29 and Feeling Fine

Bowling with my baby. Size 7s and 11s.


Hintonburgettes. Sweet Sarah Sims (plus two babies!), the lovely me (plus, what Adam calls, 'The Teeth'), and the always-ebullient, Emilie.

Retro

My mother's cooking is so good that she's been making the same dishes for 30 years. One of my favorites is marinated cauliflower salad, a food that, for me, is total comfort.

The gorgeous weather this afternoon prompted me to make a lighter version of this salad suitable for a quick lunch. I used my hands to break my little Bryson Farms cauliflower into florets and then I sprinkled it with a sliced scallion, fresh lemon juice, olive oil, S&P, a bit of prepared horseradish, and a teaspoon of simple syrup. Perfecto!

Birthday Doppelganger

My mother has always been firm in her belief that Adam looks like Tom Hanks -- or rather that Tom resembles Adam. And while she's understandably biased when it comes to any of her kids, this time she's kinda right.

Well, today is Adam's birthday, and here's the email he sent me from work this morning.

On the way to work, I pick up a ratty 24 daily. Breezing through the sorry veneer of content, I reach the entertainment section in search of some comic relief. Diana Ross didn't show up to Jacko's memorial; good grief, how infuriating. The Beckhams rent an entire island for their wedding anniversary. Don't they know they are just peeing their money away; BUY, DON'T RENT. Moving on to more quantifiable data, in the celebrity birthdays today, I see that Tom Hanks is listed. Clearly, he is gradually encroaching on my life, and attempting to assume my identity. Do you think I should get a restraining order out? - Adam

My reply: How did you get to be so funny?

Adam: Learned from Tom Hanks.

Happy 29th and 53th birthdays, boys!

Hot Time

It's summer in the city.

In our house, that means fresh salads, tall drinks, daily bike rides, and lots of ice. Yesterday, I put together what was my first of those salads this season: rice noodles in a quick sesame miso dressing with sliced snap peas and green onion (the latter from Ziad's father's reputably amazing vegetable garden). I topped it off with a handful of purple microsprouts from the Bryson Farms delivery. Such a pretty dinner for a weekend bachelorette!

Then, this afternoon, we bought a 1/2 litre of Pascale's peanut butter and salty caramel ice cream at the Ottawa Farmers Market. I feel like such a plebeian for not trying her ice cream before now. I admit that my summer treat of choice is hot dogs or maybe chips and salsa, but Pascale's ice creams may make me a convert. Look for her many other flavors -- Espresso and Fifth Town Goat's Cheese; Hall's Apple Cider; Dark Chocolate Bacon -- all over town.

The winter is dead. Long live summer!

Common Fools

Snack Homage

In honor of my father's mad snack-making skills, I toasted three pieces of sprouted grain bread this afternoon, spread them with tahini, and sprinkled sliced strawberries and raw sugar on top.

When I was growing up, I picked buckets of strawberries with my mum at a local u-pick. Most of the berries were slated for jam (with a few set aside for shortcake -- with biscuits, not angel food cake, thank you very much). But my dad's favorite ways with them were sliced -- on both cereal and buttered toast. And he always made the bread a bit burny, just like I did today.

I miss stemming strawberries with my mum in the kitchen of our old yellow farmhouse.

El Burrito

I can't stop making burritos!

Maybe it was being in New Mexico (which, annoyingly for everyone else, I can't stop talking about) or maybe it was because Adam and I, planning a late-summer trip to NB, have been reminiscing about one of our old haunts, El Burrito Loco in Fredericton. For years, their large and colorful sign read "This ain't Tex Mex, baby! This is the real thing."

In any case, I recently discovered sprouted grain tortillas made by a company called Food for Life. I like them a lot, but Adam prefers the Canadian-made corn tortillas I usually buy. One thing is for sure: pile them this high and they'll never hold!

Les Hot Dogs

You may recall that when Adam went away last summer, I seized the opportunity to dine on canned ham, a processed meat product that had been a childhood favorite of mine.

This week, it was hot dogs -- or tube steaks, as my brother affectionately calls them. Only, this time, I at least sussed out an organic version: all-beef franks free of nitrites and made in nearby Quebec.

With some all-natural ketchup and a salad, this was a meal so effortlessly perfect that it left me wondering if I could eat it at work this fall. Or will the parfum of microwaved hot dogs be too juvenile and too repulsive for my good government colleagues to handle?

Evening Come

Jack and Lorraine taught me well. A day of dining out made us hungry for familiar foods, so we went to the local Whole Foods and grocery shopped, eating out of our bags for dinner.

