The Food of April 2016

Yeah, my April 2016 overview post was long, but it would have been even longer if it had had food in it. Here's some of the food I cooked or bought last month:

COOKED

This is rotisserie chicken ramen after the recipe from 101 Easy Asian Recipes. From broth to bird, I made everything in that bowl! (No, I didn't raise the chicken, mushrooms or scallions or hand toss the noodles. I'm just saying this wasn't some from the packet ramen!)

I continued to workshop my chongqing chicken tacos.

A nearby Mexican grocery store sold me a giant bag of melty Mexican cheese that I had to figure out what to do with. So here's a cheeseburger I made topped with a pickled Thai pepper quesillo. I pickled those peppers myself, too!

Another 101 Easy Asian recipe, Spicy Beef and Celery. 

Another use of my Mexican cheese: "Chop Cheese" tacos. What's a Chop Cheese? Sheesh, you sound like someone who lives below 110th street!

And finally, a nice big plate of spaghettin (linguini) with a homemade bolognese. When is it a bolognese and when is it meat sauce? When you take a long time to make it, that's when!

BOUGHT

Out in Queens there's this odd little place called Jollibee that I always walk by on my way to get Thai. It's the only East Coast outlet of a popular chain in the Philippines. The menu seems "normal" at first, with burgers and fried chicken on it, but then it starts having things on it like spaghetti and...well, spaghetti, on it and you're like "What's the deal with this place?" So one day I rode out to Queens to find out what was up.

I got a cheeseburger and the spicy fried chicken. The cheeseburger was enough like a McDonalds cheeseburger to be familiar but also different enough to compel me to keep eating it...there was some kind of curious sauce or something was up with the cheese or somehting, whatever it was it was like the burger was talking to me "Yeah, I'm kind of different, right? Don't you want to eat more of me to try to figure out why?"

I ordered my fried chicken spicy and it came out dusted with a formidable spice powder. Probably the spiciest fast food chicken I've ever had, it definitely gave me the occasional unexpected spice cough. Chicken came with a side of mashed potatoes and gravy along with an extra gravy. Looking around at my fellow Jollibee eaters, people were going to town with that gravy,  dunking everything in it, pouring it on everything, that was like the open secret of Jollibee "Come here for gravy food."

In conclusion, Jollibee was unusual enough (to me) to make the trip worth it and I imagine going back some time in the next 12 months to try their spaghetti. Also, the workers could not have been friendlier. A++ service.

Other foods: I gave the tacos at Taqueria Diana in the East Village another shot. Either improved or better than I remember.

Then there was this weekend I went to a place in my neighborhood called "Delicias Mexicanas" three times, the first time I indulged in this unique creation, the "Bati-Taco" which was like an openface, multiple tortilla quesadilla topped with lots of cheese and big slices of carne enchilada. Would definitely, definitely get again.

Okay, truth be told, I plan to post about two more restaurants I ate at in their own post. It'll be fun, you'll see.

This Was April

Bet you didn't expect me to have my April roundup posted by the fifth day of May, did you? Well, I did! The secret: Breaking April up into a lot of sub-posts--this is the post for nothing that became a sub-post, although some of this definitely could have.

Started April off by going to Andy's house to listen to the Priesthood Session of General Conference (before running up to Boston the next day to meet up with my folks). Andy's for General Conference with Chicken McNuggets and fries, this is becoming quite a tradition.

This is Andy laughing when he heard someone was named "Gaylynn" in a story in one of the talks.

A big change at the old new apartment: I have a rug now. It looks oranger than this in real life, but you get the idea.

Then one Friday: I meet up with Steve to walk around Harlem a bit, looking at trees grown through fences and stuff, and then go up and check out his studio in the Bronx.

Meanwhile, in Midtown, they're still skating at Rockefeller Center

Although the new art installation suggests summer is around the corner?

Ironic iconography at Salvation Burger

And the Lady of Guadalupe and I have definitely had our ups and downs before but now that we're neighbors we're getting along better.

