Kourabiedes

At this time of year, you can often find me kneeling by the printer, but this year I've been spending time around our new Thermador PRG 304 Professional hearth where it is warm and cozy. We have no tree, no twinkling lights and the only Christmas music is heard by me or Chaim singing "Happy Birthday Micky Jesus".

So I Baked Cookies: Kourabiedes (Greek sugar cookies) in fact. Unfortunately, I haven't moved all my books from the studio and thus, the recipe is still tucked into the piano music in a box, so I had to look it up. I remember it to be a pretty easy recipe, consisting of only flour, sugar and butter. The three or four recipes I looked up had completely different measurements for the proportions for the three ingredients, some of them off by 1/2 cup, so I'm just winging it this year. They turned out pretty good though, and the house smells fabulous!

Ingredients (for this batch):

about 4 cups of flour plus a few handfuls more.
about 1-1/2 lbs of butter
2 cups of powder sugar plus a few more cups for dusting
3 tbsp ground cloves
1tbsp Madagascar vanilla
1 tsp baking powder
3 egg yolks
1/4 cup Johnnie Walker Gold Label 18 year old Scotch (I couldn't find any brandy)
1-1/2 cup chopped almonds

Beat, mix, fold, all ingredients until the hand mixer starts to stall, and begins to smell like the motor is about to burn out. Then take over by hand, and knead to finish mixing. Roll into small balls the size of a grape, then smaller about the size of a frozen green pea, for the second batch when you realize they expand and will not fit into the small tins. Bake in a 350 degrees oven for 15 minutes. Let cool and dust with remaining powder sugar.


Excerpts from the following story was included in a Holiday card a few years ago. Here it is in it's entirety explaining why I love these cookies so much.

Bach Inventions with Sassa

Sassa Maniotis was my piano teacher when I was six. She went to Juilliard a long, long time ago. Her husband was an important geneticist who taught at Washington University, and they were the most interesting Greek couple who lived in a very large 3-story Tudor house behind the school. In the front room where most people had plushy upholstered couches and end tables, she had two Steinway Grand pianos. This is where I used to go for lessons once, then later twice a week. She always had a Pall Mall unfiltered cigarette hanging out of the corner of her mouth. She would keep time to my Bach by clapping loudly over my left shoulder. After each few measures, she would spit the stray tobacco from her mouth and shout “AGAIN!” When I got older and started wearing jewelry, big 1980’s bracelets and plastic rings, she would make me remove them at the door, so it would not hinder my practice. I once asked her what she thought of Liberace and she just grunted. Grand pianos were made to be a shiny jet black not a blinding white after all. She would inspect my overgrown nails before stepping up to the bench. If she found them to be more than an eighth of an inch in length, she would make me bite them down to the quick. She disliked the clicking of nails more than Liberace’s white pianos. I describe her as though she could be frightening and militaristic, but once you got past the fear, and became accustomed to her chain-smoking habits, she was a good woman, and a wonderful teacher.

I once sprained my right wrist playing softball and she composed a short piece, a left-handed invention for me to practice on during the two weeks my right hand was out of commission.
During the holiday season, when I arrived for my lessons, I could count on the haze of smoke mingling with the welcoming scent of cloves and cinnamon, and on the front foyer table, a tin of Kourabiedes, delicious traditional Greek cookies coated with ample powdered sugar that she had just baked. It was hard to sneak a handful of the treats. It’s as if the cookies were designed with so much powdered sugar that when I tried to take more than my share, I would be left with the incriminating dusting of white on my hands and clothes.

One year, the Thursday before Christmas, Sassa asked me to come early for my lesson. Not having practiced as much as I should have, I was sure I’d be lectured before we began the warm up scales. Instead she invited me into her kitchen and we kneaded dough, and mixed together a sprinkle of this and a dash of that. That lesson was one of the most memorable: as I played the repetitive exercises of Czerny for my teacher/baker, and as my fingers became more limber with the warm-up, the house too became warm with the aroma of the Kourabiedes. Later that evening I went home with a copy of the recipe tucked between the Adagio and Allegretto of Beethoven’s Sonata Op. 31, No22.

This thick volume, where the flour-dusted recipe still holds place to this day, was given to me on my 15th birthday. Inside the first page of the cover, Sassa wrote this inscription: To Micki On her 15th B’day Use Beethoven Well Love Sassa Maniotis. Sassa presented this book to me after the kitchen lesson and we started right away working through the first Sonata. It was composed and dedicated to Joseph Hayden. I love the piece for just that fact alone.
Three months after that lesson, I was playing that piece without a metronome, keeping speed and time in my brain. 4 months after that, skipping 16 works, Sassa had me playing the last piece: Sonata Op. 31, No2. And 8 weeks after that I quit piano lessons for good. I had become a bratty uncontrollable teenager, and piano was the last thing I wanted to be doing. By jumping to the last work, she almost knew that it would be the last piece I would play with her, and she probably wanted the both of us to feel that we had gotten through this daunting 341-page book together. On the pages of that last sonata, Sassa wrote a lot of demanding things with exclamation marks. Practice! Bring the metronome! There was a scolding tone in the pencil marks.

