Peck Slip Pickle Festival - NYC

View from New Amsterdam Market

Last weekend, Gary and I met my SF friend Amanda (who now lives in Portland) at the New Amsterdam Market in NYC for the Peck Slip Pickle Festival. This was the first time Gary and I had ever visited the New Amsterdam Market*, which is a weekend-outdoor marketplace under the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge that features local vendors who support regional agriculture. Some of my favorite vendors that set up shop at the New Amsterdam Market are Blue Bottle Coffee (originated in SF Ferry Building) and the Bent Spoon (Princeton fame).

This weekend was special; in addition to the regular vendors, there were additional vendors featuring... you guessed it - pickles.

Pickles Were the Star of the Weekend's Market

One of the best things at the Pickle Festival was the McClure's Pickles stand - and we all absolutely loved their Spicy Bloody Mary Mix and Dill-Garlic Potato Chips...  a dangerously delicious combination.

Gary and Amanda Talk to One of the Vendors: McClure's Pickles

Regular Vendors Sold Out within a Few Hours of Opening

Of course, there were more than just pickles to be sampled - and I stocked up on homemade Mexican chocolates from a local bakery.

It was such a fun way to spend an afternoon with a very missed friend. Gary and I will definitely return to the New Amsterdam Market - when the weather gets a little warmer.

Good Links

A Look at New Amsterdam Market - Serious Eats

The Top 10 Lunches at Farmers' Markets - Bon Appetit

Power Picnics - NY Post

2010 30 Under 30 List: Joe McClure (McClure's Pickles)

* The New Amsterdam Market takes place rain or shine every Sunday from 11am to 4pm in front of the Old Fulton Fish Market on South Street & Peck Slip in Lower Manhattan.

Big Gay Ice Cream

(picture from NY Examiner article)

If you've never heard of a "salty pimp" before - you've probably never heard of the Big Gay Ice Cream Truck in NYC either. Thanks to our friend Christine (a fellow ice cream aficionado), the truck has been on Gary's and my radar for a long time - but they usually are only "rolling" on weekdays, so we've never been able to catch up with them. Today, however, was the grand opening of their Big Gay Ice Cream Shop - eliminating the need for weekly location Tweets and daily Facebook status updates.

We were in the City this morning anyway, so obviously, the logical thing to do was to walk 10 blocks and wait an hour in line to finally taste their iconic cone (salty pimp): vanilla soft serve, covered in dulce de leche sauce, sprinkled with sea salt, and dipped in chocolate.


Overall, I have to rate the ice cream a solid B. It was good, but all the flavor was in the topping... the ice cream itself was nothing more than Dairy Queen vanilla. While I'm glad that we finally had this NYC treat, it wasn't exactly the same ordering a salty pimp in a shop adorned with unicorn murals - instead of from a Good Humor truck on rainbow colored steroids. Perhaps these crazy inventive ice cream toppings (toasted curry coconut, pumpkin butter, key lime curd, wasabi pea dust, elderflower syrup) are more awe-inspiring when they come out of a slide window on four wheels rather than a brick and mortar shop. For my buck - I'll stick to the Wafels & Dinges truck, until something better rolls along.

Mac 'n' Cheese Pancakes at Shopsins

Last weekend, Gary, Christine, Chaya and I went to brunch at Shopsins in the Essex St Market on the Lower East Side. Shopsins is owned and run by Kenny Shopsin - whose food philosophy and awkwardly callous demeanor landed him a staring role in the 2004 documentary: "I Like Killing Flies" (available on Netflix).

Kenny Shopsin

There are only 20 seats in the restaurant, and there are rules one must follow in order to eat here, including: no cell phones, no ordering things not on the menu, no parties larger than four... break any of these rules and you're gone. Another one of the rules is: know what you want before you come in. Why? There are nearly 900 combinations Kenny's tiny kitchen turns out (click here for the menu), and patience isn't exactly what this restaurant is known for.

