Grabbing Life by the Throat and Other Warped Analogies

I've often found myself thinking, wishing, and saying "I can't wait for the weekend" or "I wish it was Friday" or "If our vacation would just get here already" meanwhile completely ignoring the moment that I am standing in. I've had to train myself to stop and enjoy life instead of planning and scheduling the hell out of it and always looking forward to something better than whatever it is I am currently doing. It's been 6 months since we moved to New York and it's like I now want to make time stand still. If I could dig my heels into the earth and keep the seconds from ticking away so quickly I would. It's not because I am so present and conscious and joyful in each and every moment that I have transcended my former self and now live solely for today. I am nearly halfway done with school and I don't want it to be over. And even that statement is more complicated than it at first seems. I am really enjoying school. I am learning so much from my chefs and I'm getting everything I had hoped to out of this experience. But there are two reasons I want to put the brakes on the clock, the first being warm and fuzzy and the second born out of sheer terror. I'll start with the happy stuff. I am acutely aware of the fact that I am in the midst of an experience that will never again be duplicated in my life. I spend an inordinate amount of time with 22 other people, all at different stages of life, all with different personal histories that brought them to this point where our paths intersect and merge for this handful of months. Some of us have so little in common but school has bonded us in a way I didn't expect and am constantly grateful for. So, for that reason, I am not ready for school to end and for us all to go our separate ways and have different schedules that won't allow us to see each other all that often. I know we still have months to go and that when it's over, we will stay in touch, but right now, I am enjoying this moment and I don't want it to pass. The other, not so pretty reason, that I want to stop time is because I don't know what I am going to do after school. I know I am on the right path, I just have no clue where it is leading. I am interning at a restaurant, shadowing the sommelier/beverage director in addition to another unpaid position with a wine importer. None of these places are giving me that feeling of "YES! This is where I want to be and what I want to be doing every day!. I think both are good networking opportunities, but it feels like I still have a lot of doors to beat on before I open the right one. I sometimes have to remind myself that this is why I am here doing what I am doing, especially after working for free all day and going home tired and empty handed. Well, tonight I left with a beautiful bottle of Brunello, so not empty handed so much as empty pocketed. I am going to cook up something lovely for Mike to go with it to remind us of the anniversary we spent in Tuscany a few years back. (Secretly wishing for a time machine right now).

The source of all this yearning to bend the space-time continuum is that we have reached the six month mark as New Yorkers and it seems unreal. Time is zooming along and yet I feel like surely I have lived here longer than half of a year, right? So normally it would be time for another 30 things I've learned in 30 days, but since I am so mired in self reflection, I am just going to go with the 6 things I've learned in my 6 months here.

1. I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up. I know that I will recognize it when I see it and I feel it lurking somewhere close by but it is still eluding me. Believe this: when I catch a glimpse of it, I am going to grab it by the throat and choke the hell out of it.

2. Uncertainty makes me aggressive. See above.

3. I have the best husband in the world. See any past blog referencing Mike and you will understand why I make this statement. It's not that I didn't know this before, it's just that he continues to demonstrate it at a whole new level here in New York as we work toward my personal career goals. He gives me the worlds longest leash to pursue what I want and do what I want and often times I get myself tangled up around a tree and my own leg and then look at him expectantly for help. And that will be the last time I ever create an analogy that likens me to a dog.

4. I walk nearly every where and at least every 3 blocks I get smacked in the face with one of the following three smells: dog doo, bum pee, or rotting garbage. Despite being suckerpunched by stench, I love walking for so many reasons. 1. My jeans fit better. 2. Walking forces you to pay attention to what is around you and you are usually rewarded with either a thing of beauty or a little bit of crazy. 3. The breaks in between the bad smells are usually crisp fall air that just feels good to take in to your lungs until an MTA bus rolls by coughing out exhaust. Whatever the reason, I like using my own two legs to get somewhere.

5. I will never ever root for the Yankees. Even living here surrounded by Yankee caps, I take joy in seeing fans just after a brutal loss. There is no part of my cold heart that feels anything but glee. I hope that they collapse in the Bronx over the next couple of nights in monumental fashion so every paper in the city demonizes the Yankees big budget, Girardi's micro-managing and the organization as a whole. I would rather have the Yankees lose than this city smell like an English garden after a fresh rain. Just sayin'.

