Long Hot Days and Ratless Nights

Is it really only Wednesday? I need a weekend badly and I need it right now. But it needs to be one of those weekends where I don't have anything planned and I can lay on a blanket in the park and stare at the sky. I am definitely going to make that happen. Yesterday afternoon, I put my mom in a cab to JFK after a marathon week of cramming as much New York as possible into her visit. I had some concerns about her visit, mainly centered around the fact that she had both knee and shoulder surgery in the past year and we do a lot of walking. We also live in a 4th floor walk up and I could swear that they are the three steepest flights I've ever climbed. And then there's the weather. You know that vent that pumps hot laundry air out of the dryer at your parents house? The one that makes a small part of your backyard smell like hot, windy Bounce? Well, pretend the sky is a dryer vent and instead of Bounce your mom uses a dryer sheet called Rotten Swill, that's what the weather is like right now.

My mom doesn't do well with humidity and I know this firsthand. She came to visit us when we lived in Buffalo back in 2002 and there were a few key similarities between that situation and our current one that alarmed me. 1. We lived in a 3rd floor flat that had steep stairs. 2. It was June and beginning to get warm and a little muggy. Let's just say that our most vivid memory of that visit is my mom fanning herself and acting like she was going to melt. And I say that with love mom. So fast forward 7 years, add a flight of stairs, raise the temperature by about 15 degrees and mix in a pile of garbage. I'm sure you understand why I made sure to remind her in every conversation we've had since she booked her flight that the weather would be awful and that the stairs would be hell. I think it worked because she was a trooper. We walked all over the place, up and down countless sets of stairs all the while drenched in sweat and she did it with a smile. It was the sort of smile that said "See? I'm not complaining!" but it was a smile nonetheless. And to her credit, she actually was melting this time. It was brutally hot and humid, probably the worst weather we've had all summer.

Despite the heat, we had a great time and we did SO much. Perhaps I should have been more concerned about my ability to keep up than hers as I am thoroughly exhausted. We hit the ground running when she arrived Wednesday morning with a sightseeing cruise around Manhattan. I went to class, Mike took her to Arturo's for authentic New York pizza. Thursday started off with a classic New York experience: a trip to Target in Brooklyn. Okay, so it's not in any way a cool NYC thing to do, but we always go to Target together, it's our thing. Some mothers take their daughters to afternoon tea at the Ritz, mine takes me to Target for household goods, cheap sundresses and a bucket of popcorn and I love it. After our popcorn breakfast I took her to my school where we attended a demonstration by Aaron Sanchez, of Food Network's Chopped & Chefs vs. City. He also has two restaurants in Manhattan: Centrico & Paladar, which I will definitely be trying after sampling his cooking at the demo. He's charismatic, engaging and very proud of his Mexican heritage, which made the food even more delicious. We were given small plates of seared scallops with a charred corn salsa, duck breast with a chili and orange infused dulce de leche sauce and some ridiculously good pork belly tacos.



Friday, we slept late,then saw Julie & Julia before I headed off to class. Saturday, we did some shopping at my favorite place in SoHo, The Market NYC. It's a bunch of young designers in a church gym with table after table of cool, unique accessories and clothing. The three of us then headed to Brooklyn to the Botanical Gardens and a stroll through Prospect Park, which I think she loved. We gave her a brief tour of Park Slope that ended with a much needed mani-pedi before we hopped the subway back to the city to get ready for dinner at L'Ecole. L'Ecole is the restaurant at FCI, which I will eventually be cooking at during levels 5 & 6. We had a 5 course meal that was truly delicious.



Sunday, we headed to Times Square hell to pick up tickets for a matinee of "In the Heights", a fantastic musical about life in Washington Heights (the barrio in Manhattan). In the remaining days, we also managed to get her to Ground Zero, took a stroll along the Hudson through Battery Park City, toured Central Park and then lunched at Jean Georges, which deserves its own blog entirely, made a short visit to the Met to find that the three things she really wanted to see were closed, took her to Chinatown for dumplings, ate a Gray's Papaya hot dog and her first falafel. I think the only thing that we didn't get to see that she was disappointed about was a rat. Some people would be delighted to not encounter a rat in New York City, not my mom, she was actually bummed about it.

A week can be a long time with family in close quarters, but there was no (major) bickering or meltdowns. We had a really nice time and I'm happy to have shared our new city with her. It was a week that I will not soon forget and this time my most vivid memory will not be of her fanning herself. Well, maybe of her mopping her brow but doing it with a smile. Love you Mom!