Afterward, we had a long swim and shared a lounger while the sun went down. The hotel courtyard, just beyond the adobe fence surrounding the pool is a coiffed green lawn split down the middle with a scrolling wrought-iron trellis (home to flowering vines and a flock of tiny songbirds). All around are nooks for upholstered outdoor furniture, mosaic-topped drink tables, and wooden rocking chairs, the kind you could grow old in. We sat outside, eating pina colada ice pops, until the torch lights came on. And now it''s time for bed.

Santa Fe

As the capital of New Mexico, Santa Fe is like Albuquerque's richer, thinner, better-looking cousin. The art is more expensive and so the artists seem better fed. The iced coffees are taller, the old town is packed with tourists, and the architecture is more polished. As soon as we drove into town this morning, Adam and I accidentally drove through Canyon Road, a hilly strip of nearly 80 art galleries and studios peppered with New Mexican bistros, vintage Range Rovers, sleepy Dalmatian dogs, and graying high-society drop-outs.

We stopped for cold drinks and smoked pecans at The Tea House before picking out three galleries that suited our tastes more closely than the Moma had last week. New Mexico's warm weather and lack of moisture makes for an environs friendly to outdoor sculpture, and we saw a handful of wind-powered ones made out of metal and old paint cans, dollar bills, and kitchen pots at the Jennie Cooley Gallery. And just a couple doors down were some of the most amazing contemporary paintings and sculptures I have ever seen by a fellow called simply 'Pasqual' at GF Contemporary Gallery, which was staffed by a society of international hipsters who spoke to each other in French and were clothed entirely in grey silk and designer jeans.

Santa Fe also has a proper downtown, which is partly where Bill Richardson (NM's scandal-plagued, but Democratic(!) governor) punches in every daya, and partly a dedicated walking plaza (filled with shopping suitable for hardcore American loyalists). We ate lunch at Cafe Pasqual's, a decades-old SF institution, serving New Mexican, Mexican, and Asian breakfast, dinner, and lunch. Adam's grilled chicken sandwich on chili cornbread was delicious, but played second fiddle to my shredded chicken enchiladas made with white corn tortillas and covered in dark chocolate chili mole.

Stuffed to the gills, we shopped around for a bit, took a break by the river, and then missed Albuquerque so much that we decided to head back home.

Albuquerque

Spineless flowering cactus, which are planted all over the city and growing wild everywhere else. Not much else grows here without the aid of aggressive irrigation systems.


Japanese koi in a feeding frenzy at the tiny, but tidy Albuquerque Botanical Gardens.


A grilled chili tofu slab from Whole Foods, as part of our urban picnic lunch.


White adobe fence around the public school in Old Town Albuquerque. Faced with a lack of timber, adobe has long been the building material of choice in New Mexico, and, as a result, nearly every building from pharmacies to sprawling ranch houses to even the most flea bag of motels looks like it came straight out of an old John Wayne movie.


Tent Rocks National Monument built over seven thousand years ago when area volcanoes erupted periodically, creating layers of volcanic ash and sandstone.


You have to work hard to get to these views, climbing hundreds of feet and huffing wildly from the sharply increasing altitude. But the reward is great, and it's not just the epic landscapes. It's also the pleasure of hearing nothing but your heart thrumming in your ears, the soft silt bed cushioning your step. And the powerful feeling of your human value systems falling away, as you hike deeper into the rocks, pausing to prolong the moments of respite in the shady canyons, and remaining perfectly still when you spot a black-tailed jackrabbit bounding through the brush or see a tiny lizard zipping along a fallen branch.


Adam using a pre-obsidian 'Apache tear' as a faux nez.


The rocks constantly reminded us of Gaudi's architecture. No wonder the Spaniards were so enamored with these landscapes.


Thesis? What thesis?


Ditto.


Here's a spot in the world that humans haven't had a hand in constructing. Naturally, I had to do a downward dog (known for its 'grounding' effect).


The Dog House is an Albuquerque institution complete with a car hop, sun-weathered locals, terrible French fries, mediocre milkshakes, and foot-long chili cheese dogs (split down the middle, grilled, and covered in chopped onions and fire hot red chili gravy).


Only in America!

In The Desert

I'm going to the desert this week. Come back to read posts on green chili cheese burgers, outdoor yoga, Old Town Albuquerque, and minor league baseball.

GPS -- OUT

Adam was on his best game when an old black dude in a beat-up delivery van pulled over and asked us for directions to North 12th Street.

I was like, 'Huh?'

I mean, we're in the muddy back alleys of one of the oldest neighborhoods in the city. And we're as chicken legged and wide-eyed as they come.