A word of caution: don't even think about coming in as a party of 5 and pretending to be a party of 3 casually meeting up with a party of 2 - you math-sly tricksters aren't fooling anyone...certainly not Kenny. (For more on the "rules" see "Don't Mention It" in The New Yorker or "Flipping the Bird" in The New York Times).

So why is there a cult following for this tiny place, in the middle of a small market, where it's highly probable that you'll be cursed-out by the unpredictably cantankerous chef-owner? Simple - for the same reason Jerry, George, Kramer, and Elaine (from the show Seinfeld) fearfully followed the the Soup Nazi's outrageous demands ... the food is that darn good.

After reviewing the menu, watching the documentary, and going over the rules during the car ride into the city - the four of us felt somewhat prepared to face Kenny on Sunday morning. We made sure to arrive before the market opened, so we only had to wait for about an hour before getting seated in the "bar area" - right next to Kenny himself, who sat perched on a lone chair where he could simultaneously watch and comment on the kitchen and his patrons. Needless to say, we were nervous. Luckily, Kenny seemed to be in a good mood, and only lobbed a few f-bombs here and there at his staff.

Any trepidation about the Shopsins experience, however, melted away with my first bite of mac 'n' cheese pancakes. Let me repeat that: MAC 'N' CHEESE PANCAKES. Brilliant. To learn how Kenny cooks up these little fluffy, cheesy disks of perfection (and to get a taste of Kenny's character) watch: BATTER UP.

Fried Chicken, The Dismemberment Plan, and Cereal Milk: East Village NYC

The Gozicks are crazy into music, just like Gary, so when they heard that The Dismemberment Plan (indie rock band) was getting back together for a tour, we immediately planned a trip to the city for dinner and a show in the East Village. (Caution: the following blog post contains graphic descriptions of obscenely unhealthy food...viewer discretion is advised.)

FIRST STOP: The Redhead for dinner.

The Redhead 349 East 13th St NYC
(above picture from: Serious NY Eats )

The Redhead is a tiny Southern style bistro, but luckily we got there early and were seated right away. After peeling off our millions of winter layers, we got right down to business and started studying the menu - a task which the guys took very seriously....


We decided to start with with bacon peanut brittles (because, as the menu notes, "everything's better with bacon") and house made soft pretzels with Kentucky beer cheese - both of which were flawless.



Then we tried three different entrees...

Chris had the redhead burger with homemade chips, which he said was fantastic and perfectly cooked. A nice touch to his dish was the spicy mustard, which came on the side with the traditional mayo and ketchup condiments.

I had the low country shrimp with anson mills antebellum grits and andouille sausage. I hate to say it, but my meal was sub-par. The grits were overloaded with raw onion and celery, and otherwise lacked flavor and texture.


Christine and Gary both had buttermilk fried chicken, which came with a corn muffin and spinach & pear salad. (Note that the misplaced pickle on Gary's plate is from Chris's meal.) This is the dish that the restaurant is known for, and Christine immediately declared it was the best fried chicken she has ever eaten.

We all shared a beautifully dense dark chocolate tart with Mexican cinnamon ice cream for dessert. (Sadly, there is no picture of this dessert because we were too busy eating it!)

NEXT STOP: The Dismemberment Plan at Webster Hall.

The Dismemberment Plan broke up in 2003, and was a popular indie rock band in the 90s - even opening for Pearl Jam and co-headlining with Death Cab for Cutie. Other than a brief charity concert, this is the first time in eight years they have played together... so it was an eagerly anticipated and sold out show.

Can you find Gary in the crowd? Christine, Chris and I stayed up in the balcony - away from the frenzied fans.

We knew it would be an early show (over by 10:15) so we had already scoped out our LAST STOP: Momofuku Milk Bar for a post-concert snack.

Momofuku Milk Bar is amazing. Gary and I both had their "Cereal Milk", which has four ingredients: milk, corn flakes, brown sugar and salt. It is supposed to taste like the milk that's left over after eating a bowl of super sweet sugared cereal. It was perfect.

