Dinersaurs

A couple weeks ago, a few of my dearest friends in Manhattan trekked over to Williamsburg to join this tart for dinner, Brooklyn-style. Diner is one of the restaurants that's been at the top of my list for ages, and though right in my backyard, it's taken me three years to actually get there.


Lots of things make this place special before you even set foot in it: it's in an old diner from the 20s and was beautifully renovated. Having completed a pre-apprenticeship program to introduce women into tradeswork, I am a sucker for old hardware and architectural detail.



What makes Diner really special is the fresh, unpretentious menu that changes every day. (They embrace the farm to table philosophy and also own Marlow and Sons and Roman's. Check out their blog here.) Our lovely server scribbled the evening specials on the paper tablerunner, explaining the cooking procedure and ingredients used. Our dining experience began.


House made flatbread with serrano ham, caramelized onions and rosemary.

This is me having a transcendent experience with the Portuguese fish stew. It's one of my favorite things in the world and they just happened to make it that day.

Seriously, I could have bathed in the tomato broth.

Frank had a burger with hand cut fries that hadn't been sitting in a bucket all day. They made me so weak, the camera lens got blurry.

Even Abe, with his pain in the butt vegetarian demands, had a marvelous homemade pasta that didn't beg for meat: pappardelle with pesto.

We squished up in the corner booth, completely oblivious to the high traffic aisle next to us and the line out the door. All that mattered was we got a table.

Kissing Winter Goodbye

Ice skating with Bessie- a photographic journey.

It's hard to tell, but I was actually working on some sweet jumps and twirls, until one of the rink refs told me to stop.

Isn't she beautiful?

Click here for more info on skating in Prospect Park. It's way better than Central Park or Rockefeller Center in Manhattan, where you spend an arm and a leg and sometimes have a time limit. Plus, you get to be in Brooklyn.

Peace out, winter!

Barb the Builder

I graduated from NEW! Here's me getting my pre-apprenticeship diploma.

Sadly, the hard hats were only for the girls with no tardies. It would have mostly sat in my closet, anyway. I did get an awesome 20 foot tape measure that weighs at least a pound. My tool collection begins!

I wish I had been able to blog about the program more as it was happening, but there were a couple factors inhibiting that.

1) Having a camera was awkward and the teachers didn't seem very excited about me taking pictures when I was supposed to be working.

2) I didn't want to go through the rigmarole of asking permission for classmates to be in the blog.
3) I was too tired. This is actually the real reason and the first two are just excuses.

Between carpentry math, blueprint making, financial workshops, self-defense, occupational safety, painting, electrical work, and shop class, each day was a little different.

Here are some pictures of me in shop.

Here we are beginning to build our very own miter box for cutting 90 and 45 degree angles (for picture frames, for example). This was a proud day for me; I went into the class with the least practical experience as the rest of the girls and I got one of the highest grades. And that was after a gal heckled me for having high math scores, but working at a snail's pace with no hammer skills.

I didn't make it past the first round in the hammer contest, but if I can take my time, I have confidence in my craftsmanship. It shows that I would best be suited for finishing work. It also shows that I'm my father's daughter.

You can see the woman in the corner using a combination square, one of the next tools on my list. I'm getting out some aggression using a crosscut saw.

I wasn't sure if I was going to leave the program with the same feelings as I had going in. Surprisingly, I have them and more. I entered Nontraditional Employment for Women because I wanted to take advantage of the incredible learning opportunity, and all offered for free. I wasn't expecting to fall in love with every minute of it (except for maybe the 5:30 am wake-ups on Saturdays).

This program is really giving women in New York City the ticket to change their lives. I am so proud of the ladies with children who commuted on top of rearranging their work schedules, just so at the end of this, they could get out of a dead-end job or financial dependence.

I went in with an interest in plumbing, and left with an interest in everything. I doubt I will stick around New York for the 5-year apprenticeship on top of a very long wait list, but I do know I'm going to apply the skills down the road. I am grateful for the confidence NEW instilled in all of us, for all the strong women it churns out into a dusty, dirty world.

There is an old house out there, falling apart from neglect and waiting for someone to rescue it, like an old dog at the pound. Somewhere on the horizon, you will see me bent over a work bench, taking a chance on trying to put it all back together again.

How to Ruin Cheese

Warning: this post is going to gross you out.

Here's how to take one of the most perfect foods in the world and ruin it:

1. Exploit your wife after she gives birth
2. Use her breast milk to make cheese
3. Offer it at your restaurant

This is exactly what Chef Daniel Angerer has done at Klee Brasserie, as reported in today's New York Post, which has quickly coined it as Klee Brassiere.

I don't really know where to begin. Social mores, anyone? Turns out, Angerer's wife is encouraging him to try making gelato next. Maybe we can start using sweat as a flavoring- you know, since no two musks are the same, like snowflakes. How about booger garnishes?

Breast milk, on its own, is beautiful and flawless by nature's design. It is also meant to be for babies during the crucial first year or so of development. If it is disturbing to see a 5-year-old still nursing, then why shouldn't it be that much more taboo for an adult to consume?

While there is absolutely nothing wrong with breast milk, I am completely against using any kind of ingredients produced by the human body in cuisine. No thanks. I'll stick to the moral code set by the Western world. If I was in a remote part of an underdeveloped country and breast milk was part of the food culture and was offered to me by the chief of a tribe honoring me as their guest, then that might be another story, but come on. We're New Yorkers. We don't eat shark fins, monkey brains, tiger bones, whales, endangered species; nor do we practice cannibalism. And as far as I know, breast milk is hands off, too.

If this couple wants to do experimental cooking with their bodily secretions, I don't think it should be offered as haute-cuisine at a trendy Chelsea restaurant in New York City. It seems awfully attention-seeking and out for shock value. It's gross. What does their baby think about all this?

Read all about it here. That is, when you're done throwing up. The comments at the end are fantastic.

Sharing a Wish with Jamie Oliver

Photo: jamieoliver.com

Jamie Oliver just soared to the top of my celebrity chef chart. Last month he was honored as winner of the 2010 TED Prize, awarded each year to an exceptional individual with a wish to change the world. His wish? To teach every child about food.

At the Ted Talk, Jamie stressed the need for food education in this country to set an example for the rest of the world in conquering the obesity epidemic. Two-thirds of the U.S. population is overweight or obese. Our main causes of death are related to diet and make up ten percent of health care costs today. In ten years, costs are expected to double to 20 percent- a staggering 300 billion dollars a year just on diet-related diseases. And it's all preventable.

Jamie humbly introduced himself as not a doctor, but a chef. He shared experiences from his visit to West Virginia, home of our country's largest percentage of obesity. During a school visit, children could not recognize basic vegetables, including cauliflower and tomatoes. Most schools actually promote fast food by limiting cutlery and serving quick, hand-held meals loaded with sugar and fat additives, which lead to addiction. (Anyone with a sweet tooth, I know you know.)

I never realized the severity of the situation until I moved to New York. I spent most of last year teaching cooking and nutrition to kids in the south Bronx, most of whom rely on school for their main meal each day.

You don't have to be a teacher in New York to see the destruction of unbalanced diets a million times a day. Watching teenage mothers feed their children Cheetos and candy on the subway makes me feel helpless because I can't say anything. Two-year-olds who eat McDonald's have no idea how much harm the parent is inflicting.

Adding insult to injury is the misguided idea that fast food is affordable. Excuse me? A $5 minimum for each meal per person, which are designed to make you hungry again in an hour or two? So it's expensive in the long AND the short run? It's enough to make my blood boil.

What resonated with me about Jamie's presentation was his statement that children having poor nutrition is a form of child abuse. I could not agree more, and I love him for having the guts to say it. Children are growing up to be the first generation with a shorter life expectancy than their parents. Food diets are something you are taught- they become a habit. Kids don't have a choice what they are served, so when adults are being irresponsible on their behalf, what will that lead to for them?

Adults should know better, but they are also entitled to make poor choices, whether it's once in a while or, God forbid, every day. We can't expect children to know any differently, unless we teach them.

The truth is, though limited, kids do have a choice. I will never forget one of the third-grade girls tell me she didn't want to drink cow's milk because of all the hormones added to make the cow produce more milk. I applauded her for making an informed decision and we talked about other ways her body can get calcium and why it's important for bone growth.

If you have twenty minutes, I urge you to watch Jamie Oliver's presentation here. If time is crunched, at least skip ahead to 9:30, when he starts really getting to the meat of the issue and offers reasonable solutions to our nation's most damaging epidemic.

Yogoraphobia

I hate exercise. I hate the gym. I hate team sports. And for a long time, I hated yoga, too.

Before the entire free world boos me off the internet for slandering yoga, allow me to explain. I have no flexibility whatsoever. My hamstrings are so tight that when I bend to touch my toes, I'm still about a foot away. A foot!

I took a yoga class once in college, only to be made an example of by the teacher (who was as amazed by my lack of flexibility as one would be horrified by a circus performer). I cut my losses and never went back.

Since I learned to swim last year and ride a bike the year before, my stiff joints are all I have left in the freaky body department. I thought I had come to a resolved knowledge and acceptance about my physical limitations. At least I can still rock climb, even if the rest of my body is like a clumsy giraffe.

My roommate, Bessie, wouldn't let me off the hook. Have I mentioned she's a professional dancer and has been practicing yoga for 15 years?

Since I alternate Sundays between being lazy and bettering myself, I decided to better myself and join her for a class at Greenhouse Holistic in Williamsburg.

A restorative class was the route we went- it was gentle and "not aggressive," good for a yoga virgin like me. We did gentle stretches like child's pose, cat and cow. There was also a lot of napping. It's strange to me that yoga is aimed to center most people and find inner quiet. For me, my internal voice just gets louder.

While everyone else closed their eyes and lay still, here's what went on in my head:

"Hey! So this is how you have a productive weekend? You're gonna nap all day? Don't forget you still have to grocery shop, pay your bills, clean the house and cook something with that hamburger left in the fridge. And you need to call your mother."

"Try to find the quiet within," the instructor said. "Put a block up against distractions. Find clarity in this moment. Strive to be satisfied with everything right now, just as it is."

"Yeah, quit getting distracted. Listen to the teacher, sucker."

When I thought that yoga's purpose is perfecting the body and deciding who's the most flexible in a class, I realize now that I'm the only one looking around. It's just like when I was in kindergarten and couldn't fall asleep with the rest of the kids during nap time.

I also have a hard time relaxing my shoulders back to open up my chest and solar plexus, which I know is one of the main chakras in the body (though I can't think too hard about chakras or I'm really going to start getting lost).

The challenge is not going to be how far I can stretch, if I do continue to practice yoga. It's going to be finding a quiet place within myself, within Brooklyn, and remembering to keep my heart open.

Ghetto Sundaes

What do you get when you have two roommates together on a Saturday night with cheap whiskey, junky ice cream, cake mix, and frosting?

The invention of something wonderful.

Behold the ghetto sundae.