Megan Blocker

Dinner tonight was penne with a fresh tomato sauce - tomatoes, garlic, olive oil, hot pepper flakes, basil, and finished with just a touch of balsamic vinegar. Green salad dressed with simple vinaigrette (white wine vinegar, olive oil, S&P). The entire dish: The obligatory "arty" side-shot: Also finished off the last of that Cabernet Sauvignon!

Ooooh, I just remembered one of my favorite salads, from Alice's Tea Cup on the UWS. It's watercress with roasted shallots and a champagne vinaigrette. It's soooo good - I order it, two scones and a pot of tea every time I go.

Good call, Chris! I had take-out from an upscale deli down the street. I got an assortment of salads and veggies, including broccoli rabe and green beans with garlic, cucumber, tomato and red onion with oregano, and a farfalle-pesto-spinach thing. Yummy!

I, too, find it hard to imagine having catering for the High Holidays (and I'm only half-Jewish!), but, oh well. Eli's here in NYC has some gorgeous pics of more traditional foods (they do holiday catering), but the nice photography might be inspirational enough! The Yom Kippur eats in particular look yummy.

Exactly what I was thinking. I want a Double-Double!!!!

Ooooohh, saute it with some garlic, chili flakes and olive oil. Serve alongside...anything. But it's best with something richer, as oer Malawry! It's also really good in pasta - sometimes I treat watercress like broccoli rabe, adding it to a sauce with sausage, garlic and oil. Very delicious.

Ooooh, yummy. That looks divine!

This is something I made a while back - tasted great, but doesn't look too good. It's essentially coq au vin, made with riesling. Yummy, but all one color and photographed REALLY badly.

So, dinner with my little brother was cancelled (he took me to the theatre today for my b-day, though, so he's forgiven ), so I ended up eating the chicken with forty cloves of garlic (Ina Garten's recipe, subbing in bourbon for cognac and leaving out the cream and flour) that I'd made earlier today for some dinners later in the week. On the side, a tossed salad with cukes, tomatoes, red onion, yellow pepper, and romaine - so delicious. I didn't do anything special to it, so I'm thinking I must have really been craving veggies for it to taste that good. In the glass, a Cabernet Sauvignon that my best friend and his boyfriend brought me from Napa a couple of weeks ago - they picked it not only because it's delicious (which it is), but also because it has the same name as the BF - Hall!

Wow, wow, wow, Susan. Everything looks amazing. My brother is taking me to dinner tonight - and now I know I'm having steak frites!

Toasted H&H bagel with butter and blueberry preserves, plus a big ol' cup of coffee from DT-UT. And, of course, the NY Times! I love Sundays!

Chocolate chip cookies!!!!!

Thanks, Susan! High praise, especially coming from you - that butter dressing sounds ridiculously good. Patrick, would you be willing to share the chicken recipe? It looks delicious - I'd love to be able to teach my kung-pao-loving-but-living-on-a-student-budget brother to make it.

Dinner tonight was a riff on chicken milanese - with some tomatoes and onions thrown into the salad on top. Dressing was just lemon juice, olive oil, and a little minced garlic. I dipped the chicken in flour, then egg, and then coated it in a mixture of bread crumbs, parsley, garlic and parmesan cheese. I love that contrast of the cold salad with the hot chicken - yum!

Gorgeous, exciting pics - as always, Percyn! Can you tell us a little bit about the different sausages on that plate? Lokks pretty freakin' good!

I made it to Pegu Club last night for some cocktails with my friends Nick and Louisa, who are getting married a week from today, and moving to Ohio right after their honeymoon (for a job). They seemed very sad to have to leave New York so soon after finding such fabulous beverages. I started with a classic Manhattan on the rocks (not on the menu, but it was gooood), then moved on to a Pegu Club cocktail, which I loved. Louisa favored the Old Cuban, which she called a "Champagne mojito!" After the Pegu, I had a Jimmie Roosevelt - all I remember about this one was how unbelievably strong it was. Nick had to down half of it so I could move on to a glass of the Eve (apple-infused vermouth) to finish things off. The nibbles were also good - we particularly liked the sloppy duck, though the coconut shrimp were also pretty yummy. Nick really enjoyed the feel of the place (as did we all), particularly the whole British colonial thing. As he put it, he's "really into imperialism." More from an academic perspective than an actionable one, I imagine. In short, thanks to all for this great recommendation and info - I'll definitely be back!

Isn't this "standard quip" really more about the hypocrisy of those who attack foie gras while not attacking mainstream, mass-produced meat than it is about declaring one to be better than the other? To me, it seems to almost proclaim them as equal - if you have a problem with one, you should have a problem with both, and vice versa. In other words, no fair picking and choosing, whichever side you come down on.