6. New York really is the greatest city in the world. This doesn't mean I will live here forever or that I don't appreciate the other places I've lived and visited. It just means that there are so few places on earth that you can find the kind of energy, beauty, vibrancy and flavor that abound here. And for the time being I am going to cling to it and squeeze (or choke) the best out of it.

The Ageless Husband and the Joy of Freezing Your Ass Off

Today is Mike's birthday...his 36th to be exact, although everyone thinks he is still in his 20's. As I continue to age, he somehow manages to look younger and younger. I am convinced that 10 years from now people will be whispering "Check out the cougar!" when we walk down the street together. For the record, I am 4 years younger than him, which I remind him every chance I get, pointing out the little strands of silver that are coming in. You're welcome, hon.

Since his birthday falls on a Monday, when I have class, we decided to celebrate the weekend before and I knew that I would have to go big after the homerun he hit this year for mine. We have had so many guests since we've been here that I wanted to do something just the two of us and I knew it would have to involve craft beer, since it is Mike's primary passion in life, after me, of course. So I planned a surprise overnight getaway to Philly to hit some breweries, see the sights and eat the local food. I didn't tell him where we were going until we got to the Amtrak station and I had to print our tickets, which is a huge feat for me. I am terrible with surprises and asked him about 40 times if I he wanted it to be a surprise or not.

I still can't get over how quickly we got there. It's only an hour and 25 minutes from Penn Station, which is only slightly longer than Mike's commute to Queens. Being from California, if you want to be in another major metropolitan area, let alone another state, you are investing a minimum of 3 hours in traffic, but usually more like 4 - 5. And forget about the train, the schedules suck, it's inconvenient and overpriced. Anyway, we love the proximity and access we have to new places here. We were in Philly by 10:30am and spent the day hitting some local beer spots: Monk's Cafe for mussels and rare Belgian and American beers, Yards Brewery for a tour and a weird interaction with a crew from MTV filming some reality dating crapfest and a stop at a home brewing store where Mike picked up supplies to brew up a batch of an Oatmeal Coffee Stout. We ended up tucking into our B&B pretty early, mainly because it was FREEZING cold and one can only stay awake so long after a beer filled day.




We spent Sunday touring Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell:



We compared the cheesesteaks at Pat's & Geno's (they tasted nearly identical to me, but Geno's had a few too many onions for my taste and one of their Hummer's was parked out front with anti-immigrant stickers all over it, including a huge decal on the back window that said "SPEAK ENGLISH OR GO HOME!", so I choose Pat's for not mixing politics with Cheez Whiz soaked meat)





And we spent a bit of time watching football before we caught a train back to the city around 5. It was a lovely weekend, despite the freezing rain and wind, and even better to spend some QT with Mike. I mean, he is getting up there, we don't know how many years the old guy has left.



This man ages like a fine wine.

Given that it's only mid-October and it's already this cold, it got me thinking about the many months that lay ahead and how I am going to deal with it. I've lived in very cold weather before and if I've learned one thing, I cannot dread the cold, so I am going to embrace it. I am making a mental list, well I guess it's about to become an actual list, of the good things that happen when it's cold out. So here is my attempt at positivity in the face of bone chilling winds.
1. Without cold weather, there are so many foods that wouldn't be as enjoyable. Soups, stews, anything from the crockpot, roasts, butternut squash, etc. Just thinking about warming up my kitchen and filling our little apartment with all these delicious smells makes me happy.
2. Hot chocolate. Or hot schnocolate (with peppermint schnaaps).
3. Hats, scarves and gloves. Winter accessories are fun and who doesn't look adorable in a hat?
4. Winter coats. I am all stocked up on winter coats now and I love them. It's a big step from my San Diego winter coats which were either a jean jacket or a hoodie.
5. Rain boots...for splashing in puddles.
6. Being snuggled inside with the rain pattering on the windows.
7. The leaves changing color.
8. Wrapping myself in the quilt my mom made for us to use in this apartment.

That's all I have for now, but I am determined to add to this list regularly in an effort to force myself to like the changing of the seasons and not think about what my pasty skin would look like if I were in San Diego.

