From May 29th, 2008:
The sun is shining today, the world is new. It's springtime in New York.
I believed for the longest time that this was the greatest city in the world. I still do, to some extent. My friends are here. My bars. My food places. Ziggiz, on Twenty-Fifth and Third. Bread Tribeca on Church. Paquitos in the Kip's Bay. The Beer Garden down the street from my apartment. Carmine's Pizzeria on Graham Ave. in Brooklyn. Ditmars Gyro Place, the Neptune Diner, Sparrow. All places that have colored my culinary world.
These are a few of the stories of my eatings and drinkings.
I took Hannah to Bread Tribeca last year for her birthday. It was a nice day, all day. By the time we'd dressed and gotten from Astoria, Queens all the way to Tribeca in Manhattan, it had gotten a little gray. Once there, we sat outside, because it was just warm enough to eat outside and wasn't too humid or too cool. It was just right. I told her not to worry about cost, because this was her birthday and it was my treat.
Oh, and she had to pick the wine, because I don't know shit about wine. I still don't.
Those were the only caveats. The caveats of freedom.
She ordered a pear salad, a pasta with spicy tomato sauce. I had an onion, cucumber, tomato and toast salad with a vinaigrette and for dinner, I had pappardelle bolognese. The wine? I couldn't tell you, but I'll be damned if it wasn't fabulous and totally worth the $30 we paid for it (we usually spend at most, $10 on wine. I splurged one day and got "Frontier Red" by Fess Parker of DAvy Crockett fame. It wasn't very good and I was out $14.07. At 15% alcohol, it got me good and snookered. Put a crimp in attempt #2 to read Paradise Lost, though.)
After our dinner, we sat and talked and did out best to finish the bottle of wine that we had bought and thought, "Why not have dessert?"
She had a gelato with flaming strawberries and I had tiramisu (I'm a tiramisu fiend and will take it any way I can get it.). After we ordered out sweets, it began to sprinkle. A bit of rain here and there. Being a bit concerned for our safety and for the safety of our bottle of wine, we requested to be put inside. Our waitress, a delightfully foreign girl from where she originated, what her accent sounded like or what her name was, only that she was delightful and possibly the best waitress that we've had in the city, told us not to worry at all, that she would bring our desserts to us and that we ought to get inside immediately!
Not five minutes later, the skies opened up and dropped piles of water all over Manhattan. Lightning flashed, thunder boomed, cutting through the sound of traffic. There we were, slightly fuzzy, warm, dry and filled with the best food either of us has ever had. The desserts came and we ate them happily and with much pleasure.
Every Sunday, I would don my green army-style jacket, grab a comic book (for the longest while, it was the Sin City series that I was re-reading) and walk down to the Neptune, six blocks away. Being on my own, the hosts knew me, not my name, but by look and pointed me in the direction of the counter, in spite of arriving after a pile of church-going Greeks. I would sit down, begin to read my comic book and wait for my waiter. I didn't need to look at the menu. I knew exactly what I wanted: Waffles with a side of Sausage and a cup of Diner Coffee.
I would get through most of an episode in the comic book before my waffle would come. At its worst, it was a rock hard, overdone pastry, pocked with craters. At its best, it is bready, soft, sweet, with a hint of vanilla. Either way, it was the romance of a young man alone in the world. Those Hemingway moments that every young man has when he walks into a bar, or a restaurant, or a greasy spoon and knows that everything is going to be alright. This is the start of an adventure.
I would read and eat, my waffle swimming in too much butter and high fructose corn syrup, the heroes swimming through a hail of gunfire and dames, receiving far more punishment than any human being could or should. Beside me, I'd see old men, alone, eating their omelettes, silently conversing with their dead wives and regretting not having the courage to die when their mates did. I would see Long Island men filling their t-shirts with an equal portion of fat and muscle; the image of what a man is, and possibly ought to be. They smell vaguely of cigarettes and vanished dreams but laugh because, if nothing else, life is good. Behind me a slightly overweight girl ordered a shortstack of pancakes to go. My waiter asked her if she wanted bacon and inevitably the answer was yes.
They were good Sundays; mingling with the people and the city in which I live.
Today Sundays are better.
The first year I lived in Astoria, the first month in fact, I was one of many victims of The Great Queens Blackout of 2006. Today, it's mostly forgotten and the residents of Astoria barely mention it, but for a whole week, the residents of Astoria were without power. Not even the stove would light.
It had been so hot at Laguardia that the copper under the streets through which, flowed the life-giving power of the Borough melted, cutting off power to Astoria and Sunnyside. Knowing that it was that hot, you should understand what I was going through. Hot. Humid. Sticky and dark. I had no food that could be cooked. I could not get a shower. I could not do anything past 8pm.
For. A. Week.
Our 24-hour grocery store provided me with little reprieve. I would go just to experience the air conditioning and to get candles (because I was late to the store, I didn't get any plain candles and to this day, we have a St. Michael The Archangel candle in our collection. I also have 8 white candles that will serve in a pinch.). One night, I tried to write in the dark and drink Guiness Extra Stout.
The beer was as dark as the night, which ceased both writing and drinking.
I was working for a company called IAG Research, a company that studies product placement in television, which meant that I worked from 5:30pm to question mark. This meant I spent all day sweltering and sweating in my apartment (thankfully I lived in the basement, which made it cooler, but not by much) and then at night, went to work, unable to take a decent shower. the wednesday of the blackout, I decided that if I got out of work early enough, I wouldn't go home. I would go to a bar, somewhere far away and drink all night.
