Jetprop to Eat

The eating orgy continues: this latest time in San Antonio and then Truth or Consequences, New Mexico.

Jerry had a conference in San Antonio and I tagged along in his new jet prop. Jerry and a partner acquired a Piper Mirage converted to a jet prop, so it zipped right along, especially with the killer tail wind we had.

We got to San Antonio in about five hours flying time. We stopped in Arizona for a very undistinguished lunch, and were back in the plane in no time, getting to San Antonio before sundown. Very civilized.

Once we checked into the Crockett Hotel, Jerry and one of his coworkers and I set out to find dinner. We were really hungry so settled on a place a couple of blocks from the hotel. I ordered boneless pork chops, mashed potatoes and mixed vegetables. The vegetables were not overcooked and the pork chops were just a tad overcooked, but we survived.

The next day Jerry had a class to teach and I went out to explore. One of my goals was to find non Tex-Mex restaurants, and I succeeded pretty well. We had dinner one night at a Mediterranean restaurant which did a good job. For the life of me I can't remember my main entree, but the Caesar salad was quite good, with a very good dressing, crisp romaine and sadly, one lone anchovy.

Another day when I wandered off on my own I hit the Blue Star Art Center, which is also home to the Blue Star Bicycle Shop and the Blue Star Brewery. At the bike shop I bought a t-shirt and checked out their stock. Lots of fixies and cruisers and nice staff.

I hit the Brewery for lunch. The food was typical pub fare, but the Brewery did their own beers, though I passed. The bicycles hanging from the ceiling added to the decor.

The eating highlight in San Antonio came courtesy of the restaurant, Feast. The restaurant was decorated very starkly, with white tables and clear plastic chairs. A glowing reviewer said he (or she?) felt they could have been in New York or San Francisco. I would have to disagree because the lighting was way too bright. That may be about the only negative thing I could say about Feast. Take it down a notch, please.

The menu, while a bit cutesy, held some real treasures. It was divided in sections with such headings as "melty" and "grilly." We decided to try something from every category except large plates, figuring it would be more fun to have tastes of a lot of different things. I think we made a good decision.

We started off with a pear and onion salad with raspberry vinaigrette. Normally I steer away from sweet food, but this was definitely a winner. We went on to Mac and cheese with garlic breadcrumb topping. Okay, but not standout. Our starchy standout came in the way of homemade Yukon gold potato chips with a bleu cheese bechamel. We also had grilled brussel sprouts and tuna tartare with pomegranate seeds.

Dessert for me were mini churros with lemon-lavender pot de creme. And good coffee.

We knew we would be flying into a headwind on the way home, so we decided we would pop in to Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, and visit my friend Kathleen.

I hit the internet to find a place to stay and had no idea, that I had once again, hit the jackpot. Sierra Grande Lodge and Spa is truly an oasis in what appears to be a depressed little town. The owner's son fetched us from the airport and delivered us to a very western lodge full of New Mexico and new agey touches. Included in our lodging was the opportunity to soak in one of the hot springs tub.

We met Kathleen for dinner at the local upscale Italian restaurant. All of the other diners were guests at the lodge: I have a feeling it keeps them in business. I ordered something that was unfortunately better sounding than it was: pasta with various vegetables in a cream sauce. It had far more cream sauce, which was overly gloppy and pretty well tasteless, than vegetables. Jerry seemed to fare better with a more traditional eggplant Parmesan.

But the soak made up for all of it. Kathleen had been told by her doctor that soaking was not a great idea for her, but she decided to give it a try anyway. She happily reported to me the next day that she suffered no ill effects.

We spent more than an hour lolling in delightful, delicious hot water, talking and relaxing.

We left town too early to see much of Truth or Consequences, but with the lodge, I think we hit a very wonderful highlight.

Back at home, I'm trying to eat a more reasonable diet. This whirlwind of traveling, which began in October, has definitely taken its toll on my waistline and my energy. Time to clean up my act before I hit the road in February...

New York, Walking, Dancing, Squab and Soujouk

And so the eating continues.
Just back from a handful of days in New York. Official reason for going was to attend the Golden Festival, an annual overload of Balkan music and dance. But as with most of my travels of late, eating was an important part of the itinerary.

Jerry and I arrived early Wednesday morning after taking the red eye. We knew a nap was in the offing but first there was a task at hand: cooking 40 pounds of soujouk, a Turkish beef sausage.

Last year Paul, our host was the soujouk chef de cuisine, but since he was in Las Vegas for the Consumer Electric Show, the job was left to his wife Nancy, Jerry and me. We hauled out Nancy's crab pot and set to work.

We crammed as much sausage as humanly possible into the pot and waited for it to boil. Once it finally did, we waited the prescribed 10 minutes for it to be done. Then, that batch went into the sink where the next task was to pull off the skin while the next batch cooked.

After the first batch Jerry discovered that if you immediately doused the sausage with cold water the skin practically slid off by itself. It was incredibly satisfying for the casing to just peel off the sausage.

