For lunch on Saturday, we went to what appears to be a really rockin’ bar. At least at night, I bet. During the day, it was laid back enough for us to take a big table by the back and get a few burgers.
But despite the innocent looking setup, this was not you average lunch. It was, in fact, the first time anyone could remember that Mark, aka AJ, did not finish his burger.
Dun-dun-dun! He had ordered the Insanity burger, and it was, indeed, so insanely spicy that he could not finish it. The culprit? Dave’s Insanity Sauce, a sauce so hot that it has its own wikipedia entry.
Yes, he was a bit ashamed. But also happy to know that he was beaten only by something that once held the title of “World’s Hottest Sauce.” More photos of the food — and the family, with Samantha, of course! — after the jump.
I don’t have nearly as extensive of coverage as Jennifer does over on Nyack Backyard, but I took exactly three photographs at the centennial flower show of the Nyack Garden Club.
Number one. A scene setter:
Number 2. My mom’s arrangement:
And number 3, the penguin:
To see more, you really should click on the Nyack Backyard link. But go Mom! Congrats!
Our good friend David, whom SCF fans may remember from this summer in Charlottesville, is in town for a holiday. We met him for a delishy lunch at Pastis, which we chose because 1. David is a Francophile; and 2. It’s near the High Line and we wanted to walk along it after lunch. Success on both accounts. To wit, a terrific frisee aux lardons salad:
More French food and High Line walking after the jump. But here’s a cute one of Greg and Sam, just for kicks:
After our brunch at the Breslin, Boo and I headed over to the Morgan Library to check out the Dickens exhibit.
We also saw good ol’ Pierpont’s library. You’re not supposed to take photos (and I didn’t know that), but I got this one off before they asked me not to shoot:
Here’s Boo outside the library:
And, just for kicks, here’s Srimnp on the train on the way downtown before brunch:
On my last day of maternity leave, we went back to the city for a little walk along the High Line and a then had a supper of soup and oysters and the Standard. Here’s Srimp enjoying her milk along the High Line.
Another visit to the Museum of Modern Art? Sure, we’re members, so why not. As Greg points out, MoMA is a convenient way to spend time waiting for cocktail hour to begin. While I was spending my time, I enjoyed this piece. I wouldn’t mind emulating its layout in my rogue’s gallery on the wall of the staircase, too!
And taking Greg’s advice, after the viewing of art, the drinking of cocktails began. These are at The Modern, the Danny Meyer restaurant at the museum.
A martini, left; and The Heights, a special on the cocktail list, right. More art, and a few snacks at the Modern, after the jump.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art just reopened its renovated American Wing, which displays, according to the Met, “one of the finest and most comprehensive” American art collections in the world. It has George Washington Crossing the Delaware, for one, and two galleries dedicated to the Hudson River School. The wing is organized chronologically, so you can watch the development of our nation as you move through the galleries, starting with European-style portraiture and moving on to the Hudson River School and Western art and then on to Impressionism and Modern. It’s a lot of fun — and a lot to take in. We’ll be back.
I got so many comments and “likes” when I posted this photo on Facebook, so I’m just gonna throw it out there before the jump. After the jump you’ll find a few more photos of art. We also have a few more photos of Sam, but here’s one of our favorites:
Samantha’s first trip to MoMA was to see the Diego Rivera exhibit. Six of his murals were on display; they were ones for which he was brought here to the museum in 1931 to create. He ended up created portable frescos on a lime-enhanced cement, which is pretty cool. It was only the museum’s second exhibition ever. I think Sam really enjoyed it. I know we did.
Greg is working on an article for The Valle y Table magazine about maple syrup in the Hudson Valley. So we took an afternoon and went to visit Bri Hart at his White Oak Farm in Yorktown Heights. He has 10 acres and last year produced between 400 and 500 gallons of maple syrup. He grew up on a farm in Northeast Connecticut and has been farming the land here in Westchester for about 35 years. We got a little tour of his sugar shack and Greg also took at look at the saw mill he has on his property. Great fun. Here’s a little slideshow of our visit.