From Duck Farm To Table

Food. It's such a simple word but it can evoke such a variety of emotions, thoughts and even physical reactions, depending on your mood. By definition food is nourishment consumed to sustain life, provide energy and promote growth, but we all know that it's much bigger than that. Everyone has food memories from childhood. Everyone has favorite foods and foods that comfort them. Everyone has foods they don't like, won't eat or will never ever try. And everyone has issues with food. I literally cannot think of a single person I know who hasn't at some point thought critically about their diet, changed their eating habits to lose weight, or castigated themselves for overeating. Food is a complicated aspect of being human. It can bring so much pleasure and so much pain. My struggles with food have evolved over the years from subsisting on junk food to yo-yo dieting to where I'm at now, which is more of a moral quandary. I've read too many books like Fast Food Nation and The Omnivore's Dilemma to be blissfully ignorant about what I am putting in my body and the repercussions of my choices. And I am not just talking about my health, but about what kind of practices in the food industry I am supporting. I WANT to eat all organic, grass fed, cage free, free range, cruelty-free, hormone-free animals that lived happy lives with farmers that loved them before slitting their throats and draining their bodies of blood. In an ideal world, this is what I would do. Do I always do this? No. Do I sometimes eat at McDonald's because I have an unnatural craving for whatever kind of crack they put in their Chicken McNuggets? Yes. Do I do this even knowing the conditions that the chickens were subjected to are practically torturous and that McDonald's has singlehandedly altered farming in our country while simultaneously making us one of the fattest, diabetic, heart disease riddled nations in the world? Yes, I do. (hanging head in shame). Why do I do it? Because I can tuck it away in the back of my head and pretend that what's going on behind the scenes isn't really going on since I don't have to see it on a daily basis.

Now that I am in culinary school, there are so many opportunities to go behind the scenes and see how things are done and where my food came from. An opportunity presented itself earlier this week in the form of a field trip to a farm in the Hudson Valley. My classmate, Jersey was on the hunt for foie gras and ended up organizing a tour for a few of us of one of the best foie gras purveyors in the country: Hudson Valley Foie Gras. If you've never had foie gras, but maybe have heard of it, you already know it's controversial. The ducks (or geese) are force fed to enlarge their livers and make them extra fatty and delicious. And it is truly delicious. It's rich, buttery, flavorful, melt in your mouth fatty goodness. But as you can imagine as the term force feeding implies, not everyone thinks it's humane.

We (me, Jersey, A La Greque, and hmm...nickname...it could be "I never leave the East Village", but I think I will just go with Cheese-ophile for managing to surpass my own obsession with the good stuff, actually let's just contract the two and call him Evil Cheese. It works beautifully on so many levels). Anyway, the four of us set off last Tuesday morning for the duck farm, which was about 2 hours north of the city. It was a picture perfect autumn day. The air was crisp and as we wound away from the city through tree lined highways, the leaves changed from green to golden to fiery orange. When we finally arrived at the duck farm and stepped out into the country air, we realized two things: 1. it had turned from crisp to bone chilling and 2. a duck farm smells like bad breath and duck poop. We located the office and met up with our tour guide, Marcus, who is the Operations Manager of the farm. He was soft spoken, lanky, and bearded, basically exactly how I picture a farmer.



He spent some time explaining to us what we would be seeing over the next few hours and then laid out the defense of their farming practices, which he has clearly spent a significant portion of his job doing. He led us through different parts of the farm where we met ducks grouped and housed by their ages. As we toured, he regularly thanked us for giving him the opportunity to show us firsthand their standard of farming, which he was personally very proud of. He also remarked several times that he knew that not everyone would make the decision to consume foie gras (or serve it in their restaurants) after seeing the farm, but he was happy that we had chosen to educate ourselves before making a decision.



We were able to watch the force feeding which occurs three times each day and lasts about 5 seconds per duck. It involved inserting a rod into the ducks mouth and pouring food through a funnel. The ducks don't like being handled, but it didn't seem to hurt them either. Marcus explained the ducks anatomy in great detail and how the force feeding would feel to the duck (which is to say, not painful, just momentarily uncomfortable), but since I am not a duck and have no clue if that is true, I made my judgments based on the ducks behavior.



