Side Of Spaghetti: #17

Now with 100% more raccoon fur!

Monday 7/14- Started the week off with some serious iron pumping at a kettlebell class which kicked my butt. Coffee at home because I finally figured out how to make good iced coffee and now I feel invincible. Jk, I feel terrified and powerless, but I can make iced coffee. I had a smoked turkey, avo, cuke and kimchi collard green wrap and slathered it in carrot ginger dressing, then headed out for a massage at Bergen Spa and it was really relaxing and nice. I caught a late afternoon screening of Superman at Cobble Hill Cinemas and I loved it! A pro Palestinian Superman was a heartwarming surprise, and while it could be considered wildly reductive that this horrendous crime agains humanity could be solved so simply, I chose to not be cynical and appreciate that there is a superhero movie that is addressing many of the most important issues facing our world. It made me really emotional. It’s not a perfect film, but it far exceeded my expectations and I recommend seeing it. I came home and made a super simple summer spaghetti with shallots, cherry tomatoes and shisho and watched Dirty Dancing. RIP to Swayze, one of the best to ever do it.

Tuesday 7/15- I saw that my friend Jeremy was teaching an early hot yoga class at my gym so I headed out to catch a 7am twisting sesh and it felt amazing. Did a quick stop at the Borough Hall farmers market and I bought some flowers, herbs and peaches. I grabbed a mind-bendingly delicious croissant at Caputo’s Bakery and also ate some cherries and blueberries whilst sitting on the kitchen floor at home. I noticed a weird spot of dirt and hair in my bathroom when I got home, but chalked it up as a mystery, wiped it up and moved on. This is an important clue, stay tuned. I did some writing and then made another turkey/ collard wrap for lunch and headed back to the gym for hot Pilates, trying with all my might to stave off the impending dread with exercise. I met my lovely friends Joseph and Franco Caputo of Caputo’s Fine Foods fame at Bar Bête for dinner. I really like this place. It’s consistently delicious and every bite we had was perfection. We had snapper crudo with pink peppercorns and watermelon juice, spicy tuna toast, duck fat fried potatoes with garlic aioli, little gem salad with pickled mushrooms and fried shallots, turnips with anchovy tonnato and peaches and the best leeks vinaigrette ever! Great conversation, great food, felt very lucky! I watched the first half of Do The Right Thing for the 1,000th time because it is being featured in an upcoming newsletter. So, so, so good.

Wednesday 7/16- I whistled while I worked on my newsletter, then ran some errands and bumped into my sweetie pie friend Joanna on the walk home and had a nice little chat with her. For breakfast I had a delicious peach and some strawberries with Tajin and lime. Started Keith McNally’s memoir, I Regret Almost Everything, upon my friend Nicky’s recommendation and so far so good. Caught a midday hot yoga class with Paulo and then walked to Culture in Park Slope for a fro yo. I got passionfruit and nearly passed away because it was so fucking delicious. In the evening I walked down to Brooklyn Wine Exchange to shoot the shit with Thomas and Kerry and then popped up to Frankie’s to say hi to my buddy Nicky and had a glass of chilly red. Bumped into Joseph and his wonderful chef girlfriend, Jane and then home to finish watching Do The Right Thing while eating a charred flour tortilla with Kerrygold.

Thursday 7/17- A day that started out like any other day, but will live in infamy. I had the coffee, I did the yoga, I recipe tested a very cool sandwich for an upcoming news letter and brought it down to BK Wine for them to try. I walked with Liz to Culture for the second in what was becoming a hot streak of Culture visits. I got half strawberry, half plain with pineapple. YUM! Walked back, did some work and went to an evening showing of Eddington at Cobble Hill Cinemas. I have mixed feelings on Ari Aster’s films. I think they can be punishing and often leave wondering if he has an editor that he listens to. Hereditary and Midsomer are both really good films, but I did not necessarily enjoy watching them and I will never watch either one again. I deeply disliked Beau Is Afraid and walked out in the last five minuets after sitting through nearly three hours because I just couldn’t stand it any more. But Eddington was nearly perfect. Really funny, empathetic and bleak all at once. I got home at about 10:30 with my nerves a little fried and went about making myself a charred tortilla with a slice of goat gouda for dinner. My chef knife was missing all day long. I usually either leave it in the drawer or next to the sink, because I use it so much. It was nowhere to be found. I started searching again, and after looking everywhere in the kitchen, I began to search the rest of the house. The last place I looked was in the bathroom, knowing there was no way my knife would have ended up here, but I looked anyway just so I could say I searched the entire house. There is a weird space next to the sink, like a 12x12 nook between the sink and the wall where i keep the toilet plunger. Things sometimes fall down there and become lost forever. I peeked into the space, right where I had seen the mystery dirt THREE DAYS earlier, and while there was no knife, there was a gigantic RACCOON! That’s right folks, a raccoon. An alive raccoon. In my apartment. It had been there for three days! That was where the mystery dirt came from. IT CAME FROM A RACCOON THAT I HAD BEEN LIVING WITH FOR THREE DAYS!!! I grabbed my upstairs neighbor Viv because initially I thought it was one of her cats, and we first called 311 who sent over some useless cops who refused to take off their shoes in my house and were afraid of the raccoon. The city does not have a public animal control, so I had to pay $450 to get someone to remove this thing. A very sweet man arrived with no gloves or protection, just a stick with a lasso and another stick with a grabber on the end and spent a half hour trying to get the raccoon who refused to get out of a ball. The man finally un-balled him and got him into a cage. He peed allover the guy and my bathroom but was quite calm in the cage and looked healthy and robust which calmed me because it made me feel like he wasn’t rabid. I had no cash so I offered the animal control guy some cherries. He accepted, and we walked him out to his car where he put the raccoon in the trunk, splashed some water from a bottle on his hands and then started eating cherries. I was aghast, but also in awe of this man who could not be bothered to wear any protective gear or wash his hands with soap while handling a live raccoon. The tiny little stalker was driven to the woods of Staten Island and set free. Viv and I gossiped while cleaning up piss and hair and I got to bed around 3am. Only in New York Folks.

