fresh from the ocean, into the pot.
Nataliya’s first lobster.
Category: food
So Damn Lucky
When Dad called to ask how he could un-freeze his iMac I was about 100 feet from the Times Square North picture, walking up to 45th Street and turning east into a full-blown street fair (apparently the ‘Times Square Holiday Fair‘) complete with gift and food vendors. It was unclear what the celebration was (if any), but I moved to the sidewalk to avoid the crowd and head toward my destination.
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Now You’re In New York
7:50am Friday, from 9th Ave. (around 25th St.) on the way to the office.
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Happy Halloween
I asked Alison to carve our Halloween pumpkin this year, which actually isn’t a pumpkin (Cucurbita pepo species) at all, but a French heirloom squash (Cucurbita maxima sp.), Rouge Vif d’Etampes, that happens to look just like the iconic pumpkin made into a carriage in the illustrations of the Cinderella fairy tale.
We didn’t grow this one ourselves — winter squash and pumpkins take up so much space in the garden that we limit ourselves to planting only squash that we really like to cook and eat. As beautiful as it looks, the RVdE is all looks and no substance. Right now our preferable variety includes the Long Pie Pumpkin, a Cucurbita pepo variety that doesn’t actually look like a pumpkin, but when mature looks like an overgrown zucchini. But the flesh is full of sweet pumpkin flavor, the seeds have very tender hulls (so are good eating when fried or toasted), and it is very productive here in mid-coast Maine. We now have about twenty of them stacked like cordwood in our unused and unheated upstairs bedroom ready to contribute to our winter menus. Our favorite meals with pumpkin include Thai curries with coconut milk, lamb and pumpkin Chinese dumplings, and of course Carol’s Pumpkin Pie. Although that pie is now a documented feature of the Katy T-Day Party in 2008, maybe Marc will post that recipe on Eats soon for posterity.
Rector 50 Reno
Yes, folks, it *really* happened: Marc and Carol celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary on June 19th, 2010. Eric and Brian made sure they did it in style with their favorite people in Sparks. (Sparks is next door to Reno.) Sparks is roughly a three and a half to four and a half hour drive (depending on traffic) from the San Francisco Bay Area, through Sacramento. It is also roughly 40 miles north of Incline Village on the north shore of Lake Tahoe.
Thank you to everyone who contributed a memory of where they were on June 19th, 1960. Here’s a link to a PDF version of the booklet I put together and handed out at the party. Marc and Carol had to think *a bit* with some of the entries (Marge was the hardest), but in the end they guessed them all.
The party took place at 5pm at
Vista Pavillion @ Hidden Valley Regional Park, Sparks/Reno, NV
a lovely spot managed by the Washoe Co. Parks and Rec department in the eastern hills above Sparks and Reno with trees for shade, tables, two barbecue stands, and a horseshoe pit. The view is to the west, so sunset is one of the featured events, especially when it back lights the incredible band we hired: Analog Jazz. The kept people dancing and singing through the whole party, part of the time fronted (spontaneously) by Marc’s sister Amy. We *highly* recommend hiring them for your next celebration in the I-80 Bay Area – Sacramento (where they’re based) – Reno corridor.
Google Map Link
Besides terrific jazz music from the 1960s, the party featured a visual display of some of the terrific movies that came out in 1960:
Butterfield 8
La Dolce Vita
Oceans 11 (the original)
Breathless
Psycho
and one movie that came out in the 1970s but is set around 1960 (in the CA central valley): American Grafitti.
The menu was a tribute to Carol Rector cuisine over the past 50 years:
Stuffed Mushrooms
Pimento Cheese on crackers
Eric’s Blue Thistle cheese (a new addition)
Brunswick Stew
Potato Latkes (fried potato pancakes) with cream cheese and chives
Butterflied Grilled Leg of Lamb
Grilled Bison T-Bone Steaks (a new addition)
Crepes Suzette, which flambeéd on the grill just as the sunset flambeéd the western sky.
The Rector family continues to travel this week as we celebrate Matt and Andrea’s wedding the following weekend. As soon as we all arrive back home, more pictures will be posted.
