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A Colossal Food-and-Gardening Post, Part II

Tony and I have been eating so well lately. We've both been on our game when it comes to cooking, and Tony has been doing a lot of grilling.

Earlier this month—on May 2, to be exact—Tony grilled lamb chops and corn. He seasoned the chops with cinnamon and cardamom and mixed the corn kernels that he'd cut off the cobs with lime juice and jalapeno. Outstanding! He also braised Swiss chard in water spiked with fresh ground nutmeg and salt. I contributed a bottle of 2008 Paso Creek Zinfandel that went very well with the lamb.

On Sunday night, Tony grilled Newport steaks and sweet and spicy pineapple. He got the latter recipe from the Mayo Clinic website. I made bok choy using a recipe Tony had found and made for us back on May 16; it's sautéed in garlic and ginger, with a dash of sherry added at the end.

After we ate, I took a flash photo of one of our Knockout Rose bushes. It had a cluster of six flowers. The brightness! It burns! :-)

On the 16th, besides the bok choi, Tony made broiled London broil in a spicy soy sauce; sauteed orange pepper, mushrooms, and onions with Chinese five-spice powder; and white rice.

The wine in the photo was a Beaujolais Villages that I don't remember much about. So it must have been just OK. The meat and peppers were fantastic.

Last night, I cooked a skinless, boneless chicken breast from Raghoo Farms in a cast-iron skillet with spring onions. Separately, I cooked gluten-free pasta in chicken broth with fresh peas that Tony shelled for me. They came together nicely and paired well with a delicious Riesling from Freiherr von Heddesdorff that I purchased from Moore Brothers, which we're finding to be a reliable source of enjoyable wines.

I threw some chopped fresh dill in the pasta at the last minute. And I started us off with a mixed-leaf salad with grated cucumber and a vinaigrette made with chopped fresh spearmint. And fresh juice: yellow apple, gold beets, and ginger.

And for dessert: Lavender Meringues. I made them using egg whites left over from making Strawberry-Rhubarb Ice Cream (which required the egg yolks), a cup of sugar, and Elixir of English Lavender. They weren't bad for a first effort. I was disappointed they didn't turn purple, but the egg white–to–lavender extract ratio was too high to allow that to happen.

And here's the ice cream, which I ran through my ice cream makers tonight.

At first, I thought it might be undersweet, but I'm digging it more and more as I'm scraping the last bits of it from the metal cannisters as it melts. I had purposely halved the usual amount of sugar in the cooked dairy part because I figured the strawbbery-rhubarb puree I was going to be folding into it would be plenty sweet. And I think I made the right bet there.

***

I was afraid I was going to have to lament the loss of another favorite local place in this part of the post. 'sNice was closed up on a Tuesday morning this month without any signs explaining what was going on. The next day, it was open like normal. I realized it must have been in solidarity with the 99% on May Day. Phew.

***

I picked our first ripe serviceberries this evening. I expressed skepticism in the first part of this post that they're supposed to taste like both blueberries and pears. But they really do.

It's getting late, and I'm tired and stuffed with scraped portions of ice cream, so I'm going to wait until a part III to talk more about the trees themselves. I had to spray them with an organic fungicide after doing a good deal of pruning over Memorial Day Weekend because of an infestation with cedar-apple rust. There are still some unripe fruits on our three trees, but it's clear we're going to end up with only enough berries this year to enjoy snacking on them. Hopefully, I'll get the trees healthy enough for next year that we'll be able to harvest a lot more berries and do more-interesting things with them.

A Colossal Food-and-Gardening Post, Part I

The restaurant where Tony and I went on our first date has closed. Both the Union Square L'Annam and its sister restaurant in Kips Bay are no more. In addition to its sentimental value, the Union Square branch was a convenient delivery option for Tony if he had to work late at his office in Chelsea.

Longtime West Village staple Soy Cafe also closed, earlier this month, because, as with L'Annam, the rent rose too high. I never actually went in there, but Tony stopped in every so often. Stupid landlords!

***

On April 5, we got more plants from our landscape designer. She had come two weeks before that to deliver the containers and the bagged soil.

We got more of the dwarf Alberta spruces; some ornamental grasses; Knock Out Roses, which I'd never heard of before; and, what I was most excited about, three serviceberry trees.

