October 2006 Archives

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I could say I went to New York because Stephen and my mom sent me there to celebrate my birthday. I could say I went to spend some quality dress-oogling time with the ladies who will, in the not to distant future, be in my wedding party. I could even say I went in hopes that a bout of jetsetting would snap me out of my prolonged period of useless moping. While all these things are technically true, the real reason I made the trek was to eat.

If you're the sort of person who travels on her stomach, you could hardly to better than five days in New York with Whitney and Tejal. There are few people in the world more enthusiastic about a rigorous schedule of cocktails, dinners, further cocktails, and midnight snacks than those two.

We kicked off Star Chefs Rising Stars Revue, a pretty fantastic to-do hosted by the people at Tejal's new job (which I think she'll talk more about later). I put on red lipstick and dangly earrings, then Whitney ane I up met up with Tejal at an enormous club called Crobar.

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The theme was "high-concept street food," meaning we strolled from cart to cart with our ever-refilled wine glass, sampling bites from exciting young chefs like Franklin Becker, Paul Liebrandt, Zakary Pelaccio, Tony Liu, and Will Goldfarb.

About every five minutes, someone would ask, "Have you tried the foie gras hot dog? It's awesome!" I did; it was indeed awesome, as was the tuna sashimi with wasabi ice and sweet soy reduction. The latter wasn't the most literal example of "street food," but the sweet, icy burn had eyes rolling in pleasure all over the room nonetheless.

We continued on to the after party at Bed. In route we were soundly hooted at by two guys driving a garbage truck. Which is every bit as flattering as it sounds. At Bed we partied like rock stars and learned two very important lessons. One: everyone looks sexier lounging on cushions.

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Once we spied people passionately smooching, we learned lesson number two: it's better not to think about what you might see staining those cushions if the lights were on.

It's all right

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Ten weeks ago I got a once in a lifetime invitation to eat my way around Southeast Asia in the company of the most extraordinary person. It's amazing, really, how it all came about. See, I was on the plane coming home from Nashville, and you'll never guess who was sitting in the seat next to me!

Okay, not so much. That would be a much better excuse for my absence than the truth. The truth is that my real life, the life I live outside of this cozy cyber nest where my biggest concern is whether or not the yeast will bloom in warm water, kicked my butt recently. For a variety of icky, personal reasons I spent the last few days, weeks, months, forevers (it seems) moderately depressed and basically useless. I couldn't bring myself to post here pretending to be witty and sunny, pretending everything was fine. I also couldn't bear to post the truth. Day after day of "Didn't get out of bed today. Ate nine fun-size Kit-Kats. Ordered Chinese again," hardly seemed worth it. At a certain point, the fact that I wasn't posting began to feel like a failure in and of itself, one more reason not to get out of my pajamas.

Thankfully, the worst seems to be over. The gears seem to be turning again. I'm cooking, nothing worth noting, but it's nice to feel like I'm finding my feet.

I thought about turning up here again, apologizing in passing for my time away, and continuing without further comment. When you live part of your life on the internet, there's always the question of how much of yourself to reveal. It's more fun to show the cocktails and nibbles part of me than the unwashed hair, red-rimmed eyes, and pizza delivery part. In the end, I decided to address it largely because I kept getting e-mails from people wondering where I was, if I was okay, and whether or not I'd been eaten by a bear or something. At the time, I didn't really know what to say to those people (Hi Sean! Hi Payal! Hi Whitney!), but it made me think that something did need to be said.

Some years ago, Stephen gave me an acoustic cover of "Here Comes the Sun" by a folk singer named Richie Havens. The first time I heard his version, I realized it was actually a rather sad song. When George Harrison sings it, it sounds like everything bad is in the past. Richie Havens sings like all his troubles are very much in the present. He sings with a desperate hopefulness, like he believes, must believe, that he's finally seeing a sign that everything will eventually be better. He says, "I feel that ice is slowly melting;" I think I know what he means.