Church Avenue Chomp

Sorry I haven’t been posting, folks. Instead of writing, my new pastime is measuring each and every object in the house in order to create a complete list for the movers. Whoops! The list is not complete: I forgot to get the dimensions of the metro shelving hidden in the closet. Whoops! Incomplete again, because I forgot to measure the inflatable bouncing donkey from nose to tail. How will I work in the measurements of the ears! I’ll have to email them. These movers, they will not be happy if I don’t include the ears.

I’m old enough to know when someone is laughing uproariously at the hoops that I am semi-willingly jumping through. Somewhere in Bronxville or perhaps the East Village, a move administrator is showing my list to the boys, and he is just guestimating the cost.

Whoops! I didn’t include our 2 garbage cans. Whoops! I own another duffel bags. Up it goes up by exactly $100!

What else is going on in the Westminster Zoo: I become really sad when I think of leaving this lovely place where I first lived with Matthew (well, except for this place, which I moved into 4 years ago for a brief 2 months, and which inspired the blog). Where I live now is where I became engaged, and spent the first of many blissful, and sleepless, and blissful, nights with Baby Henry. Who is now Little Boy Henry.

Every morning this version of Henry gets up, eats one truckload of food for breakfast, and then runs to get his tiny little bike helmet and hands it to me and points to the door. Owsai! Owsai! He loves being outside, and he loves the bike, but he also loves coming back home. On the occasion of drinking 2 tequila drinks a few weeks ago, one right after the other, I became very sad thinking about how Henry will be confused when we don’t come here anymore. (I used to just cry on behalf of the cat’s small injustices, but now I have Henry. Lucky Henry.)

These things make me somewhat sad, as does the impending loss of our beautiful green wooden porch flanked by hundreds of purple flowers, as does shrinkage of my kitchen. I’ve been living large in a big eat in kitchen with room for an ice cream maker, a dutch oven designed for camping, multiple other dutch ovens. Now I will, um, put it all into boxes, and try to stuff it into a very petite galley kitchen.

Ok, off to bubble wrap something! Here, kitty kitty.

don't let this man scare you, either

Don’t let the name scare you. Colon Blow was the name of a cereal in a not-very-funny SNL commercial in the early ’90’s. But, it’s what my friend Heather and I called this, the original PILE in our lives. We made it all the time in our first apartment, ever, which we shared in Austin.

About the apartment: We lived next door to 2 guys in a speed metal band who in retrospect, seem really pretty nice. One was called Keith, and the other was called Roland, though we privately referred to Roland as Trackmark. I don’t think Roland had a girlfriend but Keith was dating a stripper. Rhea did laundry once a week and she hung her six pairs of tiny stripping pants out to dry on the porch we all shared. Blue fringy, white shiny,  green sparkly: she really had quite the wardrobe. I don’t think she wore shirts.

Our lives were, uh, less exciting than theirs. But still pretty exciting! Our apartment had light-blue wall-to-wall and Heather and I each paid $257.5o.

Whatever cooking we did was stuff that Heather made up or read about in Moosewood, I think. We ate a lot of vegetable casserole with cheese and breadcrumbs, and tabouli, and I have to say, it was all pretty delicious.

To me this still tastes like 22 and swimming every day and Trackmark and our first jobs, to which we wore lots of rayon dresses and sandals. Without nylons, of course. Needless to say, it’s delicious.

Colon Blow

Serves 2 roommates

• Sweet and hot mustard
• Soy Sauce
• Vinegar
• 1 package Firm Tofu
• Rice
• Broccoli

Stir together soy sauce, vinegar, and mustard until it tastes balanced. (If you don’t have sweet and hot mustard, improvise with seedless Dijon plus cayenne or Sriracha, and a pinch of sugar or honey or maple syrup.) Then, see if there is enough marinade to cover the tofu, and when there isn’t, add more of each thing until it is approximately right, again.

Slice firm tofu into rectangles, and marinate in the sauce for an hour or so.

Start to cook rice and get ready to steam some broccoli.

Heat oil (peanut, corn, safflower, canola) over medium high heat in a wok or other pan. Add marinated tofu when the oil is hot enough to sizzle aggressively, but not outright spit.

Of the tofu, we used to say. “First it turns into cheese. Then it turns into chicken.”

Fry it until it turns into chicken. By that point the sweetness will be caramelizing on it, and it will be crumbling a bit because you need to turn it over several times. I often find myself turning the heat up to high, and then turning it back down again. There are usually a few chewy burned bits, and those taste good, too. Make a pile of rice, then add steamed broccoli and tofu.

