Flavors 518

We used to take the Amtrak or drive to Poughkeepsie to take the Metro-North to visit NYC. In more recent times though, we've discovered the charm of driving. Insane Manhattan traffic you say? Take the BQE. Expensive parking you say? My mother-in-law spotted a place in Brooklyn that costs $7 a day. And there are benefits too - flexibility of timing, being able to buy stuff there and cart it back (no one wants to crush their pretty Paper Source loot or One Girl whoopie pies in a backpack), and in the case of my job being able to move artwork around. The Taconic State Parkway is also beautiful and incredibly civilized to drive on. You feel a bit like Don Draper dropping Sally off at boarding school. You can imagine all the old timey road trips taken on that very strip of asphalt. I drove down for work a little while ago, fought through traffic in the Bronx, got to a spot near Hudson on the Taconic and experienced the most beautiful view. It was all fresh air, arm-stretching space, ...

My friend Jessica's Bachelorette Party was this weekend in Saratoga. It was a fabulous time. I couldn't believe how many really nice ladies she's friends with. I really love the movie "13 going on 30", and I watched it recently while out in North Adams dogsitting. I've probably seen it more repeat times than any other movie the last few years. I really love the pitch she gives on how to change the magazine. While her rival character gives the pitch to make the magazine more cynical, darker, more anorexic, the Jennifer Garner character says she wants to feature real women who are smart and pretty and happy to be who they are. Everytime I see that movie, I just love that scene so much. And so what a pleasure it was last night to meet so many interesting, accomplished ladies all in the mood to have a great time. We started out at Boca Bistro . Our friend Tiffany did a fabulous job organizing it for such a large party, and $30 per person for three courses was...

Yesterday we checked out the Ugly Rooster Cafe in Mechanicville. We tried it once last year too . It is a cute, old school looking place that feels very much like it fits in with the town. People all seem to know each other, a whole big group was huddled around a tv tuned to the local news at the counter, and the employees are all super friendly. They have an extensive menu with a lot of inventive things I'd still like to try, including: the omelette with asparagus, crab, and hollandaise sauce, the BLT with fried green tomatoes, and the southern style breakfast sandwich which sounds over the top (fried egg, cheddar, fried green tomato, on a buttermilk biscuit is what the menu online says but I'm pretty sure the menu there had added bacon and gravy inside the sandwich). Its hard to decide what to eat when so many things sound so good. Scott had the Huevos Rancheros, which were very delicious: I had a chicken sandwich (The Mechanicville Special) with bacon, ranch, and avo...

I've been out dogsitting quite a bit lately in North Adams on the weekends. I've been watching these dogs for almost four years, which seems crazy. This has meant marathons of David Tutera and Bridezillas and the sort (last night was the last episode of Bridezillas ever, how is that even possible? End of an era!). It has also caused me to feel incredibly nostalgic for my old job. What is nostalgia really? How are you nostalgic for things you chose to leave behind? Are you nostalgic for parts of yourself you seem to have lost, or some rosier version of life that never really existed? An important ingredient for nostalgia to exist is time - enough time gone by to forget negative aspects of things. One thing I know is that the more ambitious you are, the more difficult it is to feel grateful for what you have, so there's that. Anyways, so I've been meeting my husband at The Towne Tavern in Averill Park because it is a good halfway point. We've been exploring differe...

You know I love the Whistling Kettle . I once wrote about the tea and another time about the whole experience . Well, I checked it out again today, and it was a lovely lovely lunch. It was quite possibly a little celebratory lunch, so I decided to treat my self. You know how I love the Berkshire s, but if all goes well there could be a lot more buckets of fried chicken in my future. So I say, treat yo self! I got a pot of the lavender Earl Grey because I absolutely love it. This tea is just so elegant. The subtlety of the lavender and the Bergamot oil mix so beautifully with the high quality tea. It is the kind of delicious food item that makes you stop and think. It slows you down, and forces you to just live in the moment. Also, they have reconfigured their seating since last time I was there. Look at these cool, tall, comfortable booths: I ordered a curry chicken salad sandwich with pecans and a side salad. I got the ginger dressing which was amazing. They ...

Hello Internet. I have not typed at you in a while. What have I been up to, you ask? My coworkers and I were in a craft fair . We were proud of our display: My in-laws came to visit, and we checked out Yono's . I thought the food was fabulous, and liked that it felt light in my stomach even though clearly a lot of thought and skill had gone into the preparation. See my amazing lamb with coconut rice:  Husband's red snapper with flageolet beans: We had a great time at the Fresh Grass bluegrass festival at MassMoca where we also really enjoyed the "Oh, Canada" exhibit. We checked out Mezze in Williamstown too, which everyone loved.  I've made use of my bear cake pan I bought at the Confectionery House with my friend Sandy . I made this one for my friend Elizabeth. I went to my cousin's wedding in Michigan, where my sister put the bridesmaid dress she wore for my wedding on me. There was cake we didn't get to eat, and...

My friend Elizabeth said twice on Sunday "if you want to be a food blogger then you have to try Jake Moon at least once." It is a ways out from Albany on the way to Thatcher Park. It is a "destination eatery in the Heldebergs" according to their website. For me, this past weekend was really feeling like the end of summer. We were going to head back out to the Finger Lakes for a special event at the vineyard where we joined the wine club in July (it is Damiani and their reds are fabulous), but thunderstorm warnings caused us to change our plans. I started to realize that my wanting to go back to the Finger Lakes was me wanting to revisit summer vacation just a bit more, and with bad weather it wouldn't have been the same at all. So we stayed back, and when we picked up my friend Elizabeth and her fellow for brunch she was dressed like summer was already over (very sharp looking in tights and boots). I, on the other hand, kept the last pretend bit of summe...

