8/30/20 Courtelyou Road Greenmarket Walk

So I'm gradually recovering from the shingles. Once it had really set in, the first few days I didn't go outside at all - just too tired and uncomfortable. I think it was Tuesday that I got up the energy to go to the Stuf'd sandwich shop that operates out of the relatively new Rusty Nail bar that took over the old Mama Lucia's space on Foster & East 17th. Their first food attempt was a Korean/soul food fusion thing - some friends and I went to try that & weren't impressed, the sandwich place is WAY better! They're a spinoff from a popular food truck by the same name and I'm delighted they've decided to set up an outlet so close by. Here's their spin on a Reuben, with fries and brussel sprout sides - 2 sandwiches and one of each side gave us dinner and lunch the next day, too, the shop lives up to its name. Reubens were good - barbecue brisket, which was my first purchase a few weeks back, were AWESOME. 

So that was one block away; a couple of days later I managed a couple more blocks, going to C-town for chicken thighs for curry. That was the first time I was actually up to cooking for a while - TQ gets home from work pretty late these days so I've generally been doing the dinner cooking for us, but ugh, there was no way that was happening during the first week or so of the shingles. 

Sunday was an absolutely gorgeous day here in NYC. I've been going to the Courtelyou Road Greenmarket pretty regularly on Sunday mornings this summer.  That didn't happen last weekend 'cause that's when the shingles were just starting to get really unpleasant, but yesterday I was feeling enough better that I decided I would take a slow walk over, and then home again too if I had the energy. It's about 1.6 miles round trip, and there's a train station there so there was an option if I didn't want to walk home. 

It went well, I walked there and back again (energy for the walk home provided by a scrumptious apple turnover from the Breezy Hill Orchard stand!), and I'm so glad I had my camera along. Midwood & Ditmas Park are such photogenic neighborhoods.

All photos after this, first one is just a neighbor's beehives, I enjoy just stopping by their fence to watch the bees going about their business, then it's just going through the neighborhood, a few at the market, and then a couple more on the way home. Click on any photo for a slideshow view!

Perfect Weekend Part 2 - PEACHES!

I started off Sunday with a trip to the Courtelyou Road greenmarket. I have been jonesing for peaches for a couple of weeks now, and yesterday, one of the stands finally had Jersey peaches!

You aren't allowed to touch things at the greenmarket these days, so no picking up the peaches to feel whether they have a promising bit of give to them, but I was there pretty early and the vendor picked 6 splendid-looking peaches out for me, and then threw in a bonus one after he'd weighed them.

They weren't quite ready to eat on Sunday, but by Monday morning, this one had softened up and begun emitting a luscious scent. I set it on a silk pillow so that I could photograph it like the precious thing it was - ahhh, the first peach of 2020!

And then I cut it up and had it for breakfast. With, uh, yogurt. That's right, peaches and yogurt, a healthy summer breakfast.

Because what kind of frivolous person would ever have peaches and ice cream for breakfast? The very idea. Hmph.

Complicated As Duck Soup

So this was the goal of Saturday's bike ride - the Fei Long grocery in Brooklyn's Sunset Park Chinatown (Brooklyn's got multiple Chinatowns).

As I mentioned yesterday, they were sadly lau lau less, but they did have all the duck soup fixin's I'd hoped for. 

These were NOT among the soup fixin's, I just had to take a photo because I don't think I've ever seen a vegetable the size of a husky toddler before (ok, excluding giant pumpkins). At first glance they resemble cucumbers but look a little closer! Never saw anything like 'em.

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Now HERE was the absolute best find of the day. When I started leaning towards trying to make the soup with ingredients in keeping with the deliciously pronounced Chinese seasoning of the broth I'd made from the frame of the duck TQ had brought home, I started by picking up bok choy and enoki mushrooms at the Flatbush Food Co-Op. I decided I also wanted to add dumplings, which was why I wanted to go to Chinatown. Knowing that that was my destination, I asked TQ if he had any ideas of anything that would be good in the soup.

He thought for a minute and then said "Fresh water chestnuts?"

Which sort of blew my mind - believe it or not, the concept that water chestnuts ever existed outside of their canned form had never crossed my mind! We looked them up, though, and the answers we found seemed promising.

Walking around Fei Long's amazing produce section, I found chestnuts first - then a few aisles away, aha! there were these things that looked exactly like chestnuts, except that I knew the actual chestnuts-roasting-on-an-open-fire variety chestnuts were elsewhere. Sure enough! Packed up a bag, got some fresh noodles, beansprouts, dumplings (so many dumplings to choose from!), and a packet of roast pork buns (consolation prize for no more lau lau), and then headed for home.

Fresh water chestnuts turn out (surprise surprise!) to have the same relationship to the canned variety as fresh peaches or green beans or corn have to their canned varieties.  TQ looked up how to prepare (he was so surprised when I walked in and showed him one and said "OK, this is a fresh water chestnut, what do I do with it?") and it's really simple - cut off the top and bottom and peel the rest of the brown rind. They can be eaten raw, so we tried one that way and it was delicious! I always think of canned water chestnuts as being more about adding crunch than flavor; biting into a fresh one, a lightly sweet flavor I never would have expected, and the crunch is somehow more delicate. The recommendations for cooking were to add them at the very last minute to preserve the crunch and flavor, so that's what I did. 

Making the soup! I mentioned that I was making duck soup yesterday on Facebook, and an old friend commented, "Is Duck Soup easy? 'Easy as duck soup' is an old saying."

My response: "Duck soup actually IS easy, if you have a duck. You take the frame and you cook it exactly the same way as you would a chicken carcass and the broth comes out so delicious! I chose to complicate mine tonight because the seasoning of the duck gave the broth (which I made last night) such a delicious Asian flavor that I decided I needed to roll with that. Hence the Brooklyn Chinatown trip today, and I ended up with some time-sensitive ingredients that had to go into the pot in a certain sequence. But you can also just slice up normal soup veggies - I've done that too."

But I had so much fun making my complicated duck soup. Even the noodles were special - fresh wonton noodles from a company right here in Brooklyn. Totally worth the bike ride, even with the accidental extra mileage.

The end result - onolicious! Another successful cooking adventure!

Brooklyn Chinatown Bike Adventure!

Decided to do a little biking today. Somebody cracked me up a long time ago by saying "It's not an adventure 'til something goes wrong", so by that standard, I think today was an adventure.

It wasn't anything bad, just me still learning my way around the borough by bike. I had set out to get soup fixin's in Brooklyn's Sunset Park Chinatown. Earlier in the week, TQ had brought home a roast duck from one of his favorite Chinese restaurants in Queens, where he works, and yesterday I'd used the carcass to make broth. I was originally going to use that to make just your average duck soup with carrots and celery and onions and such, but the restaurant (sorry can't remember the name!) seasons their ducks really nicely, and the broth came out delicious - and very much like something you'd get in a Chinese restaurant! So good that I decided that the rest of the fixin's needed to come from Chinatown.

There was a certain place, Fei Long, that I decided to go to because a long long time ago they had had frozen lau lau. Lau lau is a Hawaiian food with different kinds of meat (the ones Fei Long used to have had pork and butterfish) usually with some extra fat in there to make it succulent, wrapped in taro leaves and then the whole thing wrapped up in a ti leaf to make a neat little package. It was traditional luau food, the lau lau would be put into the imu (pit oven) to cook with the pig that would be the main course. Best that way but of course you can also just steam them on the stove top. I've learned how to make some of the dishes from da 'aina that I love (spam musubi, kal bi, kalua pig and cabbage for starters) but lau lau is a little complicated, so when I found out from a high school friend that Fei Long had them, I was SOOO excited!

Unfortunately after a few that were as onolicious as I'd hoped, I got a package that must have thawed out at some point - they'd gone rancid, and that was disappointing enough that I didn't go back for any more after that. But since I specifically wanted to go to Chinese grocery today, I figured why not go there?

I wasn't counting on them still having lau lau - that was a long time ago and I'm suspecting that even if they did still carry them, supply chains from Hawaii are probably messed up right now - but I figured if they had them, I'd give them another shot.

Google Maps said it was 3.6 miles to the store and would take me about 22 minutes to get there by bike. Unfortunately Google Maps totally failed to include my failure to pay attention to certain aspects of the route in their calculations.

I knew where I was coming from, I knew where I was going, and hey, it's easy to navigate in NYC - it's a grid, right?

Yeah. It's a grid. Until it isn't. And that explains how I ended up going from just south of 18th Avenue to 8th Avenue via 5th Avenue. Oops.

I'd neglected to note exactly where I would need to cut west to not run into the VERY LARGE Green-Wood cemetery. I did that once before on a long walk and ended up just going for a walk in the cemetery (that may sound weird but it's beautifully landscaped, features the highest point in Brooklyn and incredible monuments from the Victorian era, the heyday of mortuary art...ok that still sound weird but trust me, it's a great place for walking). This time I just flat out got confused and ended up going the long way around, making the outbound leg of this 3.6 mile ride more like 6 miles and also sending me up some pretty serious hills. I think I met the slope in Park Slope and the ridge in Bay Ridge personally today. Oof.