Many of the serviceberry flowers had dropped already because, Amber said, they'd come from a nursery in the South. (I hope that doesn't effect their winter hardiness. Although if the next few winters are anything like this past winter, we've got no worries.) There are many berries on the trees now. They're small and mostly still green with some showing bits of red. Once they're blue, they're ready to pick.

They're said to taste like blueberries or, um, pears. And the seeds add the flavor of almonds. I hope we can harvest enough of them for me to make something fun out of. Maybe some syrup for soda/cocktails. Or gluten-free muffins.

The Knock Outs are so brightly colored in photographs that they look fake.

That first rose of the season arrived on or about April 15, which is when I took the photo.

To celebrate our first rose, Tony prepared a splendid Rose Dinner for me the next day. Here's the menu he sent to me and some friends who he thought would be impressed with and amused by the lineup. And I just know he was hearing the voice of the veddy-proper-sounding menu reader on Supersizers Go ... as he was writing it.

Rose Menu

To celebrate the first rose of the season on the terrace and this summery weather:

Lillet and lime micro-aperitif

Smoked duck on spring herbs with raspberry lime argon oil vinaigrette

Vin grande Bordeaux rosé

Carrot & ginger avocado custard, chilled

Provence lemon sole in parchment with garlic roasted Brussels sprouts and shallot smashed potatoes 

Honking big chunk of dark chocolate

We actually both passed on the chocolate because everything else was so filling.

The custard was a variation of the soup Tony and Mark put together for us when Mark visited us in the fall, made thicker with more avocado. Tony has prepared it several times since Mark's visit.* The flavor was as wonderful as always, but we agreed we prefer to have it more souplike. I've got a better-lit photo of the dish than I took that evening that I'm going to run below.

Here's the entree.

The fish and sprouts were good but the potatoes were on the dry side. Tony had drained all the water from the pot by the time he asked me to work on them. I've found that if you don't add milk to the spuds, you've really got to retain some of the cooking water. 

Here are the cute micrococktails.

Tony had bought the lillet to make these cocktails for Rich and Vince when we'd had them over for an early dinner two Sundays before. At my request, Tony had made the carrot-ginger-avocado soup, which was on the custardy side that time as well. The garnish, as usual, is cilantro.

For the entree, we had Newport steaks from Florence Meat Market. Tony grilled them and made tasty multicolored potato salad. I contributed sauteed Bordeaux spinach, which has lovely red stems, and Swiss chard.

Here's a cute but disturbing knickknack that was on the counter at Florence.

And here's some of the Tangelo Sherbet I made for Mark's birthday party that we had to try out that day. We needed to make sure it was good. :-)

And it was good. I was—*toots loudly on own horn*—really pleased with how it turned out. I had tried making the sherbet a couple weeks earlier, and the texture was lousy. The flavor was quite good, but it was icy and thin instead of smooth and creamy. So I felt like I really redeemed myself with the second attempt.

Rudy lounged while we ate in the greenhouse.

Rich took some photos of the guys and me.

I don't like myself in this one that much, but I'm digging how Tony and the Rudester look.

We moved to the other back corner of the terrace where the lighting was a little different. We're both doing slightly weird things with our hands. Lou had given us the tulips in the pot between us.

We bought a lot of herb, flower, and vegetable seeds that we're going to start in the greenhouse and then transplant to empty spots in the containers like the one to the right of the spruce to the right of Tony.

*The one time I tried to make it by myself, I screwed it up because I thought all of the ingredients went into the juicer and I didn't bother to re-read Tony's e-mailed instructions. You juice only the carrots and ginger. You then blend those juices with the avocado flesh in a blender. Juicing the avocado made it disintegrate.

A Food and Drinks Post With a Couple of New Obsessions, a First Attempt at Gluten-Free Cookies, and Some Catching Up, Part I

It's been a while since my last all-food-and-drinks post, so I've got some catching up to do. But first, my two new food obsessions:

I've been buying kaffir limes at my new health food store, Integral Yoga Natural Foods, and using them in salad dressing. If I put some sliced apple and radish in the salad, I've got sweet, tart, and bitter all in one bite. Outstanding.

