Last Days in New York

There was a bridge, near our place, that was destroyed in a recent flood. No, it wasn't the flood that complicated our lives back in 2011 during Hurricane Irene, but rather a different, earlier flood.

Ever since we moved in people have been unable to find our place with a GPS because, for some reason, it tells people to go over this bridge that hasn't existed even though that would actually make you drive past our place and have to circle back.


Now, for the last two weeks we live in our current place, the bridge is back! That means if you're trying to find us by GPS in our last weeks here you are in luck!

Rejoice!


I had Thursday off of work which means I took the guys around town on many walks. Martin and I played for a while in the grass where he took a particular interest in the car of the guy across the street. The only man more interested in that car is its owner, a man who spends 50% of every snow storm out there brushing his car off as the snow falls.

Today he caught me outside and told me that he was impressed with Jen's demeanor and that she is always so pleasant as she leaves for work in the morning. He also warned me of the rot on the tree in our front yard, all while bearing a striking resemblance to Jen's grandfather.

He is one of the nicest men I've ever had the pleasure of talking to but probably still only about 40% as nice as Jen's grandfather who may be the nicest man alive today.



Before Jen got home from dinner we enjoyed one of our last swings at the park before our move.

I spent most of the week recovering from a respiratory infection and, after seeing the most comical New York doctor you can imagine, I was recovering and on antibiotics. The doctor was very impressed with my "nice, chesty cough" and informed me that I should take the antibiotics in the morning with a coffee and a buttered roll.


On Saturday we hired a babysitter and went out to dinner with our good friends, Mel and Jule. We'd been discussing going to Frankie & Johnnie's steak house for about five years and our departure from the Empire State was the final shove we all needed to finally get it done. The last time Jen and I went to a steak house together I think it was 2004 or 2005 so it was nice to notch off another decade with a steakhouse visit. It was delicious but not half as delicious as the company of some dear friends who will be greatly missed.

Like with everyone we have extended the offer to them to come and stay with us in Chicago in the posh guest room of the house we have yet to purchase.


After returning home the guys slept for a tiny bit but woke up around midnight and would not sleep for the rest of the night. They were both quite irritable and had fevers. This proceeded for two nights and left Jen and I in a zombie-like state. It also meant that we fell asleep in weird spots of the apartment and that Martin and Elliott sometimes fell asleep lying on the floor or whatever else it took to finally get them to shut their eyes.


Martin has been making a new face, a face that I didn't quite capture in this photo. He makes a face that seems to be a mixture of horror and annoyance. The best part is that he doesn't really make it at appropriate times. Sometimes he makes the face because you have told him not to do something. Other times he makes it simply when you say his name.

The ladies at daycare were the first to really identify this face and I'm afraid he will move past this phase before we get a really good picture. Until then enjoy this partial photo of him looking disgusted, possibly because I told him I was going to get him his sippy cup.


On Sunday we started off the day with a nice breakfast before heading out to the farmer's market.



Martin took a particular interest in the samples of waffles being offered by Pika's Farm Table so I purchased a waffle for him. Then I discovered that what Martin had discovered was the world's most delicious waffle.

This is good because we've gotten to eat them two weeks in a row. It is bad because we know that we only have two weeks left in the near future with access to these tasty waffles. I actually thought about sneaking behind their booth and trying to see if I could find the recipe so I could steal it.

I didn't think about this like some sort of fantasy, I actually, truly thought about doing it.


It is convenient, with all these sugary waffles, that I have successfully tricked Martin into brushing his teeth nightly by purchasing these new toothbrushes. The old ones would just make him squirm and fuss. He loves the new brushes so much that he will actually brush his own teeth at night.

Elliott, unfortunately, has not been fooled by my tricks.


On Sunday Jen made a quiche out of the broccoli and other assorted items from the farm share. She and the Wombats enjoyed it for dinner and I got to have some leftovers the following day.



Jen, unfortunately, has had the unenviable task of picking up the babies from day care and picking up the farm share for the past two weeks due to my work and travel schedule. She has done an admirable job and has even made the time to take pictures of the recent hauls.