Recently, we visited Buffalo for one of Chaim's many cousins' Bat Mitzvah. His 9 year old nephew was there as well, a very good piano player. At our wedding he got right up with the band and played some keyboard. He is a fearless player. In Buffalo, he put on a concert for the family, making up programs and raffles, and even had a sing-along karaoke while he played back-up to our off key singing. He hit the notes, and was playing well, but I listened to him, remembering my practicing habits a year before I gave up the piano. I could hear that his heart was no longer in it; he played, just as I had, in quick ramming strokes, getting through the piece so that he could go on to the next song. When he missed notes, he didn't care, and kept going. I told Chaim that he will have retired his Suzuki books and quit by this time next year. Last time Chaim spoke to his sister, he found out that his nephew received a drum set for Chanukah, and we were sending him some wire drumming brushes wrapped with a bow.

Unlike the Suzuki method of teaching piano, Sassa did not rely on any one text, and would tailor a composer to each individual student, depending on many factors; their talent, their finger reach, basically what the student could handle. I have small hands, and could only reach one or two keys beyond an octave, but I loved Chopin. So probably against her discretion, Sassa changed the fingering as written and let me play Chopin. I was a mechanical player -- I could play anything when you put music in front of me, and I could sight read like nobody’s business. But…I could never play anything unless there was sheet music in front of me or I had the piece memorized.

I played everything by rote. I so envied the players who could improvise, just sit down and start playing random notes, jazz players especially. The first guy in art school that I had a crush on, in fact, had this talent. He was not very attractive, a cross between a camel and Harry Connick Jr. But he could play piano like Harry Connick, and in smoky dive bars no less, making it that much more appealing. We'd sneak into the school auditorium, or the church down the street and he’d teach me to do the base line, the simple repetitive 3 or 4 chords, so we could play together. He could go on for hours and riff.

I must have had talent though. Especially compared to another of Sassa’s students, Joshua Cohen. Poor Joshua, he really tried hard but somehow just couldn't get it. He was the older brother of my classmate Anna, and had been taking lessons 2 years longer, but it took him 3 times more time to get the fingering down, or to remember that the piece was in A major not B#. I used to come for my lessons following him, so on the days when my mother dropped me off early, I’d have to sit on the runner carpet in the foyer and listen to him struggling. We would pass each other in the hall each time; me with a look of compassion, and he with a look of defeat. Poor Joshua.

When you type in the words Piano and Prodigy in the Google search engine, 80 percent of your hits will refer you to a cute Asian girl or boy sitting at the piano or holding a tiny violin. This percentage was higher in the early eighties I imagine, and growing up in a part of the country where there were few Asians, somehow in the back of Sassa’s mind, I think perhaps this is what she wanted me to become. After all, I was already living the stereotypical child prodigy life; being two grades ahead in math skills, going to Saturday Japanese language schools, and taking piano lessons.

One year, to get me further prepped for a life of competitions, Sassa signed me up for theory classes at the music conservatory, five blocks from the Maniotis house and one block from the public library. This meant that on top of my lesson with Sassa, I would be going to the conservatory one day a week to learn about note reading, intervals and scales, pitch values, triad inversions among other theories I was already playing but not really understanding.

I had been playing piano for about 7 years by then, so they first had to test me to see what level of theory I should be taking. The testing process was brutal. I was blindfolded and led into a room and seated in the far corner of what I assumed, by the echoes, of a large room. I heard feet shuffling, lots of sniffles, and whispering giggles of kindergartners. After what seemed like 30 minutes, an adult male voice cleared his throat, and spoke.

“Miss Watanabe, I will first play a note, then from it, a chord. First I will play it, and then will play it as an arpeggio. Please tell me what note on the keyboard, then tell me the chord, and what key the chord is in”

You must be joking… Every time I got the answer wrong, I would hear giggles, and shuffling. I sat in the corner blindfolded giving incorrect response after another, for what felt like an eternity, and when the blinds were removed, I saw that it was worse than I thought. In a large recital room, I had been sitting about 20 feet from a Steinway, and in another corner, about 25 3-4 year-olds were sitting classroom style facing me, giggling and shifting, swinging their legs. I ran out crying…

My theory teacher turned out to be a man in his mid-forties, with really, really, really bad b.o. I couldn't bear to concentrate when he leaned over to point out something on the sheet music. Music Theory Classes lasted about a month. By then, I think that Sassa realized I would not begin competing and I believe I quit piano cold turkey.

