Author: zora

Why I love Astoria

I talk a lot about the fabulous produce of Astoria, and how a pile of eggplants made me decide to move here. But I’ve never shown photographic evidence before.

astoria night

Look at that. It’s nighttime. The veggies are beautiful. And it looks like that all night long, because it’s open 24 hours! And there are about three more places just like this one on the same street.

Here it is during the day:

astoria day

One day I was standing on that corner, mooning over some piles of peaches or something, when this troop of out-of-towners (you can tell by the white sneakers and sweatshirts) went by–it looked like maybe a resident was showing his family from Iowa around. The little brother said, in a voice dripping with scorn, “Geez, and everything’s always on special here.”

Boy, no city slicker’s gonna put anything over on that little brat.

But it was funny, because I’d until then I’d never even noticed the “SPECIAL!” signs. That’s how distracting the produce is.

And then there’s this. (Squeamish people, don’t scroll down!) As with produce, I have a choice of at least four butchers within a ten-block stretch, plus the all-halal butcher department at the Trade Fair. This sort of selection is an average day–when it gets to be any holiday period, there are double the number of carcasses crammed in there.

astoria meat

Astoria: it’s not just for vegetarians.

Better Late than Never

As usual, I failed to make Christmas cards. I even failed to write this very post in time for the holidays. So, think of this as a little way to make the season last a little longer–I know I’ve got some eggnog left to drink, and some chocolates to eat.

kesh-mish

Merry Kesh-Mish from the Navajo Nation.

(Shiprock, to be precise. Where, incidentally, the KFC serves mutton stew.)

Lahspers

LahspersWhen he was little, my brother called lobsters “lahspers.” I’m not sure why he was even talking about them, though, because we lived in New Mexico, where there are no sea critters to be found. There was a Long John Silver’s, and that was it.

But I had the real thing over New Year’s, and maybe it’s due to my landlocked upbringing, but damn, those fuckers are delicious.

And I do say “fuckers” because my hands are still covered with tiny, painful nicks and jabs from where the shell gouged into them. But maybe that’s my fault for eating in a frenzied whirl, like a starved maniac? Maybe, also, the melted butter all over my fingers made me a little clumsy.

This was the first year I got to participate in what is now Karine’s NYE tradition in Vermont, but she’s been doing it for several years, after being faced with the challenge of a turkey deep-fryer: a big ol’ stainless-steel pot, with a temperature regulator, just begging for something to be cooked in it. She appreciated the theater of a deep-fried turkey, but wisely saw that all that dirty oil was not something she wanted to face with a hangover the next day.

Thus, the lobsters were summoned, from the northern reaches.

As a way of celebrating the new year, the lobsters seem perfect. On a superficial level, they’re the logical complement to champagne, and due to price and difficulty of eating, they have the suitable just-once-a-year feeling about them that good holiday food should have. (I know, New Englanders are scoffing right now. But for me, lobsters average out almost to once-a-decade.) They’re also a lovely bright red, the importance of which can’t be overstated in the middle of winter.

And this year, when Karine had chosen a dinner theme of “The American Apocalypto,” well, those little beasts looked just right on our plates, burnt-red as Satan’s hide, with waggly eye stalks, wiggly legs and other demonic details.

Which brings me back to the gashes all over my hands. I wouldn’t normally say getting wounded in the course of dinner is good, but this seemed like a suitable kind of penance for the utter sweetness and perfect texture of the meat.

Or maybe it’s proof that working hard for something makes you appreciate it more–which is a lesson I have to say I never internalized. While most people’s parents told them this, mine in fact told me the opposite: that just skating through is the way to go, as it makes you feel exceedingly clever. Perhaps if we’d had lobsters when I was little, I might’ve had a stronger work ethic? Perhaps if I’d eaten lobsters at every new year, I’d be inspired to actually make resolutions.

At any rate, as with the crabs in Maryland and the sea urchins in Greece, I was also reminded just how much some things don’t want to be eaten. And yet we are such ingenious humans that we now have dedicated tools for doing so: giant pots, tiny pokers, silver-plated claw-crackers, even little bibs to protect us as we gouge out the livers, like so many ancient Greek oracles. (My liver augured well for the coming year, I’m sure.)

