Sesame Bagel with Tofu Cream Cheese

I recently spent a weekend visiting a college friend in Brooklyn.  I’m a pretty big fan of New York City in general, but after visiting Dan a few times, I’ve decided Brooklyn is where it’s at.  I’ll take you on a bit of a food tour of the things I ate while I was visiting.

First, of course, is a sesame bagel with tofu cream cheese from La Bagel Delight.  You can’t come to the city and not eat a bagel.  The ones from here are pretty excellent, but my favorite part is the tofu cream cheese.  I have no idea what’s in it, but it’s heavenly.

Red Bamboo is sadly no longer in Brooklyn (BOO!) so we trekked over my favorite bridge to Manhattan to get our fill.

Brooklyn Bridge

Walking the Brooklyn Bridge is the best.  It’s even better at sunset, though.

The Red Bamboo space itself is not nearly as nice as the Brooklyn location.  The tables are super close together and the outside doesn’t look very welcoming. But go inside and sit ridiculously close to people you don’t know, your taste buds will thank you.

Dan is decidedly NOT a vegetarian, but when I first visited him and asked if we could go to Red Bamboo he was interested in trying some vegan eats, if a bit cautious.  Well, the Barbecue Buffalo Wings totally won him over on that first visit, and after I left he would send me the meanest messages saying he had ordered them for delivery.

Barbecue Buffalo Wings. We didn't eat the BlackBerry.

We weren’t super hungry when we sat down, so we decided to split a few appetizers. Obviously we had the Barbecue Buffalo Wings.

From the menu: “Soy buffalo wings marinated in a spicy citrus barbecue sauce served with vegan sesame garlic dressing and celery sticks”

There is something about the texture of these things that is really amazing.  The outside is super crispy and the inside is chewy without being rubbery like a lot of seitan wings you can buy.  The sauce is spicy, tomatoey, and just plain delicious.  The dipping sauce isn’t anything special, but is essential when you’re eating wings in my opinion.

Almond Coconut Chicken

This Almond Coconut Chicken was pretty good, but also quite greasy.  The coating was interesting though, and we gobbled them up pretty quickly dipped in the sauce.

From the menu: “Crispy golden soy chicken encrusted with toasted almonds and shaved coconut. Served with a sweet chili dipping sauce”

We also had the spring rolls, which weren’t great but were still consumed.

Original Sin Hard Cider

This is a really great cider from Puck Fair.  I’m not a fan of super sweet ciders, and this Original Sin Hard Cider was perfect.  It reminded me a lot of the ciders I had when I went to Europe a few years ago.  Dan used to work in the beer business and told me that this cider uses champagne yeast, meaning that it looks flat but really has a nice carbonation.  I might have had 2 pints.

House Salad at 67 burger

For dinner we went to 67 Burger.  I wasn’t very hungry after our heavy lunch and a veggie burger didn’t sound all that great (especially when I saw the note that they were cooked on the same grill as the meat) so I went with the “Small House Salad on a Plate.” (What else would they serve it on?)  Anyway, there was nothing small about this salad.  It was really filling and quite delicious.  Also pretty cheap at less than $5.

From the menu:  “mixed greens, fresh tomatoes, black olives, crispy garbanzo beans, kidney beans”

And the next morning, to hold off hunger before meeting up with some girlfriends for brunch in Manhattan, I picked up some Pirates Booty from the bagel shop and an Iced Coffee with soymilk at The Greene Grape which is right down the street from Dan’s apartment.  This place alone would make me bankrupt if I lived in Brooklyn.  It’s a gourmet market and it’s heaven.  I spotted this guy there right before I left:

(Source)

He was buying tomatoes for a salad.  Vinny Chase (aka Adrian Grenier) eats salads.  Swoon.

That New York Pizza flavored Pirates Booty was pretty disappointing.  It tasted like a less delicious version of pizza Pringles.

I have no words.  Photos must do.

In-N-Out Burger "Grilled Cheese" with grilled onions

I believe this meal cost $3.44.

Santa Monica Pier

When do I move to California??

Be back to good old Central New York next week.  It will be bittersweet, I assure you.

I spent 5 glorious days in San Fransisco recently, and discovered that I’ve been missing out on some ah-mazing foods here on the East Coast.

First, and most important: tacos.  I knew we didn’t have great tacos here, but I always thought that what I could get in New York was pretty damn tasty, so I didn’t mind that they weren’t “authentic” tacos.  Now, I’ll just have to pretend I’m eating a wrap or something when I get tacos or burritos here.  Tacos in California are delicious.

Soyrizo taco with extra guacamole

And the Guacamole doesn’t suck either.

Guacamole

Especially when washed down with one of these guys:

Ginger Beer!

Although I have to say that the ginger beer wasn’t the best choice when eating spicy food- too much spice!

At (on?) Fisherman’s Wharf my mom treated me to a delicious lunch at Boudin Bakery!  Amazing sourdough bread, folks.

I got the tomato soup in a sourdough bread bowl.  It was so so so good.  Sort of tasted like pizza! Ya know, tomatoes + bread + parmy cheese.  I ate all of the soup, then started in on the bowl.  I was absolutely stuffed but just could not stop eating that bread!  I ended up saving the top of the bowl for the plane ride home

Tomato Soup in a Sourdough Bread Bowl

Next I went to the Buena Vista Cafe, where the Irish Coffee was purportedly brought to the United States.  Now honestly, I don’t care who brought it to the US, I just care that it got here, so when our lovely hosts insisted that we get one on our last day in SF, I happily sought it out.

It was good.  Nothing spectacular, but just booze, coffee, and whipped cream like it should be.

We ended our trip with some lovely fro-yo from a self serve place.  This was funnn.  I mixed “tart” plain yogurt with mixed berry, then added strawberries, mini chocolate chips, and blueberries.  The blueberries tasted funky and were sorta hard, but other than that this stuff was delicious.  Big fan.  Want one in Syracuse.

I ate other stuff too!  Tasty indian food, homemade dinners, grilled cheeses, and lattes each morning.  It was a pretty tasty vacation!

Now I’m back at home, and think I finally slept off the funky jet lag that I had (2 small children sitting behind you on a red-eye flight from CA to NY is NOT OK!) and back in my kitchen.

And if the soap doesn’t fall off the sink and jump up and down on the bathroom scale like it was a trampoline, annoying the toilet brush and making the bubble bath giggle, I’ll tell you next about how to make sneaky vegetarian lasagna in roll form!

Brace yourselves, I think this is going to be a long post!

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, by Barbara Kingsolver

I bought Animal, Vegetable, Miracle after seeing it reviewed on a few blogs.  When I was in high school I read a few of Barbara Kingsolver’s books (I still haven’t read the Poisonwood Bible, but I will soon!) and enjoyed them, so I figured this book would be right up my ally.  Great writing and a book about food?! Heck yes!

I decided to save the book for my week-long vacation to New Hampshire, so I could dive right in insted of reading little bits at a time.  Well, that vacation was last week and I’m happy to report that I absolutely loved the book.  The setting was perfect too: a beautiful New England lake house, with views like the one below:

The book chronicles Kingsolver’s family decision to move to Appalachia and eat only what they grew themselves or could be found locally for one year.  What an undertaking!  The book is filled with factual accounts of food production, from the home grown vegetables to factory farming, as well as stories about the challenges and successes the family faced.  Chapters are supplemented with anecdotes and information from Kingsolver’s daughter and husband.

What I found so interesting was her description of vegetable seed producers/engineers.  Kingsolver explains the difference between heirloom vegetable seeds and the seeds that most of us buy from major corporations and that turn into the fruits and vegetables that we eat.  She explains that there are very few seed providers, and those that do supply seeds have come up with ways to genetically manipulate the seeds so they grow heartier at the cost of nutrients, and have a “terminator” gene that doesn’t allow for farmers to save seeds to be replanted for future crops.

Additionally, and perhaps most interesting to this intellectual property loving law student, producers of these seeds have intellectual property protections on the specific genetic formation of their seeds.  Companies like Monsanto have successfully sued farmers for unlawfully “growing” the company’s seeds when the seeds inadvertently blew onto that farm from another farm authorized to use the seeds.  Unbelievable!

Kingsolver also talks about the problems with factory farming that most of us know by now: foods shipped to your supermarket from other parts of the country and other parts of the world use an unbelievable amount of fossil fuels, at the risk of our environment.  Those tomatoes you find at the supermarket in the middle of winter taste like garbage because they are so artificially ripened that they aren’t really even tomatoes yet.  Factory farms put out products more cheaply than neighborhood farms, and as a result the once booming farming population in the United States has declined at an alarming rate.

The book discusses the challenges of growing your own food, too.  Bananas and avocados don’t grown around Appalachia.  Crops require a tremendous amount of attention and hard, manual labor.  Vacations simply aren’t possible for many farmers for this reason.  Eating only locally certainly means sacrificing some of ones favorite foods, and eating some of the same foods over and over again simply because they grow well in your area.  Kingsolver deals with the latter dilemma by providing some wonderful sounding recipes right in the book, as well as on her website.

Now, I understand that this is a work  of a fiction writer, and that it certainly is not the definitive guide to the perils of factory farming, but I think the best part of the book is the awareness it brings to those that read it.  Personally, I intend to read a lot more on the subject in order to better inform myself.

I highly recommend you look up this book and visit the website.