Red Sauce

Perfection Irritates As Well As It Attracts

On Madison Avenue on the upper reaches of the respectable bits of the Upper East Side there are quite a few signless restaurants and delis. The French cafés thankfully have tasteful shading that protect the delicate paleskins from the summer sun and heat while they sit on the sidewalk and eat perfect omelets with perfect mixed green salads. The awnings delicately announce the cafes names.
But, in life you have to come to terms with the fact that rarely can you see what you are getting yourself into. And on the Upper East Side you have to come to terms with this fact as well as the idea that this is not your home and there are secrets within these clear windows that you can only figure out if you dare to go in. You just have to decide which one to take a chance with.
So, it takes some wandering before I decide where it is I will buy my lunch. For this, I usually have in in my right hand, my new go to friend - Raspberry sorbet on a sugar cone from Ciao Bella. The two hefty scoops my new friend at the ice cream shop plops on top of the cone gingerly, pressing them down into the cone and on top of each other contain such an intense raspberry flavor that it is amazing that the only ingredients are raspberry, ice and sugar. It just seems like something artificial has to go into it to make this flavor so purely raspberry.
Walking up and down and trying to decide whether or not the woman outside Yura and Company is going to go home and take a bottle of pills or spend the afternoon at pilates because of the years of her husbands absences and dalliances that have just washed away any color from her pale brown hair is much more satisfying with the sweet, intense raspberry cone in hand. But this woman, by the way, is really rocking that Lily Pulitzer skirt.
The Upper East Side and raspberry sorbet from Ciao Bella—two near perfect specimens of purity and my new guilty pleasures.

Oh, Give Me Land, Lots of Land

I was standing at a pole (once again) on the 4 train, staring at two fat balls of sweat hanging on to the edge of a woman’s forehead just across from me when I realized I have cabin fever. I need to get out of the city.
Yeah, yeah, I was all about embracing the summer in the city and my new full time freelance life is agreeing with me. My new full time freelance gig (lasting to November) even embraces biking to work with showers in the office and bikes in every cubicle.) But it’s hot, soupy and people are angry and I just need to rest my ass down near some water, lapping up and down the coast and then stare at the moon and the stars with a cold beverage in my hand.
In the meantime, I am planning on stocking up at the Farmers Market this weekend and perhaps actually making a meal worth telling you all about this weekend.
Last night, I saw a slight, angry woman start yelling at a big, bulky man on 14th street. The air was thick with humidity and for once the drops of water coming down and landing on my shoulder and neck was not air conditioner schmeg but instead it was rain, only intermittent drops, but still refreshing, uplifting, inspiring, optimistic rain.
The bulky guy in the oversized white t-shirt yelled back at this slight woman wearing sunglasses in the dark and then he raised a square, fat hand and punched her in the face, in the nose. She bowed down, held her nose and looked up as blood started streaming down her face. Several cell phone-equipped women started calling 911 frantically and stayed, transfixed at the scene. On nearby Fourth Avenue, the Mr. Softee truck was busy with a hot, impatient line of people waiting for their cones.
New York - just like I pictured it.
I wondered at the time, not what started the fight or even if they knew each other before (they didn’t seem to), but why none of the boys or “men” on the street called 911. They just kept on walking, for the most part.
When Latwonda was pregnant and, Willow has agreed, the white men never get up for the pregnant ladies on the subway and these men also don't call 911 when someone is attacked on 14th Street, apparently.

I Refuse to Smell the Roses

A trip to Trader Joe’s last night made me think that of the two kinds of people, those that like to make a "connection" or small talk with the people that they are making a transaction with (waiters, cashiers, salespeople) and those that would rather just make the transaction and move on, we need more of the latter.
First of all, I have never truly understood the appeal of Trader Joe’s. I know, it’s cheap, organic and they have containers of cookies for cheap and there is some cutesy shit going on like specials marked on chalkboards with clever slightly politically seeming messages. There is a cult surrounding this grocery store chain that I will never ever understand. There is even a web site that actually taste tests and rates its bottled sauces.
Since it’s peach season, and I am something of a peach fanatic (me and Ruth both, by the way), I don’t appreciate having to inspect my peaches through a dark shield. The peaches ("ripened") at Trader Joe’s, were in a plastic container with dark blue mesh over them. It’s hard to really see what you are buying. Why does Trader Joe’s not want you to see their produce? Instead it’s shrink wrapped or covered up. I gave up on the peaches finally.
At the 14th Street branch, the lines are always long and the shelves are bare. But isn’t that the case at every Trader Joe’s? And there are lots of NYU students standing agape at the shelves. And there are annoying couples deciding, arguing, cajoling, figuring what to put in their cart. And there are women in line making chit chat with each other. Ugh, it’s suburbia. I tore myself away from that years ago. I am cranky, always have been, never suited for the small talk unless I am shopping here, in my mom’s grocery store in Michigan.
Anyhow, this all brings me to William Grimes, former New York Times restaurant critic. When describing Bill Buford’s new book “Heat,” Grimes writes, “...he succumbs to what might be called the New Yorker fallacy, the belief that absolutely anything, if reported on in exhaustive detail and presented in glossy prose, will fascinate.”

Like a Virgin All Randy and Ready to Go

New York is in grocery store madness. It really looks like a collective mental illness. The new mega grocery stores are packed. People stand in lines for 20 minutes with their little cartons of food.

The days leading up to the opening of Trader Joe’s were anticipated as much as a middle aged virgin anticipates the first time. Web sites devoted themselves to counting down the days.

   On Saturday, a day after it opened, the place was packed, the shelves were bare and angry, ashen-faced people, mostly women, stood in line, grim-mugged with their ten things in their little carts, grumbling and dealing with every little shove with a tiny shove back.

    We left and went to Whole Foods which was irritating and packed but the line didn’t reach outside, as it eventually did when we walked back past Trader Joe’s.

     Grocery stores, the culmination of real estate and food.