what about the plastic animals?

Take Cover

Keep your eyes open and you'll notice that there's a building with a fallout shelter sign every few blocks.  This one is on St. Nicholas around 119th Street.  It makes me wonder, do you think that there are any untouched shelters remaining?  Space is valuable so I imagine that most have been converted to some other use, but I can't help believe that there's at least one fallout shelter that was somehow forgotten and is now waiting to be uncovered.

Wikipedia on fallout shelters.  And I still haven't found out the story behind this public shelter.

I'm off to Philadelphia for a couple of days.  Don't expect to see anything new here until Saturday.

Starting to Bloom

I walked through the Conservatory Gardens in Central Park over the weekend.  Some crocuses and snowdrops were in bloom and many other flowers were starting to poke out of the soil.  I fiddled around with the image to remove all the color except for the one flower.

Off the Cuff

Uh-oh, this shirt's slide to ragdom has started to accelerate.

Boiled Cider Pie

For a dinner party on Saturday night I decided to make pie for dessert.  I had never made boiled cider pie before, but the recipe looked good.

Boiled cider is just that, cider that has boiled down to a syrup.  I boiled almost half a gallon of apple cider down to a cup of syrup.  Pour the cider in a big pot and boil until done.  Let cool before using in the pie recipe.

The pie recipe came from Marcia Adams' New Recipes from Quilt Country.  It's as easy as pie.  Literally.  You need pastry for a one-crust 9-inch pie and filling.

The filling:

4 eggs
1/3 c sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 c boiled cider
1 1/2 c whole milk
2 tsp vanilla extract
grated nutmeg

1.  Preheat oven to 400.  Line a 9-inch pie tin with the pastry for the crust.  Set aside.

2.  In a large bowl, combine the eggs, sugar, and salt and beat thoroughly.  Stir in the boiled cider, milk, and vanilla and combine.  Pour into the pastry shell.  Sprinkle nutmeg over the top.

3.  Bake the pie for 10 minutes, then reduce the oven temperature to 350.  Bake for 55-60 minutes, or until a knife inserted into the center comes out clean.  Remove pie from oven and cool on a rack, cover lightly, and refrigerate.

Easy, right?  The pie is more or less a custard pie.  As you can see in the bottom photo the cider and custard separated.  You taste the sourness of the cider but without an intense apple taste (when I tasted the syrup by itself it was really apple-ly).

I also made a whipped cream-based topping for the pie but the cream reverted back to its liquid form, rather than staying a foam.  It tasted fine but it is easier to just use whipped cream (pictured above). 

Mr. Met on the Mend

Mr. Met has returned home after last week's incident with a garbage disposal.  I don't have a garbage disposal and Mr. Met isn't forthcoming about what happened and where it happened.  All he says is "I'm not here to talk about the past." over and over.  Here he is keeping his injuries elevated.

Early Spring Snow

Snowy scenes from our campus yesterday morning. By noon all the snow on the trees had fallen off.

Unrelated:  Jake makes Easter Candy better (not for the faint of heart).

Crickets

There's a pet store in our building.  Have you ever eaten crickets?  I had chapuline empanadas once at Guelaguetza, a Oaxacan restaurant in Los Angeles.  Chapulines are closer to grasshoppers than crickets but I imagine they taste similar.  They tasted fine but feeling the little serrated legs on your tongue as you ate them is an odd sensation.

Unrelated:  Can anybody recommend a good place to stay in Kodiak, Alaska?
Also Unrelated:  Was that Garrison Keillor sitting almost next to me on the 3 train Tuesday night?  I didn't notice him until he was getting off at 72nd St.

Borf visits New York

When I was in Washington last month I saw a lot of Borf graffiti and stencils.  I even took a picture. Borf reminds me of Neck Face but with stencils instead of drawings.  Walking up Lafayette in NoLita last night I saw that he had tagged a couple of mail relay boxes here in New York.   It sounds like DC is getting tired of him.

Coincidence:  Satan's Laundromat travels to Allston, MA and finds Cube Face, whose work reminds him of Neck Face.

SSSSSSSSSSubway

Ten different mosaic S's from the subway system.  You might think the system would have a standard that was used across all the stations but that's clearly not the case.  For one, the current subway system is descended from three separate systems, the Interborough Rapid Transit (IRT), the Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit (BMT) and the Independent Subway (IND) lines.  For another, the S's even vary within a station (see the first two columns).

Want to see a giant rainbow-like subway S?

What you can get on 111th Street

On the walk home this evening I had the following conversation with a mid-twenty-ish woman standing at the corner of Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. Blvd and 111th Street:

"Excuse me, can I ask you a question?"
I looked at her, slowed down, but didn't stop.
"Are you married?"
"No."
"Do you like women?"
"Yes.  Uh..."
"Do you have a rubber?"
"I'm not interested."
"But..." she continued talking but I was already walking away.

Why did I walk away?  Well, this beauty a further down the block caught my attention:

This elaborately carved coffee table is being thrown out.  It is by the curb on 111th between Adam Clayton Powell and St. Nicholas.  I was very tempted to bring it home but I already have a coffee table.  Garbage pick-up isn't until Tuesday morning if you want to get it for yourself...