Best End of One Year, Start of Another

So, Monday was New Year's Eve.  Seemed most everyone was out of town and not much was going down.  Ryan suggested we meet for dinner at Curry in a Hurry on Lexington.  Sounded plenty good to me.  I'd never been but I knew the place.

Ryan invited two fellow Brooklyners, here he's calling them, trying to find out where in the world they were.  Lost?  On their way?  Or not coming at all?

Earlier that day I had been cleaning and found a bag full of dollar coins.  I didn't remember where they came from, but I knew they'd be buying me dinner. 

And if you want your dollar coins to go far, you should eat where the taxi drivers eat.  Look at all this food they gave me!  What a gigantic piece of naan!  And there was a chutney and salad bar.  What a meal to end the year with.  This is how I like to eat: heartily.

Andrea and Jeanie, Ryan's Brooklyn friends, showed up and we headed to the one party we knew of, a gathering on 138th Street.  On the way to the Subway we passed the Empire State Building.  It was all lit up in a way I had never seen before, flashing and strobing and changing colors.  I loved it.  It felt like a beacon, a symbol, a symbol to let us know it was okay to be celebrating.  That we should be having fun.  So many people on the streets and on the trains were dressed up nice, more than I'm used to seeing.  Was NYE 2012/2013 an unusually big deal?  Who knows.  But the Empire State Building sent me a message, the message was: "Have fun."

I was trying to mostly get the festive Germans from the subway in this picture but I mostly got the festive Brooklyners.

We arrived at the party.  The theme was "New Year's Jockin' Eve."  Athletic apparel was the suggested dress code, Jock Jams the proposed soundtrack.  At first, frankly, it wasn't terribly different from too many church dances I've been to in my earlier years.  And I suppose in my later years.

But a spirit of festiveness crept in and overtook us.  Maybe it only took the poppin of one bottle of Martinellis?  But the Empire State Building's Permission of Fun reached this basement apartment, and a good time happened.

A screen descended to display the dropping of the ball just five miles south of us.  Some in the crowd, with watches carefully synched, would say the ball dropped fifteen seconds late.

And then there was partying, good lively partying.

Sometimes you just decide to calm down and enjoy yourself.  And enjoy that your camera's flash seems to be broken.

Well-partied at one'ish AM, I returned to Little Italy, far more satisfied with my night than I ever would be.

Epilogue:

This Epilogue is a Prologue.

Earlier in the day I craved tamales fiercely.  So I went and found some in the East Village.  While eating them, I remembered I had taken the family to Mom's Tamales on New Year's Eve last year.  So I guess this is a tradition now: every New Year's Eve I get tamales. (even if Mom's was fresh out when we went last year)

Best It's Christmas Time, Here's Christmas Stuff

Hey, why don't I stop posting food for a minute and talk about human beings?

Well, it's Friday evening and Christmas vaction has officially begun.  I'm celebrating Kevin McAllister-style this year, minus the fancy hotel, but Christmassy happenings have been in full swing for weeks and weeks now.

Two Saturday nights ago Kristin and Gabe hosted a fine and fancy gathering on Gabe's roof.  Here's a photo from the party I quite liked that I stole out of Kristin's Facebook album.

All month long I've been involved with the Church's Sub 4 Santa activity, a service project that just won't die.  As I write I've got three big bags of presents sitting in my room we've been waiting 2+ weeks for someone to pick up and take to the UES building.  Wait.  You know what.  No Sub 4 Santa complaining.  No Sub 4 Santa stories.  It's a joy to serve.  But this is a photo from two Monday nights ago when we were organizing the gifts.  I wimped out and went home at 1 am.  There were people that didn't go home until 6am.  It's a lot of work, this Santa'ing.

I've had a couple of Christmas packages sent to me, both of which have been lost in the mail.  But I've received some nice cards, often with customizations on the envelopes.

Last Friday night Ines and Laura hosted a Holiday party at their apartment.  Here's Ines and Broek.

The next night I did the music for another party way downtown.  Don't be fooled, I'm using the simplest DJ'ing software in the universe now.  Basically it's iTunes with a crossfader.

Somedays I celebrate the coming of Christmas by eating a Chips Ahoy cookie in the lobby during work.

Wednesday night Patricia and I decided to charge up our Christmas Spirits by admiring the Christmas sites of midtown.

Windows at Bergdorf Goodman

Assorted lit up jewelry stores,

Collapsing shoe displays,

On over to the Rockefeller Center tree,

And finished up with a look at the Gingerbread Houses at the Parker Meridian.

The thing about the Parker Meridian Gingerbread Houses is that every year they're cool, but there's not very many of them.  If you bundled up all the kids and headed to midtown just to see them, well, it takes maybe 5 minutes to get a good look at them.  Better have other plans in the neighborhood.

Origami'd Christmas tree in the lobby.

And finally, Thursday night celebrated Taco Navidad with Jeff, Ryan, Kelsea and Dave at La Cabaña.  No pictures of tacos or chalupas or tortas, but here's some kids that came in and found themselves immediately transfixed by that night's telenovela.

Best Dudes

Okay.  Let me start this with a confession: I almost forgot to tell you that Collin was in town with Mallory for a few days at the beginning of Thanksgiving Week.

Many things happened, but let me tell you this: One night we went to Mission Chinese Food together.  Mission Chinese has tremendous buzz right now and, predictably, I love it--it's my inclination to say eating there my first time, a handful of months ago now, struck me the way Ssam Bar and M. Wells did on my first visits to them.

We had the Thrice-Cooked Bacon and Rice Cakes and the Salt Cod Fried Rice.

These days that Thrice-Cooked Bacon is just about the only thing I want to eat.

We also had BBQ Pig Tails and Spicy Pickled Carrots.

After dinner, a visit to Sugar Sweet Sunshine.  Cuz that's Collin's cupcake spot of choice.

And then we paid Andy a surprise visit.  Well, I wasn't a surprise.  He expected me.  Collin, however, he was not expecting.  It'd been probably two years since they'd seen each other but Andy didn't care, he got right down to business.  Collin didn't care either, he got right down to business, too.

Don't be scared, Collin.  It's just the wind!

Amigos.  I guess I should make some joke about having been to Mission Chinese and Andy's house in the same night, something about them both being Chinese and a thing/person that I'm a fan of, but the joke isn't coming to me.  And also I don't want you to look at these pictures and be all like, "Awwww, look how they're visiting the kid in the wheelchair." Because that's not what's happening, this is Andy, for crying out loud.  You show up at his house and you don't know what's going to happen, you might get taken to task, you might get a story told, you might work on vocabulary words.  It's just homies hanging with homies.  You don't think I'm a good guy just for hanging out with Collin because he wears glasses, right?

Anyway, I digressed.  Moving on with the photos . . .

And afterwards, on the way home, we got baby massages.

No we didn't.  Come on.

-Epilogue-

The next day I had lunch with Collin at Parm, knowing full well I'd be there the next night with my family.  What, was I going to deprive Collin of a meatball hero?

Had their Saratoga Club for the first time.  Holy cow.  This thing.  This sandwich is an absolute 10/10, A++.  Favorite new sandwich of the year?  Sure.  Why not.  I'll say that.  And I'm not even a guy who ever ever thinks to order a chicken club.  The recipe for this is in Lucky Peach #4, that's a recipe worth taking a long look at.