Brief post to say: I am desperately trying to book movers. I wasn’t desperate until I called the Wongs — would that we could use the Wongs, who are reputedly older but very strong and very inexpensive and very competent — but alas, the Wongs are booked. Then I called Rainbow, because Rainbow sounds strong and gay and cheerful, which is just what one requires on moving day. They are also booked until July 2nd.

July 2nd? What do you mean July 2nd! I will have started my new life by July 2nd!

I had gotten lots of recommendations from people in the neighbhorhood and other places, and so I called on. And on . . .

Many of the movers are out moving things and can’t answer, but you can fill out web forms to ask about availability. But instead of just asking a person over the phone if they can move a big 2 BR, you have to estimate what you need moved in order to complete the form. Like, all of your possessions.  So I compiled a fast estimate of our things. It had some excruciating details and took a long time, though I did it very quickly, and admittedly did not get up from my station on the bed and look around the apartment to do so. But I did picture every room, and list piece after piece of furniture. And I upped my box estimate from 50 to 52 in order to lend myself credibility. Perhaps it would seem like I’d already packed!

And as it turns out, at least one company isn’t busy on June 30th, and can do it! I was delighted to read their very low estimate until I saw the accompanying note asking “Don’t you have any rugs? Floor or desk lamps? How about bikes? Do you people have a bed?”

Mmmnph.

PILE↑ a là Nicole

When I was a kid, with the exception of Spaghetti night, we’d usually have a piece of meat (or possibly fish), a starch, and some peas, if I remember correctly. Or corn. The food was fanned out horizontally on a plate, and this is a template that worked, and still works, for most families, most nights. It’s a very American way of eating.

In contrast with that style of eating is what I’m going to call “Pile.” Pile is the word my friend Nicole uses for what she and her husband cook for dinner almost every night. We eat it in a heck of a lot of forms around here, too. Nicole and I believe that there should be an arrow at the end of it, to indicate the upward trajectory so key to eating a pile of food in a bowl.

Like,

PILE↑

When interviewed about it recently, Nicole explained. “PILE↑ (henceforth referred to as pile, though we still mean PILE↑) for started off as a Mexican dish.  Essentially, a burrito without the tortilla.  So it’d be rice or bulger, beans, maybe some kale or spinach, tofu sauteed with onions, garlic and usually another veggie like zucchini or broccoli, avocado or guacamole if we had all the fixings, and some hot sauce.  Now, we had been eating other non-Mexican versions of this dish (skip the beans and avocado, sometimes substitute the greens for mixed lettuce, and throw on some salad dressing) for quite some time, but it was the Mexican version that inspired the name.”

So, the definition of pile is: grain or noodle, possibly legumes or another protein; savory roots like onion, garlic, or ginger; agents like perhaps strong greens like kale or collards; accent vegetables, and perhaps salad greens, and condiments. Pile is never soup. These things are layered and mixed up and eaten from a bowl with a fork or chopsticks. Nicole and Josh are mostly vegetarians, though the example you see above came from their kitchen, and it has breaded and fried tilapia on top! When you want to cut out meat or fish, or use a substitute, or just use less, PILE is a wonderful way of eating. It’s also good because it is DELICIOUS, and very flexible, and messy, and can be fast. I also really enjoy eating out of bowls, and I love condiments, and sauces, and herbs, and the chance to squeeze limes on things, and all of these things work well together. We really love pile over here.

For a while now, I’ve been meaning to post on different sorts of pile. However, talking about 5 different recipes in one post is overwhelming, and I suddenly realized that making it a series would help me jump right in.

So: coming next: a recipe for the most standard pile we make. After that: peanut butter pile, and ThaiPile, and more.

Also: feel free to email or comment with tales of, or recipes for, your own pile recipes! I would love to hear them / post them.

Read about Choose Your Own Adventure Peanut Butter Pile. Read about Colon Blow — if you dare!

Fish on sale in Phu Quoc, Vietnam. Dec 2009

In our lovely Ditmas Park neighborhood, the scale can seem somewhat off. These enormous Victorian houses are, after all, still in NYC, so they are veryveryclosetogether. Many a house shares a driveway with the one next door, and the one we live in is one of those. Henry’s room is right on the driveway. It also overlooks the garage behind the house.

“Poor child,” you are thinking. “It’ll be a wonder if he isn’t intellectually and perhaps emotionally stunted by his sub-par view.” And here is my retort: it’s actually lovely and leafy and flowery with a blackberry tree, and the garage has masks hanging on it that our landlord made, with illumination under their chins. And if you can get past the scariness of having stonewhite faces staring at you all night long, it’s really pretty dang special and arty and, dare I say, to channel some edu-speak, enriching. One of Henry’s favorite quiet activities is grip his special blanket and to gaze out onto the leaves and flowers and plants on and around the garage. He does not seem afraid.