Cereal Milk

I also had a cornflake-marshmallow-chocolate chip cookie; Gary had a compost cookie (pretzels, potato chips, coffee, oats, butterscotch, chocolate chips); Christine had soft serve ice cream with cornflake crunch topping; and Chris had a slice of cinnamon bun pie with cheesecake filling and brown butter.

The shining star of this epic sugar overload, however, was the birthday cake truffles with rainbow cake crumble, sprinkles, and vanilla frosting.

Birthday Cake Truffles

The magic of these truffles is that it takes a moment after you eat them to get that ultimate "hit" of birthday cake flavor. Each order comes with three truffles, and despite their pure genius, we were so full that Gary and I had to split one, and Chris and Christine split another - leaving one truffle.

Since (in the lyrical words of Three Dog Night) one is the "loneliest number you'll ever do"- we offered our last truffle to the three outgoing and friendly gals standing across the wooden bar from us. Turns out, thanks to Christine's keen desire for cupcakes, we recognized one of them as the owner of Sweet Revenge - one of our all time favorite Greenwich Village spots, and the only "cupcake, wine and beer bar" in the city. Christine finally said something to the owner along the lines of "your cupcakes are better" and the owner blushed and thanked her. (For Christine, Sweet Revenge is a holy place of worship.) Personally, I think both Momofuku and Sweet Revenge deserve a place in the hallowed halls of Dessert Legends.

What a fantastically delicious fun-filled night!

Christmas Time In The City

Last Saturday, we had an adventure in New York City with our friends Chris and Christine. When we arrived, the guys and girls split up for the first chunk of the morning. The first order of business for the guys was a haircut for Gary; and yes, Gary goes to NYC for a haircut every two weeks. His barber (Michael) was recently featured in the New York Times Style section and, as you can imagine, has quite a following.

Gary and His Barber: F.S.C. Barber, West Village NYC

While the guys visited the barber and a rare book store, Christine and I walked over to Chelsea Market, which is an industrially designed maze of vendors - offering everything from baked goods to clothes. It is also home to a few TV networks, including The Food Network, so "celebrity foodies" are sometimes spotted wandering around.

Chelsea Market, 75 Ninth Ave

Notice the bag in Christine's hand? It's a box of gourmet chocolates from Jacques Torres Chocolates. And the coffee in my hand? That's a cappuccino from Ninth Street Espresso (best coffee in the City). These were just two little treats we picked up before visiting Amy's Bread for a chocolate croissant and an applesauce donut. After our Chelsea Market morning, we met up with the guys and walked over to Pastis for lunch.

Pastis, 9 Ninth Ave NYC

Pastis is the real deal - a French bistro with serious French food and serious French attitude...

So Christine and I practiced our pouty Parisian looks before her salad and my croque-monsieur (ham and gruyere cheese on a baguette) arrived...

After lunch, we walked to Soho so that Christine could visit her favorite yarn store (and pick out some amazing pink yarn for a hat she's making me). On the way to the yarn store, we stopped in at the world famous MarieBelle Cacao Bar and Tea Salon for two dixie-cups worth of premium hot chocolate - which cost a staggering $7 a piece (hopefully you can see them in Gary's and Christine's hands below)

MarieBelle, Soho NYC

Then we did a little shopping....

Christine Strikes a Zoolander Pose

Next - it was over to the legendary Pommes Frites for authentic Belgian fries. Pommes Frites only sells three things: 1. sizzling double fried wedges of potato perfection; 2. over twenty-six different dipping sauces for your fries; 3. drinks. In addition to sauces, you can also get your fries layered with the traditional mayo, onion and ketchup - which is exactly what Gary ordered (below):

Pommes Frites, 123 Second Ave NYC

The place is smaller than tiny, and only has two tables in the back of the bar. (Luckily eagle-eyes Johnston was able to commandeer one right away.) The best part about the tables is that they have custom built holes to keep your paper fry cone perfectly upright, leaving your hands free to dip away - as expertly demonstrated by Chris and Christine.


