oyceter. New York, Days 1-3

I arrived on a red-eye and basically collapsed into bed for the next few hours. After that, my sister and I went out for lunch and some random shopping, except I was very grumpy because the sky was grey and it started raining on and off halfway through.

I think I'm officially Californian now; I was so baffled by the concept of rain in summer. I feel I shouldn't be, as I grew up with summer typhoons and the warm, wet rainy season, but I glared at the grey skies like they were a personal insult. It's summer! Skies should be vast and blue and sunny, the weather should be hot and dry, and the nights should be cool and refreshing. This hot, wet, muggy thing doesn't work quite so well.

On the first day, the food was good but not particularly spectacular, though I did get to sample cheddar grits, which are very interesting. My sister and I both agreed vehemently with each other that sweet, porridge-like substances (oatmeal, cream of wheat, etc.) are extremely strange, and that we prefer savory porridges (polenta, congee, etc.) intsead. Of course, this is because we grew up with congee. I remember being particularly startled when

rachelmanija once told me that she couldn't eat congee because it weirded her out, as she has grown up with cream of wheat. On the other hand, I can actually eat oatmeal, but only with fruit or jam. Adding brown sugar makes my brain freak out a little.

I feel I should stop being shocked and eminently amused by small things like this, but it's like the first time I saw a non-Chinese kitchen and realized that... they had no rice cooker!

You may all laugh at me now! I am a bit obsessed with things like junk food and Twinkies and meat loaf and street food because I find different people's concepts of "normal" food extremely interesting. For example, I find tuna, ketchup, mayo and cucumbers on waffles tasty and normal but was completely surprised to see people eating waffles with fried chicken and maple syrup (I suspect that would be tasty, though I haven't tried it).

Ratatouille and Korean food

My sister, her roommate and I went to see Ratatouille the night of the fourth. After several mishaps involving getting into the wrong line and not bringing an umbrella out, we finally made it into the theater. Except, given the whole wrong line thing, we just got in for previews, which meant every seat except a scattered few in the first three rows were taken.

I really loved the movie! Of course, I was pre-disposed to, given that it's on rats and food. But a critic somewhere commented that it was a very old-fashioned movie, one that didn't have the snazzy pop culture references that so many animated films do these days, and I think she's right. There's a bit of a timeless quality to the film that I like.

Also... drooool! Oh man! I was dying for French food after that!

Also also, I will just note here that rats have five toes on their hind feet, not three, and that their tummies should have a little vee-line of fur down them. But that is just because I am a total dork who counts my rats' toes.

Mostly I had to prevent myself from squeeing out loud from the cute ratness of it all.

Alas, we did not go for French food afterward, given the whole reservation thing, but we did have Korean. And afterward, we went to Pinkberry in Koreatown, which has frozen yogurt with toppings. Except Pinkberry's frozen yogurt actually tastes like yogurt! As in, it is creamy, but also a bit tangy and sour, and not like soft serve (I'm generally not a soft serve fan). Also, you can pick three toppings, many of which are fruit. So my sister and I split one with raspberries, blueberries and mangoes on top. It was absolutely wonderful, and now I want more, except I don't think we have it here. Grrr.

I blogged about Max Brenner and the Union Square farmer's market previously, so I'll leave that off. And I'll write up all my book loot when I get home.

Park Avenue Cafe

I whined to my sister about French food, and we both decided to have dinner the next night at Park Avenue Cafe, which is French and pricey, except they have this "pay your age" thing that we took advantage of last year. Unfortunately, when we got there, we realized that the place had been entirely redecorated and there was no mention of the pay your age thing. Thankfully, my sister was very nice and treated me as an early birthday present.

We had a soft-shell crab appetizer, which came out with two whole soft-shell crabs on top of a little salad composed of avocado, jicama, and strawberries. I really liked the pairing of the deep-fried, hot, salty crab with the sweeter fruits and vegetables, particularly the contrasting textures: creamy avocado, crisp jicama, soft strawberries and deep-fried crab. We also got seared scallops on top of a mix of tapioca pearls, peaches and a little granola, which sounds incredibly odd, but actually went very well with the scallops.

Before this, I never would have thought that fruit and seafood went well together, but there you have it!