Welcome to brunch in New York, right? Particularly on the UWS, which turns into a stroller parking lot on Sundays. Literally. They actually HAVE stroller parking lots outside of E.J.'s and Good Enough to Eat - during the winter, at least. In summer, these spaces are used for sidewalk cafes, much to the chagrin, I'm sure, of many mommies and daddies. I used to be an avid brunch-goer, but because of scenes like the ones above (power-hungry sous-chefs and aggressive yuppie-rents galore), I pretty much steer clear these days. Mostly I just head across the street to DT-UT for a cup of coffee and the paper, clearing out before noon, at which point that place, too, becomes land of the playdate. Sarabeth's is a favorite of mine for actual weekday breakfast (good granola, yummy oatmeal), but you couldn't pay me to go in that place on a Sunday.

Link to yesterday's NY Times article on this one... And each other, of course.

I wonder if this gender gap is narrowing as time goes by and wine becomes part of your general consciousness at a younger and younger age - in my circle (generally between the ages of 23 and 33), I would say the women are at least as knowledgeable as the men, if not more so. In fact, up until I read this thread, I never really thought there was a gender gap here. (I learned almost everything I know about wine from my mother, so...) Is it more (as I think has been explored above, particularly as it relates to Coors, White Zin, and bad taste showing up in both genders ) that this wine is being marketed to the female equivalent of the guy who keeps Natty Light in the fridge, to the woman who would otherwise not buy wine at all? In other words, is this just the next chapter from the creators of Zima?

No, not even when we begged. In reality, I do agree that we should leave slaughtering to the experienced or the professionals, given that they are likely to cause the least suffering. However, that doesn't mean we shouldn't pay attention to what happens in that moment and all of the other moments leading up to it. It's all part and parcel of respecting your sources of nourishment. ← I disagree. In Home Economics courses, students are still taught how to sew to some extent, something which there are literally millions of professionals doing, yet there are still enough educational aspects of it to make it instructionally worthwhile in a public school. I think the same thing about our food supply. I'm not saying that for a class of 26, one should procure 26 bison, or hogs, or even chickens. However, 26 catfish, and then allow the students to watch for several other types of animals (say, a mammal and a fowl). I think it would give a very good area to tie multiple areas of study together: ethics, science, economics, history, sociology, psychology, and animal husbandry. A month of intense study on this one area would give significant real-life education to students, and I think we give short shrift to this type of education. ← I think this is a good idea, so long as the activity is watched very closely and every precaution is taken to keep things within the standards that those professionals would observe. Not something that always happened when I embroidered pillow cases in home ec. That said, I don't think caring for and then slaughtering and eating a catfish differs too much on the gore scale from some of the dissections I undertook at school. (While the lesson learned would obviously be somewhat different.) I would also say, however, that learning this in school and then moving on to other things would not make me a professional. Therefore, in my adult life, I do believe it's right to allow the slaughtering to be done by someone who has chosen to study it and become far more well-versed in it than I, be they an experienced amateur or a professional. Hmmmm...now I'm wondering whatever happened to Bob, the pigeon my lab partner and I used to study Pavlovian psychology. So named because he was huge - Bob's Big Boy. Ah, Bob.

I agree! Actually, during my third trimester of freshman biology, my class took a trip to a buffalo farm in New Hampshire. It was very illuminating, and a good choice. It was a free-range ranch, so the animals seemed content, which was nice (and definitely instilled in me a hearty respect and preference for free-range meats). During the course of the day, we also learned how they were tagged, tracked and slaughtered. This was done at a private prep school, and I don't recall needing my mother's permission - though I'm sure I could have been exempted from the trip if I (or she) had objected to it. I don't remember anyone from the class not coming along, though. ← did they let you kill a few and cut them up.................. ← No, not even when we begged. In reality, I do agree that we should leave slaughtering to the experienced or the professionals, given that they are likely to cause the least suffering. However, that doesn't mean we shouldn't pay attention to what happens in that moment and all of the other moments leading up to it. It's all part and parcel of respecting your sources of nourishment.

I agree! Actually, during my third trimester of freshman biology, my class took a trip to a buffalo farm in New Hampshire. It was very illuminating, and a good choice. It was a free-range ranch, so the animals seemed content, which was nice (and definitely instilled in me a hearty respect and preference for free-range meats). During the course of the day, we also learned how they were tagged, tracked and slaughtered. This was done at a private prep school, and I don't recall needing my mother's permission - though I'm sure I could have been exempted from the trip if I (or she) had objected to it. I don't remember anyone from the class not coming along, though.

Aaaahhhh....as promised above, an update from Gawker on Martha's visit with Diddy. Check out the link for a pic of the chalkboard mentioned in the quote below. I will be watching the tape at home tonight, trying not to choke on my dinner as I laugh...do you suppose they made gougeres in celebration of "cheddar"?

Hee hee! So true.