My second obsession is dried pineapple. I bought some of it maybe three weeks ago from the Organic Avenue near where I work, and I really enjoyed it. But it was very expensive and packaged in plastic. Lately, I've been buying it in bulk at IYNF. It's more reasonably priced, I can carry it off in one of the bigger reusable cloth produce bags that Dad and Jean got me for Christmas, and I'm almost certain it's organic. (I think that's what the sign at the store said.)

And my first attempt at gluten-free cookies:

At my request, Tony gave me the BabyCakes Covers the Classics baking book for Christmas. I have yet to visit the well-known vegan and mostly gluten-free bakery on the Lower East Side, but I've heard nothing but raves about it. (And I'll get there eventually.) And when I checked out this book at the Barnes & Noble near work, it looked like a winner. It's got recipes for things like waffles, breakfast buns, and all-time-favorite cookies, like chocolate chips and Snickerdoodles, all made without gluten or dairy ingredients.*

And donuts! How could I not mention the donuts? In a cover blurb, Mark Bittman says BC's donuts are "the best I've had in twenty years." I don't think it will be too long before I try out one of the donut recipes. But I'll have to buy donut pans first. Because these are baked donuts.

Two weekends ago, I asked Tony to select a cookie out of the book for me to take a stab at, and he chose Lace Cookies, which was the least-complicated cookie recipe in BCTC that didn't contain oat flour. (Tony is unable to eat oats even though some people with celiac disease can.) The majority of the recipes in the book contain arrowroot and xanthan gum, and BabyCakes proprietor Erin McKenna highly recommends using refined coconut oil as the butter substitute in most of her recipes, though canola oil is named as an alternate. And unsweetened apple sauce shows up a lot too, in combination with the oil. IYNF had only unrefined coconut oil, which would have made the cookies taste strongly of coconut, so I ended up buying the refined stuff and the arrowroot at Whole Foods.

I liked the cookies, but Tony was a bigger fan. Which was better than the reverse would have been. :-) I took some to the Game Party, and they were well received there too.

Here's the bowl of dry ingredients:

Here's the dough:

And here's the finished product:

***

The brunch photos in my previous post reminded me of the very good brunch I had at Malaparte back in October.

Mashed potatoes and eggs! At another, more recent brunch there, I got a classic Spagetti alla Carbonara.

At the end of October, Paula and Mark P. joined us for dinner at Commerce.

The waiter took photos of the four of us with my iPhone, but they all turned out somewhat blurry. And I looked possessed in every single one of them.

Commerce was our old favorite place. Bistro de la Gare is our new favorite. The owner/chef is very friendly and comes out of the kitchen to check on her customers. We like that. And because they use rice flour as a sauce thickener and use butter in only those items on the menu in which it's specifically mentioned in the description, it's a great place for Tony to eat. (And as I mentioned in one of my 86 or so Christmas/New Year's posts, we had said we'd treat the Gerbers to dinner there. And we did that. On Friday. But that's a story for the pending blog post about my nephews' visit this past weekend.)

We took Bob for dinner at BDLG back in early November because he visited and helped us with some technology-related apartment issues.

As usual, he wouldn't smile for the camera. Because he sucks that way. :-)

On a visit later that month, just the two of us, there were some handsome cyclamens outside the door, planted with cabbages and ivy.

*As author Erin McKenna explains in a note about the complete gluten-free-ness of the recipes in the book, BabyCakes sells some products made with spelt** flour, but she worked hard to create spelt-free versions of Wonder Buns and other bakery favorites for her GF readers. Thanks, Erin!

**Spelt is a wheat variant that some people with gluten senstitivies can eat without digestive difficulty.

Christmas 2011 and New Year's 2011–2012, Part III

Granny had gotten out the Tangoes set of tangrams that I had bought for Pop many years ago.

Tony and I and Matt and Mike tried to solve a few of them.

And because I realize there were no people in the photos from the last post:

Mike (in green) and Matt unwrapping a present

Dad and Jean checking out the wine Tony and I gave them

Rob excited to see that he's unwrapped a telescope

Tony and M&M at the Green Olive. We all went there for breakfast on Monday morning. So it was an official Souf Jersey visit.

The next weekend, we had two parties for New Year's. Because we had invited people fairly late, we decided to have guests over on both the 30th and the 31st, in case they'd already made plans for New Year's Eve.