Sam and I will be spending lots of time together over the weekends from now on. Greg got a great new job copy editing at The Daily, and his hours are Saturday and Sunday nights. It’s so terrific for Srimp. No day care once I have to go back to work on Feb. 1. It’s not so terrific for spending quality family time together around the Farm. So we’re a little sad about that. But the good far outweighs the bad, and Srimp and I had quite a few laughs this first weekend. I held her and we practiced smiling and making talking noises, and then she went to bed and I sewed some vintage buttons on my coat.
On Sunday, we walked down to the farewell potluck supper at church for our Rector, Richard Gressle, who has retired after 16 years. He will be missed!
I’m sure we’ll find plenty to keep us busy these weekend nights. But we will miss Hunna lots!
In search of a good backpack, we headed to the new Ridge Hill shopping center in Yonkers, which has not only and REI and an L.L. Bean but also a Dick’s Sporting Goods. If you can’t find a backpack in those stores, there’s something wrong with you. (We did.) Since this is (ostensibly) a food blog, I will note that we had lunch at the Whole Foods there. The store, by the way, beats the White Plains one by a mile. So much more spacious, fewer people and lots more stuff. Bravo.
Greg made his own tacos from the “salad” bar. I got a panino. Srimp had milk.
No, I’m sorry SCF fans, we don’t have a new episode of Today at the Mall, with Gregory! Instead, we have a few old college friends getting together for some lunch and shopping. We don’t even really have a good place to show you where we ate lunch. It was, in fact, a chain (the horrors!). Melanie, Marissa, George, Sam and I had lunch at (dum, dum dum!) Chili’s. I know. The shame. What has gotten into me since this Mom thing? I hope it changes soon!
Maybe it was the rice and beans from Maura’s the night before, but I had a hankering for Harry’s. And the weather was so gorgeous that we decided to make an afternoon of it. We walked down the long way, stopped for lunch, walked a bit more, stopped for coffee, and then headed home. Come along and share our outing!
I must have walked past the main branch of the New York Public Library a hundred times, but I’ve never been inside. Today, that all changed. We took in the sites, including those famous lions, a Gutenberg Bible that was on display inside, and, of course, the Rose Reading Room.
Yes, we’re back. We thought it would be a fun spot to take Sarah and Chris and the kids. Indeed, it was! We got a table by the ice rink and sat under the heat lamps, enjoying burgers and soups. We even got to see Boo, who was able to join us last minute. What fun!
Jane stayed home, and Mae was beside herself about being alone with her Mommy in the city. “I don’t even have to share my hot dog!” she exclaimed. What’s better than that?
For a little holiday diversion, we took the kids to see the butterfly exhibit and the dinosaurs at the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan. Oh how Mae hoped a butterfly would land on her hand. Alas.
Everyone, however, was sufficiently wowed by the T-Rex and his cousins on the fourth floor:
Greg, Samantha and I took shelter from a sprinkle under a canopy at the bar called the Southwest Porch at Bryant Park. The park is all decked out for the holidays, complete with an ice-skating rink and a big blue tree.
We think Sam enjoyed her first trip to Manhattan.
More pics, including of a big, cozy fire pit, after the jump.
We took srimp — that’s what we’ve taken to calling her these days, srimp. No “h” — to the last outdoor market of the season in Pleasantville. We stocked up on all kinds of goodies.
Clockwise from lower left: celery, potatoes, apples, frozen blueberries, leeks, Tuscan kale, butternut squash, tiny onions, pea shoots, beets, apple cider, pear cider, celeriac, carrots, Brussels sprouts, garlic, turnips, onions, and, the in the center, pears.
Quite a haul!
Greg calls the photo below “Joni Mitchell shopping in 1973.”
For Sam’s first trip to the mall (with Gregory!), we had lunch at a brand-new food court stand called Cheese Boy, and took in a 2 p.m. showing of The Descendants. First, the sandwich.
A well-made sammy with good bread, butter and fresh ingredients. We were happy indeed. I also got a tomato soup. Photos of that, and Sam in her stroller for her first mall experience, after the jump.
Dr. Lecter? Dr. Lecter? After much insistence from Boo that “Silence! The Musical” was just about the funniest musical she’d ever seen, Irene, Greg and I joined her for a performance. She may well have been right. We really laughed hard. And often.
It’s a spoof on Silence of the Lambs, with music, and follows the plot line to a T. It’s still playing, although not at the same theater. Yes, thumbs up. Go. Here’s the web site: Silencethemusicalnyc.com.