Looking back at the sheet music, I get glimpses of those days with nostalgia and sadness. My mother was right after all, I should have practiced more. Looking over Sassa’s handwriting, and the endearing notes she wrote in the margins, I long to have a place to keep a grand piano (even a baby grand) if not to play, but in memory of my beloved piano teacher.

Now in our new house, in a few weeks we will have everything the two of us owns in one single place. This seems unbelievable. Currently my electronic weighted keyboard upright sits to the right of my computer desk unplugged. It is now temporarily being used as place to pile all the papers and school books.

My new year resolution is this:

Once all the books are unpacked, I will open up the Bach Inventions, practice the scales and begin where I left off ,over twenty years ago and begin again with Beethoven.

Last Day of Chanukah

We missed a few nights of candle lighting due to Chaim getting a rare eye condition called Iritis, but now things are slowly going back to normal. We had our customary non kosher dinner this evening. Chaim cooked an international meal of: Belize conch with Korean sauce, a white rice casserole made with sausage from Schaller and Webber, Feta and Parmesan cheese, and a bit of red sauce. We aren't trying to be anti-Jewish, in fact we realized that we always eat this way and just noticed it during Chanukah.

We exchanged gifts, even though we said we wouldn't buy into the commercial hype. I got an electric toothbrush, a gift that may at first seem very unromantic, but in the end, it's about taking care of one's health, so it turns into a loving gesture. And I got Chaim a sample kit of popcorn; 8 different kinds of popcorn with some coconut oil (which is like 98% saturated fat) and movie spices. It's called the Amish country popcorn kit, and we wondered what coconut oil has anything to do with the Amish.

On the Third Day of Chanukah My True Love Gave to Me...

Chaim went to Manhattan Chinatown for lunch, and brought back my favorite Vietnamese Sandwiches, and just like our past two nights of non kosher eating, we feasted on Shrimp with special sauce over rice, and the crumbled pork between delicious French bread.

Today's appropriate Times story is titled "A Holiday Medley, Off Key", where they discuss multi-religious and interfaith couples. The article lists examples of many Jewish families that have Christmas Trees, and most families try to balance out their separate religions and try to have an equal amount of decorations strung up around the house.
This year we don't have a tree. First we don't have space for it amongst the boxes and mess, and secondly, we don't know where any of the boxes of ornaments are. Just the other day I did unearth a cooler full of Christmas Tree lights, but decided it was too much to deal with. Chaim set up a holiday display on my Aluminium CD rack (replacing an Aluminium tree). On the top shelf is a Nutcracker doll, then some random tree ornaments he found on the street, the most humorous of them being the Family Guy, then under that is another Menorah Chaim found somewhere in an Upper East Side thrift shop, displaying some Day of the Dead figurines.
So far, celebrating Chanukah, has been a good replacement, a contained ornamented holiday with lots of time in the kitchen which is a double bonus because it warms up the house.

Oh and by the way, a Babka update. The dough finally rose after about 8 hours, and this morning I kneaded and twisted it into a nice sticky mess, and placed it into the oven to bake for 45 minutes just like the recipe called for. And much to my surprise, it is actually good. Chaim says "wow this is the real deal!, it tastes like it was made by a women who wears a wig". It doesn't look as good as the picture in the times, and I think it tastes like coffee cake.

Chaim works for the NYC Ballet, teaching dance appreciation to the schools, and so he seems to be in a lot more of a Christmas mood out of the two of us. The project he brings to schools is the Nutcracker Suite and so you can often hear him humming "Dance of the Sugar Plumb Fairies".
Since my birthday is on Christmas, even with out a tree, wreaths, mistletoe, and lights, we will always have something to celebrate. So when ever we hear a Christmas Carol being played on T.V. or radio, Chaim immediately starts to sing along, but makes it into a Birthday song for me:
so instead of

"We wish you a merry Christmas,
We wish you a merry Christmas,
We wish you a merry Christmas,
and a Happy New Year!",

Chaim will sing
"I wish you a Happy Birthday,
I wish you a Happy Birthday,
I wish you a Happy Birthday,
to-oo Mick-i Jesus!

Also today we got phone service, through Verizon. The technician was due anytime between 8am-12pm, and he actually came at 8:15 and was done in two hours!!!! That's what I call a great Chanukah present!

On the Second Day of Chanukah my true love gave to me...

Well actually no presents were exchanged but I won my first game of Dreidel. I won a whole $3.00. It was a short game in that on the second spin, when it was my turn to call the ante, I went all in, because my wrist hurt, and won the pot when Chaim landed on the shin letter, and he couldn't put one in.