Now here's something big: Harlem neighbors Kelsey, Amy and Nico invited me one Saturday morning on a major day trip to check out West Point and return to Storm King. I liked West Point a ton, we had a good tour of a little bit of the campus that definitely left me wanting to see a lot more.

Down the hill there? Just some cadets practicing their Irish dancing

Seems awfully un-American how much trouble Army wishes on Navy

Post-campus (and burritos), a quick visit to the Military Museum. Time was short, so we focussed on the weapon exhibits.

Then it was a quick drive over to Storm King for a whirlwind walk to its farthest points and back.

Richard Serra balance-beaming

I hadn't seen the mirror fence before. Mirror fence makes quite the optical illusion.

Back to more art!

Nailed it!

Before returning to the city we were headed for a Hagen Daz that had turned up on our maps until we came across this far more American opportunity

Another day, a daytime Soho walk

A terrible bummer of a discovery: Peep on Spring street has been shut down. I don't think there's a restaurant I've been to more in the city. I think I've taken absolutely every visitor I ever had here. I remember the first time I walked by it and looking in at its shiny, space age hipness and thinking "Oh, I probably can't eat here" but no, we wound up having quite a history, Peep and I.

Okay, let's finish this walk on a happier note...

Some evening in the lobby with Ned

One afternoon I meet up with Lexia and her girls for one last visit before Lexia and Adam move off to Maine (with their daughters, of course). Having arrived at New York at the same time, it's a nostalgia-stirring loss to see Lexia go. Whatever happened to 2003?

On a Saturday night I check out the big Enchantment Under the Stars gala to raise money to send kids away for the summer. If there's anything I'll support, it's definitely sending kids away!

One weekday I find myself handling a little business downtown, followed by my first visit to the Oculus, which was kind of tricky to find an entrance to.

Baxter Building, I guess.

And then, on the last day of the month, I find myself joining in on a biscuit-crawl through the Lower East Side.

Post biscuits, I go it a lone for a bit before meeting up with Patricia, Ned and Jeff at Mission Chinese

Later on: I blow out candles on the Upper West Side

A Mighty Mighty Weekend Trip

Mom and Dad were in Boston the first weekend in April because Dad had a conference up there and they were like "Hey come meet up with us" and I was like "Oh, I don't know, it's such a long bus ride and didn't we just do this only four and a half years ago?" But then I realized "Hey, no one else is asking me to visit them this weekend, shouldn't I go where I'm wanted?" So Sunday morning I bought some bus tickets online and THEN checked the weather. Cold. Cold and snowy. That's what I was headed for.

I got off the bus at South Station or North Station and then walked through Chinatown and up Washington, met up with Mom and Dad on the street, and headed on over to their hotel, the famed Parker House Hotel.

There we listened to the afternoon session of General Conference on my computer and, once we were done, went to dinner at a nice Italian place with lots of sea food on the menu. Too dark in their for pictures. Just imagine bay scallops and mussels and stuff.

Woke up Monday morning and it was snowy! Mom and I walked through the snow and trained over to the library to see the murals Mom and Dad had enjoyed so much a few days earlier.

After the murals we T'd down to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, which I felt I'd never even heard of but really liked. Isabella was this rich lady who built herself a Venetian Palace to live in in Boston, filled it up with art, and then left it as a museum after she died. There was a famous art robbery there in 1990 that I would like to know more about, too.

Then Mom and I caught a train to lunch with Dad and a place the name of which I cannot remember, but I went hard on the Boston food and had clam chowder and a crab cake BLT.

So rainy wet and cold, but everything I've ever read says my camera is weather proof. 

Then it was back on the T and back to the hotel and then back to the bus station and back to New York with me! It was a good little getaway. I'm glad I let me talk myself into just taking it easy and going up to see Mom and Dad when I could. I hope my actions will inspire my sister Kristen to come up to New York while on one of her monthly trips to Washington DC.