postcard from oaxaca

Wish you were here.

It's lime, bitches. For making tortillas.
She's making ice cream!
They're herding goats!

This video goes out to Face: Ask and ye shall receive, girl.

One day soon I'll write a long letter instead of a postcard. But for now, your bl*g mistress went to Mexico and all you got were these photos and AWESOME VIDEO (the '80s are back; if hipsters can wear shoulder pads, I can use the word awesome like it's going out of style, which it did a long time ago).

P.S. I miss you. Lots and lots and lots.

apropos of nothing

I want to move to nearly every city I visit, but if picking just one meant I could actually live there, I'd choose Amsterdam, hands down. Here's one of the reasons why:



This video is actually from Utrecht, which is smaller than Amsterdam, but you get the idea. Bicycle rush hour. Pretty great, right?

Via.

eating portland, maine: the gfd guide (part 1)

There is a lot of good food to be eaten in Portland, Maine, and when we were there a couple weekends ago, the yachtsman and I did our best to sample as much as we could. What's here represents only what we were able to consume in one 48-hour period; there are many places we plan to go on future visits, but for now I can vouch for the following.

On our way into town we stopped at Hot Suppa! for their famous corned beef hash. While I'm still a vegetarian at heart (or a vegetarian who eats heart; see Hugo's, below), I have a serious weakness for the breakfast meats (it was bacon that broke me), and this is really, really good hash. Plus, my over-medium egg was perfectly cooked, the toast was homemade, and the yachtsman recommends the Cubano sandwich.

It was nearly impossible to decide where to eat dinner each night, but I don't think we could have chosen wrong. Friday night we went to Hugo's, which was très chère, and also très good. There was a "molecular gastronomy" element to many of the dishes, which involved things like "prosciutto gelée" (I'm nervous) and "peanut-butter powder" (forget licking your plate; snort this shizz), but everything we ate was deeply flavorful, including the beef heart the yachtsman ordered. You read that right: beef heart. On a Caesar salad, natch. In spite of the fact that I gagged when the waiter was describing the dish, I tried it, in the hopes that by doing so I might one day convince the yachtsman to let a bite of nonscrambled egg cross his lips (pure folly, as it turns out; see Bresca, below). While I found plenty to eat that didn't involve organ meat, Hugo's is not for vegetarians. But it sure was good for a pseudo vegetarian who eats things like fresh pea soup with eucalyptus foam and prosciutto gelée; asparagus with a 149-degree egg and teeny, tiny little Japanese mushrooms; and also halibut with allium risotto and a sweet-onion ring. Did I mention that the yachtsman ate beef heart? And should we take a moment here to acknowledge that "beef heart" means "cow heart"?

There is an abundance of lovely little bakeries in Portland. On M. LaBee's advice we went (twice) to Standard Baking Company, where we tried the croissants (heavenly, phallic),


the morning bun (without nuts, of course),


and a funny cheese thing that the yachtsman selected and I bogarted. We also stopped at Two Fat Cats , where we bought a cupcake and whoopie pie to bring home, both of which were scrumptious, though the whoopie pie filling did not appear to include marshmallow, which means it was not really a whoopie pie, it was a tasty chocolate-sandwich dessert that I would definitely eat again. And again.


Remember when I told you to save your Parmesan rinds to flavor soups? At Micucci Grocery on India Street they actually sell them, people, but if you've followed my advice that's one thing you won't have to shell out dough for when you're shopping at this little Italian market.


What you will want to shell out dough for is the dough being made and sold in the back of the store, namely amazing pizza with possibly the best crust you'll ever eat;


sfogliatelle, a creamy, flaky pastry involving phyllo dough and sweetened ricotta cheese;

Taken with the yachtsman's Hipstamatic.

and something called Luna bread, which the ladies literally lined up for and insisted the yachtsman and I buy a piece of (they didn't exactly have to twist our arms).

Did you think we spent the whole time eating? Well, that was mostly the case. But in between meals we went for cold, rainy walks, around Portland and at a couple beaches/state parks nearby.


There was also a little shopping, including at Longfellow Books, an indie bookstore with a large selection of magazines and new books, as well as a nicely curated collection of used books. And if you, like me, love books and food equally (or, as my mother used to tell Mojie and me, "the same amount, just differently"), you must go to Rabelais, a bookstore that sells "fine books on food and drink." While we were there I drooled over Ad Hoc at Home and wondered whether The Flexitarian Table might be the answer to the culinary dissonance between the yachtsman and me, but ultimately settled on A Homemade Life, which I read in bed at the hotel in between walks and shops and meals.


Our favorite meal of the weekend was at Bresca, a cozy, candlelit place


where they serve food for both the gruelish palate (braised Tuscan kale with a soft-boiled egg, crispy pancetta, kombu butter, and charred multigrain bread ) and beef-heart eaters (the yachtsman had spaghetti with veal-ricotta meatballs, which he said was out of this world). When Gruelish Palate asked Beef-Heart Eater if he would like to try a delicious bite of kale, egg, and toast, Beef-Heart Eater said no way. When Gruelish Palate pointed out that she'd tried the heart of a cow, for god's sake, B-H E said he'd rather eat nothing but beef heart for the rest of his life than consume undercooked egg yolk. All the more for me, then, not that I needed more: the kale and egg was an appetizer that could have been a meal, yet I went on to eat a delicious piece of local cod and a panna cotta, the sweet memory of which I'll carry with me to my possibly-early-if-I eat-panna-cotta-on-a-regular-basis grave.

I may have spent my Sunday mornings growing up singing in the choir at the Cathedral of Immaculate Conception, but nowadays I prefer the New York Times and a bagel to the bible and a communion wafer. Sunday mornings are meant for bagels, don't you think? When we're at home we go to Myer's and eat them Montreal-style; in Portland we drove over the bridge to 158 Pickett,


where the tattooed pirates made us egg-and-cheese sandwiches served on homemade bagels that are so popular customers are limited to three per person on weekends, six on weekdays. And while I usually prefer my bagel with cream cheese only, the egg-and-cheese version here was so good, I wished I'd ordered three.

After the bagels we went to confession (gluttony), and then drove home. But we plan to return soon, and after we do I'll write part 2 of the GFD guide to Portland, Maine. In the meantime, this New York Times article and this piece in Bon Appetit are great resources, as is this. And perhaps the Down East Dilettante and his posse can leave their suggestions in the comments?

unstoppability

The y-man and I are off early tomorrow to Portland, Maine, where we have 48 hours to eat our way through that fair city. I will not be stopped. Neither will C. Arthur Miller.

Look for a full report next week; until then, happy weekend.

postcards from san francisco

We are slowly eating our way through the city. Meal by meal, we will conquer San Francisco.

Breakfast at the Penny Cluse West (or maybe Penny Cluse is Boogaloos East):

Although the best breakfast in town the world can be found at Dottie's True Blue Cafe.

You'll wait in a long line for the breakfast you've been waiting for your whole life. I've been twice so far. And on a side note, I used Google Maps on my iPhone to figure out how to get from Dottie's to my next destination, which sent me traipsing through the Tenderloin. My favorite comment (and I received many): "Hey, Snow White, can a black brother be your dwarf?" I told him I'd have to check with the head dwarf, who subsequently indicated we're not accepting applications for dwarfs at this time: my dwarf harem is full.

The booze in our minifridge has been replaced with fruit from the farmers market. This is a pluot, my friend. Part plum, part uot, all delicious.

The sweetest grapes, nestled in a Le Meridien (or as the yachtsman likes to call it, The Le Meridien) towel:

Strawberries dipped in yogurt eaten over the bathroom sink:

Dinner at A16, creator of the asparagus and walnut crema I made five hundred times this past spring:

Macarons from Miette:

Sea lion: delicious.

Seriously, he appears to be a distant cousin of my dog -- I know that coy look well.

And lest you think we're high rollers, please know that we put on our high heels (or I do, anyway) and take the bus to even the fanciest restaurants. Because that's how the yachtsbusman rolls. (Round and round. The wheels on the bus go.)

Wish you were here...

the friendly skies

Usually when I have to fly somewhere I spend the flight alternating between trying to pretend I'm not on a plane and praying to god not to let the plane I'm not on crash. But on our way to DC this past Friday I tried a new tactic: taking photos out the window. While taking these photos from seat 20A, I felt like a National Geographic photographer in the Serengeti sneaking up on a lion, or a paparazzo trying to snap a photo of Sean Penn -- I was willing to risk great danger to get the perfect shot. As a result of my reckless bravery, I have 200+ photos of white, fluffy clouds.

i hate cherry garcia

This little indulgence at the Denver airport did not make up for all that came before it and all that came after, which included a canceled flight, a delayed rescheduled flight, a one-hour wait for the shuttle from the Chicago airport to the crappy hotel, and the fact that, I shit you not, a Grateful Dead concert at the convention center attached to the crappy hotel was getting out just as our much delayed shuttle finally delivered us to the crappy hotel lobby at 1:00 a.m. Which meant the crappy hotel lobby was made even crappier by the presence of hundreds of white people with dreadlocks. Hundreds of wasted white people with dreadlocks. Hundreds of stinky, wasted, loud white people with dreadlocks.

And not only were they in the lobby, they were roaming the halls, stinking and playing their didgeridoos and calling each other "bra" and "mon." And not only were they in the halls they were smoking pot and holding drum circles in most of the rooms. And not only were they in the rooms, there were thousands and thousands of them in the convention center parking lot that my crappy hotel room overlooked, where they spent the rest of their long, strange trips juggling fire and blaring bootlegs from their car stereos while I laid in bed holding my finger in the air, hoping for a miracle.

enough already!

I'm at Denver International Airport watching CNN without any sound. Apparently there has been another pirate incident, and apparently CNN has been hijacked by someone's Long Island grandmother. The last two captions that appeared under the anchors and pirate experts were "Again, with the pirates" and "Pirates: What are you going to do?"