Back by popular demand (hi Mom!).

1. Spanish food from La Nacional/The Spanish Benevolent Society in Chelsea (14th Street between 7th and 8th Avenues). Mediocre mostly. But very authentic in that it felt just like you picked out some random tapa place in Madrid and had a not terrible but not excellent meal. We ordered sangria made with cava, which was the best part. Further research into the place reveals that it has been around since 1868 and is in fact the oldest Spanish restaurant in New York; also that Garcia Lorca himself used to hang out there during his stay in New York. I feel as if I should have liked it more or else spent more money and tried the paella or something. Read poetry in that back room whilst getting wasted on amontillado…

2. Expensive martini at the Art Bar in Chelsea. It had been a very long time since I had a martini. This one was like $8.50 or something (probably normal by now but it was still a shock coming from Central America) but it was very good. And large. I made a mistake in ordering a second and wound up stumbling back to the hotel.

3. Weak coffee with far too much half and half. This was only the first of many creamed-out coffees we got in NY and elsewhere. What is it with the East Coast? These folks are afraid of black coffee. Not only that, but most places do not let their customers manage their own coffee condiments. We had launch a huge fuss to get it black or else deal with the consequences because “just a wee teeny bit of cream only please” or “no cream at all” doesn’t mean squat. We accompanied CJ and Adam in their morning quest for a cheap deli serving breakfasty stuff. In New York you don’t have to walk far, even for cheap, and we ended up in this odd place that featured an ‘Egg on the Roll’ special. CJ and Adam ordered a somewhat sketchy looking breakfast so Joshua and I decided to just go with coffee, which as I mentioned, was mostly half and half. While CJ and Adam ate, we were entertained by some crazy dude who was not satisfied with the deli selections and brought in his own meat. “See this? This here’s corned beef. See? It’s good!” This while he is shoving slices of the stuff into his mouth and gesturing with an additional piece at the counter guy. “Now I want you to make me an Egg on the Roll with this corned beef.” The counter guy refused and there was much nervous laughter on his part, meanwhile the corned beef dude stomped around the place ranting some crazy shit. After a lengthy tirade, he went with the Egg on the Roll minus the corned beef but he was sore about it. So sore that he took the sandwich and then made a stink about paying. There was more nervous laughter. Finally he left, after chucking a dollar at the counter guy. Then we left.

4. Cheap cheese. Ohmygod. Sage derby is only like $10 per pound here and real manchego from the actual country of Spain is even cheaper. I spent nearly 20 minutes in front of the cheese counter agonizing over which to buy to go with our baguette.

5. Street giros near the Rockefeller Center. Good. Cheap.

6. Sushi from Sandobe (167 1st Ave., East Village). Adam researched inexpensive yet good sushi joints in our neighborhood and by the time Joshua and I made it back to the hotel he had decided upon a place called Sapporo East. By the time we walked there, there was a huge crowd and the waiting list was fairly long. We began scoping out neighboring places and decided to take a chance on a newish looking Korean/Japanese place across the street rather than die of starvation in the window of Sapporo East. Food (nigiri): good for the most part. Granted, we hadn’t had sushi for so long that we were beside ourselves just to be served such a variety of raw fish, but the majority was really good. Standouts were the hamachi and sake; totally not a standout was the saba, which was marinated too strongly and texturally unpleasant—too stiff and dry. Fish slices were really large but the rice was not as good as I would have liked—not enough flavor and the sushi chef didn’t put that dab of wasabi under the fish like they normally do. Adam ate primarily rolls and reported that they were definitely better than average.

7. Insanely expensive bagels and cream cheese. Bagel prices have definitely gone up since I last bought bagels. I’ve heard a million things about the splendiferousness that is a New York bagel and well, they sort of seemed like most of the bagels I’ve had before, so hmmm; maybe I don’t know what makes a New York bagel special, aside from the price.

