After S was off work on Saturday, we decided to meet up at
Katz's Delicatessen in the Lower East Side. They have been in NY since 1888 and are supposed to have some of the best pastrami and corned beef around. It's a very famous place, and you may know it from the movie When Harry met Sally. On my way there, I had to change subways on 23rd Street and I ran into the Chelsea Hotel. This is another place full of NY history...Bob Dylan has stayed here, Dylan Thomas, Mark Twain, and famously, this is where Sid Vicious allegedly killed Nancy Spungen in 1978. I'd like to stay in a room here for one night sometime.
Here is Katz's. It was a total madhouse inside. S and I had to walk around for 5 minutes before grabbing a couple of seats and then wait another 20 minutes in line to get our sandwich.
Here is a shot from inside. The crowd on the right is where you fight your way to the counter to order a sandwich. We ended up splitting a pastrami on rye and it was pretty incredible. We don't eat a ton of meat, so unfortunately we had to leave about half of the pastrami on the plate; unfortunate especially since 1 sandwich costs $18!! It was a really fun experience, though.
Afterwards, we walked a few blocks south to try out the donuts at
Doughnut Plant. There was a long line...we waited probably about 40 minutes, but the donuts were
gooood. We learned that you have to go early because they were out of a lot of flavors.
This is the view from the back of a 40-minute line. No complaining though, these donuts delivered.
This is you and Logan on 4th of July in 2005. I had to cut out Connor because he was making a face. I'm trying to make a playlist of music for your new MP3 player--it's so hard for me to decide between songs I think you will like and songs that I want you to like.
I ordered Jeff beans for his birthday. For those who don't know Jeff...he wants beans, ok? He really does.
It's huge. I ordered it online and I guess I didn't have a good concept of what 7 quarts of cooking capacity looks like. Turns out, it looks like half our kitchen counter space. For my first time using it, I wanted to start off with something easy so I made a black bean soup. The soup, to be honest, was just good. Not anything fantastic. The cumin yogurt (crème fraîche if you don't live in a humble neighborhood in queens) thing on top is essential...and maybe a piece of cornbread along with it would push this into the awesome category.
Even though its just good, it does have a lot of other qualities going for it: cheap, healthy, quick, and easy. All the things I look for in a weeknight meal. Or um, should I say, four weeknight meals in a row.
This is the view from the back of a 40-minute line. No complaining though, these donuts delivered.
We were stuffed! It was great to catch up with her and I hope she gets the job because it would be fun to have another friend in town.
This is the main entrance.
This is the middle of the front lobby ceiling.
This is where I waited in the really long line.
Tonight I cooked Mushroom Bourguignon from smittenkitchen.com. It was sooo delicious. This is definitely going into rotation. Even better, it was really easy to throw together and didn't use too many dishes. I used both cremini and portobello, but I liked the cremini best so I'm going to stick with that in the future. I also don't like whole pearl onions, so I quartered them. I had a problem getting them soft, so next time I'll add them in earlier. To find this, go to smittenkitchen.com and look for her recipe link in the left margin of the page. Then select winter foods and you will find this recipe in the list. Sorry, got to figure out that hyperlink thing still. Anyway, go there, find this recipe, and then make it. You will be happy.