John R. and his girlfriend Keiko stayed with us Thursday night. We went to dinner at Slice.

The next evening, before our first party, we had the Schultieses over for dinner. Tony made stir-fried chicken for Bob, Abbe, and me and stir-fried shrimp for Zane, Jen, and himself. I made a salad for a starter. And for dessert, flourless peanut butter cookies that I'll definitely make again. I made Tony three of them without chocolate chips and the rest with chips for those of us who can eat chocolate that may contain traces of dairy product.

Zane and Jen. Behind them, you can see part of the row of dwarf Alberta spruces we had a landscape designer plant behind the greenhouse so that we could have some lit-up (but otherwise unadorned) Christmas trees. That's all we've asked Amber to do for now, but this spring, with her guidance, we're going to start growing some more plants and get some furniture out on the deck so we can really enjoy the space in warmer weather.

Abbe and me

And my dinner

Mark M. and José and Andy were our only party guests later that night after John and Keiko took the train to hang out with John's friend John G. in Jersey. It turned out that most of our friends were still available to come to our party the next night, Saturday night. I fell down on the picture-taking front, so I don't have any new photos of MJ&A from that Friday night. We had lots of fun, chatting mostly about the theater and other forms of pop culture.

Christmas 2011 and New Year's 2011–2012, Part II

On Christmas Eve, Tony and I drove down in our rental car with the Rudester. We had the borsch for lunch at Granny's. She didn't like it.

That evening, we had the usual Christmas Eve cold cuts and sides, including Jean's wonderful green Jell-O salad that, like so many things I mention on here, I would have sworn I'd written about before but doesn't turn up in a search. Dad and Jean had bought kosher salami for David but no mustard. He ragged on them all night because he couldn't put mustard on his sandwich. On Christmas day, Dad went to Acme—who knew it would be open?—and bought some Gulden's spicy brown. Before David and the rest of the Gerbers came over to Granny's for lunch—Dad had brought the leftover sandwich makings to Granny's too—I doctored the label of the mustard.

That's Souf Jersey–speak, bitches!

Rudy seemed underwhelmed by the squirrels-in-a-tree-trunk toy I got him.

Since then, he's played with the squirrels a bit. And I've gotten him to pull the squirrels out of the trunk to retrieve a biscuit at the bottom. And after we got home, Tony had fun posing the squirrels on and around our snoozing boy.

We started opening presents at Dad and Jean's before dinner and finished up, with the Gerbers handing out their gifts, after dinner. Tony got me a Smokey the Bear like I had when I was a wee lad. Actually, I think I had two back then because I wore the first one out, if I remember correctly.

He had said I was either going to love one gift he'd gotten me or I was going to chuck it aside, and he meant this one. I loved me some Smokey. It was such a sweet idea. He also gave me a book of amazing portraits of monkeys and apes.

Everyone enjoyed looking through it.

Jean and Dad had the cutest little tree on the table between the front door and the sofa.

Tony and I gave Granny an organic-flowers-of the-month-club dealie. Her first bouquet arrived a couple of days before we did.

I had hoped to make pop-up cards for everyone in the family, but I didn't get them done. I made a rudimentary one with a pop-up fork for the Gerbers that I thought turned out pretty well.

It reads: "Have dinner on us at the restaurant of your choice. But not Per Se, because that would be taking advantage of us and our generous offer. And no wine pairings for Mike and Matt. Remember how badly that ended last time. And as always, for G-d's sake, DON'T GET THE LOBSTER!" (The last line is a standard joke of mine.)

I had invisioned the Gerbers picking out a nice place (but not Per Se kind of nice), putting the bill on their credit card, and letting me know how much it was, so I could pay them back by check. Tracey and David insisted that we should all go eat somewhere together. So we're taking the four of them to Bistro de la Gare, our new favorite neighborhood restaurant, later this month during the next 'phews visit.

We Haven't Gotten Another Dog Yet, but We've Been Doing Some Other Pretty Cool Things, Part I

We met Scruffy and a couple of the other Lil Monsters dogs three Fridays ago, and I'll write more about that experience in a later post. For now, I'm going to start writing about more-recent events and will work backwards in time until I'm all caught up on the pretty cool things we've been doing.