For today's gastronomic experiment, I saw that the Wednesday food section had a write up on Babka, so I decided to give it a try. Chaim's friend Darra Goldstein, (who curated his plastic spoon collection into the Feeding Desires Show at the Cooper Hewitt) was quoted in the article defining: "Babka comes from baba, a very tall, delicate yet rich yeast-risen cake eaten in Western Russia and Eastern Poland." Unfortunately, it involves yeast as Darra says, and definitely not my forte. I am now waiting, ( have been for about an hour now) for the dough to rise, and I don't think the mound has moved in the vertical direction one inch.

We lit our candles tonight, this time three, and because last nights candle burned the right side of tonight's candle, the third candle burned much shorter than it should have. I hope the dough rises before the candles burn out.

Are we supposed to eat Latkes for 8 days???

Happy Chanukah!....
Some spell it Hanukkah, but now that I am married to Chaim, anything with a "hu'gh" sound with forever be spelled with a CH.

Trying to get with the spirit of my new borrowed holiday, I took out our new menorah, given to us by Pat and Mia. (We had put two of them on our gift registry thinking that we could use them all year round as candelabras, but since Mia works at the Skirball Center in LA, they probably were on to us, and only got us one from the Jewish Museum gift shop).

It's great to be able to begin using our wedding gifts for our home. The only candles I could unearth were the two packs of Manischewitz Shabbat candles I had bought years ago for the 9-11 emergency kit. Since the cans of Dinty Moore beef stew had been consumed, the candles were the only things left in the kit, so I figured this would be a good time to use them up as well. Only, I learned that Shabbat candles and Chanukah candles are different sizes and burn different lengths. Chanukah candles are much smaller so I had to shave off the bottom inch of the Shabbat candles to fit them into our new menorah. I stated shaving and filled all 9 candle holders, only to be told that you are only supposed to place only the candle you are burning into the menorah. Stubbornly I left them all in and so the first candle began to melt the second night's light, so tomorrow will be a little shorter festival of light.

I came home tonight with three potatoes and 4 beets thinking to make some Latkes for Chaim, in honor of the holiday. For some reason, I had in my mind that beets had something to do with this holiday..... I didn't have any chicken shmaltz, so I used a mixture of olive and vegetable oil. In addition, I added some of the fresh sage from Jill and Aaron's garden. The last batch, I shredded some beets and we put a little bit of wasabi on them (we didn't have any horseradish) for an interesting twist. Chaim and I both wanted apple sauce on the latkes instead of sour cream, so I sent him out to the Dynasty to get some. On his way out started chanting "pork chops and apple" sauce to myself, something from an old Brady Bunch episode, and 15 minutes later, Chaim returned with the apple sauce and some pork chops, telling me that this is not really kosher.

So this is what I learned today:
Beside the fact that you are only supposed to put the candles you are lighting in the menorah, the 9th candle is called the shamas, and this one lights all the other candles. And unlike the punk sparkler you use to light fireworks, this candle stays lit the whole time the other candles are lit, so just like taking antibiotics, on the first night you take two and light both. I also learned that since Chanukah candles are smaller, you are not supposed to use them for the Sabbath, since the burn time is much shorter. Therefore, our Menorah candles are actually on for way too long according to the family Jew. But I say we are just having a deluxe first Chanukah in our new Woodside home.

My only question is, are we supposed to eat latkes for the next seven nights???????

Recyling after Thanksgiving

Recycling pick up on our block happens on Mondays and Thursdays, and often lands on a National holiday; Memorial day, etc...

Since we spent the whole weekend unpacking instead of gorging ourselves with turkey and comatose on the couch watching football, we ended up with more than 300 empty boxes to put out on the curb...only this pile ended up becoming a fire hazard blocking our entryway until the next time the Recycling truck came rolling by.

Library of Congress vs. Dewey

Thanksgiving weekend was spent mostly unpacking. I spent approximately 8-10 hours a day cataloguing about 350 books. Yes, I know, I'm a freak.... I pretty much know what books I have, but decided to put call numbers on them when I realized Chaim and I would be combining all of our books together, to make it easier for us to find them. There are a lot of art and design books, so most of the shelves up to this point are filled with N books. I'm much more comfortable with the Library of Congress than the Dewey Decimal call number system of dividing up the books, but the ones that I didn't agree with, I put my own numbers and catalogued them to make sense of it.

I have a few oddball volumes; from Rob, from one of his trips home to Holland, an operetta by Robert Wilson in Dutch; and a found hardback architectural sketchbook with a forged inscription by an ex-boyfriend. These get catalogued in their own special places.

In the new glass fronted shelves that was given to us by Mordecai ben Chaim, we have started an autographed book section. My copy of The Corrections from Jonathan Franzen sits surrounded by Chaim's numerous books from famous authors and artists.
There are about 20 more boxes in the studio that will be unpacked soon, and we haven't even begun with the fiction. oy vay!

