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In cleaning up my files today I was reminded of any number of photos that I took in the past year that didn't ever get posted online. Some I didn't get around to posting, others had some perceived flaw, while still others just didn't fit in to whatever it was I was trying to say at the time. In no particular order, this is the first of three or four sets of photos.
Upper plate on the downtown 2/3 platform at 116th St. this evening.
Isn't a "blow out" sale on pets a bit disturbing?
Papaya King's dogs are a bit cheaper, but are they as tasty?
If you haven't yet been, I highly recommend the Romare Bearden exhibit at the Whitney Museum. You only have a week left. Also recommended at the museum are the Isamu Noguchi sculptures (through Jan 16), and my favorite, the Political Nature exhibit that is on display through the end of March.
In front of a church on W 121st St.
I'm headed upstate today for a long weekend away. I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Don't expect much new on this site until the new year. Once I return I'm going to work on a family project that some may find interesting and that must start on the first.
Way back in August I noticed that Dinosaur Bar-B-Que of Syracuse was going to open a location in New York. The restaurant opened a couple of weeks ago and I finally got a chance to eat there this afternoon.
I had the Pork Bar-B-Que sandwich with two sides (salt potatoes and cole slaw) and a sweetened iced tea. The pork was tasty but a bit dry. As a barbecue snob I was upset to see sauce on the sandwich. The sauce is good, but you shouldn't need sauce if the meat is any good. The kaiser roll was completely wrong as it put up a battle with the barbecue instead of succumbing to it as white bread would have done. There was also way too much bread for the amount of meat. After a couple of bites I scraped the meat off the bread.
The salt potatoes were excellent. If you're not from the Syracuse area, salt potatoes are potatoes boiled whole in extremely salty water. The salt raises the boiling temperature so the potatoes cook at a higher temperature. The potatoes aren't salty, however. The cole slaw wasn't what I was expecting, it had some spices unknown to me, but I really liked it.
I had only contempt for the sweetened iced tea. Does anybody north of the Mason-Dixon Line know how to make sweetened iced tea? The tea was cloudy, meaning they made it by pouring ice into hot tea. It was also bitter, which is odd for sweet tea, probably because it steeped for too long. Hey, I said I was a snob!
That said, Dinosaur BBQ is better than 90 percent of the BBQ places in New York. I'll certainly give it another try. Perhaps one of the rib plates so there's no bread involved. The price was very reasonable. Only $7.95 for the platter.
Oddly enough, I've never been to the original place in Syracuse. If I get on the road early enough tomorrow I should be passing through town in the early afternoon...
I forgot to include these in my last post.
Two more posts until I'm outta here.
The Time Machine on Christopher Street.
Baby Jesus, stolen last year, is still missing.
Spend two minutes taking pictures of the Washington Square Arch and 1.) tourists ask you to take their picture, 2.) protesters try to convince you that Israelis killing Palestinians and Palestinians killing Israelis is bad, and 3.) guy tries to sell you "Ganja, ganja, ganja"...
Unusual star at the top of the tree, or crappy picture with raindrop on camera lens?
Unrelated: Now that it has finally gotten sufficiently cold it occurs to me that it is time for the annual making of the buckeyes.
Continuing in the muckraking vein... I get this constituent newsletter from my state senator yesterday telling me all the wonderful things he has done for his district in the past year. Since my senator is a Democrat and the state senate is run by Republicans (actually given the dysfunctional state of the State legislature, a single Republican, the Majority Leader), he doesn't have influence to do much of anything.
Nonetheless, I glance through the newsletter and see the picture above. I wish I had a scanner so you could see this better, but does that look like a really lame Photoshop job, or even an exacto knife cut-and-paste? And what the hell is the deal with the guy playing peek-a-boo? Why do Senator Paterson and Mr. Peek-a-Boo look like they were photographed with sharp 50 ASA film, but the other people with grainy 800 ASA film? Then again, from this photo on his web site he was at the rally.
Curious about Mark Bittman's changing attitudes toward canola oil I wrote to the food editor of the Times Wednesday evening. I essentially repeated what I had written but in a less flippant tone of voice. Waiting in my inbox when I logged-in the next morning was a message from Mark Bittman himself!
Until recently he thought canola oil was fine for frying. A few years ago, however, he began noticing that it smelled bad, especially when heated. He doesn't know if this change is because his sense of taste has changed, the formulation of canola oil has changed, or some combination of the two. The next edition of "How to Cook Everything" will be less canola friendly. Bittman also mentioned that grapeseed oil has become less expensive and is a viable alternative neutral oil.
Now we know. Thanks for writing back Mr. Bittman!
I decorated my office this fall with these ears of ornamental strawberry corn (there were more decorations but those aren't relevant to this story). When I bought them there was a sign that said the corn was also good for popping. Last night was a good night for popcorn so I gave it a try.
The kernels easily rubbed off. Three ears produced about half a cup of corn. I tossed the kernels around in a bowl to, if you'll forgive the analogy, separate the wheat from the chaff. I put a couple of tablespoons of canola oil in a saucepan and turned the stove to a medium heat. When the pan was hot I poured in half the corn -enough to cover the bottom of the pan.
Nothing happened for a couple of minutes. Then a pop. Then a whole lot of pops. The popping stopped after a minute or two. Almost all the kernels had popped! I poured the popped corn into a bowl and tossed it with a little bit of salt.
Very tasty!
You can't really tell from the last picture but the kernels weren't as big as with commercial popcorn. That is, the kernels didn't pop as large as Orville Redenbacker. You might think that would be bad, but the shells on these weren't as hard as regular popcorn so they mainly added a little crunchiness to the mix.
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