Last night, Tony and I went to Andy's 31st birthday party at Sardi's, which was the location for his 30th birthday celebration too. We hung out a lot with Mark McC and his sweetie, Jose. Here's a photo Tony took of the birthday boy and me:

And here's a photo he took of me acting like I'm pinching Norbert Leo Butz's cheek in his caricature at Sardi's:

Yesterday afternoon, I took Rudy to the vet to have a lump on his stomach examined. I assumed it was a harmless lipoma, and the vet thought that's what it was too, but he took a fluid sample for testing to make sure, which is what I was hoping he'd do. I also picked up Emme's ashes.

For lunch yesterday, we had leftover ribs, potatoes and carrots that Tony had cooked up in the crock pot on Friday evening. Delish! The meat-to-fat ratio on the ribs was quite high. I contributed some roasted romanesco, to which I had added only some almond oil, minced garlic, and a sprinkling of salt:

Yesterday morning at the farmers market, I bought these gorgeous dahlias:

I bought the vase after work on Friday to replace the one Rudy knocked over with his tail. I floated two of the blossoms because their stems had snapped.

Earlier yesterday morning, I went to the TKTS booth at South Street Southport to try to get discount tickets for today's matinee of Anything Goes for Dan and Paul, Dan's mother—who has a birthday coming up this Saturday—and Tony and me, but there were none available. 

Last weekend, Tony's buddy Mark from DC came into the city for a too brief visit. He arrived by bus late that Friday night. On Saturday morning, Tony and Mark did some shopping on Bleecker Street while I hit the Union Square Greenmarket. In the afternoon, we went to the High Line, and Mark and I both took a gajillion pictures:

We went from the High Line to Chelsea Market. Tony bought some monkfish tail at Lobster Place to cook for dinner. I had tried to get some at our more-local Greenmarket, at Abingdon Square, earlier in the day, after I'd gotten back from Union Square and before I'd gone to meet up with the fellows, but the stand had just sold out of it.

For a starter, Mark and Tony made a no-cook carrot-ginger soup that was creamy textured thanks to the addition of avocado. (Like Tony, Mark can't eat dairy.) They prepared it using the juicer Tony had bought a little while ago. It was crazy good.

Tony did a good job of preparing the monkfish. The texture was a little unusual but not in a bad way, and I liked the flavor. He also cooked some Brussels sprouts and mushrooms. We ate it with the somewhat embarrassingly named Cupcake Chardonnay I'd purchased at Chelsea Wine Vault. I'd asked one of the people who worked there for a buttery chardonnay, which is what Tony had said he wanted to serve with the fish, and that's what the guy handed me. I liked it more than Tony, but he thought it went well with dinner and was indeed buttery. (Mark didn't have any.)

Mark left fairly early the next morning to catch his return bus. Tony took this photo of the two of us. Mark is wearing a cool new hat he'd bought the day before:

Follies and Catch Me If You Can

A week ago Thursday night,* Missy, Nate, Tony, and I caught Follies, starring Bernadette Peters as Sally and Jan Maxwell as Phyllis, and a few weeks ago, during the weekend it closed, Tony and I saw Catch Me If You Can, starring Norbert Leo Butz, who won the 2011 Tony award for leading actor in a musical.

Tony loved Follies. I liked it, and I liked it even more after Tony gave me his take on it. I had had reservations about the ending given to one of the main couples.

The cast was amazing: Danny Burstein and Ron Raines were great as Buddy and Ben. British stage star Elaine Paige got a "starring" credit below the four principles' as Carlotta, whose big number is "I'm Still Here," and Paige really did it justice. Tony was blown away by Rosalind Elias as Heidi Schiller and Leah Horowitz as Young Heidi performing the operatic number "One More Kiss." And Terri White, whom I'd seen in Finian's Rainbow, led a bunch of the gals through the fantastic Mirror Dance set to "Who's That Woman." I enjoyed Peters's version of "Losing My Mind," and Maxwell's "Could I Leave You?" was outstanding. The cast album will be available at the end of next month.

Missy, Nate, and I waited outside the stage door for autographs. I was hoping to get all four of the leads to sign my Playbill. Peters emerged fairly quickly, and I took this photo of Missy and Nate with her:

The other three principles didn't appear for quite a long time, so we gave up on getting their autographs.

