I haven't been working so it makes me feel important to meet people for breakfast. Today Lyle, Tabitha, Phil and I met at Cafe Cluny. It's a great spot for breakfast, a lot of people are having meetings, you might see a celebrity and the food is good. I had two eggs over easy, rye toast and a side of French fries.
Artifacts of the 20th Century hosted the first show by the Labor Pool (formerly known as Bob Lawton's Problems) yesterday afternoon. Everyone rocked out while enjoying porchetta from Porchetta.
Tabitha, Phil and I went to see Mike Bribiglia's one man show, My Girlfriend's Boyfriend at the Barrow Street Theater. It was funny and heart-breaking and air conditioned which was nice on yesterday's hot day. Afterwards we went to Pearl Oyster Bar for dinner. I always feel like a little bit of a sucker when I go here, it's kind of touristy and always very crowded, and expensive, but I have to admit it's really good. It's the kind of food I could eat everyday. Lobster was served simply, boiled with some drawn butter on the side and a dish of creamy corn pudding. Dessert was a butterscotch praline sunday.
It's really satisfying when you can make a meal using stuff you already have lying around. I had some pizza dough left from a failed pizza party, tomatoes, red onion and red pepper left over from an Israeli salad I made the other day, and some ricotta I had in the fridge. It was a great combo: the tomatoes were sweet after being cooked, the onions and peppers had some zing and the ricotta was creamy. I'm proud of this one and ate the whole thing by myself.
Today was my last day of chemo for a while. I have a few week break and then we'll do some scans to see how effective the treatment has been. It was a great day. After leaving the hospital, Phil and I went to the New York Botanical Gardens in the Bronx and then headed to Yankee Stadium to meet Tracy and Tony. We had steak sandwiches from NYY Steak and garlic fries. They were both great, the sandwich was on a Weck roll with caraway seeds and salt and came with horseradish sauce. We had fun joking around and the Yankees won.
Ruby, Leeann and I said good bye to Savoy last night. The restaurant is closing after a long run and turning itself into something else. It's hard to let it go but it's for the best and hopefully the new place will be even better. We started by filling up on bread: fava bean toast, bread with farm butter and honey, and a trio of dips.
Onions with blue cheese and onion ash.
Dandelion greens with a poached egg.
French Fries
Tilefish with fiddleheads in lemon sauce.
And three desserts: creme brulee, walnut ice cream and rhubarb tart
Roz invited Lori, Noah, Eli and I to the daytime premiere of Kung Fu Panda 2 at the Ziegfeld. The movie takes place in China, so afterwards I was in the mood for Chinese food and since we were uptown Shun Lee seemed like a good idea. I like lunch specials. Soup dumplings were the appetizer, followed by Hunan chicken and pineapple for dessert. It was terrible (the food not the movie).
Today was the penultimate day of chemo in the first section (eighth week of nine before surgery). Kelly came with me, nothing exciting happened, but we went for lunch at ABC Kitchen afterwards. It was between lunch and dinner so the menu was very limited but it only made me want to go back to really give it a try. We had beets with yogurt, roasted carrots with sour cream, pizza with goat cheese and spinach and a plate of cookies.
Andrea had some leftover turnips and cauliflower from her recent appearance on The CBS Morning Show so she gave them to me. We used a recipe from CitM for the turnips and roasted the cauliflower with red pepper flakes. There is a cool setting on my camera that makes parts of the frame look out of focus.
It's nice to get out of the city. Mindy, Susan, Tony and I drove up to the Dia Art Foundation in Beacon to see the art there. My favorite were the gigantic Richard Serra curved steel structures, but the whole place was fun to be in. Afterwards we drove up to Hudson for lunch at Baba Louie's and shopping at the great antique and modern stores lining Warren Street. I had pizza with turkey sausage and pineapple.
Congratulations to my good friend Andrea who won the James Beard Award for Best chef in the Southeast yesterday. She also brought me some eggs and lettuce from North Carolina so I made an egg salad sandwich for lunch. I added Duke's mayonnaise, mustard from Blue Ribbon Market and tarragon. Ruby made a delicious, healthy dinner while we watched the awards streaming on my computer. We started with a salad with Shiso leaves and seaweed.
Perry Street is one of the nicest places in New York to have a meal. It was a sunny Saturday afternoon, so the modern corner room was bright. We could see boats cruising up and down the Hudson River. They have a three-course Spring prix fixe menu for $28 that is a great deal. I've lost some weight recently so I've been trying to eat food to fatten me up which is as fun as it sounds. We started with a spring pea crostini. From the menu I had an arugula salad and hamburger with fries. Dessert was a warm chocolate cake (I also had two Cokes). Afterwards we saw Lucy in her school's production of Oliver! She was great as a member of Fagin's gang.
Sometimes things work out perfectly. On the way over to the Washington Square Diner I knew I wanted a Belgian waffle, but not a whole one. Luckily, Kevin was thinking the same thing... and he wanted his eggs over easy and sausage, patty preferably. We split the waffle, eggs and sausage. It was a perfect combination of savory and sweet.
I made Jonathan Waxman's asparagus for dinner while admiring my new Sea Vees. When Tony claims that he "discovered" them, remind him you saw them here first!
The weather in New York was perfect today. I hung out in Washington Square Park reading the paper before going over to Kevin's for a meal based on a famous breakfast sandwich. After some laying around I bought the new David Kilgour and the Heavy Eights record at my favorite music store, Other Music and had lunch with Susan at The Noho Star. We shared two classics: Caesar salad and Fried Chicken salad.