The latest game to keep the babies occupied has been to just set them loose on the dishwasher. They love it. While they are very good in emptying the dishwasher they are not necessarily as good at putting the items where they belong. I'm thinking of just keeping all our clean plates and utensils on the floor moving forward as that would save us a tremendous amount of time and these guys would do a great job of taking care of this chore for the future.

Quick note: I recommend taking all the knives and forks out of the dishwasher before allowing babies to play in it. I'm not going to tell you how I learned this safety tip, I'm just going to tell you that you should consider it if you have babies you'd like to have play in your dishwasher.


Last night I made this pumpkin tortelloni with rendered bacon, onion, butternut squash, cream, salt, pepper, and grated Parrano cheese, and fried sage leaves. It worked out well but it also just happened to be what I had lying around in the fridge and freezer. The Wombats even had some though they only had a few saving room for their favorite food of all time: peaches!


I'm saying goodbye to New York in many ways. One way is in trying to tick off as many beers and breweries off my list as I can that are not available in the Chicagoland area. Last night was Captain Lawrence's Brown Bird Ale, a beer brewed not even twenty minutes from our house that we have shamefully still not been to visit.


I picked up several different local beers that I won't be seeing in the midwest and will be making my way through them over the coming weeks. While it's nowhere near as sad as not being able to see our good friends and family as much, it's a way of saying goodbye and opening myself up to a great number of beers in Chicago that we don't get out here.

I hope our friends and family come and visit often. Our room rates are quite competitive and I'll offer one extra night for anyone who brings me beer I can't get in Illinois.

Clap for Babies!

We have a pretty good system down with the Wombats. We feed them their dinner, follow up with snacks, read them a story, sing them a song, and put them to bed. Sometimes we follow up with a bottle if necessary. It all seems to work pretty well most nights.

Most nights.

Last night was one of those nights where everything went out the window. I was by myself. Often when I'm by myself my sweet little sons take pity on me and give me an easy night. Last night they decided they were going to lose their minds.


I got them home from day care and noticed Elliott happily clapping in his car seat. I'd never seen him clap before so, after a minute or so, I took this video. At the end of the video you can hear Martin working himself up and you can see Elliott quickly fade from happy clapper to distressed baby.

The next 90 minutes was a blur of screaming, tears, and a frantic race to put them to bed and hope they could fall asleep.

Ten minutes before Jen arrived home they were both sound asleep. Jen was disappointed she missed seeing the guys and wanted to go peek at them while they slept.

I warned her against this with the promise of a quick and furious violence.


While working on a very quick dinner I had this Terre Ferme from À l’abri de la Tempête, another purchase from our recent Quebec trip. It was a nice IPA bordering on Pale Ale. I'm pretty sure that after that baby wrestling match a can of Milwaukee's Best would have been every bit as enjoyable.

Or maybe just pure grain alcohol.


During the hurricane, when we were staying at a hotel in the city, we ordered room service and I ordered one of my favorite dishes: pasta puttanesca. Unfortunately what I got was one of the worst plates of puttanesca I've ever had. It's been over five months so I decided I would make a redemption puttanesca. I cooked some anchovies in a pan, added the leftover sauce from the roast cod the other night, then tossed in some cooked spaghetti. The result ended up being approximately 15³² times better than what we paid probably $30 for at our hotel.

Added bonus: no hurricane!

____
After dinner I was still enjoying the peace brought on by two sleeping babies and decided to open one of these tiny Horn Dogs from Flying Dog Brewery. I bought them in 2011 and have been hanging onto them ever since. It was a decent American barleywine and a nice cap to a meal. It had far less carbonation than I would have expected. At 10.2% ABV I was very happy to only have a seven ounce bottle. That was the perfect amount to cap off the evening.

Elliott ended up waking up around 1:00 AM and I put him in bed with us, ignoring Jen's 5:00 AM rule. Sometimes it's just easier that way to get some sleep.

I'll take sleep any way I can get it. Even with a baby's feet in my ribs and his tiny hands smacking me in the side of the head.

Quebec Warm Up

Last night was a bit of a mess. For reasons unknown the Wombats both lost their ever-lovin' minds. Nothing we could do could really calm them down and we spent two hours fumbling our way through every trick in our arsenal until they both ended up asleep and we both ended up feeling as though we had gone through battle.