Here's my Playbill with Peters's autograph tastefully photographed next to my flowers from the Greenmarket for the past two weeks—and still going—because they're so long-lasting, ageratum:

Before the show, the four of us had a nice dinner with Joyce at Nizza, which gave her a chance to verify, along with Missy and Nate, that Tony is real and not a figment of my imagination. :-)** (Joyce had just seen Follies and, even though she'd enjoyed it, wasn't up to seeing it again so soon.) I took what would have been some cute pictures of Joyce holding Dash, the second son of Missy's BFF, Edith, who was sitting at the next table with her family, but the lighting was so bad in them, I'm not going to post one here. Sigh.

***

I mainly wanted to see CMIYC so I could see Butz in his Tony-winning role. He was very very good. I was also curious to see Aaron Tveit, whom I'd missed in Next to Normal because he was in Seattle working on this show. And I thought he was super as well.

CMIYC was fun overall, but it wasn't fantastic. And I have to agree with the assessment of the New York Times's Ben Brantley that the choreography was mostly uninspired.

Tony said the show would have been better if it had ended with Butz's FBI agent, Hanratty, visiting swindler Frank Abagnale Jr., played by Tveit, in prison. The backup dancers could have been dressed in sexy striped outfits, and the leap to Abagnale's working with the FBI instead of running from it wouldn't have seemed so abrupt, he said.

For quite a while, I was obsessively listening to Butz's performance of "Don't Break the Rules" on my iPhone's iPod. You can see it on YouTube here. And sit your fat ass down—and click here—for a wonderfully fun interview with Butz on Side by Side by Susan Blackwell, whom I loved so much in [title of show].

*Could I be any more behind on my blogging?

**One of Tony's dentists*** has an office near our office, and he was going to come in to meet Missy, Joyce, and some of my other co-workers after a weekday-morning appointment a while ago. The appointment got postponed by the dentist until our really busy workweek, when I really couldn't take the time to show the boy around and have lunch with him, which was the other part of our plan. That started us joking at work that Tony was the equivalent of my "Canadian boyfriend." 

***Yes, the boy has more than one. It takes a village to prevent his teeth from imploding.

We've Moved Into the New Place, and We've Done Some Other Things Too Since Then, Part II

A week ago Friday, and into that Saturday—I'm sooo behind on my blogging—I made Chicken Corn Chowder, and I have to say that this summer's batch was the best ever. I thought about using canned tomatoes to save some coin, and I'm so glad now that I didn't. I didn't use any water at all in the soup, so there was nothing to dilute the magnificence of the fresh summer 'maters. *rubs belly*

I bought several pounds—I'd guess maybe 6 altogether—of large-and-meaty yellow, orange, and red tomatoes from various farmers as well as two containers of Sun Gold cherry tomatoes from Berried Treasures to contribute a bit of sweetness. I cored the large tomatoes, sliced them, and ran them through my Velox tomato press. And I ran the Sun Golds through the press as well, with no cutting or coring required. And like two years ago, I ran the stuff that came down the waste ramp through the press a second time to extract more of the good stuff.

I cooked up the accumulated tomato pulp with only some added salt. While I was processing the tomatoes, I'd been roasting eight smallish chicken breasts from Raghoo Farms in some canola oil after seasoning them with Penzeys Mural of Flavor and salt. I added the kernels from 25 ears of corn—some white, some bicolor—to the tomato liquid and then the meat from the cooled breasts. And after letting that all simmer for a few minutes, I turned off the stove and went to bed.

The next day, I cooked up some sweet peppers and garlic in canola oil with a little salt. I added some of the tomato liquid and some chopped basil and curly parsley. After a few minutes, I turned off the heat, pureed everything with an immersion blender, and poured the puree into the soup.

I had some of the soup for lunch that day, and then Tony and I had it for dinner. And the next day, that Sunday, the Schultieses came over for dinner. We wanted to have them over to see the new place, and Jen, especially, has always been a fan of my various chicken soups/stews. She enjoyed this one too.