Yet, here was Adam deftly pointing the way to a native New Yorker.

I admit that I may appear to be biased, but I still maintain that Adam is basically a human GPS. He does have a photographic memory, so no wonder he can figure out the five fastest routes to the three closest subway stations in less than ten seconds. But, I come out of a big building, like the Moma, in the middle of a rainstorm, and it takes me a lot of twisting and turning, unfolding and refolding of various laminated maps, and asking four separate people for directions before I even figure out what corner I'm on. Meanwhile, I casually mention to Adam that I'd like to go to a vegetarian dim sum house that even lifetime New Yorkers need sherpas to find, and Adam gets us there with only one subway transfer, a plastic paperclip, and eight tiny reindeer.

But every cartographer needs to stop moving sometime. GPS out. Until tomorrow, that is.

Remains of the Day

Tablecloth drawing at Pig and Egg.


Note the steady hand and fine crayon detailing.


Vegetable and herb planter beside our open-air table.


Taking shade where we can get it.


Red Apple Orchard's fresh cider blends.


RonnybrookFarm's small-batch dairy products are hormone free and made with love.

The Burg

Saturday in Williamsburg brings year-round artists and fleas who set up ad hoc on Bedford Avenue (completely closed to car traffic for the day). Tables and chairs spill out of restaurants onto the sidewalks and street, and tourists and locals queue for bahn mi, chicken tacos, eggs and grits, and the best pizza pie in the hood.

This Saturday also brought the Renegade Craft Fair to McCarren Park, just down the way. Renegade is the biggest DIY fair in the country with over a hundred vendors selling guitar straps made from seat belts, clocks made from bike gears, and a surprisingly disproportionate number of silk screened American Apparel shirts. We valiantly visited most of the booths, but felt too dizzy with opportunity to actually buy anything.

Instead, we hoofed a half a block to the tiny, but popular Williamsburg Farmer's Market, where we made friends with the woman who owns Ronnybrook Dairy. She was selling milk and yogurt drinks out of metal coolers and, in true New York style, texting madly on her iPhone.

The day shaped up to be a hot one, so we took a long lunch at Wild Ginger, a vegan noodle house on Williamsburg's main drag. It was no accident, I believe, that we saw Adron (the singer whose concert we went to see on our first night here) popping into WG for a bathroom break. Clearly, we have similar tastes in restaurant bathrooms and would become close friends were I to move to Brooklyn. My status as a burdgeoning hipster is cemented in my mind.

Here and There

Traveling takes its toll, for sure. If you've done it, you know that too. By three pm, I notice my eyelids creeping down and my arms start to feel heavy. Probably from all those things that make it fun to be away from home -- strange food, new bed, unfamiliar streets. Plus, we've had a heavy day of rain here in New York City. Lines of yellow cabs inched their wet way down 5th Avenue all afternoon, and tourists -- on line for the Moma -- crammed closed against the building in a totally vain effort to keep dry.

After bowls of scrambled egg whites with spinach and red peppers at Urban Rustic this morning, Adam and I headed to Manhattan on a busy subway system that, on rainy days, is known for steaming up like a hot shower stall. I have become more aggressive with each ride -- pushing my way through the scrum to be one of the first on board, sliding quickly into the blue plastic seats, and speeding past lesser and larger mortals up several flights of stairs to street level.

Once in Midtown, we joined the end of the long line of chipper American tourists waiting to take in the collections of one of the most famous contemporary art galleries in the world.

My surprising nonchalance over the floors Adam and I visited could have been due to the crushing crowds in nearly every room in every room or perhaps it was the let-down that must inevitably follow the build-up of any major tourist attraction. Still, I'm quite glad I went. I was satisfied with the experience, if slightly nonplussed over all the fuss.

Chief among my favorite pieces were computer-generated origami shapes, painted sculptures of pastries and an impressive rack of ribs by Claus Oldenburg, a contemporary take on still life by Tom Wesselman, and a tiny glassed-in display of vintage Tupperware.

The day ended as it began -- with a healthy, vegetarian meal, this time in the Lower East Village at Angelica's Kitchen, which is a New York institution recommended to me by my friend Tsia, a one-time Maritimer and now a long-time New Yorker. Ordering and eating here -- and lingering afterward over a piece of silky coffee layer cake -- felt as comfortable and familiar as eating in our own kitchen.

Thus, I am confirmed in my belief that people go on vacation to do what they normally do, but in another location. Displacing (or re-placing) one's sense of home -- but engaging in what are still mostly predictable outcomes -- seems to be oddly rejuvenating.