Grooming day

Much to their dismay, the cats were taken in for a grooming today, bundled up in their carry all bags, bellies empty and fire in their eyes. And as an extra penalty, the pet grooming salon was flooded from some kind of leak from the floors above, so a dirty brownish water covered everything. We were all too happy to leave the caterwauling animals and go up to Fairway Market in Harlem where we stocked up on produce for the holiday week coming up. If you get there early in the morning its not such an aggravation to shop there. I got a nice slab of hake for tomorrows supper.

The photo on the left is last night's dinner -- mustard/mint lamb rib chops with red potatoes with provencal spices. It was pretty good, but cleaning up the brazier was a pain.

Drizzly Dog Weekend

This is Nikolai watching the Catsitter DVD up in Vermont. Pretty amazingly, the cats are fascinated by the gerbils, birds and chipmunks on the disc. They bat the TV with their paws and then they look behind the TV after it has been turned off trying to figure where their prey has gone.

These are the new flowering plants we got for the patio; pretty good deal for $21 total !



For dinner, I grilled a lemon stuffed 2.5 lb red snapper, Russian fingerling potatoes and some endives on the Weber last week. It worked out pretty well but that big fish only feeds about two people, with a little leftover for fussy cats.

This is Lena enjoying doggie ice cream; this brand is called FrostyPaws. It can keep her absorbed for 20 min per cup -- no brain freeze for this lady! She's back on her Piroxicam by the way, which has made a world of difference in her mobility and mood.
Our peonies have come out in bloom and you can see them in this "Before" picture of dinner. We prepared skewers of yellow/green squash, pork loin kebabs, onions, and pineapple rum boats in the back. Shish kabobs are time consuming which explains why prepared ones seem costlier than they ought to be. Anyways we like to custom cut ours and then put our own different Penzeys spices on each item, so we make this ourselves. You can not see it here but we also had some great lemon/scallion/cilantro rice to go with this.

And this is the "After" picture on the grill. The squash skewers are a little too long.

J. made a bonfire too after I dug out the firepit from a couple of seasons worth of ashes. I put the ashes into the plowscrape scars on the front lawn, so hopefully that will help them get filled in with new grass. It started getting cold and rainy, and we lost the electrical power (which happens once a year or so) so we came back earlier than usual on Sunday. Remember you can click on the pictures to look at high resolution larger versions of them.

Extra bonus - our friends Mike & Lisa just had a new baby !

And as previously mentioned - I am thinking strongly about this good deal from the Vail network of resorts. It really makes skiing/riding their system much more cost effective. They will probably be more crowded as a result, but this pass looks good. If you are interested, or end up getting one, let me know so maybe we can work our 09 group trips around that.

A trip to Curry Hill and a spice store

So this weekend we met some family friends at the Madras vegetarian chain gone global, Saravanaas, in NYC's Curry Hill neighborhood.

The food was excellent and spicy, but the service was weak --enough so that I'm not sure I would go back. They charge gratuity on the bill, which is legal in NYC if you disclose that, but I think when a venues opts for that there must be a reasonable level of service. I walked out thinking the service sucked and I don't think I'd go back. You can see the enormity of their fried bread known as poori's on the left side. The specialty of the house are the crispy rice griddle cades called dosai, also in the picture to the right

Afterwards, we went two streets up to the famed specialty spice store, Kalustyan's which stocks a massive array of spices known along with an incredible range of dried food and grains. I counted something like 30 different kinds of rice alone. They do a substantial amount of business to the restaurant trade, so their pricing for retail customers is on the high side. But its helpful to shop there just to see all the different things they have.
While we were there, we picked up a number of exotic spices that we can't easily find including florals like rosewater, jasmine, and lavender. Then in the picture to the right, you can see the big jars of goods, where we found glaceed orange rinds, apricots, and blanched almonds. Then in the powdered spice section we got some file powder, biryani blend, and Japanese dried bonito flakes. And then we also found some sour cherry juice, Peruvian hot sauces, and dried morels. It was quite the expensive shopping trip.

Indiana Jones New Movie - It was nothing special

We had a relaxing weekend in the city, taking care of household chores and seeing friends. On Saturday we started with our once a quarter visit to Costco to load up on pet food, kitty litter, and swiffers. After we came back and unloaded a car full of dry goods, we got ready to see some friends, Jesse & Susan. We met them at a hole in the wall Mexican restaurant (Ah Chiuhaha!) around the corner where we had some tacos and salsa. After that we went to see the new Indiana Jones movie that just came out. It was ok, nothing special, and certainly not as good as the prior three.

The next morning we baked cinnamon scones and then went to church, which seemed sparsely attended, and then went shopping afterwards. The city was shut down for a parade on 5th avenue so getting across town was a headache. So we walked for a while and stopped for an iced chai and jello while going home. Then we went to the Japanese market to get rice vinegar, bok choy, and various other Oriental spices. Afterwards I opened up a light Italian rose wine for dinner.

Last night for dinner Jenn made veal marsala, mashed potatoes and green beans which we ate on the patio. The patio is now covered with a dozen flowering plants which are all in various stages of bloom. They are quite thirsty though and need 3 gallons of water just about every other day; the pets like to snooze outside while we water them.