanut butter filled pretzels and looking for the next bottle of Champagne.  I mean, we'll have to buzz for the nurses to bring it.  And Uber's got a small bladder so we'll have to have the catheter changed first but there are things you know.

So, yeah.  I know this is supposed to be a food/drink blog.  And it is. But that's just it for me.  People are food and wine.  Not in a soylent green sort of way.  But, for me all of my memories of people get all twisted up with my memories of food and where we were when we ate something or what bar we had that drink in.  And this is how it is for every body in my life.  If you mention some one to me, I almost instantly think of a food or beverage I associate with them.  I never realized it until I began working on a book about my food and beverage memories but that's how it is.  

And when I started thinking about Uber leaving and thinking about obvious things like how much I'd miss her, I started thinking less about her (sorry babes) and more about the food and drinks I connect her with in my memories.  Well, okay not less.  I take that back.  I'm trying to say that a lot of my memories of our good times co-star some things and it's not about that party or that joke or that song or that book.  I mean, that's obvious.  We're good friends we got that shit too (last day at TTR, love sticks, shorty got low, lolita).

So because I like to write about food and wine and booze...and because I will miss you...I do miss you, I wanted to also write about you.  Because I know things, Uber.   Like:  the day I knew we were clearly starring in our own tv series in our brains was years ago.  I walked into the office and asked very casually "what's up peaches?" and you replied very casually "what's up cream?"  That was it.  I was like, who the hell does this bitch think she is?  I mean, sure, there was the fact that we would race to see who could spin around faster in her swivel chair, or the fact that you would get in a cab and go pick me up a lobster roll all the way downtown, or compile lists of late night restaurants without batting an eye.

I also know that I was there the first time you tried an oyster.  The FIRST oyster!  I love that day.  I love that you love oysters now!  See, now you go try to have champagne and oysters and see who the hell you think of, huh?  Me.  That's right.  Yeah, whatever!  Sure, you'll think of some dude too but at some point you will get all tipsy and you'll trick someone into ordering a bottle of Selosse and everything will get all fuzzy as the flashback approaches and you'll think of my shiny red hair and tell some charming story about how hilarious and pretty I am...I know.

I mean, really.  Brighton Beach...I think of love sticks and that dude who had the chest hair growing in the pattern of a bulletproof vest.  I think of eating cherries and melting chocolate covered almonds while drinking Fontsainte rose.  Delicious.

Christmas, I think of poo-lar bear pooping little black licorice jelly beans on the floor and I think of the fact that I totally tried to pass off the fact that I hadn't put anchovies in the deviled eggs or pork in the greens that I gave to your brother!  oops.  What do you want from me?  I was drunk.  It's christmas!  Baby Jesus, the Grinch, poo-lar bear and shots of Applejack.  C'mon ya'll.  And for the record...Uber's brother does not believe in dinosaurs so he pretty much had it coming okay?

I think of snack packs of dried fruit from that magical mystery place you always tell me the name of but I can never remember and I'll never have them again because I can never remember the name. Damn you!

I think of our pretend slumber party where we were just going to drink champagne and eat ice cream.  And I think of Adulterated Ice Cream flavors.

I think of our other pretend slumber party: the coat check at work.  I love that place!  There's always cookies and mini-peanut butter cups, bananas and apples, cherries (when seasonally appropriate of course), coffees, teas (iced for me and hot for you and sascha), yogurt, leftover family meal, bagels, and how whenever I drink the kombucha drinks I get all hyper and crazy. Or whenever I eat cupcakes that Linda brings I get all hyper and crazy.

I think of our almost slumber party where we waited so long for a certain cigar smoking italian wine importer to leave the restaurant that we were passing out from exhaustion and hunger and all we had to eat was a banana and some crumbs of potato chips that we shared.

I think of our real slumber party that began with oysters and mussels that we had been dreaming about all day and ended with shots of jameson's on my shag rug.

I think of gummie candies and crab chips.  No wait, that's boo.  No wait, that's you too!

I think of the el diablo and the grape smash and how years have gone by and we still want them! And I think that we're at the end of concord grape season and I don't even know if Ricardo made any grape smashes this year?!

I was at Mas farmhouse last night.  And I looked over at the corner table and I thought of Austin's bday.  And I thought of the fact that I climbed over Schmoo and Austin to threaten to kill you with a fork.  Because?  Because.  Because, you said you didn't like corn.

What can I say lady?  I'm not gonna say "don't change".  I'm not gonna say "you'll be back".  But, I do miss ya.  And I hope you have fun.  Or had fun.  Whatever, isn't Boston like 3 blocks long?  Aren't you done with it yet?  Just kidding.  

But remember one thing lady, save room for love. 

PS  seriously what the fuck is the name of that place with the dried fruit?