I’m not usually one to say: “Hey, let’s go check out a Civil War battlefield!” But when the battlefield is Gettysburg, well, that’s something you don’t want to miss.
We spent an afternoon there, and I must say, I want to go back. You could spend a full day or more, easily, understanding how the battles played out, what strategies worked and which failed, and well, just being out in the countryside. There’s nothing like visiting a place to help you understand it better, whether that’s a foreign land, a vineyard or, yes, a Civil War battlefield.
After a pretty bad night’s sleep at the Days Inn Roanoke — which Greg nicknamed the Days Inn Islamabad for its crumbling walls and filthy rooms — we headed out early in the morning to get some brekky and check out the O. Winston Link museum. O. Winston Link was a commercial photographer who worked on Madison Avenue shooting products for ads and PR campaigns, but he had a special passion: The Norfolk & Western Railway. He spent countless hours and untold amounts of his own money to document the last of the steam engines running these lines in the 1950s, and his collection of extraordinary photos is housed at the museum, which itself is housed in the former Roanoke train station.
Perhaps his most famous photo is here below, “Hot Shot Eastbound at the Drive-In, Ieager, West Virginia.”
O. Winston Link was a genius when it came to lighting. Don’t forget, this was before digital strobes or anything like that. This photo, and all of his others, was lighted with those enormous one-time flash bulbs, along with smaller bulbs hidden in places like lanterns or behind bushes or structures.
There are hundreds of photos collected in the museum. They are all beautiful and admirable for their craft, but they also show you how life was in rural Virginia and West Virginia during that time period, and for that they are even more special. This one on the right, called General Store, is especially telling. Look at the community, the products, the setting. You know that place.
After the jump, a look around Roanoke and the exterior of the museum. No photos were allowed inside.
We didn’t have much time for any other sights in Philadelphia, but we did get a nice look through the windows of a small tour bus. Here’s a look at a few snaps.
City Hall:
Clothespin by Claus Oldenburg:
Did you know that the hinge is the “6″ in 76?
The “Rocky” steps at the Philadelphia Museum of Art:
In a mansion in a leafy suburban neighborhood near the Main Line in Philadelphia, there’s a collection of Impressionist and Modern paintings like you’ve never seen in one place before: 181 Renoirs; 169 Cézannes; 46 Picassos; 21 Soutines; 4 Manets, 4 Monets and 7 Matisses, including “The Dance II,’ a 47-foot mural specifically commissioned to span the three arches in the main gallery.
The collection was amassed by Albert Barnes, who invented an antiseptic called Argyrol, made millions, and established the Barnes Foundation in 1922. The collection is set to move to a new building on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway – home to the Philadelphia Musuem of Art (yes, the one with the “Rocky” steps), among others.
As part of a press tour, Boo and I were invited to see the art in its original location, and then to check out the construction of the new building downtown.
It was quite an experience, and I wish I was permitted to take photos of the paintings. (They are mostly paintings, but there is also an interesting collection of ironworks and furniture.) Here’s a sample of what just one wall in the main gallery looked like:
AP Photo/George Widman
The walls are hung from floor to ceiling with the art and these ironworks (many of which have practical uses, such as door hinges, kitchen tools, etc.), and Barnes stipulated that after his death that the arrangements he made were not to be altered in any fashion.
This made it controversial to consider moving the collection to a new location, but in the end, a compromise was reached. (Well, I suppose that depends on whom you ask; at any rate, the collection is moving.) The walls will be hung the same way, with the same proportions, though some space will be added between galleries, and a separate public space will be built on the new property. Here’s a a link to the New York Times topic, which has whole lot of information on the foundation, the controversy and the collection. There’s also a movie, which Boo watched and enjoyed (but I haven’t seen yet) about the controversy: The Art of the Steal.
The original property is also home to an arborteum with a beautiful collection of trees and plants and a highly respected education program. These will remain at the original location.
The Goatherd Book Club met at Rory and Chris’ apartment to discuss the Hemingway classic, “The Sun Also Rises.” Rory and Chris made a special Spanish tapas meal, with gazpacho and pastel moreno and a host of other terrific dishes. They also rented the 1950s edition of the movie, which played in the background as we dined and disucssed. Here’s Kris, Tom and Chris, enjoying their meal:
