Harvest Time!
We’ve been enjoying the fall in NYC again! Crisp cool air, blue skies, flaming trees! It’s the best time to be here, in my opinion. Certain people, like Mark, may try to convince you that it’s best in the summer. But hot in NYC means hot and sticky and muggy and stuffy and stinky. Don’t be fooled.
Why is fall considered the time for harvesting? It seems like at least as much stuff is harvested in spring and summer. Maybe it’s because stuff you gather in the fall is stored to help you get through the winter. But then they should call it storing time, not harvesting time.
We’re going apple picking this weekend to do some harvesting of our own. In the meantime, I’ve been gathering lots of goodies from the farmers’ markets. Summer may have the tastiest produce, but fall has lots of stuff that is fun to cook with. I made a pumpkin-pear cider-apple cake. And delicata squash with swiss chard and cipollini onions (spiced up with coriander, turmeric, and cinnamon). Yum! And some “Lakers soup” – butternut squash-corn-leek soup with purple cabbage. And it’s not even Thanksgiving yet!
And since we’re on the topic of harvests, my pepper plant is growing fruit! I think there are 3 baby peppers growing! It’s a little late, but it’s probably just confused because it’s in a yogurt container inside an apartment.
What I threw together for dessert
I threw these tarts together from bits and pieces that I had lying around. It came together so well, probably much better than if I had planned it out. These are goat cheese cake tartlets topped with slices of white peaches.
Since I was using bits and pieces, I only made three tartlets. Seems like three wouldn’t be worth the effort, but they were so delicious. And they weren’t much trouble to make. The crust was super easy – I used a French tart dough that I found through David Lebovitz. Easiest crust AND most delicious crust ever. I’ll be using it again. And the goat cheesecake part is modified from another recipe online. After the crust and filling were baked, I topped it with some thin slices of white peach, sprinkled some sugar on top, and threw it under the broiler. I was trying to get a little bit of a creme brulee-like crust. That didn’t work out. Maybe I’ll try it again with a blowtorch, once I find myself a blowtorch.
Even without a blowtorch, it was still delicious!
Delicious form and function…
… a.k.a. structure and function, for those of you who are in the protein biology, computational biology world.
Check out this pho bowl. It’s so smart and beautiful and efficient and functional!
I’m not doing ceramics these days, but seeing this makes me want to do it again. Even though I don’t have the skills or patience to throw something like this.
Colorful adventures in wedding dress shopping
We’ve made our first appointments to look at wedding dresses. One place is a non-profit shop that sells donated dresses and the proceeds to go to supporting education in New York City. I’m not sure what type of education. I’ll have to find out. Given that this is NYC, there is a wide range of types of education. And some types need more help then others. Oh, I’m glad that I checked more thoroughly on the website – they actually say that they support a charter school in Brooklyn. That’ll do. I’m not sure what they’ll have in their store this weekend, but I figured that it’s worth checking out.
The other place is a bridesmaid dress shop that was recommended by my friend, a soon-to-be bride. When I called this place, I mentioned that I was looking for bridesmaid dresses to use as a wedding dress. They were super friendly and suggested that I check out some designers that have “bridal alternatives.” Suspecting that they didn’t fully understand what I had in mind, I told them that I was looking for non-white dresses. The woman on the phone said, “Oh, I’m glad you told me. Like dresses in champagne?” Ha ha! We’re not sure where the dress will fall on the color spectrum, could be white, could be champagne, could be colorful. We’d like to consider all colors at this point (well, maybe only colors that are flattering to me).
Reminds me of a conversation that MP had a few weeks ago. I wasn’t there, so I might be getting some of the details wrong. Some new acquaintances were asking him about wedding plans and he mentioned that I was thinking about a non-white dress. One woman said something like, “Oh, I did that too! My dress was ivory!”
But in the wedding world, at least for wedding dresses, words relating to color seem to have a different meanings. I’m going to have to develop my vocabulary for describing colors that I currently categorize as white!
First photos from new camera
Dried flower puffs
Da laughing with her tongue sticking out
I’m still learning and figuring things out, but so far, I’m finding that using my new toy is very liberating!
Work is ramping up
You may have guessed from the paucity of posts. And when I do post, I might sound different. I’m learning to think and talk in the language of education research.
And my camera appears to be broken. Every single photo comes out as a nice dark rectangle. So there won’t be too many photos until I either get the camera fixed or I finally jump in and buy a digital SLR. The digital SLR that I’ve been talking about getting for years now.
I was just in California and I got caught up on strawberries and peaches and cherries. Now I just have to wait for them to get going in NY.
While we’re talking about cherries, they don’t usually last very long when I get my hands on them. But maybe I’ll make a cherry clafoutis one of these days. It’s one of my favorite desserts. For those of you who know what nien gao is, it’s like that, but less sticky and chewy. And I found this neat trick to pit the cherries – http://www.thekitchn.com/thekitchn/no-cherry-pitter-use-a-pastry-tip-088418 – with a pastry tip!
All the good stuff is coming!
Cupcake truck! It debuts on June 3! I don’t actually like cupcakes all that much. I like making them. And I like the idea of them. And I love the idea that there’s a cupcake truck!
The Union Square Greenmarket is finally showing some spring goodies! Winter is over! And the first (albeit expensive) strawberries are showing up! I know you guys out in California will mock me for rejoicing over leeks and peashoots, which you have had for months now! But you have to imagine half a year of just onions and apples!
And Mark’s coming home from Paris soon! Just in time for summery BLTs and tomato-bread salads!
Preview of July 4th weekend, 2010!
The inventor's old farmhouse and barns
Imagine chairs and an aisle here...
Lots of trails through the woods and around the...
... the reservoir
I think this spot would be great for photos! But I'm not sure whether there will be flowers in July.
Fire pit and horseshoes! A perfect match!
Or maybe you're more of a volleyball person... HOOOOO!
And if you're still not satisfied, there's tennis (courts are off in the distance), kickball, whiffleball, softball, or whatever other game you want to play on the open field
And don't worry... there are also plenty of lovely spots for relaxing.
Tin Tins around the world
Mark picked up some Tin Tin books in Brussels: two versions of the Crab with the Golden Claws. One’s in English and the other is in Chinese. It turns out that they have a ton of translations for Tin Tin, many of them are in languages that I’ve never heard of.
They also show the availability of all the Tin Tin books on the backs. There are 24 Tin Tin books in English, but only 21 in Chinese.
Tin Tins in Chinese
Tin Tins in English
That might be a little hard to see, so here are the ones that are translated to English but not Chinese (simplified, what they use in the People’s Republic):
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Why is Alph-Art, whatever that is, banned? And what happens in “Tin Tin in the Land of the Soviets” that has to be banned?
Why do the French museums want me to be a student?
I’m not a student and I left my old student IDs at home, so I was fully prepared to pay the regular adult admission price at all the museums in Paris. But at two museums, a significant fraction of the total # of museums that I went to, even though they asked me if I was a student and I said no, they still gave me the student price. Why is that?
Some of the non-standard Parisian museums I recommend are the Musee Pasteur and La Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine (architecture museum). The setup could use a lot of improvement at the Musee Pasteur, but I wound up learning a ton about Pasteur anyway. Man, he did a lot! Do you think that if I were doing science 100 years ago, I could have made more discoveries than doing science now?
Musee Pasteur
I’m not so into the old architecture (but if you are, they have lots of casts and replicas of old buildings and it’s pretty neat), but the modern architecture sections were done really well.
Model at the architecture musuem
The Musée du Parfum was okay and worth a stop (it’s free) if you’re around the Opera area. I was expecting a museum full of stuff to smell, but it was mostly a bunch of objects related to perfume, mostly bottles, and a store where they try to sell perfume.
Empty bottles of scents that would have been fun to smell