Then we walked around for a while, and took in the sites before making our way back to the West Village.


All day we had sporadically noticed people in Santa Clause costumes. It was a little weird - but we heard there was a parade or something, so we didn't really think too much of it... that is until we got closer to our car, which was parked by NYU. All of a sudden, literally thousands of drunk college kids dressed like Santas were everywhere... pouring out onto the streets, eating burgers in Five Guys, outside the bars smoking, inside pizza parlors - everywhere you looked there were swarms of intoxicated Santas.


We pulled out our trusty iphones to try to figure out what the heck was going on and learned that we were in the midst of "SantaCon" 2010. Basically, SantaCon is a silly Santa prank that started in San Francisco in 1994 - in which thousands of people descend on a location wearing Santa gear. Apparently it is a craze that has spread all over the world - they even had 70 thousand Santas in Moscow in 2006! Who knew?

Picture of SantaCon 2010 by my cousin who was there!

Believe it or not, by the time we reached the West Village, it was dinner time. Luckily, Gary and I knew just the place we wanted to take our friends: Scarpetta in the Meatpacking District, owned by celebrity chef Scott Conant - who became famous, in part, for his simple but amazing spaghetti with tomato and basil dish.

(Internet picture of Scott Conant and his signature dish)

After enjoying some of the best pasta in New York City ...it was time to head home.

You may be wondering how I held up after all this eating and walking? Well, as far as the eating, for the most part Christine and I limited ourselves to small samples of whatever it was that we had ordered - but still, it was a lot of food and I have been fighting serious nausea all week. The walking was fine until the next day...when it hit me like a ton of bricks. I still feel creaky - almost a week later. So I guess you can say it took a bit of a toll, but it was a great day - one in which I really lived life to the fullest with some of my favorite people in the whole world.

Dr. Nash and One Tasty Sandwich

Thursday, we went back to Manhattan for a follow-up appointment with Dr. Nash. Unfortunately, his office is just a few blocks from the UN, where President Obama was addressing the world's leaders at the UN General Assembly. Street closures and thousands of police made navigating in and out of the island a little like the 1981 Kurt Russell movie, Escape from New York.

While the logistics to and from my appointment were a nightmare, the appointment itself couldn't have gone more smoothly. Dr. Nash said that my wound was officially closed, and that I didn't need to see him again until my next CT scan in six months. Going forward, I will have to have CT scans - at a minimum - every year for the rest of my life. It's a small inconvenience that I really don't mind; frankly, there is something comforting in knowing that Dr. Nash is going to be following me so closely for years to come.

We usually try to eat at one of our favorite Manhattan haunts when we see Dr. Nash, but because of the UN traffic, we opted instead to grab a gourmet sandwich from Pret A Manger on the way to the parking deck. It was beautiful (the sandwich, not the parking deck) - made with hummus and roasted tomatoes.


If you've never heard of Pret A Manger, you are missing out. It was started in London by a couple of college friends with one goal - to create handmade natural sandwiches and salads, without using any additives or preservatives. In their own words, they describe Pret as "a cross between a good restaurant, an Italian coffee bar and a bullet train." Every night, they get a shipment of local produce, which they use to create delicious products "to go"; anything not used or sold is donated to City Harvest, a local NYC charity, at the end of the day. Incredibly, they have donated over 90,000 lbs of homemade, fresh food to help feed hungry New Yorkers. Bravo Pret.

Wafels & Dinges NYC

We had an appointment with Dr. Nash yesterday, who thought the wound looked absolutely fantastic, but told us to keep packing it until it completely closes. He also said that I no longer need to follow a low fat, low residue, low fiber diet - but to take it slow.

So what was the first thing Gary and I did when we left Sloan-Kettering's Manhattan office? We hunted down this legendary Belgian waffle truck, Wafels & Dinges, for my first post-surgery taste of raw fruit: strawberries.

I ordered a liège wafel (soft / chewy) covered in fresh strawberries and a tasty addictive spread called speculoos, which has the consistency of smooth peanut butter but tastes a little like gingerbread and caramel. As they say in Belgium: mmmmmm .... lekker*!