Look at this photo of her and Bob. Her bowl is empty, while Bob is still working on his. :-) :

Abbe and Zane had fun climbing up into an odd little space we have in the apartment that Tony and I have taken to calling "the nephew cage." :-) It's a little room that you have to climb a ladder (behind a mirrored door in our living room) to get to, and you can see up and into it from the living room. Here's a photo I took of the 'phews in that room when they and my sister came to visit for Ice Cream Sunday, which was after we had gotten the keys to the new place and before we started moving in:

And here's a photo of A&Z in the room (with the usual graininess that results from using the zoom on my iPhone camera):

Tony and I had talked about what to do with that space and settled on Library/Meditation Room. Abbe suggested using only pillows for furniture up there, and we just may do that. At one point, we had thought about putting a futon or fainting couch up there.

Once again, Tony was Zane's favorite. Here's a shot Bob took of the kids and Tony as I ladled up seconds:

Zane was also into Rudy on this visit. He told him he loved him and gave him more attention than he usually does.

Before dinner was served, Rudy knocked over my big vase—seen in many a flowers post—with his tail. I was this close *holds thumb and index finger very close together* to catching the vase before it smashed onto the bricks of the greenhouse. *sigh* The vase had been on the floor, with some lilies in it, near a few potted plants. Here's a photo of Emme snoozing near the vase that I'd taken a few days earlier and posted on Facebook:

It's also seen in my previous post, in the photo of the greenhouse during the storm.

For dessert, we had Grape Sorbet that I made from what were called "champagne grapes" at a stand at the Greenmarket. They were mostly red with some shading into green or even all green, so the sorbet had a similar color to the first one I made last summer.

On Monday, Labor Day, we had Lou over for dinner. We started with a salad much like the one I'd served to the Schultieses: mixed greens with a lemon-lime vinaigrette, some chopped fresh dill, and sliced Kirby cucumber. (I generally like simple salads. Unless I'm making one for a big crowd.) Surprisingly to me, A&Z had eaten the cucumber (with dressing and a little dill on it) but hadn't wanted the greens.

Lou enjoyed the soup a great deal—and the Lemon Verbena Ice Cream and Grape Sorbet we had for dessert:

And we enjoyed Lou's company, as always. I gave him some soup to take home, and I finished the last of it on Friday for lunch at work.

We Got the Apartment. And It's Gonna Rock

Yesterday, we met with the owner of the building that our new apartment is in. He loves dogs, which is a great thing, because he's got a lot of dog movin' in. :-) We signed the lease last night, and Tony will get the keys on Monday.

The apartment is on Jane Street, aka Authors' Row, between 8th Avenue and Hudson Street. It's a sixth-floor penthouse, and it's got an amazing amount of outdoor space, plus an air-conditioned greenhouse that adjoins the living room. Tony remembered to ask the owner whether we could garden out on the terrace, and he said we could because it can support a lot of weight and, in fact, the previous tenants had created a spectacular garden there.

The kitchen is supercute. It gets lots of light and has a Dutch door leading out to the terrace that Tony said he could see me handing ice cream through. Tony also said he could see Rudy reclining on a chaise lounge out there while wearing big novelty sunglasses.

I said we need to get Emme a big floppy hat to shade her from the sun. I'm so happy for my girl. When my ex Steve and I got her and her cousin, Cody, we were living on a farm in Hunterdon County, N.J. And she's likely to end her life in an apartment with a penthouse view. She's doing a reverse Lisa Douglas. :-)

There are some drawbacks to the apartment. It's got only one bedroom. Tony and I had wanted a two-bedroom place because we're both used to living on our own and we agreed it would be good to have an extra room for when one of us needed some alone time. (The greenhouse can probably be used for that purpose, at least for many months out of the year.)

There's also a twisty staircase to get up to the loft bedroom; I had wanted a place in an elevator building (check) that was on one floor (no dice) so Rudy would be able to get around better when he's older and inevitably finds it harder to navigate stairs.

There's also no laundry facility in the building, let alone in the apartment. I've gotten so spoiled having a clothes washer and dryer right in my unit. I'm not looking forward to having to go to a laundromat again.

But on the plus side, we have a loft bedroom. :-) And the living room is pretty big, with a high ceiling. And my half of the rent is a little less than what I'm paying now, and Tony's half will be a good deal less than what he's paying now.