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Party Hearty
Every year on the Sunday closest to my birthday, we throw a party and guess what, a Super Bowl breaks out. This year they called it XLIV. All the regulars showed up minus Leslie (we missed her) and plus Brian (welcome to the tradition!). Food was prepared and consumed; money changed hands. It was a beautiful day and a great good time was had by all. Not only that, the Saints triumphed over the mind numbingly boring team from Indianapolis, faux Colts. WHO DAT! WHO DAT! Who dat say dey gonna beat dem Saints!
We swapped last year’s Bacon Explosion for piles of veggies. That stuff in the jars is my home made pickled cauliflower and carrots. Here they are on their way to the dining room… betting central.
Not that we didn’t have meat, we had plenty. That’s a Burgers’ Smokehouse “City Ham” from Missouri. I made a K-Paul Meatloaf and macaroni salad with a barbecue flavor. Now that was good, and it’s a good thing because we had enough to eat for a week.
We didn’t make everything… here’s Paula with her deviled eggs and Sarah with her chili. After a taste of Sarah’s chili, one need an egg to cool down one’s palate. Continue reading “Party Hearty”
Sue Berard
[View some more photos of Sue at this Picassa album.]
Sue loved good food.
Of course Sue loved her family, and she loved Cohasset, Mass (where she grew up), and she loved her work with the Society for Hematopathology, and she loved puzzles and card games (especially Bridge), but she really loved good food, and she loved preparing and serving good food to those people she loved.
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Dinner Club SF
Eric and Alison aren’t the only ones having fun. We just have ours closer to home.
Last week, we celebrated Dinner Club, a sometime get together at a local restaurant — or home — to have a nice meal and good fellowship. Marc and Carol and Paula and John and Carol’s colleague, Sarah gathered at Heaven’s Dog, the latest of the Charles Phan restaurants in San Francisco. Leslie usually attends, sometimes with Tate and sometimes with Rick and sometimes with both, but she was not available on this evening.
The light on Market Street was amazing as we turned south to get to Mission Street.
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Initiate Re-Entry
We had an early morning flight out of Urumqi (pronounced “Oo-Room-Chee”), and four and a half hours after takeoff we landed in the other Shanghai airport — Hongchiao — north of the city center. We got instructions on which bus would take us to the Metro, and we easily found our way back to Patrick and Tina’s apartment in the western French Concession. Patrick was there to greet us and wanted to hear all about our adventures but careful not to let us get too carried away because Tina would want to hear all about it as well later at dinner.
I managed to download all 750 pictures from our trip West, as well as the 350 emails, before we headed out to dinner at a neighborhood Sichuanese restaurant — a last trip on the spicy side, although Patrick warned us that it wouldn’t be “true” Sichuan” food because the spiciness would be throttled back for the Shanghai palate. Still it was fun and spicy enough:
–Sliced pork belly in sauce
–Vinegared cucumber skins
–Crispy rice and seafood
–Stir fried wild mushrooms
–Stir fried green beans and red peppers
–Mapu Tofu, cubes of tofu braised in a red pepper sauce
–Hot stone oil fried beef
and because Patrick (of course) new the owner and said hello, we got an extra dish of Hot Stone Oil Fried Shrimp. The Hot Stone Oil technique is just what it sounds like: the waiter brings a basin of VERY hot oil to the table with stones in it (to keep the heat I suppose), and then vegetables are added to the oil, along with green pepper corns (still on the vine), and then the meat (the beef was loose, the shrimp were on skewers). It makes for quite a show, and a delicious result.
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Doorstep To The Moon 2
At this point I’m sure my readers are a bit confused…didn’t we just visit the Kashgar Sunday Market? The market one tourist remarked that, “The Sunday Market is fresh and vital, with a kaleidoscope of colours. There is a wonderful profusion of ethnicities”. And of which another tourist said is “…vibrant, pulsing, almost unbearably joyous,” and which caused a third tourist to admit “I want to have an orgasm over the whole world,” That Kashgar Sunday Market? Well, yes and no.
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