Three batches later we were done, and we loaded the sausages into coolers, topped them off with ice and then Jerry and I headed to our basement room for a nap.

Not sure what the rest of the week would bring, we decided that night would be dinner at our favorite Park Slope restaurant, Al di La. Al di La takes no reservations, so we headed down to 5th Avenue to arrive in time for its 6 pm opening.

We were quickly seated at the same table we sat at last year, and once again, I had no idea what wine to order. I'm pretty good at California wines. I've even expanded my repertoire beyond Napa and Sonoma into Lodi and the central coast, but Italy is still a complete mystery. Nancy suggested a bottle she had tasted during a previous visit, and she picked a good one. It was a nice peppery red with an interesting aftertaste, that admittedly took a bit of getting used to, but after a few sips and a little air, went down easily.

Though on any other day of the year I don't eat beef, I generally make an exception at Al di La and I order the medallions of beef liver. I pretty much assumed I would do so again, but the specials were enticing. One was a squid risotto and the other squab with wild mushrooms. I had never had squab before,and with a little coaxing, I went for it. I was not disappointed. The plate was an orgy of richness: delicious meat surrounded by more rich mushrooms. I don't think I will order squab again because I'm not sure it could live up to the wonderful dish I experienced.

No trip to Al di La would be complete without at least one order of Malfatti-- a Swiss chard dumpling filled with a blend of ricotta and herbs, topped with fried sage. We always order it and are never disappointed. We also shared a farro salad. It was okay, not my favorite, but Nancy loves it.

We decided to skip dessert because I had brought cookies with me. We went home and I brought out my tins of biscotti and brown butter shortbread topped with fleur de sel.

The brown butter shortbread is my current favorite cookie to make and to eat. It is incredibly easy to make and the brown butter gives it a rich nutiness. The fleur de sel makes each bite explode with flavor.

After cookies, Nancy wanted us to try some liqueur called Domaine de Canton. It was a rich, sweet ginger liqueur and was fantastic. We drank way too much and slept incredibly well that night.

The next day brought a light rain, but Jerry and I headed into the city and spent a good chunk of the day at the Museum of Modern Art. Earlier that day we went to the half price ticket booth and got tickets for "Seminar," a play with Alan Rickman. I have loved him since I saw him in "Truly Madly Deeply" in 1990.

Last year before we went to the theater we had found a really good Chinese restaurant, and through a little detective work, we managed to find it again. We were a bit smarter this time and ordered only one entree-- a very nice chicken and vegetables. I found it interesting that the restaurant had no condiments on the table, but in reality, we didn't need any. The seasoning was just right in both the chicken and the hot and sour soup.

Friday was a trip to my favorite Brooklyn store: Sahadi's. A trip to Brooklyn would not be complete without buying some halvah, dried herbs, and maybe a jar of ajvar, or this time, some grapefruit marmalade. After Sahadi's, we had lunch at a diner-y sort of place. I had a smoked salmon scramble and more good coffee.

Friday night, we grazed on cheese, good bread and wine for dinner. Nancy said Paul would never accept something like that for dinner, but Jerry and I do it all the time.

Saturday we made another trip into the city to Soho. We window shopped and had lunch at another Italian restaurant. More wild mushrooms, this time with pasta.

We got home in time to get ready for the Golden Festival. The day before we left for New York I found a pair of gold shoes, so I was all set.

Food at the Golden Festival has not changed in years. People are always reminded that the food is for snacking, not dinner, but since the event starts at 6 pm and people use a lot of energy dancing, there is an incredible amount of food, including several kinds of sausage, feta and kasseri cheese, baba ghanoush, ajvar and hummus, vegetable trays and a hot bean dish. Normally there is a beet salad that I make, but if there was any this year, I didn't see it. There was a cash bar with not very good wine, but the music and dancing more than make up for any shortcomings in the wine.

I remember the days when I not only stayed until the end of the Golden Festival, I helped with clean up and carting things out, but I'm not as young as I used to be so after Slavic Soul Party played at around 12:30, we called a car service and headed back to Nancy and Paul's.

While the "official" festival ends Saturday night, what is perhaps my favorite part of the event is on Sunday. Emerson, whom I've known since I was a teenager, lives in Brooklyn and people start arriving at his house around noon for an all day and well into the evening "brunch." It's the best time to have a good visit with friends, many of whom I don't see from one year to the next. My friend Kathleen, who lived in Montana the same time I did, was in from New Mexico, and we had a great visit.

So it was another day of eating, drinking a little wine and slivovitz, and spending time with great friends.

Now that I'm back home I'm determined to start to have a more healthy diet, although today was the Fancy Food Show, full of great cheeses, salted caramels and basamic ice cream, and later this week I'm going to San Antonio, tagging along with Jerry to a conference.

So maybe next week I'll go back to my two vegan meals a day. But who knows what adventures next week might bring.

Mill Valley, Salmon and South Africa

Today was a little ride to Mill Valley with the Positive Pedalers. Their AIDS Lifecycle training series started today. Since Jerry and I don't like to cross the Golden Gate Bridge on the tandem, we picked up the ride on the south bridge parking lot. So I'm talking little ride, less than 20 miles. But it was, once again, a nice day for a ride. Sun was shining and not too cold.

