This year I said fuck it – fondue is such a beast to clean (or so Andy told me, repeatedly) especially when you try to keep it warm with a sterno or tea light that just solidified a burnt circle of soot onto the bottom of the fancy fondue pot – whoopsie daisy as I used to say. Then I saw a cup of fondue at Trader Joe’s – La Fondue – and bought it as a joke. Of course I forgot to heat it up on NYE when everyone was here, but I found it this week and used the sourdough bread that Milo had made as a vehicle to test it out.
Y’all, Traders Joe’s doesn’t dick around with this fondue. Somehow they got it all right – not sure there is any kirsch in this but damn it is decent – just as good as any fiasco I might have conjured, minus all the mess.
One of the rediscovered joys of this holiday season has been home-time with Andy. While it’s always been something I’ve appreciated and adored, it means a bit more as the world around us shudders with awfulness, and even those people we thought would be with us forever dwindle and disappear. A time of uncertainty brings a time of realignment, and finding refuge in a partner is the safest bastion against an ever-threatening world.
On a recent morning I requested one of his omelettes – he opted for a ham and cheese, and turned it into an endless plate of delectable goodness, one that went on almost too long for me to finish it. Almost – I can fit a lot into my mouth and stomach (just ask Andy how I got the nickname ‘Gummie’). When you fill the stomach with a meal made by a loved one, you fill the heart as well, and a full heart is how the holidays should be celebrated.
Today I made creamed turkey on toast like Gram used to do, because who doesn’t love a roux?
What this simple meal lacks in visual appeal and ingredient complexity, it makes up for in comfort and rustic charm – and the happy memories of Gram spending the holidays with us. It was easier saying goodbye to her after Thanksgiving because we knew we’d see her in a few weeks for Christmas.
That was one of my favorite parts of the holidays.
Throughout this fall’s tumultuous online trajectory, one of the unheralded and all-too-often unseen pillars of support has been Andy. That’s typical the case in a general sense, but when I’m down or unsure, he seems to know when to be there, such as in this delicious comfort food dinner of spaghetti and meatballs. When the weather dips into the cycle of usual fall doldrums, a spaghetti dinner is one of those easy pick-me-ups that can shift the emotional arc of a day, or at the very least make dinner a bright spot.
Andy makes amazing meatballs (as previously celebrated here) – it was one of the first meals he ever made for me back when we had just started dating. Over the years, he has experimented and perfected his recipe for sauce, and there is always a ready pot of it in the fridge on days when you need a little extra comfort.
It also makes for a happy post to finish this early week of fall – come back for tomorrow morning’s recap to catch up on all the drama you might have missed for the past 49 years…
Fresh off the culinary success of Andy’s take on fried green tomatoes, he went back into the kitchen to craft this insane tower of fried eggplant, interspersed with burrata, balsamic glaze, and fresh basil. We first had something like this at Angelina’s Restaurant in Ogunquit, Maine – and it was a welcome revelation. We went back there several times just for this dish.
As we’re currently under the semi-annual spell of the deep fryer (we can only bring it out two or three times a year or we’d have heart attacks and die) it’s been a week of fried glory – next up is fried okra, courtesy of Suzie’s vegetable garden.
He perfected it without any practice, producing this delicious dish of fried green tomatoes, augmented by a drizzle of balsamic glaze, some burrata, a sprinkling of green onions and some tomato chutney. It was just as good as the original.
Pie never did much for me. On my list of preferred desserts, it’s near the bottom. Not that I’ve ever turned a pie down if that’s the sweet treat to close out a dinner (Andy makes a mean one), it’s just not my favorite. For holidays, however, it seems that pie is often the choice for dessert – especially Thanksgiving and Christmas. For yesterday’s low-key non-celebration of the 4th of July, I picked up a small apple pie, because they say nothing is more American than apple pie. Whether that’s true or not, I have neither the energy nor the desire to investigate or argue – we’re talking about a fucking pie.