The process did not horrify me at all, as I thought it might. I actually came away from the visit thinking that the farming of ducks for foie gras is probably 100 times more humane than the farming of commercial chickens. These ducks roamed around uncaged (except during the feeding stage) in a safe habitat that was kept far cleaner than a factory farm. Most chickens are kept in cages where they can't stand up or ever support their own body weight and are covered in their own filth. So until I decide to give up eating animals altogether (which is not likely to ever happen), I have no reason to give up eating duck or foie gras from a producer that treats their animals more humanely than the billions of chickens produced by companies like Tyson and Foster Farms every year. If anything, it compels me to learn more about the sources of all my food and choose producers that spend a lot of time and money ensuring that they are applying the highest standards to their farming and production practices.

After we left the farm, we went straight to Wendy's, because there wasn't much but fast food around and chowed down on burgers and chicken sandwiches from animals who living conditions probably made the duck farm look like the Four Seasons. This moment of hypocrisy made me realize that I have to vote with my dollars in hopes that someday high quality, humanely treated food will be as widely available as McDonald's. We spent the remainder of the afternoon picking apples at a farm in New Paltz and planning menus based on the bounty of duck and apples we were carting home.



A La Greque Garden of Eden Style

I ended up searing the foie gras and serving it with sauteed apples and apple juice reduction. The duck breast I picked up was spiced with cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, clove and star anise and seared, sliced and accompanied by a spinach salad dressed with an apple vinaigrette. (It seriously tasted like filet mignon with crispy skin - the best duck I've ever had). And for dessert, baked apples with fresh cheese. It was lovely to enjoy a meal of which I knew the source of its components and it's something I hope to do more and more of going forward. Jersey's next idea? A visit to a slaughterhouse. Stay tuned.



Jersey, Evil Cheese & Me at the Apple Farm

My Own Personal Papparazi

As far as friendships go, I am incredibly lucky. I have several amazing girlfriends each of whom brings something different to my life and teaches me something valuable. They are women who have unique and varied opinions, lifestyles and personalities, but the thing I share with each of them is a mutual respect and a willingness to understand and accept differences. Now before you think that this is going to turn into a blog version of a cheesy Lifetime movie about girlfriends, stop right there. I just put my BFF into a cab to JFK and it got me thinking about quality friendships and how much they enrich your life. There is something beautiful about being around a person who knows you and loves you completely, not only understands and relates to your craziness, but truly believes it is what makes you so awesome, and allows you to just be you. I could make this same statement about Mike, although I would have to change "understands your craziness" to "accepts your craziness". And that, my friends, is the root of all problems between men and women.

Moving on, I had a fabulous weekend with Jill and I am grateful that I have a Jill in my life. I am looking through the 6,000 pictures we took this weekend and am loving that I can count on her to provide me with enough facebook profile photos for the next 5 years. She has a ridiculous camera and is constantly taking pictures of us, of strangers, of food, of doors, of garbage and basically anything that she thinks looks cool. And she's good at it. The girl will not pass up a good photo op. Example: Walking back to the subway from the Brooklyn Brewery on Saturday evening, she spotted two very old office chairs in front of a chainlink fence and insisted that we sit in them and have someone take our picture. It did not matter to her that they were covered in dried bird doody. You will notice me looking stiff and posed, trying to keep just one butt cheek on the chair, while she looks gorgeous (and eerily at home) sitting in bird crap.



A short while later, she convinced me to get on a bike chained to a tree and pretend like I was riding it. This shoot yielded some great shots and led to the following exchange:

Jill: "I love taking pictures of you..."
Me: (thinking it's because I am so lovely on film that I must be her muse)"Thanks! Why?"
Jill: "Because you are such a ham and attention hog that you will do anything I ask."

And this is why we are friends. She knows me and that I will do anything for a laugh, but she doesn't think it's annoying. We have cut away all those outer layers that you show to other people and have peeled back to the ones that you hide or try to disguise as something else. Meanwhile, Mike, being the patient man that he is tried not to show his irritation when she and I reviewed, deleted and retook several photos. Again, accepting the craziness does not necessarily mean you understand it.



Me waving to my peeps as I cruise down the street on my bike...that is chained to a tree...next to a minivan.



Insert your own caption.

