In New York for a brief visit, my wife and I wanted to celebrate our
19th wedding anniversary with a special dinner. After a beautiful day
walking around the city, we decided to find a restaurant near where we
were staying at 70th and Amsterdam. For our anniversary dinner, we
wanted a restaurant where we could talk and hold hands. And we wanted a
meal prepared by a chef who cared about making interesting food, but we
didn't want to spend a fortune.
The New York Times said a new restaurant was opening nearby that
sounded interesting, so we called. On the phone the maitre d' described
the menu at Bar Bao as a "modern take on Vietnamese food." The restaurant was opening that
night and luckily a table was available.
When we arrived we were greeted warmly. That friendliness continued
throughout the evening. Our waiter, Matt, accommodating both Michelle's
desire to be meat free and my own unrestricted eating, suggested the
Vermicelli Noodles and he would bring the pork belly on the side.
Rounding out the meal, we decided on the Vegetable Summer Rolls,
Sizzling Cuttlefish, Bean Curd Glazed Black Cod, and Asian Eggplant.
Love
Love
Sugar Baby
Congratulations, you’re pregnant – and for the first time since you were eight, you can eat whatever you want! Because you’re with child and therefore eating for two! And you are supposed to be a little insane from the hormones! So when you decide you must have half a jar of peanut butter for a snack, you only have to shrug helplessly and say, “I can’t help it – the baby loves peanut butter!” as though the kid were tapping out some kind of Morse Code on the inside of your belly.
Juliet Maeve Scott, December 28th, 2007 6 lbs 2 |
Everyone smiles indulgently at you and touches you kind of inappropriately on your belly area and tells you what a blessing the whole thing is and you agree because it is indeed nothing short of a blessing to be able to order rice pudding after lunch with no pangs of guilt whatsoever.
Sure, you can’t have sushi, but there are so many other perks: cookies and pizza and macaroni and cheese (for the calcium, of course) and real soda and cupcakes, glorious cupcakes, which you can even have for breakfast if you want and nobody bats an eyelash. I was thrilled for many reasons to learn I was pregnant, but I cannot deny that chief among them was the Get Out of Jail Free card that I’d been looking for my whole adult life.
Taco Love
Things I will not argue about nor generally discuss in mixed company:
1. Politics
2. Religion
3. Tacos
Since you're already reading, my answer for this is simple: What is the point? I cannot change minds and sometimes it's really pointless to enter debate on such things. But if you ask I'll tell you 1) I'm pretty much in the middle (and you thought I was some crazy left-leaning liberal?), 2) my grandfather was a Presbyterian minister and the church was a big part of my world and 3) tacos are quite possible one of the world's most perfect foods ever created, hands down. You can't tell me any differently.
I can't say I'm a taco expert but I'm pretty sure if you were to sample some of my DNA you'd find a few strands of taco on those little ladder wrungs.
The Life of a Foodie
I considered myself a food lover: a zealous, open-minded, and
studious consumer of food. My tastes ran the gamut from Chex Mix to
Chez Panisse, and I felt this to be charmingly, almost wittily,
indiscriminate of me. I read cookbooks, restaurant reviews, and food
writing. I cooked. I baked. I ate out. I would have, without
hesitation, claimed to be well versed, at the top of my game even, in
the Art of Eating.
I was, needless to say, a recent college graduate and an unfounded know-it-all. I look back on those days with an indulgent fondness for my younger self, and her survey-class approach to eating. There she is, I think in my memory, burning garlic and liking it. I smile, knowing that soon enough she will be introduced to someone so enamored of food that in his presence one begins to question their own passion for almost anything else. To my student’s eye, meeting Ryan was like being introduced to Edward Said after a steady diet of Cliffs Notes: there is, after all, much more to be found in the details.
Love in a Pot, Shared
My food store in Maine is overflowing with locally raised vegetables, but the small half bushels of yellow bean always stops me right in my tracks. The sight of freshly picked, ultra-thin, bright yellow beans always brings to mind memories of my dear sweet Mother. When we were kids we visited a farm market on the way home every day to get vegetables for dinner and fruit for the 3 mile ride home. Our parents loved fresh vegetables, but my Mother's face would light up at the first appearance of yellow beans and we ate them every day until the last bean was picked for the season.
Yellow beans make me sad, make me happy and make me miss her again and again, year after year. The first thing that she would cook was yellow beans with pork chops, small white potatoes, oregano and tomatoes. The whole house was filled with the smell of garlic and oregano, filling us with anticipation. We stayed close to the stove talking about our day and snipping the beans. Sneaking small spoonfuls of juice out of the simmer pot to taste without ever being scolded because she always made extra. Being her daughter was as sweet as it gets.
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