Joining our Stuff.

We are finally at the stage of moving boxes and beginning to unpack. This is the first time that Chaim and I will have all of our belongings together under one room. When I say all of our belongings, this means my studio (with large power tools), old art in crates from the countless sculpture exhibits where nothing was sold, my library, both of our art works and report cards from elementary school, his 10,000+ menu collection, his collection of hockey sticks, plastic spoons, chewing gum, graffiti stickers, 30 lbs of keys, and the list goes on for may pages.

My mother came with a car load of belongings I didn't even want or have room for.


Two weekends ago, Chaim and I took a one way flight to Buffalo and drove a 12 foot truck filled with more stuff, like the aforementioned hockey stick collection back to New York. Thank goodness we got a few pieces of furniture to store some of this stuff in. Currently we are living in a cramped house, resembling more of an antique or thrift shop. We have very little furniture, so the boxes and crates act as night stands, and side tables.

Since Chaim and I have been living the luxurious lifestyle (NOT!) of having two apartments plus a 500 sqft studio, we have doubles, and sometimes triples of some items. In the Kitchen, these multiple items are most prevalent. We have just unpacked only one quarter of our boxes marked KITCHEN, and already we have a few boxes of repetitive gadgets and flatware, items that will soon be packed away to be given away the next kid we know that goes off to college, or sold for very cheaply in our first ever yard sale in the spring. We also finally got to unpack and open our wedding presents and are glad to say we still like what we picked from the Williams and Sonoma registry.

Though we are no longer collecting rainwater, our whole kitchen cabinetry is constructed out of used furniture. The first set I constructed out of our old crappy MDF entertainment center. There will be cabinet doors made from a collection of fruit crate wood, among other scrap wood I have from the studio.

We Are So Brown.

It's not easy being green, as I've stated months back when I re-tiled the bathroom in Chaim's apartment on the Upper East side. Now after months of trying to live an Eco-conscious lifestyle, we are now throwing in our non-biodegradable towel and giving up. I got a package in the mail from HSBC bank, with a "go green kit". It contained a very dim fluorescent bulb, this note pad, (that's really just a waste of paper since there is hardly space to make a list due to all the ads), a reusable bag that's too small to use in my current lifestyle, and a whole lot of papers and pamphlets talking about being green. It seems that this green living promoted by huge corporations is a sham.

Let me explain though, that we did try very hard to be green:

1. Recycling Rain Water:
After we discovered how much rain water comes out of our rooftop gutter every time it pours, we began collecting bottles and bottles of it in the 2 litre Schweppes Seltzer bottles. The last time we had a downpour, Chaim was outside on the parapet getting soaking wet collecting rain water for about 20 minutes. He proudly dragged in 32 bottles and we brought them down to our side garden, being so proud of ourselves that we could water our garden guilt free the next time a drought hit Queens.

The bottles sat in our garden for about one day, looking as though we were about to throw a party or we ransacked the Schweppes bottle plant. The next morning, we awoke to 3 bottles sitting in our garden, with our front sidewalk littered with white caps. Apparently, the Hispanic recycling ladies came by and emptied all our bottles so they could get the nickel for the bottles. They had the nerve to dump out all our hard work and pollute our front sidewalk with non recyclable plastic caps.

2. The compost heap.
Early in the summer, I built a nice compost bin out of the lathe that came out of our house. It is compact, well fairly compact (3x4x3 foot box) with a swinging front gate. We have been throwing in all kinds or organic matter into it daily. The amount of organic waste we create, along with the leaves and vines we pulled off the tree proved too much for my little box. Now mind you, we have not had a kitchen for 3 months, so there is not that much food waste being produced out of our house. Just last week, Chaim cleaned out the table saw (though demolition is over, he is still in charge of garbage and food), and dumped five drywall buckets of sawdust into the compost heap. Since the heap is situated in the back of the yard, we thought that the flies and gnats that it attracted would help in deterring our next door neighbors (i.e. the Ecuadorian night club kitchen workers) from opening the Fire exit door to our garden.

It is now November and we still have gnats flying about, sometimes in our downstairs bathroom. Last week I found a slug that had meandered into the house dragging a hair of corncob husk from a summer barbecue, no doubt from the compost pile. There's so much stuff in there, that it is hard to turn the pile, which you are supposed to do every few weeks. And most people tell us that it will take a long time before we can use it for the garden. In the mean time, we need the space outside so that I can build a small shed for the new barbecue grill (given to us by mom and pop Mordecai) along with other gardening odds and ends, since there is no longer room in the garage for such things.