For that reason we have no pictures from yesterday. Just imagine the worst calamity you can imagine and that will probably be pretty representative of our night.


After we recovered from the horror show I seared up some pork sausages and served them in buns with horseradish mustard and chopped onion. I served them with a salad of leftover ingredients and some potato chips.


As an excellent accompaniment to these sausages I poured this slightly smokey saison called Higgs de Boson from Hopfenstark, another Quebecois brewer. At 3.8% alcohol I was expecting much less in the way of body and flavor. This was a very tasty, very interesting beer that gets me even more excited about our upcoming trip to the motherland.



Tonight was a bit easier and we had a chance to made blueberries for the babies for the first time. I was a little worried about this one as they turned out chunkier than any food they've had before. They seemed to like them okay but I think the texture made them not react to this as positively as they have to some of their other past favorites.

Apparently they are not aware of just how important antioxidants are.

The Wombats' Favorite Foods (in descending order from favorite to least favorite)

1. Pears
   
2. Spinach
   
3. Sweet Potato
   
4. Apples (McIntosh)
   
5. Avocado
   
6. Blueberries
   
7. Mango frozen
   
8. Peaches frozen
   
9. Butternut Squash
   
10. Bananas
    
11. Carrot
    
12. Peas frozen
    

Blueberries were such a mess that we opted to give them a good bath so that they didn't leave blue hand print stains on everything in their tiny little worlds. This evening I had another Quebec beer, this Trois Pistoles from Unibroue. I've been desperately trying to figure out if Unibroue does any sort of brewery tours as I'd love to check them out when we visit. There is previous little information online. The best we could do is Jen finding an article from 1997 talking about how they don't do tours. I'm hoping that there have been slight changes in the last sixteen years.
After dinner I used up some leftover ice cream, caramel sauce, and crumbled up cake scraps to make these small desserts.

With that the fridge is in a dangerous spot where we may have cleaned out anything worth eating. On the plus side there will be minimal food waste while we're away. On the down side I don't know if we will have anything to eat tomorrow. It's a dangerous game that we play with fridge maintenance.

I guess we'll just have to leave home earlier so as not to have to deal with such things.

The Mustache of Spinach

Last night I rushed home from work to help out with getting the babies to bed and giving my in-laws a taste of what it's like to have dinner at 9:30 PM.


During the day it seems that Jen's mum and sister had a good time allowing the babies to play in their luggage.


I quickly put together this pasta with cappellini, garlic, kalamata olivers, roasted red peppers, artichoke hearts, roasted yellow tomatoes, toasted pine nuts, fresh spinach, and Parmigiano-Reggiano.


For beer I had this Blonde on Blonde pale ale from City Steam Brewery. It was hoppier than I expected after seeing the word "blonde" bandied about on the label. I had been expecting it to taste more like a blonde ale and less like an IPA.





During the morning we gave them their first taste of Sumo tangerines. It's hard to rank this one because they didn't actually eat it, they just sucked on the pieces in their mesh baggy. It was definitely a huge hit. What remained int he mesh bags after they were done looked like the remains of some crazy science experiment designed to remove 100% of the moisture from organic matter.


After the Sumo incident we fed them their lunch of mashed peas and avocados. They really loved this one. Jen actually liked it even more than them and seems to have plans to make it for herself for dinner soon. They seemed to hate peas so it could be the addition of one of their favorite foods that made this one a hit.


For dinner we gave the babies their first taste of spinach. I cooked a little extra when I made dinner last night but I did not have high hopes. All four of us pretty much figured that this would be a huge disaster.

