TracyFood

Monkey Monday: reading break edition 1 February 2010 9:37 am

Posted by Tracy in : eating,events,geekery,monkeys,not even vegetarian,nyc,random,reading,restaurants,school , trackback

Ok, so I am up to my ears in reading about public policy for metropolitan regions, and loving every minute of it (even if the equation typography occasionally offends my math nerd sensibility). Which is to say, I got into a class at the NYU Wagner graduate school of public service (y’know, policy, planning, management, all that boring wonky stuff that I love so very, very much). Woohoo! Important take-home lesson for everyone: seriously, do not even try to wrangle NYU cross-school registration through the main registrar’s office, which will give you about half a dozen forms to fill out and have signed by people in at least three different offices (also they may not know which members of certain schools’ student services staff are newly retired, and look at you confusedly when you say yep, you emailed that guy already and got an auto-reply email that said “go back to the previous step.”) Instead, email the professor of the class you want to take, get permission to take the class, and contact that professor’s school (ideally with the professor backing you up). In my case, the result was not one but two friendly emails saying, hey, fill out this web form and we’ll do the rest. Yay!

Here are a few more awesome things I have learned since my last post:

Going out to eat at unfashionably early hours has its perks. For example, much-improved odds of actually getting into the place you want to go. Also, being able to hear the conversation in a restaurant that’s near-empty because nobody cool will be caught there for at least another half hour. Not bad!

Not unrelatedly, I enjoyed the heck out of the winter Restaurant Week offerings at 5 Ninth (warning: that’s a super-Flash-full website). I think Peter may have won with his choice of appetizer (pig tails in bourbon BBQ glaze: mmmm, connective tissue) but I definitely won with my chocolate-pistachio pavé dessert (with tea-infused ice cream, oh heck yes). We both had cider-braised pig cheeks (with red cabbage and delicious, delicious potato-Jerusalem artichoke gratin) as our entrée; Peter’s mom and his aunt Lois each had the same winter salad I had as an appetizer, and the sweet potato gnocchi with butternut squash and mushrooms and other tasty-looking schtuff. Long story short (too late!) a good time was had by all.

Likewise, The Smith‘s potato waffles Benedict are completely awesome, if way too rich for me to finish all by myself, especially with a belly still part-full of pumpernickel bagel. Still: so delicious! And remarkably quiet until a bit after 11 AM, aw yeah.

Speaking of waffles, I only just discovered the Waffleizer blog thanks to a link from food studies department-mate Christy, and oh the awesomeness, it is epic. If French toast waffles offend your sensibilities, then seriously, stay away from this blog.

Um, what else? Well, later this month The Foodprint Project is having a pretty sweet-looking event down in SoHo (fancy!)

Finally, remember that pasta Alfredo recipe I wrote and photo-documented for my brother Piett? Somehow in all my excitement about that post I managed to completely forget that it was two days before his birthday and therefore totally counted as an early present! Anyway, I updated the post to have a little footnote about that, because I am silly.

http://princeofcups.net/ Ouroboros

I.. can't.. stop.. looking.. at.. the.. waffle.. wrecks..
(and some part of my brain, the part that makes notes for contingency plans, is considering that a waffle iron might be the perfect desert-island-with-electric-power cooking tool)
http://homemademonth.wordpress.com/ Ansley Watson

I find many items at the Smith waaaaay too rich. I had potato chips with blue cheese fondue there once. It was a poor choice. On the other hand, their brunch is generally excellent.