I_call_the_duck

Yes, the kitchen is a major selling point when purchasing a home. The majority of the new condos going up in Philadelphia these days promise “gourmet kitchens” with stainless steel appliances (some with Viking or Kitchen-Aid upgrades) and granite countertops. Whether or not people will actually cook in there is another story (like Mr. & Mrs. "it has never been turned on.") There’s a three-story house on my block that has been on the market for over a year. We looked at it, and the kitchen, or non-kitchen as I call it, was smaller than one you’d find in many Manhattan studios. Little to no counter space or cabinets whatsoever. Another house we looked at had two dorm-sized fridges instead of a normal one. Needless to say, we didn't buy either. I’ve said it in other forums, but when we were house-hunting, I absolutely refused to even look at a house that had an electric stove or teeny kitchen. My husband asked, “what if it had an electric stove but with a gas hook-up?” Nope. In fact, the first house we put a bid on (and later backed out for another reason) had an electric stove. I know that if we went through with the sale, that I’d probably still be cooking with that stove. Why? Because my dream stove would never fit into that house, let alone cost more than I’d care to admit. mrbigjas, I know exactly what you’re talking about. My kitchen was selling point #1 when we bought our house. But while I was recently dreaming of our very-distant future kitchen remodeling, I came to a conclusion: the cooking that I do does not warrant the cost of my dream stove. It isn’t as if I make mac n’ cheese from a box, but we rarely entertain, so it’s just the two of us. A beautiful stove like Viking or a Wolf would just be underutilized in my house. (I would spend a little more on better countertops, because my formica is starting to buckle.) As cool as a salamander would be, I don’t need it. I’d love a wok burner, but I make do with what I have. OK, a warming drawer is neat, and two separate ovens would be great, but do I really need them? Would I use them if I had them? Would it increase the sales value of my home? No to the first, maybe, to the second, and definitely to the last. IMO, you can find a happy medium without going all-out.

Damn Logan! Sorry to see your blog go Megan! I felt like I had someone to watch GG with! ← I swear I was expecting to hear Logan say “we were on a break"! Gee, they ripped that right off from Ross and Rachel. Getting back on topic, that dinner looked so good. I never even think of having breakfast for dinner. I don’t usually have that type of breakfast for breakfast, so having it for dinner is a great idea. And what a lovely hot chocolate. Thanks again for sharing your New York with us. It was a lot of fun, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading of your travels throughout the city.

As long as you don't expect a response, you're good to go.[...] ← Nah. It's more like, if you talk to yourself, you're guaranteed an intelligent conversation. Um, or something like that. (Also talks to himself.) ← Speak for yourself! So, I called my little bro (and fellow Gilmore Girls addict) to invite him to dinner tonight, but he has a play to go to (he's a candidate for an MFA in Theatre Management at Columbia - I'm very proud of his over-achieving ways). However, when I told him I was having "French dinner," he was really sad that he had to miss it. Then he asked, "Did you tell them about our childhood?" Literally. That is literally what he asked me. With those exact words. How effete can you get? He just wanted me to make sure to tell you all how much he loooooves breakfast for dinner. I'll be saving him some leftovers. ← Awww!!

As long as you don't expect a response, you're good to go. The voice inside my head is usually "la-dee-dah-dee-dah". Not that bad you say? No, but not good if you're holding a very sharp implement.

So, Miles has just chucked me upside the head (virtually, via email) and reminded me that I'm thinking of the Conservatory Garden, not the Central Park Conservancy, which is actually the not-for-profit group that looks after the park. Oops. ← Yeah, I meant the Conservatory Garden. My bad.

Where in Pennsylvania?

Ben Sook, I think an omelet would be more define as eggs that are already cooked and then stuff is folded into it, while the egg foo young is stuff scrambled into eggs then cooked. Gravy on egg foo young? The stuff I saw in restaurants looked just like brown gravy that they use on other dishes. As my BIL, who is a round-eye used to say (paraphrasing, because what he actually said isn’t very nice), “that’s white people food!”