3. Fluorescent light bulbs.
I like the idea of having these low energy saving bulbs in every socket in the house. I've been collecting them, sending away for them, from places like HSBC every time they have a give away program. There are two problems with these bulbs, not including the fact that they are not bright enough to work under.

1. They are a weird shape and thus, do not fit under the glass fixtures in the ceiling lights. The two I screwed in the bathroom fixture immediately broke under the compression of the glass dome covering. The ones installed in the kitchen were too big also, thus, I had to remount the glass cover upside-down, and it looks ridiculous. The second problem is that the new dimmer switches we installed to operate the fans in the remainder of the rooms are not compatible with florescent lights. In fact we learned that no dimmer switches work with these bulbs. So now we have a lot of bulbs sitting in the laundry closet awaiting a new system.

The plumbers have not returned yet, so we are saving fuel, since we are only heating 1/3rd of the house. That's about all we are doing to stay green, or shall we say blue.....

The Missing Plumber

Currently it is 50 degrees outside, and inside it is 65. We have no heat on the first floor of the house. Chaim thinks that Rakeesh the plumber is a sadist. He was suppose to return to finish the job three weeks ago, before my mother came to visit. She has come and gone and still we have pipes dangling out of the walls dripping water into takeout containers, not connected to anything. Rakeesh teases our GC and tells him he will be over at 3pm, and never shows up; never calls and never shows up. He has pulled this stunt at least 3 times. At first we were sympathetic, "oh he must be very busy, " now I think," he better have a good excuse, like gotten into an accident for him to blow us off!"

I think he damaged his testicles, and that's why he has not returned.

Moving

Exactly three months and one day after we closed on our house, Chaim and I finally moved upstairs to our new bedroom. Actually we moved only our mattress (placed back on the floor) and hung up our ketubah on the wall. From our spot on the floor, the ceilings seemed cathedral-like and we yelled to hear our voices echo off the bare walls.

It is now October and the weather has been unusual. One day it is 85 degrees and the next day torrential rain storms with a hurricane warning, and later still the evening dips down in the low 40's. Chaim had a brilliant goofy idea of installing a spigot onto our gutter downspout so that it would be easy to collect rain water. Instead he sits outside in the downpour, with a funnel filling our many seltzer bottles. Rakeesh and his guys have yet to come back and reinstall our radiators, thus we have no heat. We also don't know if our furnace works since the shiny blue machine in the garage has not been hooked up to anything. We hope that he will come back before we can see our breaths inside.

Today, Frankie and his guys are supposed to come back to finish up the electrical work. The list is long, and we are still waiting for the ceiling fan dimmer switches to arrive by Fed-Ex. He will definitely be coming back at another date.

Since the last post we have had Kevin and Fabio (Fernando) come to Stucco the parapet. I was joking about putting in some Doric columns outside, covering the brick, and when I came back upstairs to see how they were doing, he had carved out two pilasters out of 3 inch styrofoam. The process was done in a few steps. On top of the plywood walls, a pink plastic was nailed on. Then on top of that, one inch white styrofoam, made of the same material as coffee cups, gets screwed on with big plastic washers. Then they apply a white fiberglass mesh, similar to what you use to tape drywall joints. Then the first coat of stucco goes on. This step took about 10 hours to do. The next day a different group of guys came back and applied the top coat of stucco on to finish it off. Kevin came back a few days later by himself to caulk the joints.
Smith also came over one day to help paint the final coat of primer on the kitchen area where Diego finally finished mudding.
One of the days I was teaching, the roofer came and cut two holes in our roof and installed some mushroom vents. He also applied a layer of the silver coating to improve the surface of the roof.
The days I was not at school, I hung our closet doors and finished off the bedroom with baseboard molding. I used clear pine and didn't route any edges, so all the simple 90 degrees angles makes our bedroom looking a bit like a Shaker room.

Floors

On Thursday, Rico's guys showed up early in the AM and began sanding. The first thing they did was to take the electric panel off the main circuit box and wired their big Gallaxy 2000 sander to the breaker. They were not going to take any chances with the electricity in the upstairs rooms. They replaced the warped floor boards in the bedroom and patched holes and cracks with putty. It was a day with different accented English spoken by the crew of Jamaican dudes.
I spent most of the day downstairs under the banging working on the computer. At around 7pm, they had put the second coat of polyurethane on the floor and said they would return on Saturday morning to do the final coat.
We avoided the upstairs for two days, wanting it to dry without disturbances and waiting for the smell to dissipate.

It is now 10:30am on Saturday morning and we are sitting here waiting for them to show up. We just went up to peak at the work and was a bit disappointed. The floors are way too glossy, and polyurethane really turned them yellow. Plus the new boards they laid down do not match the old color, and the putty did not turn yellow to match the rest of the wood. I hope they come soon, so we can have them fix it.