The result was quite the opposite. They loved spinach. It was one of their favorite foods so far. Here's how it stacks up:

The Wombats' Favorite Foods (in descending order from favorite to least favorite)

1. Pears
   
2. Spinach
   
3. Sweet Potato
   
4. Apples (McIntosh)
   
5. Avocado
   
6. Mango^*
   
7. Peaches^*
   
8. Butternut Squash
   
9. Bananas
   
10. Carrot
    
11. Peas^*
    

^* frozen The best side effect of spinach is that it made the babies look like they had awesome little mustaches. Martin had a Frank Zappa style mustache and goatee while Elliott looked quite a bit like his Grandad . . . or some randome midwestern sports fan. For dinner, the babies stayed up quite late with us, and I decided that having guests would be a great opportunity to clean out the fridge and freezer I would cook a special selection of dishes for Grandma and Auntie Lauren! I made this cocktail shrimp with lettuce, cocktail sauce, sour cream, and avocado. Lamb chops crusted with horseradish mustard, coated in bread crumbs, seared in a pan, and finished in the oven. Meatballs with marinara and Parmigiano-Reggiano. Jen accidentally pulled these out of the freezer to defrost so we needed to do something with them. What better than to serve to our guests? Pan seared tofu with a salad of broccoli, red onion, roasted tomato, lemon, olive oil, salt, pepper, and Parmigiano-Reggiano. And Roman style cappellini with olive oil, butter, garlic, bread crumbs, and Parmigiano-Reggiano. On their last night in New York we decided to really treat Jen's mum and sister to a rockin' good time. So it was that we decided to watch the documentary Into Great Silence about Carthusian monks in the French Alps. The maker of the film asked the monks if he could film a documentary in their monastery and they told him they needed some time to think about it. Sixteen years later they responded and said that it would be okay. The film is mostly silent since the monks have taken a vow of silence. We figured that watching a three-hour-long silent documentary about monks would be the ultimate way to end their trip to New York. What can I say? We know how to party it up proper! As we watched this I felt it was appropriate to have a monastic-type beer. That's why I reached for this Augustijn Blonde from Brouwerij Van Steenberge which my parents got me for Christmas. Sure it's not actually made by monks but it is made in Belgium and it does feature a dutiful monastic figure on the label tending to a mash tun. That's got to count for something. Lauren pretty much hated every second of this movie. She was too confused about why the monks were silent, why it was so slow-paced and boring, and why there was no dialogue. Since we had just watched an incredible, thought-provoking movie we needed to pick something else for the double-feature. Something that would be the complete opposite of the movie about monks.
I think I'd rather watch about a hundred movies about monks then watch this travesty. Lauren and Grandma were happy though because there were plenty of exploding water spouts.

This is what's wrong with America.

How To Survive a Blizzard with No Preparation

We did not prepare for this storm in any way. We didn't rush to go to the grocery store, we bought no additional milk or bread. This was an extremely risky test. Would we be able to weather a blizzard and not die of starvation without going to the grocery store ahead of time. In fact, we hadn't bought any groceries since Tuesday.

We're risk takers. What can I say?


For lunch I managed to cobble together this tuna melt using bread from the freezer, canned tuna, hop pickles, onion, celery, hot sauce, horseradish mustard, dill, lemon juice, Gruyere, olive oil, butter, and potato chips.

No milk or fresh bread were used in the making of this sandwich.


The guys are still quite sick but they had a few moments of good spirits spaced out through the day between layers of screaming and fussing.



After lunch the Wombats desperately wanted to sleep but instead we strapped them into carriers and brought them out into the freezing cold to go for a walk. Some doctor somewhere said that it's good to give them exposure to cold air when they're sick. Sounds like a bunch of malarcky to me but it was a good to get out and stretch our legs.


For dinner I used up a bunch of leftover ingredients to throw together this risotto with garlic, onion, peppers, ham from the freezer, risotto, turkey stock, riesling, olive oil, butter, salt, pepper, half and half, kale, and fresh chervil.


On our walk into town Jen was so impressed that our local wine shop was open that she said we should go in and buy a few bottles. We picked up this bottle of 2011 Lurra Garnacha because Jen felt the sheep on the label was "hilarious." I didn't find it all that funny but Jen and the clerk at the wine shop tried to convince me that this sheep was in some way humorous.

They failed.


To combat Jen's sheep I went with the goat, the symbol of German bock beer! In this case it was actually a Belgian version of said beer brewed by Brouwerij Van Steenberge. My parents got this one for me for Christmas and it was a very nice bock that was fairly faithful to style with a slight note of Belgian yeast.

And there you have it. We somehow managed to survive a dinner with no extra milk or bread. We really played with fire tonight. Now if we can just manage to get to a grocery store at some point in the next five weeks before we run out of food.

Time is a-ticking.