Q: What's Good for a Sore Throat? A: Bent Spoon

My pre-Valentine's Day masterpiece from The Bent Spoon: chocolate port ice cream on the bottom and chocolate-covered-strawberry sorbet on top.

To celebrate Valentine's Day, Gary and I were supposed to go to Avenue last night - a beautiful French restaurant in Long Branch with floor to ceiling windows overlooking the ocean. Unfortunately, I've been plagued by flu-like symptoms for the last few days: sore throat, runny nose, aches, sneezing, ear infection ... the works. Gary was such a good sport though; he just canceled our reservations and instead took me -sniffles and all- for a steaming bowl of noodle soup at Rai Rai Ramen followed by ice cream at The Bent Spoon in Princeton.

TripAdvisor ranked The Bent Spoon #2 out of 68 restaurants in Princeton, and it's probably one of the few ice cream places in the world that has a line out the door in the middle of winter (with only three indoor tables). If waiting in a long line to eat ice cream outside in the freezing cold seems like a ridiculous notion - it's obvious that you have never eaten at The Bent Spoon before. Publication after publication (NY Times, NJ Best, Time Out NY, NY Post) have touted the glories of The Bent Spoon's crazy delicious treats, and I too have been known to blabber on incessantly about their legendary flavors to anyone who will listen.


Above is a picture of The Bent Spoon menu from Serious NY Eats. The flavors change all the time depending on what they can get locally, so you never know what flavors will show up on those little brown paper bags. The owners (a husband and wife team) estimate that they have about 380 flavors in their rotation - every single one using only organic, locally grown ingredients like "honey culled from Jersey bees or chocolate laced with mint grown by student farmers at a nearby Riverside Elementary School" (NY Times). Probably two of my all time favorite flavors are blueberry mascarpone (only in summer) and Guinness - Baileys cream (only around St. Patrick's Day), but the chocolate-covered-strawberry sorbet that I had yesterday is definitely in my top 10.

The sweetest thing about the afternoon, however, wasn't the velvety perfection in that little black plastic cup... it was the fact that I was with Gary, and thanks to my doctors I hopefully will get to spend many more Valentine's Days with the love of my life.

New Medical Guidelines for the Diagnosis and Treatment of NETs

The North American NeuroEndocrine Tumor Society (NANETS) has issued a comprehensive set of guidelines to assist medical professionals with the diagnosis and treatment of neuroendocrine tumors. The guidelines are organized into eight manuscripts, each one addressing key aspects of NET diagnosis and treatment by organ site. I focused on the manuscript pertaining to NETs of the appendix, and I was genuinely impressed by its clear synthesis of competing and complementary evidence-based research on this rare disease. The guidelines are not only an important resource for medical professionals, but also a way for carcinoid patients to feel more empowered about their own treatment options.

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!

Oprah vs. Milk (& Cookies)

Senior and Junior English Midterm Exams:
In the Grade Books!

After grading 119 exams, I got a real treat - a snow day because of the ice storm that hit last night. Gary also had a snow day, so we indulged by watching some programs on our 80% full DVR. First up - Oprah.

Even though we aren't regular Oprah watchers, we taped yesterday's program because it featured one of our favorite "food rock stars" Michael Pollan. The program, however, did not closely examine Pollan's famous "food rules" - instead it followed Oprah and 378 of her staffers as they took a challenge to go vegan for a week (which means no animal products at all - no eggs, cheese, meat, butter etc). The vegan charge was lead by veganist Kathy Freston, a beautiful best-selling author of vegan diet and cook books. Pollan got a couple of words in here and there, but really it was Kathy's show.

The difference between Pollan and Freston is a critical one, although not really discussed on the program. While there are health benefits to vegan and vegetarian diets, just eliminating animal products doesn't necessarily mean that you are following a healthier diet.

For example, a lot of the "meatless alternatives" Freston pushed on the episode are highly processed with unhealthy artificial chemicals and high in sodium. (For more on problems with "meatless" substitutions, read: "3 Things You Should Know Before Going Meatless".) Also, Freston doesn't take into consideration Pollan's motto of "think global, eat local" - the fruits and vegetables a vegan consumes could be shipped from farms thousands of miles away, or from farms that use dangerous chemical pesticides. We are better off eating locally grown, organic, non-processed food rather than just cutting out meat, cheese and eggs all together.

Of course, all this food talk made me hungry, so I went to our kitchen for a little snack of milk and cookies. As I was munching away, I realized that my simple snack was a good illustration the shortcomings of Freston's ideas.

Who Doesn't Like Milk and Cookies?

No one will deny that Girl Scout Cookies are delicious (and irresistible when your next door neighbor's six year old is peddling her wares in a red flyer wagon), but there is really nothing nutritious about them. In fact, the first ingredient is sugar; the other ingredients include: peanuts, enriched flour, vegetable shortening, high fructose corn syrup, cocoa, corn syrup solids, corn starch, leavening, salt, soy lecithin, whey*, artificial color, natural and artificial flavor, sodium. The milk, on the other hand, is organic, from non-hormone, grass fed cows, raised on a family farm in PA. While the milk does contain "bad fats" - it is also packed full of protein and vitamin D.

Now, a vegan could eat the processed, nutritionally void peanut butter patties - but they could not drink the calcium rich milk. Instead, they might turn to a Coke to wash down their cookies, which is a perfectly acceptable vegan product. Do you see where I'm going with this?

At least the conversation is happening though. One thing both Freston and Pollan agree on is that we have a real epidemic on our hands in America - and we are literally nutritionally starving to death while simultaneously becoming obese. Sadly, there is no quick fix or fad diet to correct the last 100 years of changes in the food industry largely responsible for this health crisis, but we can - as Pollan says - "vote with our forks" one meal at a time.

Click Here for Feb 1, 2011 Oprah "Vegan" Show Details.

*A friend just pointed out that technically "whey" would eliminate the cookies for vegans; but I think you get the point - plenty of junk food is both "meatless" and unhealthy.