With some whipped cream and a double serving of softened vanilla ice cream, we made this one into apple pie à la mode, which sounds way more French than American to me, but what the fuck do I know?
Andy has been on a burrata bend of late, and I’m reaping the benefits of it in plates like this, which features a ring of heirloom tomatoes outfitted with fresh basil from the garden and a generous drizzle of a balsamic glaze. Taken with bites of burrata, it makes for a glorious combination to form a light lunch, or happy appetizer for a simple summer dinner.
Appearing almost magically across the street from downtown Albany’s oldest store, Wizard Burger has been around for a couple of years, but I never took the opportunity to try it out until last week – and it was a happy and fortuitous revelation, as the pickings for lunch during the week in downtown are scant to say the least. Part of my reluctance is that I’m generally a meat-loving guy, so if I’m going to have a burger, I always thought I wanted it to be a meat burger. I was wrong. All of the selections at Wizard burger are vegan, but unless someone told you that you might not necessarily notice or believe it. The flavors and combos are that surprisingly satisfying .
Asking which burger on the menu was a good beginner’s choice, I took the advice of the person behind the counter and ordered their Big Kahuna (which seemed like a bold suggestion, given the pineapple and pickled jalapeño combo), as well as an order of their Buffalo-style fries (also vegan, despite their spicy taste and breaded-chicken-like appearance). Both were insanely good – the burger also had a soy glaze and some house mayo, all of which made for a sweet and savory and spicy combination that packed more flavor and punch than any burger I’ve had in the past year. The fries were no joke either, and while the creamy sauce accompanying them bore no similarity to the potent blue cheese that one may be accustomed to, it was no less delicious for the difference. All in all, it was a crazy satisfying meal, and I’ll be back again to fall under a different spell (the Wiz Mac sounds like a magnificently magical variation on the Big Mac, while the Magicano is their jackfruit-based take on pulled pork). And I haven’t even gotten started on the other fries and burritos…
While I crave a daily sweet treat, that craving rarely comes in the desire for candy. That recently changed when the Swedish candy craze that’s been taking social media by storm deposited clips of colorful bunches of chewy, gummy deliciousness on my feed, dangling those delectable bites of sweet and tart along with their supplier links right at my double-click-to-pay fingertips. It was all too tempting to pass by, and so I ordered my first batch of sour candy mix from Bon Bon, a purveyor of Swedish candy based in New York City. Today they arrived, and they are just as enjoyable as they appear – a rarity when so much online food looks amazing until you get it into your mouth.
This collection offers lemon, watermelon, cola, peach, and all sorts of combinations that straddle the mouthwatering line between sweet and sour, resulting in a gloriously-tart experience that explodes in the mouth like oh so many other sweetly scandalous things.
Next up on my wish list is a sampling of their Summer mix, as well as their Jelly’Marshmallow mix. They will make for the ideal coquette sweet treat in this coquette summer.
Full-disclosure: I’m posting this for my own reference. In the same way that I look up this tres leches cake or this holiday mocktail, or this Ghapama recipe, I will simply google my name and whatever the recipe I’m looking for, instead of searching through a pile of wrinkled, stained printed-out recipes that have been through the wear-and-tear of a kitchen season. This Mexican salad I made up the other day was such a winner that I’m doing my best to remember exactly what I put in it and how it was assembled. What follows is my best guess (and it’s all a guess since I can’t remember what happened two minutes ago, much less two days).
Mexican Salad
1 heart of romaine lettuce, finely chopped
3 small tomatoes, chopped
1 ripe avocado, chopped
1 small can whole kernel corn, drained and rinsed (or about 1 cup, fresh)
1 can black beans (drained and rinsed)
1 green pepper, chopped
Dressing:
1/4 cup olive oil
2 Tbsp white balsamic vinegar
1 Tbsp lime juice
1 big bunch fresh cilantro
1 garlic clove, chopped
Salt and pepper
Process:
Mix all ingredients in large bowl. Blend dressing ingredients with immersion blender and pour over salad. Toss and mix well.