Wait, I’m getting carried away, the music is swelling for the dramatic finale–and I didn’t even mention Julia Child! We spent all day watching old episodes of the French Chef, which, like the Muppet Show, has aged very well.

As fortune would have it, there was a lobster episode, which was sort of like Faces of Death, but for crustaceans. Luckily you’re spared the vision of 20-pound “Big Bertha” drawing her last on camera, but you do get to see Julia cheerfully put a brick (or was it an old-fashioned iron?) on top of the lid to make sure the smaller critters don’t escape their boiling torment.

So, dinner at the gates of Hell, welcomed by Julia Child–a mighty fine way to start the new year. I feel like I can handle anything now.

Something is terribly wrong.

Not that I was all that skeptical before, but now I believe in global warming.

As I’ve been sitting here on the couch in New York City today, January 6, I’ve had the windows open to balmy breezes of 70 degrees. That alone was a little spooky.

But what really did it was first, about an hour ago, the smell of lighter fluid, which it took me a minute to place. And now, the distinct smell of meat cooked over fire. My neighbors are having a barbecue in January.

To counteract these evil forces, I just drank a glass of eggnog.

Perceptive Travel: Hot Times in the Riviera Maya

Here’s a little essay about a luxury hotel sweat lodge gone awry–it’s flattering to be up alongside the consistently great writing at Perceptive Travel. (Fresh issues come out every couple of months–well worth bookmarking.)

Dedicated readers of this blog will recognize this tale of steam-fueled woe from a research trip a couple of years ago. At least in this new iteration, you have a more coherent narrative, not to mention some very pretty pictures!

On a side note, I am under a gigantic deadline-gun, more of a deadline-RPG-launcher–hence the paltry posts. No one got Christmas cards, or even presents, from me either, so no sulking. Expect more action by February.

Last-minute gift idea: Frappe Nation

frappe nationAttention all Greeks! All friends of Greeks! All people who’ve ever visited Greece! All residents of Astoria and Melbourne! All Manhattan- and Brooklynites who don’t really get what’s so cool about Queens! Hell, just anyone who really likes coffee!

This new book, Frappe Nation, by Vivian Constantinopoulos and Daniel Young, is truly wonderful.

But first, for all the people who fall into that last two categories, allow me to explain what a frappe is.

It’s simply the most genius coffee drink ever. It involves powdered Nescafe, cold water and ice. If you happen to like sugar or milk, you can have that too. You shake the bejesus out of the Nescafe and the cold water (and maybe sugar), till you get this beautiful velvety beige foam, then you pour it over ice. Then you add a little more water, or milk if you like. Then you sip and sip and sip. (Or, if you’re like me and have poor straw-management skills, you slurp too fast and have heart palpitations.) It kicks the ass of your standard iced coffee, because the sugar is blended in, and it lasts a lot longer. If you’re shuddering at the thought of instant coffee, get over it. It works perfectly.

I act as though I was born to frappe-ness, but of course I didn’t learn about it till relatively late in life. I’m sure it was Peter who first made me a frappe, and I can’t remember if it was before or after I moved to Astoria. You’d think I’d recall that formative moment, but I suppose it changed my life so irrevocably that I can’t remember what it was like pre-frappe.

But about the book: It’s a pretty, glossy bilingual coffee-table book. And rare for coffee-table books, the text is actually worth reading–it’s the best kind of food-writing, in which some foodstuff is analyzed and refracted back on the culture that produced it, so that you don’t have to be a frappe drinker (yet) to appreciate what this coffee concoction represents to a whole country.

In the book, you learn about Greek kids secretly making frappes in their bedrooms, and about the early Nescafe campaigns promoting it. You learn about Greek coffee culture in general, and you get some recipes and strategies. Ferran Adria, that master of foam, is name-checked by a Greek chef! You hear the ad-man who promoted Turkish coffee as Greek coffee in the 1970s admitting that, really, the frappe is the true “Greek coffee.”

And the photos are great, particularly because they counterbalance the common depictions of Greece as a land of black-shrouded, wizened, toothless women, bleary-eyed old men in a perpetual state of backgammon-ness, and goats. Who would’ve known: young, cool people live in Greece! They’re hot, they’re sexy! They’re even vaguely “European”-looking! And they all drink frappes.