But again, it is very close to the next house. To determine small distances, I spread my fingers wide and gauge the distance between end of thumb and end of pinky, which is just about an eight-inch stretch for everyone. I can state with absolute certainly that we are more than 8 inches away from the house next door. To determine larger distances, I consider whether or not I could lay down in the space. And I think that I could probably lay down once between the houses, but not twice. So, maybe 8 feet? The space is so tight that as you back out of the driveway — not that I am allowed to park there, as a tenant, but I have for moments at a time — you find yourself physically shrugging your shoulders so as to be smaller, though that wouldn’t change the dimensions of the car.

Also, while we are on a very residential block, we back up to the back of the buildings on Coney Island Avenue, which is famous for all of the auto body repair shops and fabric stores and Bangladeshi sweet shops. And what’s directly behind us? Well, we live directly behind the largest mosque in Brooklyn. At least it *used* to be the largest mosque, but they have been enlarging it for a few years now, so now it might be the largest mosque in the world. This is just conjecture, but I’m just saying: it is possible. However, I have seen pictures of Mecca, and it does look like Mecca is probably still winning for bigness. At any rate the mosque construction somehow hasn’t bother me too much.

What this is leading up to, of course, is what *does* bother me. But you knew that, right?

Our neighbor’s house, the house that is so close to us, backs up to a restaurant. The restaurateur, lately, has found himself with a need to do some construction. The restaurateur doesn’t want to dent his business with construction, and so he cut some sort of deal with our neighbor. The deal is that a construction company (which the restaurateur also apparently owns, because he is a POWERFUL MOGUL WHO IS RUINING MY LIFE, JUST READ ON) can use his driveway, and completely trample and destroy the neighbor’s tiny little yard in order to get access to the back of the restaurant, which is apparently the part that needs the work done. And, as I stated earlier, our neighbor’s driveway is also our driveway. Our neighbor could not be a nicer man, which may be why he granted access to the mogul. So the mogul sends all of the construction workers, and concrete, and forklifts, and demolition vehicles, to park literally directly under my tiny son’s window.

Not that my son doesn’t love forklifts, because man alive, he does. And if there were a forklift with a siren on it . . .  I don’t even know what. But if there’s one inarguable fact about people who are approximately one, it’s that they must nap. Napping is a non-negotiable. Even one a sixteen-month old who *does* take an absolutely sumptious nap tends to throw himself onto the floor when he doesn’t get his way, and so a tired one just trips and falls over and screams most of the time, getting bruises, and eggs on their head, and you don’t even want to know about the kickmarks that their parental companions sustain. So while this mogul is worried about denting his business, what he has done with his private construction company is demolish my lifestyle by robbing us of all we care about, which is sleep.

Does the man care? You know, he hasn’t spoken to me personally, but to the homeowners around here, he definitely tries to present himself as a pretty nice guy. He speaks in grand, sweeping terms and makes grand, sweeping promises. For instance, he came over and threw his arm around my landlord’s neck, explaining, “You and me? We’re brothers. We must work together.” The mogul is always offering to “take care of things” for my landlord. Mostly, these things are things that the mogul himself as broken.

So while the “brothers” sentiment is an awesome one, my landlord is pretty crabby about how his brother cracked the new driveway entrance he just put in, and how he peeled a bunch of shingles off of his home. And since the landlord has a driveway, he isn’t crazy about having his car in the road. Or about his rageful tenants.

I got the details from his wife, the landlady, when I called upstairs to complain one day. She said “Ugh, don’t even talk to me about it. We’re furious. And then has the nerve to offer Jonah a fishdinner. ‘Come to my restaurant,’ the guy says to Jonah, ‘And I’ll get you a fishdinner.’ And Jonah says, ‘Listen. I don’t need a fishdinner. A fishdinner isn’t going to fix this.” And she continues, “But I’m thinking . . . ‘Well I love fishdinners! I’d like a fishdinner, for sure.'”

I, too, would like a fishdinner. I love them almost as much as I love the word, tossed off in the Bronxian New Yorkese of my landpeople, as one word but with the emphasis on fish. “Fishdinner.” I would like a fishdinner, and I would like the napping to resume, and I would like the mogul to personally do whatever construction I need done for the coming year.

I would also like the mogul to pack for me. But I doubt I’ll even get a fishdinner.

Thanks to nurpax on Flickr for use of the photo, Fish Market.