 The crack staff at the Capital Region Dining Blog are big fans of The Hungry Fish , Chef Sarah Fish's locavore diner.   So we were pleased to see that they were moving to a slightly more convenient location (for us) in Troy.   We were able to visit this weekend, and can happily report that it's as good as ever.   The new room retains its offbeat charm, although the store portion is a little smaller.    The food remains both terrific and a good value.  I had the breakfast BLT: Very good homemade bread, high-quality bacon, fresh tomato, farm fresh egg -- how can you go wrong?   The home fries were very good too, with crisp exteriors. I'm not, in all candor, a big fan of the homemade ketchup -- it's better than most, but I'm more or less part of the foodie backlash that sees it as better in theory than in practice.  That quibble aside, it's a perfect brunch sandwich.  Ms. Garlic had the Croque Madame: ...

We had pretty much a week long wedding anniversary celebration this year ( we even took some photos to commemorate ). We went to Provence for dinner, and while we were there they informed us of a new wine bar/tapas menu they have. We thought it was really exciting. It is cool to think that really great Albany restaurants don't just have to be for special occasions like your wedding anniversary (we have friends who went for just cocktails at the bar at McGuire's which is straight up class). You can go on a Friday night for a glass of wine and share an appetizer with someone as a fabulous way to transition from your work week to weekend. After we read their new wine bar menu, we couldn't wait to go back. This Friday we went after work (it was also the start of my week long vacation), and Scott had a great Rhone glass of wine and I had some champagne. I had the sun dried tomato and goat cheese tartlet, which to me tasted a bit like a mini-pizza. There is a crab tartlet too o...

 This week we went to Sitar Indian Restaurant , and I really enjoyed myself. Indian food is my favorite. We thought about going here when we first moved here, but it seemed a bit more expensive than other Indian restaurants in the area. When I was out of town last week, Scott went there (because the Garden Bistro was closed). He reported back that while it is more expensive, the price includes naan or rice (some of the dishes also include a vegetable). He also reported back that it was really good. There are quite a bit of Indian people in surburban Detroit (where I am from) mostly because of engineering opportunities in the auto industry. I worked at a Blimpie sandwich shop throughout college, and it was owned by an Indian couple. To this day it remains the longest period of time I have ever worked anywhere. The owners were really great to my ex-boyfriend and I. The whole family was very much like the family in Jhumpa Lahiri's novel "The Namesake" (the father was...

How often do you go to a new place and love it so much you can't wait to go back? Not too often, but I did feel that way about The Merry Monk . The past weekend my friend Jessica and I went to The Tailored Tea in Latham. Now, I am a fan of the whole ordeal of tea and specifically the Whistling Kettle , but the truth is I only seem to make it up to Ballston Spa about twice a year. I usually buy enough tea to last me until the next visit. I've long wished for a place like this closer to Albany, so much so that I usually say if I were wealthy I would open a place like this. I basically just want to eat something adorable and feminine like these Joy the Baker cupcakes , wear a cheery floral, poofy dress, maybe a hat, some white gloves (or at least be in a place where such a get up wouldn't be so out of place) and talk about very classy things like ex-boyfriends who liked Gwar , fighting with your sister when you were 14 years old about silly things, food swaps , and taking ov...

Today I want to the food swap with the From Scratch Club in Troy. It was on Saturday instead of Sunday to be part of Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution Day . I juiced 31 lemons to make 6 bottles of lavender lemonade. Check out the recipe on Joy the Baker . Unfortunately, I didn't get a photo of my bottles of lemonade or my piles of lemons I juiced, but I can say the very cool bottles I got were from Christmas Tree Shops ($1.99). The recipe is incredibly delicious. I juiced about 18 more lemons for my sample jug. I had extra from that batch and sat around drinking that, watching not very good movies ( One Day and half of Horrible Bosses ), and watching my coworkers Cheasapeake Retrievers last night. It was pure heaven. Without bragging too much, this item was ridiculously, almost overwhelmingly, popular. Other ideas I had for this time were: fresh pasta , oyster crackers, BBQ sauce, and ice cream. But once I read the lavender lemonade recipe on Joy the Baker a couple weeks ago,...

My friend at work was telling me about the baby animals at Hancock Shaker Village . She also said the cafe was amazing, so I really wanted to go. I loved seeing the baby animals in past years at Indian Ladder Farms , but my husband was not as impressed (though he may deny it now - in his defense it was a cold and rainy day that I wanted him to stand around and listen to me say "look how cute the little baby ducks are!!"). So it was good my friend Elizabeth agreed to go with me. Here is the part where I say to you "Look how cute the animals are!!" Here is the Round Stone Barn that holds the animals:  Then we went to the Village Harvest Cafe. My friend really recommended it, and they grow their own vegetables so it sounded like a great choice. Here is the menu . I had the "Open Faced Roast Beef on Grilled Farmers Bread with Shaker Mushroom Sauce, and Crispy Shallots", and lots of hazelnut coffee that I really enjoyed. The mushroom sauce was ...

I am generally not a fan of "restaurant weeks,"  which are theoretically a good deal but in my experience tend to offer 1)a prix fixe of the least interesting items on the menu at only a marginal discount (and if, like me, you generally are indifferent about and skip dessert, no discount at all) or 2)reduced portions of the least interesting items on the menu.   But our friend Jessica R. was organizing a Restaurant Week outing and there were a couple good options (although I agree having it at a tavern sort of defeats the purpose.)   So we decided to try the Brown Derby , which we had wanted to visit for a while but hadn't yet. The meal was very good, and epitomized what Restaurant Week can be at its best.   It was, first of all, a genuine bargain, a three-course meal that certainly didn't skimp on portion sizes for less than the usual price of the entrees alone.    Even for those of us who can almost always take or leave the dessert, that's a...