Will do. We’re actually in town at least once a month getting our NY fix. I used to do this all the time when I worked on Madison Square Park! ← Went there too. My husband used to work near the park, so if I was having lunch with him, we’d go there. It also gave me an excuse to go to the pre-Shake Shack hot dog cart. I would beg to differ ← I agree. That only gives you less of window to drink, which means you have to cram in more drinks in a shorter period of time. *hic.* That’s one good looking sandwich. Could the weather have affected delivery, since it was so darn cold that everyone was ordering in? I went to my local deli for lunch yesterday, and they were so swamped between take-out orders and deliveries that it took a long time to get my soup. In fact they forgot about it, and I had to remind them. (Hey, it's just ladle into a cup and put a lid on. Not that hard.) I love your dinners. I don’t think I’m allowed to have a brulee torch. I was eyeing that exact one at Williams-Sonoma once, and being a self-proclaimed klutz, was not-so gently steered away.

Pop Tarts, of course! (Untoasted, in honor of season 1 when the toaster broke and Lorelei compared it to living in hell ...) ← OMG, Pop Tarts!!!! Maybe those can be the starter... ← Sausage wrapped in pancakes, tied together with bacon. That's what Luke made for Rory when she left for Yale. Gee, I'm such a geek.

The heading "Do you really need a list?" said it all. Come on. Chili? Soup? Tacos?! OK, so I don't drive, but I play navigator and back-seat driver when my husband and I travel by car. When passing him food and drink, I make sure that we're a) on a straight road with relatively few cars directly ahead or behind us, 2) it's something that isn't messy (I usually avoid nuts or anything that can get stuck in your throat, mizducky), and 3) have plenty of napkins on hand.

I am SO glad you mentioned Bar 89, Blondie. I almost had to go back down to the bar and ask what was going on, I was so confused. Imagine going up there after a few martinis.... ← There's one in Philly that has those doors. If someone hadn't warned us about them beforehand, it would have definitely freaked me out. But it was funny watching the reaction of those tipsy patrons when they saw those doors. There are restrooms in the lobby of a hotel in midtown Manhattan whose name presently escapes my mind. It's easy finding the way into the restroom, but once inside, there is no indication whatsoever of how to get out. No handles, no "push here" sign, nothing. Luckily, I was able to do my business before freaking out. I was on a date, and I had to explain what took me so long.

Megan, Missed you this weekend. We were up in NY this weekend, and I kept thinking, "I wonder what Megan is doing now?" Thanks for going to Kitchen Arts & Letters. Your pics now proved what I always knew...that it's a very dangerous place for me to go. If I can't go through a B&N or amazon.com without buying a cookbook, there's no way I'll make it out of there alive. I find that you’re being very sensible. There’s no need to be jealous about the people who seem like they don’t worry about money. They’re the ones who are probably overextended on their credit cards. My dad used to say that he had money because he was cheap. And remember--Mayor Bloomberg takes the subway to work every morning, and he certainly doesn’t have to worry about money. That dinner at Babbo looked so amazing, as does the dinner at Chez Megan. Ok. Although GF's DL says she's 5'3", but I think 5'0.75" is probably more like it? SB (knows from personal experience that another presumed advantage of petite women, that they don't eat as much, is patently false, especially when it comes to chocolate!) ← I’m 5’0” and I constantly delude myself into thinking that I’m taller by ducking under low-hanging branches. Srhcb, whoever said petite women don’t eat as much has never met the likes of me. Ooh, and for the petless New Yorker, you can always visit a dog park. I used to spend part of my lunch hour oohing the puppies at the nearby dog park. They have great lobster rolls at The Lobster Place. There’s also a wonderful gelato stand right behind Bowery Kitchenware. IMHO, their pompelmo rosso (pink grapefruit) gelato is the best I’ve had since Rome. I didn’t realize Martha Frances Mississippi Cheesecake had a storefront there. Her stand is one of the very few that make the ubiquitous street fairs worthwhile. But this is a great blog. Thanks for sharing your New York. I don’t usually frequent the UES unless I’m going to one of the museums, so you’re giving me a reason to visit that neck of the woods more often. Another vote for Starwich. Or even a lunch cart.

Shrimp chips. They're mainly starch and artificial shrimp flavoring, but I love 'em.

WOW. Klary, that was a beautiful dinner. Kudos to you, and a belated happy birthday to your very lucky hubby.

Thanks, Ah Leung. Looks wonderful as always! My favorite version is roast pork and gow choi (garlic chives).

I may be too much of an ABC sometimes, but what "rules" are you talking about? Either way, my husband sometimes thinks I'm off my rocker.