8. Cafeteria at the Metropolitan Art Museum. Way above average cafeteria with a large variety of stuff. Watch out that you don’t build yourself a twenty-dollar salad though. Joshua observed a woman who built a huge plate of cucumber and pineapple chunks, which seems weird when there are so many other very exciting things you could choose like duck and pine nut salad or various marinated antipasti.

10. Sapporo East! (245 E. 10th St.) After a short wait, we got in (it was just Joshua and I this time, a week later). Food was very good; the rice was prepared better here and included the dab of wasabi under the fish. We ordered the fried oysters, which I know seems out of season, but breaded and deep fried (mmm) and we hadn’t had them for so long, we couldn’t help ourselves. They were good but not great. Nigiri was all very good. Standouts were the saba, which was really excellent thankfully—it is one of my favorites, and hamachi; not standouts were the ‘whitefish’ (not sure which one and it was not in Japanese on the menu) and maguro, which looked good but had a bit too much connective tissue in it to be perfect. Fish slices were again very generous.

(Clearly the local Lexington Blood Bank was feeling the need to keep up with the Presbyterianses.)

If everyone we know isn’t already totally confused as to where we are and whose wedding we went to, here’s more out-of-order wedding stuff. This time the wedding was Joshua’s cousin Jeff’s and the place was Lexington, KY. We drove straight back to Kentucky from Cape Cod, stopping only once for a goggle-eyed walk through the sporting goods store ‘Cabela’s’ in Pennsylvania, home to the majority of taxidermied wildlife in North America.

Our arrival heralded the beginning of a massive takeover of Jeff and Sarah’s house and lives for the next five days. Parents and friends and friend’s wives and husbands and husband’s aunts and cousin’s children started arriving right and left. Gratefully, generous amounts of bourbon and fried chicken were at hand, making introductions smooth and familial relations foggy.

Ezra and Miles practicing being bored during the wedding rehearsal.

Being bored for the real thing.

Cake cutting; the kids had recovered from their ceremony stupor and were highly alert for this part of the deal.

(P.S. If anyone is looking for a job; I think the Kentucky Inn is hiring.)

WTF

Kurt’s mom sent us on a hike off someplace in Maine to a fire tower where the blueberries grow. If we were good little bunnies and didn’t eat all the berries, there would be a pie in our future. Kurt was armed with some plastic grocery bags. We parked the car, chatted with the previous hikers (“Absolutely gorgeous! You’ve been here before right? Such a great day for it!” etc.), and made it about thirty feet into the path before Joshua got his mushroom eyes on and spotted some chanterelles glowing from the forest. Joshua and I turned into raving lunatics and bolted off into the underbrush to collect. The glory of discovery lasted around thirty seconds unfortunately and I had to bolt or be consumed entirely by mosquitoes. I sprinted back to the trail to pace around with Kurt until Joshua emerged, a wild look in his eye. Chanterelles! In Maine! Who knew; it had been so long since we had found the little guys, and this variety was very similar to the variety you find in Oregon rather than in California (a much superior variety in our opinion—petite, fragrant, and clean). We were pretty excited. Kurt and I continued on (we were on a hike, after all) while Joshua darted off the path here and there every time he thought he saw something. And we kept finding more chanterelles; before too long we had amassed almost one plastic vegetable bagful, probably three pounds. We never found any blueberries; I guess it just wasn’t the right season.

What to make. What to make…

Answer: Pasta with Chanterelle Cream Sauce.

What you need:

Pasta. We used a sort of large unbent macaroni that wasn’t penne. I’d probably choose farfalle if I had to pick one type out of thousands.
Bunch of chanterelles which you picked fresh the same day after going on a lovely hike that had a view but no blueberries.
Olive oil.
Butter. What, did you think this would be a healthy recipe?
Cream. Get a big thing of it just in case. You can always use the remainder to put on coffee or mix with cream soda for a delicious snack.
Chopped pecans.
Garlic. Think sublime; too much garlic tends to overrun chanterelles. You want the garlic smished.
Chervil which you picked fresh from your herb garden. (Oh right! 1. Plant herb garden. 2. Go chanterelle hunting…) Chop it finely.
Salt and pepper. Al gusto.