We met up with our friends in Mill Valley and it was wonderful to see everyone again after what felt like quite a while. Looking forward to continuing to ride with this group when we are in town, which in the near future, doesn't look like it will be all that often. We are off to New York next week, and a day after we get back we head to San Antonio for a few days.

Our bike rack broke somehow on the way to the ride, so we had to figure out how to get a tandem in a Honda. Thank goodness the back seat folded down and Jerry always has supplies. He pulled rope out the wheel well and we got the frame in sans wheels and back handlebars. We slid it in and drove home carefully.

The ride did have one big climb, or should I say series of climbs. The hill out of Sausalito back to the parking lot does go on and on. But we rode it fairly well. Our average speed was decent and we were happy with the ride.

We were particularly happy because we went out to dinner Saturday night and shared a bottle of wine. There were three of us, so it's not as if we had a huge amount, but any the night before a ride is more than we usually have.

We met Bryan Urbsaitis at Luna Park in the City. Bryan lives in New York and was in town for a couple of days. While I had never met Bryan, we have been Facebook friends for some time because of our love of cycling and our involvement in HIV and AIDS organizations.

Bryan runs AIDS Ride South Africa, a cycling adventure that, in close to three weeks, spans most of South Africa. It has intrigued me but I really wanted to learn more.

And the more I heard the more intrigued, and interested, I became. Because of the expense of getting to South Africa, the ride has been small-- fewer than 10 people-- but it is still a new ride and has the potential to grow. Along with cycling there are stops at animal preserves and a chance to meet local people as well.

While Africa has never been at the top of my "must visit" list, this ride does sound like the ideal way to see it: cycling with a group of like-minded folks who want to raise funds and awareness for the terrible problem of HIV and AIDS in South Africa.

While I have yet to sign on the dotted line, I am seriously thinking of doing this ride, and Jerry is having positive thoughts about it as well. What I will do, ride or not, is try to help Bryan with some PR and possibly see if we can get some bicycles for some young South Africans to accompany us. Mike's Bikes, a northern California bicycle shop, has a program donating bikes to Africa, and I would like to talk to them about the possibility of lending some of those bikes to the ride.

We spent hours at Luna Park, part of which was spent eating. I started with a beet salad, but I have to say I was a bit disappointed. It was quite low on beets, with more mandarin orange slices than beets. But it was okay. I had salmon as a main course and its surface was deliciously grilled with the inside on the rare side, just the way I like it.

We even had dessert. My fruit crisp with a dollop of ice cream was lovely, though it really did gild the lily.

I had several cups of coffee with dinner, but generally, coffee does not keep me away. And I don't believe it did last night. What did keep me up were thoughts of Africa.

Sausalito, Salad and Resolutions

Jerry and I started out the new year with a short ride. We had not been on the tandem in weeks, so we thought we'd take it easy and not do too many miles. We have thought this in past weeks, but somehow managed not to suit up and hit the road.

Today was different. Neither of us had to talk the other into it, despite drinking wine and staying up past our bedtime last night. We celebrated the new year with our friends Sha and Lora. Sha makes delicious Persian food, and we have taken to celebrating "east coast" new year's with them. Although last night we were having such a good time talking we celebrated east and west coast: unusual for us. We had some really good red wines and the evening, which started at 6 pm, flew by.

Jerry and I did not leap out of bed this morning. We lolled for close to an hour, finally getting up around 9:30. After breakfast and reading part of the New York Times, we donned our Lycra and headed out.

While it was warmer at home, it still wasn't terribly cold and we started out with a tail wind, so we sped down the road. In Sausalito we stopped at a cafe for lunch.

I decided with the new year I was going to make one, and only one resolution: to eat better. Mark Bittman had an article recently about eating vegetarian, or even vegan, two out of three meals. I think this is a fine idea and while I won't commit to doing this every day, I am going to make an effort to do it more often.

Lunch today was a bagel, lox and cream cheese, so definitely not vegan or even vegetarian, but my peanut butter and jelly on whole wheat for breakfast was vegan, and since this is movie night, dinner will be popcorn. So two out of three: done.

Also at lunch we had a Mediterranean salad: full of artichokes, olives, delicious grape tomatoes and a few pieces of fresh mozzarella.

The other thing I plan to do, though I refuse to "resolve" to do it, is lose 10 to 15 pounds. I have really packed it on this fall, and am at the heaviest I have been in more than 10 years. I am going to go back to Weight Watchers this week.

I am also going to start getting a weekly veggie box from a farm in Petaluma. From week to week I won't know what will be in it, but I think that will keep my cooking creative and fresh. I look forward to finding and creating new recipes with the week's bounty.

While not wanting to wish my life away, I couldn't wait for 2011 to end. For both Jerry and me, it was not a great year. We are determined to make 2012 better, and we know that won't happen by itself. We will work to make our life more fun, more meaningful and more joyous.