Still here....

I know, I'm a bad blogger! But life interferes with cyber life, what can you do?
Just a few new Bests, for those interested:
BEST COFFEE ICE CREAM: Stonyfield Farms Gotta Have Coffee (formerly Javalicious), & Double Rainbow's Coffee.
BEST VANILLA ICE CREAM: Green & Black's Vanilla. Really wonderful, deep flavor.
BEST SOUR CREAM: Nancy's Organic. If you can't find it Horizon is okay, but Nancy's has a great flavor and is really rich.
FAVORITE CHOCOLATE BAR, MILK: Chocolove's Milk Chocolate with Toffee and Almonds. I don't hate dark chocolate, but I must confess, I prefer milk chocolate.
BEST TOMATO JUICE: Luvli Juices makes, without a doubt, the best tomato juice I've ever tried. It comes spicy and regular. I like the spicy, but the regular has a better tomato flavor.
BEST CRANBERRY DRINK: Knudsens makes a sparkling cranberry juice that is fantastic, I only wish it came in a bigger bottle.
That's all for now, hope everyone is well.

Thanksgiving and Its Contents

I know I'm posting this late, but I love Thanksgiving. I love the traditional feast: turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, and that's allI really need. This year I was blessed in that the turkey had extra stuff packaged with it: an extra liver, and an extra pope's nose, probably my favorite part of the bird. And I like plain bread stuffing, nothiing fancy or gussied up: breadcrumbs, celery, onions, sometimes giblets, and I'm happy.
This winter has been good, eating wise. I had a meal recently at the Old Heidelberg, perhaps the last remnant of the German population of the Upper East Side, and ate an excellent Jaeger Schnitzel (schnitzels covered in cream & mushroom sauce), and some extremely light spaetzle. I"ve written before of my fondness for German cuisine, untouched as it is by any fads or newfangled notions of eatin'. I ate with a friend who was baffled by a bowl of brussels sprouts ("What're those?" he asked me with a worried expresssion). He also didn't recognize sliced apples or kiwi fruit, which came with our dessert of chocolate fondue. ANyway, a soul satisfying meal indeed.
I've discovered a new treat: spreadable goat chese, called Chevrion. I'm a huge fan of goat cheese, and this stuff is great. You can find it at Fairway.
Another delight this Season was a friend of mine got me a 30 year bottle of Port. I'm not much of wine drinker, or indeed a drinker, but I do love Port, and this stuff is delightful. I have no way of knowing what other fancy ports taste like, but I am enjoying this bottle.
Another Seasonal pleasure was to be found at the Time Warner Mall, where food trucks were selling dishes of food from restaurants in the Mall, for 1 to 3 bucks a plate. I had a plate of oversalted Italian food (orrechiette in a cream sauce), a really delicious Chicken Tikka Masala, and a delicious chocolate dessert from Bouchon. These trucks haven't been back, so maybe it was just a special thing.
I had a delicious cup of coffee at the Chelsea Market from 9th St. Espresso, truly wonderful, and far superior to Starbucks. Wish they were on every corner.
Anyway, that's all the food news for now, hope everyone is enjoying the holidays!!

I'm Back!!

It's been a bit since my last post, guess I'm not much of a blogger. Had a Belgian waffle from a truck the other week, and it was deliicious! Hadn't had on of those in a long time. Also discovered a new coffee ice cream I love, Julie's organic Mocha Java, almost like drinking a cup of coffee, in frozen form. That makes 3 coffee ice creams I love: Julie's, Stonyfield Farms (renamed from Javalicious to Gotta Have Java), and Double Rainbow's Coffee, which is only at Trader Joe's. It's a SF brand.
Back in August had an excellent meal in Chinatown with a few of my pals at Shanghai Something or another, a restaurant at the Western edge of Bayard Street. Excellent sesame noodles, sesame pancakes, and other stuff. A swell time was had by all.
Tonight I had a nice carnitas taco from a Mexican truck that parks by 8th & 14th. Love this stuff, and they were gone for awhile, which worried me, but now thery're back, and all is right with the world.