For the main course, we split caprese ravioli, which had a mozzarella filling topped with diced tomatoes (not heirloom, woe), with a yellow tomato sauce that wasn't like pizza sauce with a swirl of balsalmic vinegar. OMG. Am newly in love with balsalmic vinegar, especially very reduced vinegar that is thick and sweet and tangy and goes absolutely perfectly with pureed yellow summer tomatoes.

Oh! Also, they served us watermelon on sticks as the amuse bouche! And the sticks were stuck into this little carton of fake grass! We were both very amused and felt rather stupid when we picked up the sticks and had the watermelon drop off simultaneously.

Soup, peas, and Shoujo Manga Dark Angel (spoilers for DA 2x11)

After

coffeeandink and I got back from the farmer's market, laden with vegetables (HEIRLOOM TOMATOES OMG YAY!), we headed over to her place. We both shelled peas while watching the first three eps. of Honey and Clover, which I think Mely liked yay! I cooked peas with salt and pepper and a ton of lemon; the peas in NY are younger and smaller and sweeter than the ones here. We ate and watched vids and cagefighting with Alec and Max on Dark Angel, and then Mely went to cook her summer soup while leaving me with ...

Shoujo manga Dark Angel!

I had been reduced to giggles by the cagefighting, as I had completely not realized that Alec is Dean! Ok, Jensen Ackles, but you know. Somehow, I have read all the SPN and Dark Angel posts on my flist and figured that Jensen Ackles plays a minor character in DA and not the angsty yet troublesome and devilish mutant that he does!

Anyway, shoujo manga Dark Angel is an episode about Alec's dark and tragic past in which the show tries to win us over to Alec's side by showing how secretly sad and tragic and torn he is on the inside. However, much like Yuki Kaori's attempts to humanize Jezebel Disraeli with a sad zombie puppy story, the result was more hilarious than sympathetic (though I am sure Sasuke fans would eat it up with a spoon). In Alec's defense, he is more your standard womanizing jerk and not a homicidal maniac who keeps organs in a jar and lovingly talks to them or someone who has sworn to kill his brother at the cost of all his humanity.

Alec gets many tragic and dramatic flashbacks to his tragic and dramatic past, involving a silver heart locket which he still keeps to this very day and piano music. We are introduced to the piano music during a dinner party with Alec, Max, Original Cindy, and a dog-man (literally a dog-man; I am not sure how else to describe him). Max mocks Alec's womanizing ways, which somehow trigger Alec's Sekrit Pain (I, for one, side thoroughly with Max and found Alec's hurt at the mocking rather... mockable). Alec then runs off. Please note that the dinner party is being hosted by the dog-man in his house.

Alec somehow manages to stumble across an old piano (!) in the basement (!!) of the dog-man's house (!!!) and begins darkly and tragically playing classical music.

I think at this point I was laughing so loudly that you could hear me from outside the apartment.

As his tragic flashback took place, involving, of course, the True Love of a Beautiful Teenager and the sight of Jensen Ackles in spectacles and a suit as a strict piano instructor, the same dark and tragic music would keep playing in the background and send me into fits of hysterics.

When the episode finished, I rushed over to the kitchen to have hysterics with Mely.

"OMG! He thinks she is dead except she ends up in a coma! And dies tragically after he sees her one last time! Coma! The only way it could be better is if she woke up with amnesia!" I flailed at Mely.

"But the best part is, in the episode commentary, they say that they were originally going to make her wake up with amnesia!" Mely said.

"Noooo! Awesome!"

"Yes! And the episode is so deep that the dog-man makes an abstract painting of Alec's tortured soul to show Max how tortured and angsty Alec is!"

(I kid you not. It was something like, "Alec hides from Alec. Dark swirls like Alec's pain. Hard to see at first, but there.")

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Posted by

heresluck

The congee thing is interesting. I love congee (and polenta); before I got used to them, I found them both weird in a this-is-not-familiar-from-my-childhood way, but I liked them instantly. And now I'm wondering whether this is partly because oatmeal and other sweet porridges are *also* not from my childhood, and thus were equally weird (but tasty) the first times I encountered them.

Huh.

And oh, I've been meaning to tell you -- I have heirloom tomatoes growing in my GARDEN. Whee! (No peas, though -- that will have to wait until next year.)

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New York, Days 1-3

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