The bread was fantastic, just as I imagined it would be! It's hard to say which was better this weekend--the food or the company! What a wonderful couple of days.
Yesterday, Nicko, Colleen, Mezzaluna and I took the train into the city, to meet Kyle, and take a quick food tour of the city. Well, we never did meet up with him in the city...something went wrong in the planning process, and we were waiting in different parts of Grand Central Station. Disappointed that we couldn't locate him, we began our day on a subway down to Chinatown. We walked around, and also passed nearby the horrible site of the disaster.:cry:
From there, we decided to continue our tour, and took a cab to Yonah Shimmel's Knishes, which has been around since 1910, and they make the best knishes on earth! On a full stomach, we then wandered into Katz's Deli, another Jewish eating institution in NYC, where we enjoyed pastrami sandwiches, salami sandwiches, matzoh ball soup, and a vanilla egg cream.:lips:
We hopped another taxi uptown, to Zabar's, an old market full of New York 'chutzpah' (lots of character), and shopped in there for a good hour. I think that was the high point of the day! Since we were in the area, we also wandered around Citarella, which is a more upscale gourmet shop.
Following all that fun, we walked off the day by meandering down the heart of Manhattan on Broadway, back towards Grand Central. :bounce:
The day wasn't finished: We still had to get home and prepare for our big dinner at Beacon. Our table was situated right in front of the open kitchen, and we all stood around and chatted for quite awhile before sitting down to eat. The meal began with 2 unexpected platters of raw and cooked seafood, plus french fries for Jim's kids (who are absolutely adorable!).
Everybody seemed to enjoy the meal very much, and we finished with a surprise birthday cake for Nicko and Colleen (which Colleen had requested for Nicko). I had discovered that her birthday just passed as well, so they were BOTH surprised. I made a hazelnut apricot cake. Mbrown also provided some delicious, and beautifully packaged biscotti, to round out the meal. We also got a special gift from Nicko!!!
Dinner was wonderful, but no, it wasn't over...
Today was the picnic, located on a huge apple and pumpkin farm. There were about 15 or 20 of us there, and we had ideal weather. A perfect New England autumn day! Capechef had put together some gorgeous platters of food, which included dry aged sirloin, and blue cheese, olives, tomatoes, and onions (I'll let him describe it, but everyone really loved it), Kyle made 4 different kinds of bread- all of them sensational. Mezzaluna, my husband, and I prepared a butternut squash soup with parsnip and fennel seed, plus some grilled veg and
chicken. Mbrown couldn't make it to the picnic, but she did give us a wonderful banana dessert to bring along, which the crowd really loved.
Then Mezz., Jordan and I had to go... off to the airport to drop Mezz. off.
What a wonderful time we had. And Mezz. was a great houseguest.
There aren't many people like these in the world. I enjoyed every second.