The photo madness reached new heights when she started taking action shots, which she is fond of. Every time I would look at them, which were usually of me walking, I would think of US Weekly's ridiculous spread called "Stars - They're Just Like Us!", which shows celebrities drinking coffee, feeding a parking meter or shopping. Like this one below:



If I were famous and in US Weekly, it would be captioned something like "Emily Davis on her way to the post office - she's just like us!", which is probably a sign of the apocalypse that our culture has elevated people, most of which don't seem to have any discernible talent, to this status where we need to be reminded that they eat, sleep and poop just like the rest of us. I would love to see a section where they had pictures of misunderstood and discriminated against populations titled "Muslims - They're Just Like Us!" or "Gays - They're Just Like Us!" that showed the same thing. But that's just me. I will now excuse myself for 20 minutes to find out through Perez Hilton if anyone is in rehab and if Jon & Kate are still a trainwreck.

A few other tidbits about this weekend before I head off to class. First, Jill developed a new superpower this weekend which allows her to buy a new sweater, a pair of jeans, some sunglasses...or whatever, then lose it within 2 hours. No joke, she lost a bag of clothes who knows where that she purchased just hours earlier. The following day, she bought a pair of sunglasses from a street vendor, put them in the bag her breakfast pastry was in and then threw it in the trash. She also paid her subway fare 3 times for the same ride. So basically her superpower is incinerating money.

Second, we tend to spend a significant portion of our time together analyzing every aspect of our lives, our friends lives, our behavior and the human condition. I am sure any men reading just noticed blood coming out of their ears just imagining this scenario which I believe is their personal hell, but it's what we do. In our thorough analysis we realized that we are very aware of our mistakes but often make them repeatedly before learning from them, if ever. We decided that we should pen a book called "Learning Nothing From Your Past: A User's Guide". It will be due out in stores as soon as we stop staying out too late and spending too much money and get our acts together.

Finally, I want to leave you with the other running joke of the weekend (besides Mike saying "Don't give that to Jill! We don't want it to disappear mysteriously."), which involved Mike running up walls and jumping off fire hydrants shouting "HARDCORE!" and "EXTREME" a la the Office episode a few weeks back. Here's an action shot by Jill:

30 Days: Observations, Complaints, and Hope

Wow. Has it already been another month? We have 5 months under our belt (and a couple pounds of butter) and I can't decide if it feels like I just got to New York or if I've lived here forever. I am still amazed by it but totally accustomed to it, if that makes any sense. So in honor of our most recent 30 days, here are the 30 things that I've discovered.

