An Alarming Discovery

Last night I made beets with my gnocchi (and a thyme butter sauce). I should disambiguate the 'with': at Z's insistence I dumped the chopped beets into the pot of hot water with the cute lil potato dumplings. Now, the water promptly turned that wonderful beety hue that you green-pointers should probably remember from all of the ukranian borscht you've had (without sour-cream which gives is a opacity not present in my potted water). I decided to look into how awesome beets were since I was under the impression that anything deep purple had polyphenols which are super awesome only to find out :

"Although spinach and other green, leafy vegetables contain significant amounts of Vitamin K, the high oxalic acid content in spinach or other sources such as rhubarb, Swiss chard, beets / beet greens, and parsley, etc., promotes vascular degeneration and increases the risk for bleeding in prone individuals". (from here)

That's right, beets'll make you bleed to death!!!!! (Spinach too, I guess. I wonder why the cartoon never showed Popeye all bruised up because his vascular system was so weak. Probably some communist plot.) Happily all the Eastern Europeans around the area that eat a lot of beets also drink a LOT, thinning out their blood and hopefully putting less stress on their already weakened vascular walls.

I might have found a way out of the problem that doesn't involve my not giving up my favorite 'root that ruins whatever you're wearing if you try to prepare it on account of its propensity to dye everything deep purple.' these folk seem to be telling me that if I just blanch my beets long enough they will destroy neither my clothing nor my vascular system (If I understand the abstract). I just hope blanching doesn't destroy the wonderful taste, because anyone who has had house salad 1 from the lunch menu at Roebling Tea Room (RIP?) knows, a tasteless beet is not a nice thing to have on a plate.

Mrs. Holland's Spiced Mocha Mix

K's momz sent me the recipe for this charming concoction:

1 C dry non-dairy creamer
1 C hot cocoa mix
2/3 C instant coffee powder
1/4 C sugar
1/2 t. ground cinnamon
1/4 t. ground nutmeg

Mix together. Add hot water to 3-4 teaspoons of mix per cup.

I haven't tried it yet because I don't have 2/3 of the ingredients, but I plan on remedying that before iced coffee takes back the city.

Bagel Update

I think the one thing we've been good about tracking here is the quality of bagels. If I were some sort of a tech whiz I'd whip up a googlemap tracking bagel places and frequency of good/bad bagels from them. I'm not, though, so I'll just lechy'all know that Z went to Russ and Daughters and came back with some excellent bagels and some even better cream cheese. CHECK IT OUT GUYS!

Return from the grave with a couple of life lessons.

Hi guys. It's been an overwhelming time, but I am back now. I think I'll be back for good too, I finished a lot of the work I had gotten behind on from the dreaded illnesses that I won't quit complaining about.

Here is a quick word of caution. Let's imagine that you are at home and really do not want to go out to purchase food. Now let's imagine you have all of the ingredients for thai food except the coconut milk, including the delicious canned thai spices. Just to make things even less general, let's also imagine that you've recently announced that you'd like to start 'getting into' dry spices rather than wet sauces and such for some reason that may or may not make sense to yourself. You might think that you should go ahead and make an awesome dry thai dinner right? Well,

DO NOT DO IT.

Last Sunday I made a panang curry as described above and it was so hot that I could hardly eat it.

Let's say you'd never find yourself in that position. I think I have learned another lesson that is even more general. If you are very hungry and you have food in front of you that is very hot, but it's the sort of hot that builds up over time should you: a) get something else to eat, b) go hungry, or c) decide that you can shovel enough into your mouth by the time that it gets unbearable (oh no, spell check isn't on. Apologies now for everything that's probably wrong with this post guys) that you'll no longer be hungry. If you answered c) you're VERY WRONG.

One of life's most important questions...

...is it still tasty?

Consumer report

Flavored Wheat Thins are not good! I know, it seems like there is no reason they wouldn't be good, but they really aren't. Normal Wheat Thins are great, and so are flavors; especially ones like cream cheese & chives, tomato & basil, and parmesan basil.

But no, pretty gross. They are, however, really easy to eat, especially when there is nothing else around. So just keep your distance from these sly bastards.

Five Leaves

Casey's incessant desire for a cheese plate wore me down. Around 12:15 P.M. yesterday, I too needed a cheese plate.

After much debate, we decided to try out Five Leaves, a tiny little restaurant on the corner of Bedford and Lorimer. It's supposedly "Australian comfort food" (I'll take their word for it) with a nautical theme. Heath Ledger was planning this restaurant with some friends when he died. I feel like anywhere else in the world this would make a restaurant impossible to deal with. But Brooklynites, in all of their knowing nonchalance, keep it on the down low. Everyone knows, but it just doesn't matter.

The first thing that I noticed was the service. In fact, our waiter was so great that the people next to us wanted to leave him a note about it. The drink prices are reasonable; glasses of wine between $6 and $10 and cocktails for $9. Pretty standard. Casey sipped a pomegranate martini, while I had a glass of sparkling wine (delicious).

We shared the cheese plate, which the menu describes as "pont l'eveque, cashel bleu, humbolt fog, brin d’amour served with grilled fruit & nut bread". The waiter was kind enough to explain the different cheeses, which was an excellent gesture. The plate also included dates (which unfortunately are disgusting), a long strip of lavosh, and what I believe was celery root. All nice touches. The cheeses themselves were delicious, each one worth trying and savoring. While I prefer D.O.C.'s presentation and ability to customize, Five Leaves turns out a pretty solid cheese plate! I'd like to come back here for lunch - the grilled vegetable sandwich sounds delicious.