I did eventually get to the store, and I'm not that sorry about the detour because I saw a couple of interesting things on route - but next time I would take the more direct (and flat) route.

I had to stop for a photo of the Seeley Street Beach, which I thought was just charming: 

I also had to stop to take a photo of this temporary COVID-19 memorial on the fence by the main gate of the cemetery. So sad. 

On a happier but still sort of poignant note, I rode by some young people sitting out on their stoop, next to signs posted on their building congratulating them as members of the class of 2020. I smiled at them as I realized they were the graduates and they saw that and smiled back and waved. 

Finally made it to Chinatown, phew!

And here's Fei Long, yay! Actually I was a little worried when I first pulled up because gates were down and I wasn't sure if they were open, but they were - you can only get into the store from the parking lot, though. The food court is open but that entrance to the store is thorough barricaded with tables and chairs, I'm guessing because grocery stores need to keep track of how many people are in the store and that people are wearing masks. The store wasn't very crowded today. No lau lau but I did find everything else I was after - including a pretty brilliant request of TQ's! 

And I think I'm going to continue this tomorrow - long enough already and it's late and I'm going paddling again tomorrow. Hooray!

I did get home by a much more direct route, but I'm actually getting a lift to the club tomorrow as both TQ's bike and I have had enough biking for one weekend. The hills I ran into ended up requiring way more active shifting than I've done on any of my previous rides and in there somewhere, something went awry with the shift mechanism. I got home fine but I think my next bike destination needs to be a bike shop. :(

Final mileage for this 7.2 mile ride - around 10 miles. Live & learn! 

Taco Time!

Warming up the tortillas, steak staying warm on the smaller burner

Aside from the medical appointments in midtown, I've pretty much been following the NYC social distancing rules. I'm actually a little bit on the introvert side - the sort who enjoys socializing but does need occasional down time alone now and then - and TQ's good company, so I'm doing OK with this. Working from home is a bit strange, I've always resisted that because I like work to be work and home to be home, but I'm dealing, you kind of have to. I'm into an OK rhythm - I work, I read, I've done a little drawing, I go outside for exercise (considered an essential activity) and fresh air. As I think I've mentioned before, I have really been enjoying watching Spring spring in my very pretty neighborhood!

My only shopping these days is the grocery store, but I was never big on shopping as recreation anyways. The local grocery stores have been generally well stocked after the early panic buying, although you do still need to be a little flexible; TQ and I both like to cook so we've been eating pretty well!

I have NOT been able to participate in this much-vaunted Stress Baking of which I have heard tell due to the fact that our gas has been off since the gas company detected a leak in early February. Boo. Gas leak is of course serious business, and once National Grid has had to do an emergency turn-off, there's a fairly complex set of requirements to meet and inspections to pass before it can be turned back on. The building management estimated probably about 3 months and provided all the affected tenants with double hot plates. We've supplemented that with a couple of camp stoves (used with the kitchen window open and a fan running for good ventilation) and a crock pot, and we've been getting by OK. Management and our super super have done a really good job of keeping things on track - they're up to one of the final steps, getting a city inspector; that may be harder because of the coronavirus shutdown, but in the meantime, definitely not starving. But no baking on a whim.

However, I did get an achievable whim while shopping the other day - suddenly decided to cook TACOS! This is DEFINITELY a shutdown thing - ordinarily I just wouldn't think of making my own tacos because we have plenty of good Mexican places nearby. Even now, I could have gotten much better tacos from Tacos El Paisano, the taco truck that parks near the Newkirk Plaza subway station in the evenings, I've stopped there a number of times on my way home from work back when we all commuted and their tacos are really good - but I was shopping, they had some nice little chuck steaks, and I got those, a sweet onion, cilantro and some tortillas. TQ picked up the lime I forgot and the avocado I forgot I forgot on his way home from work, I put together a melange of spices that seemed appropriate for the steaks, and the came out pretty well! I made rice and beans, too, managed to juggle items so I didn't need to use the camp stoves. The cast iron collection got a workout (and so did I, juggling all that cast iron)!

And I had so much fun with the fixin's - started slicing and dicing things and had to get out ALL THE PRETTY BOWLS. Doesn't this look nice? 

Final result - nowhere NEAR as good as the taco truck, but not too bad.

And of course I made about 150% more fixin's that we needed for one meal, and I had one more beautiful chunk of striped bass from an October fishing trip with a Sebago friend that I'd just thawed out for lunch (big enough to share but TQ is not a fish fan so it's all mine!) so for yesterday's lunch - fish tacos! 