A Peach for a Peach

Last night's meal at EGB was a little different. On top of BYOB, we also BYOPP: we brought our own peach pie. The last of the peaches on our tree were picked by an artist named Meg Duguid, who does performance art with pies. She and her boyfriend came over about a month and a half ago and took the remaining peaches of the season. We were a little bummed that the peaches were no more, but when she told us that she would bake two pies, and one would be shipped to Chicago, and the other to us, we got excited.
Two nights ago, we ended up having dinner later than usual. It ended up kinda late since le porte-fenetre had to be installed. Slappy and Taco came to install it after their normal work day was over, so we wrapped up around 10:30pm. We rushed over to EGB before they closed and as usual, had the place all to ourselves. We noticed it was more quiet than usual, due to the fact the daughter wasn't there to wait on us. The mother told us that she was at the emergency room all day, for a sinus infection. She had gone to school earlier that day to take a test, and couldn't focus, so she left school with t high fever. We also found out that the family calls her Peach, because she is cute and sweet. So when the pie arrived in the mail, we thought it would only be appropriate to bring Peach a piece of pie as a get well gesture. The four of us returned last night, (this time PV instead of Slappy) with the crate in tow, weighing $60 worth of shipping and handling. After dinner, Paul, the owner-dad, heated the pie up for us in the oven and brought it back up. We had ordered a new appetizer called Golden Bag- a deep fried wanton skin filled with shrimp, water chestnut, and mushroom, served with a delicious sweet lime sauce that tasted like key lime pie. So we requested for more of that sauce and put a big dollop onto the peach pie. The crust was a bit undercooked, but the peaches had been soaked in ginger for a week, and were delicious! We ate half the pie and left the remaining half with the restaurant for Peach. I had noticed that the restaurant had a Junior's cheesecake sitting on the counter, when we walked in. Apparently we could have some of that tonight for dessert when we go back.

Our order: Golden Bag- excellent.
Golden Corn- ground chicken, corn, cilantro, red curry and Thai sauce- very good.
Fresh Roll aka Por pia (Chinese sausage, shrimp, eggs, bean sprout, tofu and cucumber with tamarined sauce)- good but kinda ho hum.
Everything Pad Thai- good but a bit too sweet.
PV got the Mustang burger-Louisiana spices and jack cheese- excellent according to him.
Taco got the Thai Burger-Thai curry and peanut sauce- excellent according to him.
total bill was $38.00 plus tip. WOW.

We can almost see the light at the end of the Tunnel

Early on Saturday, Chaim began the demolition for the upstairs patio, aka, bump-out, parapet, smoking section.
I dug up my old cold chisel and sledge hammer, a tool I hadn't used since trying a hand at stone carving my Junior year at KCAI.
Apparently, that was the right tool, because Chaim finished the job in less than 3 hours.







After all the exterior rubble and stucco was cleared away, it was unbelievably simple for the rotted away wood wall to come down. Almost too simple!!!










Right after the guys took the 3 walls down, it began to pour. The weatherman had obviously lied about his forecast for the weekend. I went to the bank and when I returned I found this Rube Goldberg-esque set up, diverting the roof rain water from coming into the house.












The guys set the new French doors in the spot where we think it should go.
One evening last week, a woman from Paris came over to interview me for her Ph.D dissertation. After the interview, I brought her upstairs to show her the reason my studio is still in storage.
We asked her "what are French doors called in France?", expecting an answer similar to-"Chinese food in China is called food". But instead she told us that French doors in France are called porte fenêtre or door with windows. So now we have both, a porte fenetre and a porte sans fenetre!
Slappy takes a break from the work to have a quick hamburger from our favorite spot across the street: EGB. He and PV ended up eating 4 meals in a row from there that weekend. Lunch, then a buffalo wing snack, then dinner with the rest of the crew, then another full day of eating on Sunday.










A view of the demolition bits and pieces from the upstairs parapet piled in front of the house after we threw it out the upstairs window. It sure beat having to walk up and down the stairs with it all!

Ralphie, a man of many hats.
Frankie, Ralphie and Joe, (aka Spencer, Giseppe, etc..)
return for the umpteenth time to install some more wiring.
Hopefully the next visit will be their last.

The 2x4 and plywood wall goes back up in the parapet, awaiting the final installation of our porte fenetre. But before the doors can go in, the roofer must come and put a new membrane on the area.
This Thursday Rico, the floor guy comes to sand and polyurethane the floors!!!! But before then, David and Flocko, the Argentinians have to come back and sheet rock the ceiling of the kitchen and the walls for the new parapet. We don't have time for the mud guy or painting before Thursday, so I suppose all that will get done after............

A Blast From The Past.