If a ticket to Greece or even the book is out of your reach financially, you can still visit the authors’ website, Frappe Nation, for recipes, general info and even cute “Frappe Nation” tank tops (I happen to own one myself).

Or you can just come out to Astoria and sample one yourself: see Alpha Astoria for ratings on the best of the cafes. I know it’s a little cold for a frappe now–I guess you can wait. But I’ll remind you when the springtime comes.

Cool Sushi Site

Sushi is not my forte. I get all worried when I start reading how-tos, because they’re very persnickety, and there doesn’t seem to be much wiggle room at all.

Then I found this site: Make My Sushi. First I watched the “funny sushi video” (link in the left column), then I read about how to pick fish. I had laughed enough that when it came to the part about slicing up carrots in a very precise way, I didn’t immediately run screaming. I’m also fascinated by the process for making tamago, the little omelet slabs.

I still haven’t found the promised “pictures of celebrities enjoying their sushi in partial nudity,” but maybe I haven’t looked hard enough yet…

More on choosing a guidebook

Continuing on the theme of my Budget Travel piece on how to choose a guidebook, here’s a good piece comparing several books to the same destination: Guidebook Smackdown!

It was very interesting to see that Frommer’s ranked high for sharp opinion–I guess the only one I’ve read is the New Mexico one. Its first-person tone–which even includes the author’s childhood memories at certain points–drives me up the wall.

And since I just got done writing very, very short hotel reviews for Rough Guides, I guess the criticism is true. I swear, on the second edit, I will add more juicy details. But in about 30 words, that just means “plastic flowers galore” or something.

I’m driving around NM right now. Completely fried. Can’t even compose funny stories, because nothing fun has happened, because I’ve been driving too fast. Oh, except just FYI, Farmington is where all those trends you’ve read about in the newspaper are actually happening: scrapbooking stores, soup served in bread bowls, methamphetamine. I was there when the new 10-screen multiplex opened; the story in the newspaper lamented how the old 4-screen theater had opened just months before stadium seating was introduced–one trend that Farmington took a while to catch up on.

The Glutton’s Dilemma

I have to admit to a slight feeling of smugness when I say: I eat everything. I have never “watched” what I eat or otherwise been concerned with my health and weight, and I’m doing just fine, thank you. Maybe I’m lucky, but I also think moderation and cooking for myself does the trick. La la la–aren’t I great?

Oh, well, now I also have to admit: There was a little interlude of jeans-digging-painfully-into-my-burgeoning-gut this summer, but that seems to have disappeared. No thanks, though, to (OK, admitting more) about ten days of thinking maybe I should eat smaller portions and cut down on some of the desserts. And those were some incredibly depressing days–I did begin to understand how this fear of food has developed in so many people. It’s just the end of all pleasure as soon as you start looking at everything you put in your mouth in terms of where it might wind up bulging out on your body–midsection or butt? Or inner thighs, which are rubbing together in an unpleasant way?

Incidentally, the upshot of these ten days of vigilance and semi-abstinence is that I began to crave the strangest, junkiest things–whatever I could get from the office vending machine, frozen pizzas, Ho-Hos, you name it. For me, anyway, even thinking about “dieting” was very, very bad for me.

So, once I was through with that little thought experiment, I settled back into my usual habits, and now my pants fit again.

But perhaps what distracted me from my weight–and I guess I should be grateful for that–was another dietary issue altogether.

Without getting into specifics, let’s just say I take a little something daily to prevent the arrival of Roving Gastronomettes or Roving Gastronomitos. That little something also has the benefit of giving me dewy, smooth skin–the sort I should’ve been entitled to as soon as I stopped being a teenager, but for some reason just never got around to arriving on its own. Presto–a magic pill, and I am no longer looking at myself aghast in the mirror in the morning before I grab the concealer.

In recent years, however, even though my skin texture could be mistaken for a French woman’s in some light, it has taken to getting unattractively blotchy when I spend even four minutes in the sun. By the end of my Greece sojourn last summer, I looked a bit like I had been standing by during that terrible mishap at the self-tanner factory (the one that maybe also hit Lindsay Lohan?)–though fortunately I’d been wearing my safety goggles.

Like any disfigurement, I’m sure it looked worse to me than anyone else, but I decided I needed to adjust my daily treatments. So I started on a new formulation that held some promise of an even skin tone, though certainly no guarantee. One large perk, however (sensitive boys, block your ears): my period would dwindle away to next to nothing! Hooray! Oh, and the packaging was much cooler.