And then this morning, the fixings just kept giving - this time it was TQ's turn, I never would've thought of putting cilantro in with sausage & peppers, but OMG, it was delicious! So glad we are both cilantro fans. 

So that was a fun experiment. And btw - here is what the original fish looked like. I didn't catch anything but the way my friend Jonathan handles fishing trips he organizes fir his friends is the catch just gets split 3 ways - and with his other friend catching this enormous fish (missed being the "pool fish", the biggest fish of the day, by THAT MUCH) there was plenty to go around - and it was delicious! Beautiful day on the water, too - more photos here, if you missed it the first time.  

George's Dumpling Paddle (going back a couple of months)

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(frogma kayak smiley, patent pending)

George was one of the conditional members who we voted to make senior at the club meeting on New Year's Day - and that reminded me that I never did a post about one of my favorite events from last year, George's Dumpling Paddle! It was kind of gray and ugh today so a good day for looking back through some pictures and putting together this post.

George is a great guy and he loves making dumplings, and he loves teaching other people how to make dumplings too - it's one of his family's cooking traditions and he loves passing it along. This made for a wonderful autumn gathering at the American Canoe Association camp at Lake Sebago in Harriman State Park. The Sebago Canoe Club's main site, where 95% of my trip reports begin and end, is in the Canarsie section of Brooklyn, but the club was actually begun at the ACA camp, hence our name. The club was offered the use of the NYC Parks Department land in Canarsie in the 70's, when Jamaica Bay first became part of the National Parks Department's Gateway Recreation Area, but we do still have the cabin at Lake Sebago, and that is really a wonderful place. I don't get up there nearly enough these days, but I wouldn't have missed George's Dumpling Paddle for anything!

I went up the night before and stayed with clubmates in one of the cabins that is available for ACA members to rent. I literally woke up to this - I slept on a couch/bed right under this window and this is what I saw when I first sat up after waking up. I really need to come up here more often. 

You can see the layout of the cabin a little better here. I'm standing in the corner where the kitchen is, and there's a room with bunks around the corner to the left. The guys took the bunkroom, Barbara and I took the couches. You can see that I'm not joking about waking up, sitting up, and seeing that view! 

Those of us who were here early helped George set up in the lodge up at the top of the road into camp. He'd decided to switch things around, having the lesson first, then the paddle, which made so much sense - you can see that this took some serious setting up, an hour and a half isn't really enough time for a good paddle (half of that time can get eaten up just with moving boats, fitting boats, and launching) plus for people who were coming up in the morning, it was going to be tricky to get to the camp in time for a 10 am launch. Lesson first worked great!

And we're off! George started off with an intro, talking about how dumpling making is woven into some of his fondest family memories, and about the ingredients he'd gathered for us.

Here, he's showing how to wrap the dumplings we're going to make - btw that's Andrew in the background, they are a great couple and Andrew was helping out with George's event on this day. They were both voted in as senior members at the New Year's Day meeting. 

The first dumplings out of the pot

After mixing up the beef and vegetarian fillings and showing us the basics, George split up the fillings and wrappers among the tables. Here's Team Vegetarian showing how us how it's done! 

George stops by one of the beef dumpling tables (this was my table) to offer a few more pointers

My first dumpling, hooray!

Another happy wrapper! 

It seemed like we had an endless bowl of filling and an endless stack of wrappers when we started, but with all of us working together it wasn't that long before we had a beautiful platter ready for the pot.

Into the pot! 

Barbara and Andrew tending the vegetarian dumplings (separate pots, of course)

Wrappers, wrapped beef dumplings, and a tray of dumpling hot from the kettle, with hoisin and hot sauce. Yum!

We wrapped and cooked and ate and wrapped and cooked and ate until the dumplings were all cooked and we were all stuffed - and then the lake was waiting for us when we were done. And it was GORGEOUS. Foliage wasn't peak yet but there was enough for a lovely shoreline, and everything glowed. We had a great paddle - there was a canoe capsize, the occupants of the boat were inexperienced but they were great sports about it, the lake water wasn't that cold yet, and it was actually kind of fun working together to empty their boat and get them back into it - we did end up taking them back to the dock so they could change into dry clothes and warm up, and then some of us went back out for a bit longer as the light went into that late-afternoon fall day glow. The Sebago gang reconvened at the Sebago cabin for dinner, everybody had something to share and we stuffed ourselves again, with a member who hails from France finishing off the evening's repast with glorious fresh crepes, sweetened with just a little sugar and so delicious.

A spectacular day at the lake - I must try to take advantage of this place more in 2020!