FLORENCE PRIME MEAT MARKET

Andrea is in town again for the New York Wine and Food Festival. Last night she made steaks for Noel, Phil and I. The meat was from Florence Prime Meat Market where all the beef is "prime". I had leftover steak for breakfast: she made hash using the leftover steak, potatoes and sizzled herbs. Then Noel and I reorganized my tool closet.

UPDATE

The past couple of weeks have been a little rough. Phil and I went yesterday for one of my last chemotherapy treatments. My white blood count was too low to continue so they gave me this week off to recuperate. I'll inject myself in the stomach with neupogen which will help my bone marrow produce more cells, which will ready me for the last round. It's sort of fun doing the injection, the needle is very skinny so you can barely feel it. If everything goes well, I'll do one more week next week and I will have completed both of my nine week cycles.

FRITTATA

Mott showed up at my door this morning with a bag of groceries from the farmers market. Neither of us really knew how to make a frittata but we figured it out, and this turned out great.

He sautéed some sausage and bacon from Flying Pigs Farm. Saving some of the grease he cooked up some spinach and leeks then added six eggs and container of Benecalorie which is a supplement that adds calories to food. We finished it off with some cheddar and parmesan cheese grated on top. We cooked it on the stove top for six or seven minutes but it was still runny. After one or two minutes under the broiler, the top browned and the sides puffed up and curled away from the pan. It looked great and tasted even better.

RED MEAT

I haven't eaten red meat for a while and really wanted some. After describing to Andrea what I had in mind she thought I'd like beef tataki, but since we were already at Eataly having lunch, we decided to do it in an Italian style. Andrea made a crust of dried and powdered porcini mushrooms then seared the steak. The cut was called tagliata. Then she made a sauce with some tiny tomatoes, red onion and sherry vinegar. It gave it that acidic bite and hit the spot perfectly.

PHIL

Phil is a great friend. We met in ninth grade. When I moved to New York in 1989 I moved in with him. We shared a studio apartment. It was a classic tenement: seven flight walk-up, the bathub was in the kitchen, the toilet was in the hallway in a closet. Phil slept on a foldout futon and I slept two feet away on a fold up chair we called the Blue Guy. We continued to live together with various roommates in a number of different apartments in Brooklyn and Manhattan throughout the nineties. When I bought my own place, I moved two blocks from Phil. We’ve worked together on commercials and his film Junebug.

When I found out I had cancer Phil was there to support me. He’s been closely involved in every decision I’ve made about my treatment. Since he’s so smart, he’s able to explain medical things that the doctors are unclear about. Phil’s goofy. He flirts with the nurses and makes the time at chemotherapy fly by. He’s been to all my big sessions, which are the hardest, sitting for hours on end. Even though he’s the busiest guy I know, he’s found a way to make his schedule work so he can sit in a room with me while chemicals get pumped into my veins. Or arrange arrange for David Kilgour to play at my recent birthday party. Or sit with me in the hospital while recovering from surgery watching American Idol. I picture Hollywood bigshots furious that they can’t get in touch with him because he’s sitting in a hospital room with me cracking jokes, even though it hurts my stitches.

He’s the best friend a guy could ask for. I love him.