And I'll be living with my Sweetie and my sweet pooches, all together. :-)

A Catchall Catch-up Post, With a Show, Lots of Food, Some Flowers, and Maybe a New Apartment

Tony and I have probably found our new home. It's a penthouse apartment in a small building on Jane Street here in the West Village. We haven't signed a lease yet, but things are looking good that we're going to get it. I'll write more about it once it's a done deal.

***

Last month, Tony and I caught Unnatural Acts, a new play based on an actual gay witch-hunt at Harvard University in 1920. I was enthralled by the story and found the staging to be inspired, particularly during sequences when two different pairs of actors spoke at the same time as they offered testimony before the panel of administrators trying to root out students and teachers who had engaged in homosexual sex. Actually, in the latter of those sequences, one actor was ratting out his lover while the lover was delivering a monologue about betrayal during an audition for a production of Antony and Cleopatra.

Tony really didn't like UA, for reasons I didn't find compelling. I'm looking forward to discussing the play with him and Lou, who also caught it before its extended run ended on July 31 and who told me in an e-mail exchange that he very much liked it.

***

On Thursday, Tony and I ate at Bell Book & Candle. He was prepared to get only a salad, in case they weren't able to guarantee him a full meal that was gluten and dairy free. But our waitress was very thoughtful and well informed about the menu items and their ingredients, and so he was able to get an asparagus soup he raved about that was made creamy by the addition of pistachios and a fantastic diver scallops dish for his entree. I got the Rooftop Mixed Greens With Old-School Thousand Island and the Grilled and Roasted Seasonal Vegetables With Romesco Sauce. To destroy the unabashed good health I would have enjoyed from the light meal, I got the Warm Chocolate Brownie With Pistachio Ice Cream for dessert. We enjoyed glasses of a rosé made from the aglianico grape. That grape tends to produce red wines with a sledge hammer of tannins, but this rosé was elegant yet wonderfully flavorful. I was disappointed that BB&C was out of another rosé on the wine list, by Beaulieu Vineyard. I gotta try that wine.

***

On Saturday evening, Tony and I had a terrific dinner at his house. He roasted some potatoes with cajun seasoning and broiled some steaks that we splashed with Worcestershire sauce, which is gluten free. They were both delicious, but the highlight for me was the side dish of Sun Gold cherry and reddish-purple grape tomatoes that we roasted (after sprinkling them with salt) until they popped and finished for a couple more minutes in the oven after adding a drizzle of olive oil, a little more salt, and some chopped opal basil. Mmmmm.

***

The Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams at Home book I mentioned in my last food-and-drinks post has inspired me to make some delicious fruit sauces that I've been using in ice creams—as Jeni intended—and in sodas.

I layered Jeni's Blackberry Sauce into my homemade vanilla ice cream and was really happy with the result. I decided to pour some of the leftover sauce in a glass and topped it with club soda to make Blackberry Soda. It was so good that the next weekend, I bought a lot of the berries at the Union Square Greenmarket and made some more syrup to give to Tony, along with a bottle of club soda. The recipe for the sauce consists of boiling two parts of berries to one part sugar and then pressing the resulting mixture through a sieve and chilling it. Tony really enjoyed the soda.

One weekend ago, after Tony had told me that peaches were his favorite fruit, I made him some Peach Sorbet using the Concord Grape Sorbet recipe from The Last Course as my guide. It turned out really well.

Yesterday, I made Peach Ice Cream With Peach Swirl as my follow-up to the Vanilla Ice Cream With Blackberry Swirl. I had thought about making raspberry syrup and using that as the swirl, but I went a little nuts with the peaches at the Greenmarket and wanted to use some more of them up. And I figured that if I made peach syrup, I could give some to Tony to make Peach Soda and use the rest in the ice cream to make it doubly peachy. I was very happy with how both things turned out. I took some of the ice cream to the Game Party yesterday, and Mark said it was my best so far. And the soda was enjoyable for me and I'm sure will be for Tony too.

Here's the VICWBS:

The peach ice cream with extra peachiness:

The Peach Soda:

And the soon-to-be Blackberry Sauce cooking on the stove:

***

I was pleased with the last two arrangements I made with flowers from The River Garden, particularly the rudbeckia-and-chamomile pairing I created on Saturday:

I had so many rudbeckia (green-eyed Susans?) that I was able to cut a few very short and put them in a little vase in my bedroom:

The week before, I'd combined echinops with purple asters: