HOLI! HOLI! HOLI!

This past week was the Festival of Colors in India celebrating Spring. During the festival, people smear color, called gulal, on each other's face and splash colored water, called rang. They dance and sing in the streets and have parties. Young and old, together, seamlessly. It makes me happy.

I want Holi. Can you imagine how much fun that would be? After this horrid snow and chilling cold. Look at those colors? The vibrant happy, almost violently happy colors. It makes me happy.

I want to throw pink water filled balloons out my window and have the person I peg look up and smile. I think I will just have to settle for Tiffin. Honestly, it is not really settling. Tiffin is delicious and I could eat Saag Paneer every day. I love ordering home delivery. The cutest guys show up wearing ties and freshly combed hair. It makes me happy.

Do you think they'd mind if I hit them with a pink water filled balloon?

Food Thoughts for March

So, two things happened yesterday that precipitated this thought process - the first was brought on by Jeffrey Steingarten. I have to admit, I'm a huge fan of his writing. I really enjoy the honesty and heart he brings to his words, and his passion about food and learning comes through louder than his occasionally curmudgeon-esque personality on Iron Chef. So when my brother gave me "It Must've Been Something I Ate" for Christmas, I tucked it away happily waiting for a good day to start it, which turns out was yesterday. In the introduction, he brings up a question to ask yourself that will, he says, reveal quite a bit about your attitudes toward food. He asks you to read two statements, and choose which fits your personality best:

1. "I feel awful this morning, my skin is covered with bumps, and I can hardly see straight. It must've been something I ate."

OR

2. "I feel light as a feather this morning, my mind is clear as a bell, and I've got a smile on my face for the whole human race. It must've been something I ate."

A few seconds to guess which one I could relate to more...ok so yeah, it's #2. Shortly after reading this my boyfriend and I set about to making dinner - hanger steak with parsnip puree, an herb salad and potatoes and mushrooms cooked in duck fat. I made a spice cake with creme fraiche and pear compote. After eating, we settled in for the night only to be interrupted by a phone call from one of my favorite people saying that the bar we used to frequent in college was closing for good. That night. Now, when I say frequented I mean...I used to live around the corner. Brunch every Sunday. Not a place you'd bring your mother. Ever. Best jukebox in town. It served me my first illegal beer, as well as my first legal beer. A crux of life for those of us who lived in Newark, and a place we all hold near and dear. I got off the phone with Seth and sat on my couch, somewhat dazed. After a minute it became clear what had to happen. I put my shoes on and got back on the phone "We'll meet you there in an hour". Not long after, I found myself in a scene that could have fallen out of five years ago - the same people, most of them had rushed in like I did, after a long hiatus, to have one last beer on the porch.

I could lie and say that I'm sitting here, unaffected by the closing, but in actuality I'm so nostalgic and borderline melancholy it shocks me. That some (let's be honest) pretty crappy bar brought together so many good people, people who still mean the world to me even though I haven't seen most of them in years, and fostered so many memories and good times is no longer around just...brings the end of an era. Yes I know, restaurants and bars come in and out of existence like fruit flies but some things were never meant to leave, and in your mind you never really thought they would.

I guess the funny thing is, on my way to work this morning I felt better than I have in a long time. I got the same amount of sleep (if not less) than I usually do, routines went the way they always have, but as I write this it's abundantly clear to me - it usually is because of something I ate (or drank) that I feel this way. Or because of the people that came together to celebrate and share the food and drink, and each other. So, cheers, East End Cafe. Thanks for it all.

Meet My Dad...

Last night, Manny belted out a rendition of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody from the next room. I was just sitting there enjoying a grapefruit margarita (with ice thank you) and found myself smiling all over. Life is grand. I don't know if y'all know this, but I am a political junkie. I love it and hate it, as we all do. On certain days, I feel like I have been punched in the kidneys by the day's events. I try not to let it get me down. I have friends, like Dan, Kamala, Marisa and Francine who tell me to knock it the f*@%! off, when I start furrowing my brow. What am I rambling about, aside from the Patron, it's life mother puckers!

