Tag Archives: sunshine

The Potable Tomato

Posted on by

potabletomatoTomato juice that comes in a can is nasty stuff. This opinion of mine, I think, has its roots in a childhood aversion to the sight of it coating the inside of a glass. My favorite aunt regularly drank V8 for breakfast, and though I loved that woman dearly, the memory of a red, viscous mess being poured down her throat that early in the morning is, even now, enough to make me queasy. No amount of vodka and olives can make up for what is wrong with canned tomato juice. No Bloody Marys for me.

But some time ago, Roger (a.k.a. Godfather of Cocktails) suggested that I would warm to the drink if I made my own tomato juice or, better yet, since it would eliminate the coating sediment, tomato water. This past weekend, between taxing bouts of sunning myself on a dock and sunning myself in a hammock, I finally gave it a try and was not disappointed in the results.

Here’s what you do: you core and quarter about six large tomatoes and throw them in a blender with a little salt. Puree those babies and then put them through a cheesecloth. (You can either put a wooden spoon over a pitcher and tie the cheesecloth to it, or, if your pitcher is sturdy, you can just use a couple clothespins to suspend the cheesecloth from the side of the pitcher.) After it strains, you can drink the juice straight, and it’s liquid summer sunshine. But let’s be honest. What you should really do is put some vodka in it. Continue reading →

Lunch at the End of the Line: Love Is Grand in Inwood

Posted on by

szechuan tofuWe aspire to honesty on this blog, dear readers, so I might as well reveal that I landed at the northern end of the A line, at 207th Street in Inwood, a touch hungover and in a mood that was verging on surly. Manhattan, with its gritted teeth and fake-it-‘til-you-make-it attitude, is usually a marvelous place for a hangover, so I was taken unawares by the blinding good cheer of Inwood. I wandered the streets in a daze, nursing a cup of coffee and trying to take it all in. Birds sang. Trees blew in the breeze. Even the streets themselves had a jaunty roll to them. Outside a mental health facility, the residents parked their wheelchairs and turned their palms and faces to the sun, slight smiles pulling at the corners of their lips. Was I still in New York?

On 207th, street vendors hawked their goods, but rather than the large established halal and pretzel carts of midtown, it looked like someone’s grandfather had wheeled his aging charcoal grill onto the sidewalk and decided to cook you a hot dog. One couple had piled a stolen shopping cart with plastic containers of fruit salad and was doing a brisk business.

There were plenty of restaurants here to choose from, most of them Mexican and Dominican, but I was drawn to a Chinese restaurant called Amy’s, where a man and woman about my age were poring over a menu hanging in the window. They paused every so often to happily embrace, almost sloshing coffee onto each other in their enthusiasm.

“Do you know this place?” I asked.

“No,” the woman answered, gracing me with a beatific smile. “But doesn’t it look amazing?” Continue reading →