I’ve never actually had a cake pop (to my recollection) but my pal Betsy brought this one in to work for me and I had it for breakfast last week. That was on a Tuesday too.
Right now my favorite cracker is the Organic Garlic Naan Crackers available at Trader Joe’s, but not everyone (anyone) wants to deal with that parking lot, and sometimes you just want something plain and simple. For those moments, I decided to conduct an entirely-unscientific poll on which bland cracker is the best and here’s how the results played out:
I figured the main battle would be between Triscuits and Ritz, and I’m not at all shocked that the Ritz came out on top. We are a bland bunch of cracker-eaters, but there’s something special about that salty and buttery Ritz that brings back happy childhood memories of crab dip and Cheese-whiz. We all started somewhere.
In hindsight, I should have included Saltines in this survey, and maybe I will try again in a few weeks to see if that changes anything. Saltines for me were for sickness. Paired with ginger ale they seemed to be the cure-all for whatever we had as kids. That nostalgia factor might shake things up in the next poll…
The Beekman Boys have brought a sense of peace and calm and, of course, kindness, to this blog, and to the rest of the world, since they first moved upstate and started their goat milk business. This year they posted this Kindness Cookie recipe, which I recently made on a dark Sunday afternoon and evening. It filled the house with a heavenly aroma, and looks to be one of the workhorse cookie recipes that forms the base of any Christmas cookie platter that wants to stand slightly apart from all the others.
This recipe uses only dark chocolate, but gives some extra sweetness with its diced dried cherries – a sweetness that is not cloying or too much (as sweetness tends to be at this culinarily-perilous time of the year). It’s a subtle shift into the next level of sophistication, as far as chocolate chip cookies go, and it’s a lovely treat to make in the next few weeks. Try it and see how you like it, then spread the joy among all your neighbors.
This fall marked the 25th anniversary of when I first met Kira. Our friendship has been an unlikely one in many respects – we actually lost touch for almost a decade when she moved to Florida – but when she returned and we found our way back to one another, it was one of those nudges of the universe that we have, despite some obstacles, managed to heed and nurture. When I first met her, she was one of the quietest people I’d known; shy and almost painfully introverted, she made me feel like a brash extrovert – something I most certainly wasn’t, even as I acted it out with precision. I must have brought out the fighting spirit in her too, as we soon engaged in battles of our own: she fought with me unlike she would have fought with anyone else at work, and I took it as a sign of friendship and trust, as she reserved those entanglements for her family. In the weird and twisted mindfuck that was my habit, I was flattered that she considered me family that way. Remember, we were both in our early-mid twenties, and knew little to nothing of how to behave in the world. Making the journey into maturity continues to be a theme in our adventures.
For our musical accompaniment, I’ve chosen Shirley Horn’s ‘The Main Ingredient’ for its culinary references to go along with our Friendsgiving feasts, and an underlying hint of blues to go with our states of mind. First up is opening track ‘Blues for Sarge’, which sets the scene for the feast of charcuterie and appetizers which formed our first meal.
Now that Kira has managed to switch her work hours, she finishes up just a little while after I arrive in the city. On this night, we had a quick cup of Earl Grey tea, then went back out for some final ingredients for dinner. An intentionally campy collection of appetizers from my childhood formed the pillars of the meal – these campy meatballs, a cheesy crab dip, and some white bean bastardized hummus – and we finished it all with the cutting board of meats and cheeses you see here. For too many nights, Kira and I had feasted on something similar, only to have to struggle through reservations for dinner later in the night; we finally figured out, twenty five years into this, that our appetizer prelude was enough for the first evening.
Catching up after a year apart only feels like a daunting task if you try to cram it all into the first hour of being together. We have enough experience coming together after extended periods away to know that such sharing unfolds slowly and naturally over the course of a weekend. For the first night of this Friendsgiving gathering, which would mostly consist of just the two of us, we settled back into our usual groove.
Outside, the Braddock Park fountain was still running – we didn’t know it then, but this would be the last weekend it ran before being drained and shut down for the winter. We’d made it back just in time…