Life. Let's all just skip back down memory lane and remember why we do what we do. Why we love what we love. Why we should love what we do. Above is a pic of ....guess. It's the 70's, obviously. So smart, you are...I have my Dad's coloring and my mom's bone structure. I wish I had their height. My Mom was close to 6 foot! You can see they are happy. My dad left this earth shortly before my 30th birthday and I miss him. My Mom, she will never recover. He was nuts and dogmatic and would tickle me until I would pee in my pants. I will never forgive him for that. He had a knack for saying the most inappropriate things. Shut up! I know.... He could fix about anything and was always there for me. No one was more excited about being a grandfather. My brother once gave me the most random information about..I think it was concrete. When I mocked him, his response was, "I am my father's son." My point is that my Dad knew what he loved and he loved food. I learned to love food through my Dad.

My Dad was the king of the deli sandwich, Chinese food or any Asian product, pickled vegetables, mustard, sausage, ribs, raw bar....I could go on. The man loved food. He grew up in Rhode Island and spent his adult years in NYC. One of my first and most vivid memories is of my Dad putting a clam on the half shell to my lips on the boardwalk and me choking. He held me upside down by my ankle as he pounded my back to dislodge the bivalve. I cried and he took me for a waffle ice cream sandwich, Napolitano style sprinkled with powdered sugar, to erase the whole incident. I miss that man! My first taste of Indian, Korean and Japanese was with my Dad. He roared when I first tried wasabi. Roared! (read: annoying) He judged a restaurant by how many "round eyes" were in the place. Not too many? Good! I mentioned he was inappropriate, no?

It's a new year. Let's introduce someone to something we love. Why we love. Why we are passionate. Mike Feldman, my Dad. He has never had our gelato. He would have loved it. Now go do it! He would be proud of you!

PHOOD

I've always had a weird struggle with food. When I was about 11 years old I decided that I was frumpy and overweight so, I made the decision to be the first worst vegetarian in all of West Virginia. "Whaddya mean NO MEAT?... You want bacon instead?"

I lasted about 9 years on cereal, ketchup sandwiches and microwave noodles before buckling in college to a two day old Philly Cheese Steak. (YES, I still call them "Philly Cheese Steaks". I also refer to soda as POP and the way you people pronounce "radiator" and "Acme" gives me a full bellied laugh every time. Please don't ever stop.)

Growing up in that yo-yo diet crazed part of the 90's had a huge impact on the way I looked at food. It was my enemy. Fourteen grams of fat a day was the limit. Plain yogurt, black coffee and 5 macadamia nuts for breakfast, cardio for lunch and a 200 calorie plastic-wrapped microwave disaster for dinner. Mom started sneaking vegetable oil into the few meals that I allowed her to prepare for me, simply to keep me alive. (Thanks Mom.) It was my 103 pound summer and I wouldn't do it again if you promised me fame, fortune, and another forbearance on my student loans.

After 28 years on this silicone waif infested planet, I have decided that it's okay to have a healthy bum. I know enough about Photoshop to understand that Demi Moore's hips aren't concave in real life and regardless, Kelso ain't complainin'. The girls walking downtown with legs so thin they disappear if you blur your eyes look pretty friggin' cold this time of year and I'll bet you a dollar they haven't licked the ricotta off a plate of lasagna in a loooong time.

Working and living in Philadelphia has opened my eyes to eating as an experience. The Reading Terminal Market is a gold mine of delicious cheeses (whose names I cannot pronounce), veggies and a smörgåsbord of freshly slaughtered meats! Capogiro makes the richest creamiest most amazing gelato I have ever had and it has COMPLETELY screwed my love affair with ice cream. (I'm sorry baby, it's just not the same anymore...) South Philly Pho is the cheapest most delicious soup in the world. I could quite literally drown myself in the steaming bowl of steak*, sprouts and Sriracha and die a happy girl. The restaurants that I've discovered in Philly make me wish I hadn't wasted those 9 years on ketchup sandwiches. These days I sample foods sorta like I experimented with hallucinogens in high school... "Hey, what's that? Screw it, gimme some."

So, thank you Philly Phoodies for steering me away from canned pasta and boxed mac and cheese. Thank you Steph for your gumbo and Tacy for your stress relief baking. Thank you Capogiro for completely ruining soft serve for everyone. And thank you Pho houses everywhere. I love you. I'll see you later tonight, please save me a table.

*I don't know if it's really steak and I TOTALLY don't care.