How to do it:

First, you need to clean the chanterelles. This involves cutting off the ends of the stalks and brushing off the dirt (a paintbrush works if you don’t already have one of those froofy mushroom brushes). It is best to not clean them by washing because mushrooms will absorb water like crazy and soggy chanterelles pretty much suck. Use water only in extreme emergency. Also, cut out any weird sections (burrowing insects or slug slime, depending upon how squeamish or protein-hating you are), double-check your species, etc. Then slice into thin sections.

Dry sauté the mushrooms. Chanterelles have a lot of water in them even if you didn’t wash them and if you just start cooking with them without releasing some of it, they just end up soggy. Get a dry skillet hot (so water droplets dance around) and toss in the mushrooms. Add a bit of salt to help them release the water if you want. Stir around a bit and pretty soon they will start releasing a shocking amount of yellow liquid. They will also smell really good. Pour off the liquid and reserve and continue stirring them around until they stop releasing water more or less and the rest of the liquid has evaporated. Take mushrooms off burner and set aside. I chopped them finely for our cream sauce (you could leave them in slices or even puree them with some of the cream depending upon what texture you want.)

Put pasta on to boil.

Heat up some oil and butter in the skillet; add garlic and after a moment, add the chopped pecans. Toss these around in the oil until the pecans are a nice toasty consistency (I’m a pecan novice—I just tasted them to see if they were all crunchy and buttery and called it done); don’t burn the garlic either. Add the chopped chanterelles and toss around in the butter/pecan/oil/garlic. Now stir in the cream and reserve mushroom broth. We added enough cream to make the sauce look ‘right.’ (If you are looking for a smoother sauce consistency, you would need to set the pecans aside before adding the mushrooms, puree the sauce, then add them back in last—or sprinkle them on. Or puree them too. Whatever.) We let the sauce simmer very gently for a few minutes then called it done. Adjust the taste with salt and pepper.

Put pasta in your preferred serving bowl and pour sauce over it. Sprinkle chervil on the top to make it look pretty. Lamely, we did not manage to get a photo of the finished product.

She looks rather pleased about those prunes (those are prunes, by the way, squashed into a consistency that one does normally not expect prunes to assume); it’s hard to believe but she was screaming bloody murder earlier.

After Maine, we headed south to Boston where a post-wedding east-coast family gathering was taking place at Elise’s parent’s house. I probably mentioned that my brother Sage married Elise in June, but I’m a loser and didn’t post any photos. I guess I was under the assumption that nearly everyone I know who reads this was in fact at the wedding. Not so, it turns out, so here are the photos you all have been waiting for.

The day after the party we all headed to Cape Cod, where Elise’s family has a small cottage. The weather was somewhat uncooperative but we were able to take some good walks after it stopped raining and were even persuaded to dip ourselves in water that was less than 84 degrees.

The last night we were there, we went over to the outer ocean side just before sunset and there were dozens of people fishing in the surf. Bluefish is evidently something that is fished regularly off Cape Cod and nowhere else. People were pulling in large fish everywhere we looked. One guy who was fishing right in front of us hooked one and when he reeled it in, he gave it to us. Pretty exciting. We split up into two groups: put-the-baby/clean-the-fish and get-the-groceries and met home later to cook dinner. I believe everyone was very glad Joshua was there to gut and clean it.

Along the surfline on the beach were zillions of tiny dead fish. It was very odd; they were all perfect and glittering things and the colors were so bright against the tan-colored sand, like little fishy sapphires.

We left early-ish the next day for the drive back to Lexington. Here’s a photo of what the sky was doing somewhere across southern Pennsylvania.

Auntie Cheyenne and Riley.