Catchup Post: 961 Miles
I just had a lovely, quiet, catch-up-with-life weekend (mostly with my sweetie). However, that makes for lousy blog copy, frankly. But the reason why a quiet weekend was so welcome--the past two have been insanely busy and travel-filled: Washington DC (work plus seeing Beef & Laurel, then Squanto, Beth, and Fiona) one weekend, and Bangor ME + NYC the other weekend.
The reason for the trip to Maine, sadly, was to attend Sarah's grandfather's funeral service. It was a very sad reason to see all of her family, but I am glad that I made it up for all of the get-togethers, for whatever small support I could offer. And even at a time of such emotional distress, the family was incredibly gracious and full of hospitality.
On the way home, Sarah and I heard about the MWRA water emergency going on in the Greater Boston Area. Since we both live in affected zones, we decided to load up on drinking water while we were still in Maine:
But there was another event shoehorned into this weekend: Bird and I had bought tickets to see Peter Gabriel in concert in New York City on Monday--he only played three North American cities on this tour, so that was the closest. So we spent the night at Bird & Jen's, had a lovely dinner at Anneke Jans in Kittery.
On Monday, Bird and I road tripped down--a late lunch at Rein's New York Style Deli; in town by 5 PM. Then, over the course of the next ~16 hours, we packed it in:
- Dinner at Momofuku Noodle Bar--many thanks to Perlick for turning me on to them. Steamed pork buns... oh so perfect and full of unctuous pork goodness... grilled ramps, and a great big bowl of kimchee stew. A fantastic dinner, in a casual, hip environment. Plus, we were seated right at the bar, so we could see the line cooks cranking away... "Hot, coming through!"
- The Peter Gabriel Concert--a sold-out show at Radio City Music Hall (a gorgeous art deco masterpiece of a theater). Gabriel is looking older now (going bald, all white hair), but his voice is still kicking. The first half of his concert was going straight through his new album: Scratch My Back--covers of songs by a wide variety of folks--from Talking Heads to Regina Spektor to Lou Reed to Randy Newman to The Arcade Fire. Oh, and this is all done with an orchestral backing: no drums, no guitars. The second half was many of his older songs (albums from Security through Up), done with an orchestral backing. Oh yeah--Lou Reed doing a guest song after intermission! Peter Gabriel put on a tremendous show... if you're actually interested in detail, New York Times review here
(Note: photo not my own--it's from a Flickr page). - Two rounds of Guinesses at a New York City bar with Bird, to 1 AM
- Breakfast at a quintessential Greek diner... a new breakfast combination for me--an egg and gyro sandwich
- Road trip back up during the day on Tuesday, and getting dropped off at work to put in half of a useful day.
posted by Bats @ 7:26 PM
4 comments
4 Comments:
Have I played the Erasure cover of "Solisbury Hill"? I should make sure to do that the next time you're up here.
Dude. Sounds like an awesome, but exhausting, weekend.
I was actually considering using vacation time this week just to sleep and run errands that I've been putting off, but I was shamed into going and doing something interesting instead (which is the right thing to do). I'm ooooooooold.
Hey P--I thought of you when I ordered the Kimchee Stew also--I own the Momofuku cookbook, and David Chang described it below, and it made me laugh out loud:
When I was growing up, my mother made kimchi stew a lot: Korean moms usually do. It always had cubes of soft tofu disintegrating in it and was often based on a quick anchovy stock--a primal, primitive relation to dash made with dried anchovies boiled in water until the water tasted like boiled dried anchovies. Sometimes she'd use Memmi, Kikkoman's bottled "noodle soup base," a soy-and-bonito extract concoction that's popular with hurried moms and that you should probably avoid. Sometimes she garnished it with the true head-to-tail pork, Spam. And she always made it with kimchi that was so fridge-stinkingly fermented it had to be rinsed off before it went into the pot. That last touch is just so Korean: squeezing one more use out of a vegetable that had aged past even its fermented prime.
Of course, Chang uses fresh ingredients (and awesome pork shoulder!) for his version. The result is a smoldering bowl of spice and pork--perfect for a hangover or a cold that needs a kick in the ass.
I've got the Momofuku cookbook too. I read through the whole thing and it all looks excellent, but I haven't cooked from it yet. Give it a shot and let me know what to try first.
Also: most anyone's music is better covered by Erasure.
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