When I hear that, I think of the elephant with the giant ears. My brain works in very strange ways. No, it doesn't. I'm sure that's what the people who coined that acronym wanted you to conjure up. ← But DUMBO's cool and edgy and hip. Or is that Williamsburg (no acronymns). Doesn't invoke thoughts of Disney. Speaking of which, I wonder if Disney has any lawsuits filed about using that acronym.

When I hear that, I think of the elephant with the giant ears. My brain works in very strange ways. BTW, what are the boundaries of SoHa?

No big deal. They don't make any more dough than they can bake in a day. If they're really busy, they may not have the dough to take your dough. So you call ahead to make sure you're not disappointed. I've been there when we've had an "unreserved" pie - on a weekend, even. It's like making a reservation exactly 30 days in advance. Part real, part folklore. ← Like the bagel place on Washington and Columbus? To ensure that you get your pizza? I thought that reserving your dough meant that you take uncooked dough to make your own pizza. Forgive me, I'm a little slow. Very interesting indeed.

It is amazing that once one gets older, they change from being the "eye-roller" to learning to appreciate and understand their culture. Gastro88, gotta look for those books now.

Yikes! I think you're going to get some arguments from the New Haveners... ← The pizza shops around campus and so on are largely Greek, and some of them are pretty good, certainly much better than the Greek-style pizza you find all over Boston (now that's a city whose pizza makes Philly's look fantastic) and better than many, many of the pizza places here in Philly. The famous New Haven pizzas, though, like Pepe's, Sally's, and Modern Apizza, are all Italian. ← The first time I was in New Haven, I was about 12. I actually didn't spend much time there (just by some brief visits to my sister when she was in college), so I didn’t know Greek pizza from Italian pizza. It was just good. My favorite pizza in New Haven was Yorkside, which I'm pretty sure is Greek.

Going slightly off-topic, one of my little anal habits is to stamp the can with the purchase date. My husband loves 2-for-1 sales, so we have a lot of the same things in the pantry purchased at different times. Though I rotate the cans, it still helps.

Greek pizza ain't all that bad. Just different. I believe New Haven has great pizza, and if memory serves correct (I haven't been in about 15 years), it's Greek-style. Sandy, I think NYPD (whose owners are from Brooklyn) is a pretty close approximate to NY pizza as one could get. (yeah, I keep playing the NY card. I'll try to stop, or at least do it less often. ) Another newbie question: what’s the deal with calling ahead for your dough at Taconelli’s?

Amen! Well, mizducky-who-appreciates-quackiness-in-all-forms, I shouldn't put the blame on the older generations, for naggingly controlling the what's and why's we eat, because I, myself, have unwittingly taken over the task of feeding my family with such 'balanced' meals, explaining to my children the effects of some foods over and over again. I bet they roll their eyes when I do that, but I (and, they, in future) can't help it, we're chinese! ← This is a great thread. Boy, I'm learning so much more about my own culture than I ever did growing up. This explains so much, because, Tepee, I was one of those “eye rollers”. Mom would never tell the reason behind some horrible concoctions she made me drink on occasion. Case in point: Mom would warn me not to eat too much fried foods, saying it is “yeet hay”, and would cause canker sores. If I did indeed get a canker sore, or feel “hot”, she’d make me some type of herbal drink. I don’t know if it really worked, but now I see her reasons behind it.

Indeed - NoHo ("North of Houston"), NoLIta ("North of Little Italy"), and so on. You also often see acronyms used for other neighborhoods, though you would read these as the entire name, rather than pronounce the acronym: LES (Lower East Side), UES (Upper East Side), UWS (Upper West Side), and so on. ETA: And how could I forget the (relatively) freshly-coined SoHa ("South of Harlem")? ← And don't forget...Houston is pronounced HOUSE-ton. My favorite new acronym is LES. Just a funny name for a neighborhood. Reminds me of an old man, or Les Nesman from WKRP in Cincinnati. On a somewhat unrelated note, they're trying to find a cutesy name for my neighborhood down here in Philly, which is currently called South of South. But somehow SoSo doesn't quite market well when it comes to real estate. I'm so oblivious to celebrity sightings. Sandra Bernhard walked right by me at the Whole Foods in Chelsea, and I didn't notice her until my husband (who is oblivious to just about everything else) pokes me and says in a stage whisper, "there's Sandra Bernhard!"