After my last show, I traveled south, to a place called Antarctica. It was appropriate. I was in the midst of a heat wave/blackout. A place called Antarctica would be the best place for a fella like me to cool off. And besides, I'd been there a week or two before and the bartender was an Aussie with tight clothes, blue eyes and dark hair. Being single and having all the hubris that this entails, I went back to drink, write a little and look at a pretty bartender.
The bartender I remembered wasn't there but another one was. I bellied on up and ordered a Guiness, sat and drank and wrote an adventure story for another girl whom I have never met. The ceiling was pressed tin and the mirror older than my father. Classic jukebox music played and the faux-pauvre played pool to AC/DC.
The bartender asked me where I was from and I told her Astoria and that I didn't want to go home. "See, I haven't had power in four days and I really don't want to go home," I said. She said she had heard about it and, out of pity, my fourth beer was on her (generous, yes. She let me pay for all my sorry drowning beers. she just fitted them with concrete boots).
I rebuffed an invitation to join five other people at the end of the bar, potential friends and I regret that I didn't hang out. I should have; it would be nice to have bar friends. Afterwards, I left the bar, a nice buzz going and completely forgetting that I had not left a tip for my last beer.
I remembered the next morning. To say that I remembered is a little misleading. I bolted up in bed with a generous headache, the vaguest sense that I had been poisoned and screamed, "I didn't tip the bartender!"
That afternoon, before I went to work, I went back to the bar, all the way down on the Spring Street stop of the C train, in the pouring rain, to take a tip that I owed her. When I got there, it was jumping with the Thirsty Thursday crowd. The man behind the bar looked at me and said, with a British accent, "What'll you have, mate?"
"The bartender that was here last night? Is she here?"
"Nah. She's off. What can I gitcha?"
"Nothing. I have to go to work," I said sopping and dripping on the floor. "I forgot to tip her so I wanted to bring it to her today." I put six dollars on the bar, my wet fingers staining the money. HE looked at it, then me, in disbelief. I turned and walked out the door. Whatever he said to me was lost beneath the din of commercial hip-hop.
I don't remember her name or even what she looked like, but I hope she got my six dollars.
There are food stories everywhere. These are only a few of mine. There are no pictures to post, but I assure you, they are more vivid in my mind than any camera could capture.
Sorry for the silence (Marshall). Please, let us move through the excuses and on to what is really the most important issue at hand....
Birthdays! In particular, my little sister Abbie's birthday! With sincere regret in my heart, I could not be with her to celebrate, so I did the next best thing.
Yesterday as I was walking out of the apartment, I encountered my upstairs neighbor and his wife, with their hands full of silver mylar balloons complete with curled ribbons, pink and purple wrapping paper, and excited faces. They revealed to me that it was their granddaughter was turning five years old and would be honored that evening with a party fit for a princess.
These neighbors are a source of endless smiles for Matthias and me, as they are always quick to point out the delicious smells that come wafting upstairs from our apartment below. And remember those chocolate hazelnut spice cookies? They were so rich, that twenty of them were entirely too many to eat in a week, and so we gladly gifted some upstairs. (They have requested lasagna, or veal, but we have yet to grant those wishes. Please don't get me started on veal...).
I asked if they would like me to make cookies or cupcakes for their party and their faces lit up and they enthusiastically consented. 
And so, I set out to make cupcakes fit for a five year old little girl, with pressure for perfection, and a strange pang of longing to be five again once more with my gregarious little sister by my side. It was this nostalgia that led me to choose the recipe for Jamie Oliver's 'Tea-Party Cupcakes'. For you see, when we were small, one spring afternoon I very much wanted to have a tea-party, and several weeks before that, I had very much wanted my mom and dad to bring me a sister home from the hospital so that she could perform the role of guest at my very grand afternoon teas. My mom explained to me that Abbie was too small, but one day she would make a fabulous guest, and oh my goodness, what do you know? She wound up being my very best friend. So, it is on this April 26th that I give a five year old stranger, and my dearest wee sister the gift of tea parties and cupcakes and all other manner of little girl-ness so that they can both feel so delicate, because these tiny, lemony little cakes exemplify the word. 
Tea Party Cupcakes
adapted from Cook with Jamie, by Jamie Oliver
yield: approximately 20 cupcakes
Ingredients
for cake:
1 cup unsalted organic butter, softened
2 cups flour
1 tsp. baking powder
.5 tsp. kosher salt
.75 cup + 2 tbsp. organic sugar
4 large free range organic eggs
zest of 1 lemon
for icing:
2.2 oz. fresh blueberries (or raspberries or strawberries)
1.5 cups powdered sugar
juice of 1 lemon
Preheat the oven to 375 F.
Combine flour, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl. Set aside.
Beat the butter and sugar together until they are light and fluffy.
Add the eggs one at a time, fully combine them before adding the next.
Fold in flour and lemon zest, gently. Be careful not to overmix, you are essentially making a spongecake, but still, it should be delicate in the end, not gummy.
Spoon by heaping teaspoonful (the kind for eating, not measuring) into lined muffin tin.
Bake for 15 minutes, or until golden brown and springy to the touch.
Cool on a rack while you make the icing. (Which is just zizzing the berries in the food processor and adding them to the lemon juice and powdered sugar).
Use a teaspoon to drizzle the cupcakes with the icing. It will not be typical icing texture, don't fret. This makes it delicate and you don't feel like you have fur growing on your teeth when you are finished eating it, because there is nothing princess-like about that at all.
Garnish with fruit. 
Happy 22nd Birthday, Sistercat!
Love, Sissy, Matthias, and Yossarian