Now, I don't necessarily think this sinful treat was what Dr. Nash had in mind when he said, "take it slow", but in my defense - he did say to gradually start incorporating fruits and vegetables back into my diet, so why not eat some strawberries in style?


*lekker = (Dutch) adv. deliciously, with wonderful taste or smell; adj. delicious, tasty

Dr. Appointment and Pierogies

My Post-Appointment Lunch in the East Village
Veselka
144 2nd Ave NYC

Yesterday, I had my follow-up appointment with Dr. Nash, who checked my wound. He said that it looked like it was healing nicely, and was more shallow than last week. He estimated that it will take another few weeks to fully heal, and wants to see me again next Thursday. I'm really glad that Dr. Nash is continuing to see me every week, it gives Gary and I a lot of peace of mind.

After my appointment, we went to our favorite Ukrainian diner for lunch: Veselka. If you've never been to Veselka - GO! The food is amazing. So, while we enjoyed our usual meals (Gary: stuffed cabbage vege combo; me: pierogies), we reviewed what we learned today from the nutritionist / nurse, Rachael (another nurse - whom we absolutely adore) and Dr. Nash.

1. Dr. Nash never got a copy of the pathology on the three small polyps that were removed by Dr. Maloney during my colonoscopy - he will follow up this week. Most likely, if I didn't hear anything, the pathology came back clear. Interestingly, I found out that the polyps were not in the part of my colon that was removed during surgery.

2. The most likely place for the carcinoid cancer to reoccur is in the lymph nodes or liver.

3. The best screening method for carcinoid tumors is regular CT scans; blood markers are too inconsistent for any meaningful results, and CT scans have gotten so good that they are now considered superior to octreoscans.

4. Some of the medical literature suggests a tenuous connection between gastrointestinal carcinoid tumors and an increased risk for other types of cancers, such as colon cancer; because of this, a colonoscopy should be preformed every three years instead of every five.

5. I should finish the entire 30-day supply of Pantoprazole (reduces stomach acid, thereby decreasing the risk of a stress ulcer) and follow up with my primary care doctor if I experience any reflux after I stop the medication.

6. I can take nausea medication for as long as I need to. The medication that works best for me is Ondansetron 4mg (Zofran), which dissolves under your tongue. I have also tried Metoclopramide 10 mg (Reglan) with minimum success. There doesn't seem to be any issues with safety - both are good for long-term use and have few side effects, it's just a matter of which one works. (Fun Fact: Reglan can also be used to treat hiccups.)

7. I can slowly introduce a few fibrous foods into my diet, like smooth peanut butter or a small salad, and adjust my Colace (100 mg up to 3x a day) accordingly. It is very important that I eat protein, which will help speed the healing process for my wound. In this regard, I confirmed that I CAN EAT SUSHI (even the seaweed)! YES!

8. Since I am off the prescription pain meds (as of Tuesday), I can test whether or not I'm able to drive by getting into the car and pushing down as hard as I can on the breaks - if it hurts, I can't drive and vice-versa.

Just a note on pain meds - there are different options out there, and in connection with my past two surgeries I have tried: Hydromorphone 2mg, Vicodin 5/500 mg, and Percocet 5/325 mg. Out of these three, the only one that works for me is Hydromorphone (Vicodin does not kill the pain and Percocet just makes me loopy). Also, it didn't take me that long to switch from Hydromorphone over to Advil for the pain (I averaged 4-5 pills a day right after surgery, and decreased the amount by one pill every three days, so I only had to be on the "heavy duty" stuff for 9 days following discharge).

9. There is no problem with Gary and I going to the beach as long as I only go in the water for a short period of time (10-15 min) and immediately rinse off and repack the wound when I get out.

10. Since nearly all exercise involves your core muscles, I should wait about 8 weeks before resuming any exercise routine.

Overall, everything was good news at the appointment, and it feels like I'm slowly getting back to my old self.