New Food Craving

I recently ate at Otafaku, a small Japanese place in the East Village that offers what I'm guessing is Japanese fast food. It's been around for years, but I never ate there until the other week, and I now have a new food craving: Japanese egg and cabbage called okonomiyaki. I love 'em! I believe their replacing my lust for the sesame wontons at Plump Dumpling. You can also get yakisoba, which is sort of like Japanese lo mein, and these fried balls with a bit of octopus in the center. I like those too, but I love the pancakes, which are like Japanese egg foo yung. Also, I usually dislike unsweetened iced tea, but I love the unsweetened iced tea here, which is called muggi chai or some such, and it's a barley tea, which a great flavor, very satisfying.
Anyway, always like to expand my food horizons.

Manhattan Special Comes to Inwood! Joy!!!!!!!

I live up in Inwood, and have for about 20 years. I like the neighborhood, it has the most parks of any Manhattan neighborhood, and it is pretty solidly working and middle class with little chance of genitrification. There's no Starbucks up here, hell, there isn't even a Dunkin Donuts!! But the local C Town has begun carrying food times I love, including Murray's Organic chickens, Pellegrino sodas, Stonyfield Farms ice cream (there Javaliciousi is the best commercial ice cream on the market), San Benedetto iced tea (my favortie brand), and recently Manhattan Special Coffee Soda. Those not in the know may not know that Manhattan Special, made in Brooklyn, was for years available only in Brooklyn and lower Manhattan. Only in the past few years have they been distributing it above 14th St., and now up in my neck of the woods. I love this stuff, the best espresso soda there is, not that there's much competition for this title. Now, if they'd only start carrying Boylan's Black Cherry soda...

Butter & Sugar, oh my!

I've been having some Proustian madeleine moments recently, mostly over forgotten breakfast foods. I've written here earlier about eating fried egg and bread sandwiches, but I recently was reminded of a forgotten treat when I came across a posting on Chowhound about eating butter and sugar as a kid. I remembered that I used to love toast, spread with butter and sugar as a kid myself. I hadn't thought about that in decades. It's nothing I'd want to eat now, but I ate a lot of it as a child, and I had completely forgotten about it, until this posting caused me to recall it.

My Week in Food

Wandered through Chelsea Market the other day, and had a wonderful clam chowder, courtesy of the Lobster Place, I love a good clam chowder, preferably New England, though given my blood pressure & cholesterol, I should eat Manhattan. But for whatever reason Manhattan clam chowder seems to be an excuse to leave out clams, and make a tomato-based potato soup. I've had some decent Manhattan chowders, but good ones are usually an exception. Lobster Place uses fresh clams, they're not over cooked and rubbery, and the soup is not over salted, another chowder pitfall. The broth had excellent mouth feel, creamy with clam undertones. After chowder, wandered into the Italian grocery store, where I got a nice big can of San Marzano tomatoes for 2 bucks. In fact, the Italian store has excellent prices on most of their foodstuffs. Then I went to the Red Witch bakery and had an excellent chocoate brownie, thin and moist. And I'm not a huge brownie fan.
A few days later, a friend had a birthday party at a Vatan, one of the few vegetarian restaurants I like. The place is along Little India in Manhattan, a few blocks along the East Side in the 20s. Vatan is prix fixe, about 24 bucks, and you get a ridiculous amount of food. Most of it was delicious, including an excellent version of a mango lassi, a delicious plum sauce, and excellent samosas. Highly recommended, but go hungry. I could not finish my dessert, an unheard of thing for me.
And recently I re-discovered a place I use to eat in years ago, and had forgotten: The Restaurant inside the Ukrainian National Home, right next to Veselka's on 2nd Avenue. Apparently under new management, the food was excellent, including a delicious beet-buttermilk soup, a great shnitzel with mashed potatoes and sauerkraut (Is that Ukrainian? I noticed weinershnitzel on the menu too). An excellent mushroom gravy could be had for the shnitzel. My friend ate blintzes that were heavenly. I'd have to say this was the best Eastern European meal I've eaten downtown in a long while.
I also stopped by another old haunt, the Odessa, and had a cup of the worst borsht I've ever eaten. It was so awful I was stunned. Odessa was never the home of haute cuisine, but the food was always palatable at decent prices. This soup was horrid, salty, bland, the beets blanched of all flavor. And I love beets! I didn't even know borsht could be this bad, since most of the Polish places in the East Village could at least give you decent bowl. But I guess not. Won't be going there again!