But then came the pendulum, swinging back the other way. Within a month, my skin texture was an utter fiasco–I felt like I was back in high school or worse, that year in Cairo when everything was just like being in high school again.

Then I remembered something a friend had mentioned, about how dairy products really made her skin break out.

I subsist on dairy products–they are my go-to protein source. This summer I ate either feta or yogurt or both every single day, and in my normal routine I eat milk for breakfast, maybe a grilled-cheese sandwich for lunch or a cheesy omelet, and then when I don’t know what else to put in the salad, I put in some Parmesan or little grated Cheddar bits. Cheese keeps forever in the fridge, and it’s available in amazing variety. Yogurt is good for the gut. Milk just hits the spot on certain occasions. Cream spruces up some dishes in a lovely way. And butter–I think I must be made of butter by now.

But I tried going without for a week, and, lo, my skin returned to normal. Then I ate a slice of pizza with a dollop of fresh ricotta, and woke up with a massive bump on my chin.

So. Vanity or gluttony? Do I give up a major part of my diet in exchange for the convenience of no period and the social confidence that comes with a flawless complexion?

I fretted for about a month, thinking maybe I was wrong, or my body would adjust. Making little mental negotiations like, well, if I give up butter, I guess that just means more opportunities for duck fat? And I _guess_ I prefer the intensity of fruit sorbets…

But that month was a pretty long time (frankly, I didn’t realize I was so vain in the first place), and it’s not like I really stayed on the wagon in the first place. I just could not face a life of placing food in ‘yes’ and ‘nooooooo!’ categories.

So just a few weeks ago, I switched back to the original anti-kid, anti-pimple, pro-blotch formulation.

You can read this two ways: I have zero will power and restraint. Or I’m fabulously deep–surface beauty doesn’t matter to me in the least, darlings.

Naturally, I agree with the latter interpretation. I’ll just buy a much bigger hat for next summer–and eat a lot of ice cream.

New York–what a town!

Just got back from a wild holiday weekend in that thrilling metropolis known as Manhattan–perhaps you’ve heard of it?

Living in Queens, even the first neighborhood into Queens, it’s easy to lost sight of the glass-towered shores of Manhattan. As I might’ve mentioned many times before, we have excellent restaurants and fine friends, as well as a giant movie theater, right here in Asssss-toria.

Peter and I had intended to actually leave town for the weekend, but we were gripped with indecision in the face of too many train schedules. Plus, I was a bit burnt-out from my Mexico jaunt.

Then Peter hit on the genius solution: We would check in to the Winslow Place B&B–in which the B’s stand for the ‘bed’ in our ‘basement.’ So we packed up our bags, walked downstairs and locked the door behind us.

TripAdvisor reviews for Winslow Place praise its lax “hands-off” approach to hosting, but criticize its equally lax standards of housekeeping, its less-than-cohesive decor and its ridiculously small shower.

I’m fresh from the finest resorts the Riviera Maya has to offer, but I’ve gotta say, the place wasn’t bad. Remarkably homey, with some very nice (and novel!) amenities, such as a bottle of wine, some bananas and a cribbage set by the bedside. There was also a full Dance Dance Revolution setup, which I think must be unique to this B&B. And you can fit two people in the shower if you’re really, really careful.

During the day, we actually went…into…Manhattan! Mostly it was to see movies, but we fit in some other culture, at the Studio Museum in Harlem. We had drinks at the Ritz-Carlton in Lower Manhattan, and took pictures of the Statue of Liberty, while one of the bar employees danced around behind us to “Fascinated” (he thought no one could see him, but he was reflected perfectly in the floor-to-ceiling windows). We had more drinks, and really good food, at Employees Only, where we’ve been meaning to go for something like a year and a half (the owners, incidentally, live in Astoria); we were also horrified at the well-groomed-but-still-ugly-mob bar scene of Friday-night West Village.

And we even bought a sofa. Which nearly punctured the fabric of fiction that was swaddling our little weekend getaway…but fortunately, it’s not being delivered until Wednesday, which gives us a lot of time to settle back into our real home in Astoria. Amazing how cheap the delivery fee is, considering just how far away we were when we bought it!