1. No matter the temperature I will be sweaty. I thought it was the humidity in the summer, but it turns out when you walk 12 blocks in chilly weather and then up a few flights of stairs, by the time you get to the school locker room, you will be drenched in sweat.
2. Depending on my destination and required degree of looking good, I will take a cab to avoid being a sweaty mess with hair pasted across my forehead.
3. I just realized that this must be how the girls who wear stilettos all the time get around.
4. In an unrelated realization, when I wash dishes, it's usually cups and utensils, which made me realize I don't cook nearly enough at home anymore.
5. We've been eating too much takeout. It's way too convenient. And I am vowing to change that.
6. There are two things that happen ALL THE TIME here that I just don't get. The first is the failure to understand the basic concept of boarding a subway. Listen guy, we all know you want to get on the train and you want to be first, but when you block the entire car from getting off while you try to push your way in...do I need to finish this thought? What the hell? One of my pet peeves used to be people that got on an elevator before letting others exit. Now I have to watch this on a much larger scale at a much greater degree of inconvenience to everyone involved on a daily basis.
7. The second is the use of car horns. Again, WHAT THE HELL? I understand the warning toot when taxis roll through an intersection given the absolute refusal by pedestrians to acknowledge the DON'T WALK hand (myself included), but what is with the laying on the horn for a solid 30 seconds because the driver is mad that the other 20 cars in front of him aren't moving. Dude. Just stop. Please. It makes me feel like everyone driving is angry. And they probably are, but GEEZ.
8. My allergies are brutal here. Sniff.
9. I may have said this already, but I thought culinary school would make me a more confident cook, but with every class I realize how little I actually know.
10. I don't think I will be truly comfortable cooking French food until I've done it over and over and over.
11. Level 3 is all about repetition and perfecting dishes, so that's a start.
12. I keep taking my visitors to Jean Georges for lunch, because as I mentioned previously, it's an amazing deal and one of the best dining experiences you will ever have and I don't know that I could get tired of it.
13. Hollandaise sauce can be a bitch. It can't be too hot or too cold and you have to add the clarified butter very slowly or it will just turn into a gloppy broken mess. But I think I've got it down. Next up, eggs benedict for dinner this week so I can practice my hollandaise and perfectly poached eggs.
14. Not all chefs follow the kitchen dictatorship/hierarchy model. My new Level 3 instructors, Chefs Phil & Janet are more of the "We are all adults, let's act like it" school. It's refreshing to be treated like a grown up and just as effective. No disrespect to Chef Nic, it's just different. We can laugh openly while cooking without fear of being chastised for discussing anything other than the mise en place.
15. I love Fall. I have never welcomed cooler temperatures ever in my life, but after the general stankiness that was summer, it's nice to have some mildly crisp days.
16. Fall food is some of my favorite food. Without having a grill this summer, it wasn't half as much fun cooking up summer dishes. Now I can get excited about cooking at home, making stews, roasts, and apple cobblers. And the heavier recipes we prepare at school are a lot more palatable when it's 60 degrees as opposed to 95.
17. For the first time in several seasons of football, I had a moment where I questioned if it was really worth it. The Chargers looked like garbage for most of the game Sunday night and I just kept thinking "Are we really going to go through this again? Are they really going to dig a huge hole and make us bite our nails until they limp their way into the playoffs?" It's almost easier having a team that just plain sucks. Your expectations are low so it's tough to be truly disappointed. With the Bolts, you get a brilliant game (or at least a couple of wins), then they take a huge dump during a big game and you wonder if they will be able to make anything happen when it really counts. The ups and downs are brutal. I do wonder if I would be better off without this 5 months of highs and lows. Thank god for the bye week coming up, I need a break before I decide if I can continue with this dysfunctional relationship.
18. It's hard to get a cab in the rain.
19. No empty cabs in the rain means you can wait it out indoors somewhere indefinitely, wait on the street and get soaked trying to hail a cab as they all sail past you full of warm dry people, or walk in the direction of home, hoping you see one lit up and empty, which will unfailingly happen once you are three blocks from your apartment and totally drenched.
20. If I wear my rain boots on the days it's supposed to rain, it won't. If I wear my suede boots on the days it's not, it will downpour.
21. My favorite place to shop here is called the Market NYC on Mulberry & Prince in SoHo. It's basically a young designers market held in a church gym on the weekends, with table after table of unique accessories and clothing. I take everyone who visits me there because you can find great original stuff for reasonable prices. We took Mike's aunt and uncle from Buffalo there this weekend and as we walked through, Mike started mentally calculating the prices of all of the things he recognized that I owned from the market. It didn't help when a few of the vendors greeted me by name or with a hug. Whoops.
22. My best friend Jill, who happens to have fantastic taste and a style I often steal from, will be here on Friday, so you know I will be back there yet again. Sorry babe!
23. Speaking of style, New York is an inspiring place for anyone with even a tiny interest in fashion. I am constantly gawking at women passing me on the street to see how they are wearing something. It's an endless supply of ideas and really, anything goes here.
24. On one final fashion note, leggings are not pants. Cover your butt. And put on a bra. You know who you are.
25. I love watching the very talented a cappella group perform under the arch in Washington Square.
26. It's even better when you notice the passed out drunk laying just in front of them.
27. And still better when you realize that the people gathered to listen to the performers just step over said drunk, to get a better position.
28. I enjoy dog watching at the Washington Square dog park just as much as people watching. Try to do it without making up stories about what the dogs are saying to each other. Impossible.
29. On a serious note, it's really tough to be so far away from friends when you feel like they need you. In an update, to my previous post, Kali's treatment seems to be going well. But in an unimaginable twist of fate, Maya was also diagnosed with neuroblastoma. Both babies have a positive prognosis, but will be undergoing chemo over the next few months. Please keep them in your thoughts and if you know Melanie & Kris and would like to find out how you can help, please message me privately. You can also follow their treatment at this website.
30. While it's impossible to make sense of something so senseless, it has made me realize that I know just a few things for sure. Life can be wonderful and it can be terrible. When it's wonderful you have to enjoy it while it is and when it's not, you have to survive it. The easiest way to enjoy it and to survive it is with people that you love and that love you. I am so grateful to have so many of those people in my life. You know who you are and I love you.