In this week's Sunday Real Estate Section, there is an article about my old apartment: 30 Clinton Street, and how the board turned down my first prospective buyer. The story clears up some unanswered questions I had of the woman who almost bought 6G; what she did, what her circumstances were, etc... I look back to my first apartment building fondly, and I miss especially Kemel, our super and all around great fix-it man, but don't miss the months of being on the market. Thank goodness that phase of my life is over.

Food Review #4: The Free Pizza and others

We haven't had a good Chaim-cooked meal at home for some time, since the stove is not hooked up and a thick layer of plaster dust covers the kitchen. The other night, we decided to order in and get pizza. We had already tried a so-so pepperoni pizza from Pizza Boy II on Roosevelt Ave., and decided to try a different place.

So we looked in our menu folder and came across this place. (50-22 39th Ave)

The menu is one of those quintessential Italian 7 page documents, with every type of pasta, pizza and salads, with catering, just like Carmine's in Manhattan. They have a fresh Mozzarella Margarita pizza, so we decided this place was worth ordering from. The large is priced at $19.95, five dollars more than the rest of the pizzas. We thought it must be a tremendous pie! We called at 7pm, and they said it would take 30-45 minutes. An hour later, no pizza, so we called to see what was taking so long. Oh it's on it's way they said. Forty minutes later, still no pizza, and we are starving. The phone rings at this point, and Donato's is calling us apologizing profusely saying someone took our pizza. I said to forget it, we don't want the damn pizza, and the manager said, "It's on us, we will give it to you for free". Five minutes later a huge mediocre pizza arrived at our door. The crust was undercooked. (what can you expect with them rushing) and the mozzarella cheese was cut into 1 inch chunks. If we had paid $20 we would have been very upset.

It's hard to get a pizza as good as Grimaldi's in Queens.

There are however many other things we can get here that I couldn't get to eat in Brooklyn Heights. Like corn slathered with mayo, sprinkled with Mexican queso blanco and dusted with red chili peppers. Mmmmmmmm. When I was little, in St. Louis, I used to put mayo on my corn when everyone else was melting sticks of butter on theirs. They would look at me appalled, to see the mayo/corn combo hit my mouth. I was so excited when Chaim took me to Spanish Harlem years ago, and saw that corn on a stick with mayo was normal.

A little man was passing by our house with his shopping cart, with a cooler filled with steaming corn, and some large tupperware containers. He had about 50 layers of aluminum foil folded together as his hot mitt, so that he could hold onto the steaming corn as he put layers of mayo and cheese on it. It was delicious, and all for $2.




Our third visit to EGB or "Eat Great Burger: Thai and American" Restaurant.

Last night, we went back to our new favorite eating place across the street. Since our last visit, they had replaced the hand written sign saying "we have Thai desserts for sale" to a more professional looking ink jet printed sign taped to the front window. They had hooked up the television and had a bowl of silk flowers sitting on the bar. There was even one other table occupied, by a Thai family. It turned out that it was one of the chef and her family. We were greeted warmly like always, and sat at the window table for the first time.

We had brought an open bottle of wine from home so the daughter brought us some glasses right away. After filling our glasses, she says, "five minutes, I come back"

Three minutes later, she came back and seeing that we didn't have enough to drink (it was only a half bottle) she asks us,
"do you like beer?"
skeptically we answer back, "what kind of beer?"
"we have a beer in the refrigerator."
knowing they still don't have a liquor license, we ask again, "what kind of beer?"
"it's a small beer. it was left."
"can we see the beer?"
"ok." and she comes back with a bottle of non-alcoholic Coors lite.
"you don't like?"
Then we have to explain that it is not really beer, that it's basically beer flavored water.

We decided to order new things, and no repeats from other visits. The second visit, when we came with PV, we got the Buffalo chicken wings (excellent), fried calamari (very good), a repeat of the green papaya salad, a Pad Thai (excellent) and a Cesar salad. PV was amused at the site of the Cesar salad and papaya salad coming off of the same menu.

This time we ordered the Naked Shrimp salad (excellent), tabbouleh (which they didn't have yet), beef stewey noodle soup with a hint of cinnammon and anise (excellent but almost too rich) and a ground chicken salad that I can't remember the name of (very good). We also ordered some sticky rice, and got a mound of it wrapped in a banana leaf. This is the first time in all the hundreds of times I've been to Thai restaurants that I didn't get microwaved sticky rice wrapped in saran wrap inside a wood basket.

The daughter told us she is studying to better her English to get her MBA. She wants to become an accountant. I asked the High School son how school is going? and he said he had swimming that day. I thought he was on the swim team, but he told us that he was learning to swim, and it's a good thing that he can float. We didn't see the father but I guess he was in the basement cooking away.All in all, our third meal at EGB was excellent.