A very good sandwich

A very naughty raccoon!

Friday 7/18- I woke up late, or late for me at least, around 8am and was too tired and weirded out to go to the gym. I had some coffee and a peach and headed over to the Union Square farmers market which is my happy place. It really helped to calm my nerves to be amongst the cherry tomatoes and squash blossoms. I grabbed a bunch of beautiful veggies at Norwich Meadows, and a rhubarb muffin and a sesame whole wheat loaf, aka the best bread in human history, at She Wolf, then headed back to BK. I packed up the car and made my way out to Huntington to see my folks. I love going out to their house, especially in the summer. I made a nice dinner for them and we had lots of laughs while cooking! We had a salad with red lettuce, plums, pistachios, little baby cukes from the market, red onion and a goat cheese vin. for the main event we had grilled local striped bass with a cherry tomato and shallot sauce, herby green rice and grilled veggies (potatoes, romano beans, cabbage, turnips and baby squash) with yogurt sauce. We watched the 1978 Superman and ate mint chip Ralph’s for dessert. A perfect day!!

Bobbie Alert!!

Saturday 7/19- Woke up early and grabbed coffee with my cute mother at Southdown Coffee in Huntington. We came home and had She Wolf sesame bread with goat cream cheese, Norwich Meadows tomatoes and a fried egg from a local farm near their house. So summer. We headed to Robert Moses beach. We always go to field 3 and walk all the way to the left past the crowds until we are pretty much all alone. I love coming here, especially with my folks, it is my favorite place on planet earth. The water was aquamarine and there was a gentle breeze. We took a long walk and had Bobbie’s famous curried chicken salad topped with cucumber salad (Rob and I eat it together in one pile, Bobbie refuses to mix them and this is a point of contention within our family) and spent the afternoon chatting and swimming. I came back to BK and met my friends Becky and Adam at Inga’s in Brooklyn Heights for dinner. This place is great. It reminds me of Marlow back in the day, and that makes sense because Sean who is the chef/owner was the chef at Marlow once upon a time. We had morel toast, a perfectly dressed simple salad, mortadella with shaved gouda and honey, chicken schnitzel with tomato & cuke salad and their excellent burger and fries. For dessert Adam took us, and his lovely sister Lauren, out for ice cream at The Brooklyn Farmacy, which oddly I have never been to even though it is like three blocks from my house. I got a mint chip cone and it was very, very good! I came home and watched The Larry Sanders Show, checked for raccoons and went to bed.

Me & B thinking about ice cream!

Sunday 7/20- I was up bright and early and headed to hot yoga. Grabbed coffee at Octavia on the way back and hit up the Carroll Gardens farmers market. I feel very lucky to have this market here every Sunday. Not only is it convenient and filled with great vendors, but it really strengthens the sense of community in the neighborhood. I bumped into a few folks I know and bought cukes, beets, shisho, cherry tomzzz, peaches, nectarines, onions, kale and sunflowers. I cooked up some kale sauce, cucumber shisho salsa and a salad to have for the week with Romano beans, chickpeas, celery, green peppers, red onion and herbs. Headed over to Culture (send help) to meet my friend Sarah for a yogurt and a walk. I got half peach half raspberry white chocolate with fresh strawberries— beyond! We walked back to my hood and I stopped by to see Susan in the hospital then for a foot massage. Came home, worked on writing projects and then took a walk down to Henry Public. I didn’t feel like drinking so I had a bitters and soda and read a bit of Raymond Chandler’s, Lady In The Lake. Love that Phillip Marlowe. I finished listening to Keith’s memoir on the walk home. He has some contrasting opinions, but I found it really compelling, funny and earnest and all of us in the NYC food biz owe him a great deal of gratitude for being such a pioneer in the industry. He seems like a good person and I like his politics and really enjoyed listening to his story. I had some of my bean salad for dinner which I added fresh mozz, cherry tomatoes and pistachios to. I chatted for a long time with my friend Michael, ate some dark chocolate and watched the ;ast episode of And Just Like That and cringed my way through it until it was time for bed.

It’s tough out there folks. Try and keep your heads up and hearts open and for the love of God, go get a fro yo at Culture!

XOXO,

Z