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Adrienne got up on her birthday and made a tasty quiche. I made up for it with dinner. I think I can speak for her in thanking many of you for the well-wishes.

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These are the kind of people who make me hate New York.  The people who have lived here for years but have never ventured to Brooklyn, let alone a foreign state like New Jersey!  I almost stopped reading this article after the first sentence of the second paragraph in which the writer felt to compelled to not-so-casually drop the names of the brands she was wearing (like so many people do here), but I soldiered on until the end.  You may remember David’s post where he also expressed exasperation with the people here.  I’ll just echo his “c’mon people.”

Lately Celli seems to have a thing for climbing on people’s backs. Go figure.

Adrienne’s employer has already notified her they get an official snow day tomorrow. (They’re calling for about a foot by the time it’s said and done.) I, on the other hand, get to get up crazy-early to go clean off satellite dishes to make sure we have newscasts and such. Sigh.

I scored some complimentary tickets to see the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and Anoushka Shankar (daughter or Ravi, half-sister of Nora Jones) play in one of our favorite near-Jersey suburbs, South Orange. You may recall this is where Adrienne and I spent the first week of our time out East, and where we discovered a nice little restaurant called The Reservoir. We’ve made a point of visiting the restaurant every now and then (and even brought some of you with us), both for the good eats and good memories. Last night we broke tradition and under the advice of a co-worker, ordered the Chicken Murphy, along with the Tony Salad for One (it’s big enought for two) and a side of sauteed spinach. Turns out Chicken Murphy is large pieces of chicken, somewhat breaded and cooked along with our choice of medium-spicy peppers and lots of mushrooms in some sort of broth, topped with thick-sliced fried potatoes. Interesting, and very tasty. Which is a good thing, because we have lots of leftovers!

Chicken Murphy at The Reservoir in South Orange, NJ

By the way, if you want to hear the music we heard last night, WNYC is broadcasting live the same concert from Carnegie Hall tonight at 8pm EST.

So said I after Adrienne finished her last bite of deep dish. A great cold-weather meal (with a salad, thank you very much). I suppose it’s good we only have it once in a long while! And no burnt cheese crusts…

I don’t remember when exactly–in recent memory, for sure–I was grocery shopping with Mom and Dad. I’d picked up some organic eggs, I think, and Dad raised the question as to why we needed to purchase organic. I remember Mom saying you didn’t need it for everything, but for things like eggs, it’s good. At the time I only had a vague understanding of why I was choosing organic eggs, but I continued to do so.

Michael Pollan’s book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, answers Dad’s question and more. I highly recommend reading it, along with the followup (which I read previously), In Defense of Food. If it doesn’t change how you think about food and your relationship to it, well, something is wrong.

Case in point (picked and included so I could share the picture below!): bread. Bread is simple, right? Flour, water, yeast, and maybe some salt and sugar of some sort. Maybe not: Adrienne and I rarely purchase sandwich bread from the store, but when we do, it’s usually the Baker’s Inn Brand, 100% Whole Wheat. I think it’s good. Here’s the ingredient list:

Whole Wheat Flour, Water, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Cracked Wheat, Wheat Gluten, Yeast, Contains 2% Or Less of: Molasses, Soybean Oil, Honey, Calcium Sulfate, Wheat Bran, Salt Vinegar, Cornstarch, Wheat Starch, Dough Conditioners (Sodium Stearoyl Lactylate, Datem, Mono and Diglycerides, Ethoxylated Mono and Diglycerides and/or Calcium Dioxide), Yeast Nutrients (Ammonium Chloride, Ammonium Sulfate and/or Monocalcium Phosphate), Enzymes, Enrichment (Ferrous Sulfate (iron), Zinc Oxide, Niacin, Calcium Sulfate, Vitamin D, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride (B6), Riboflavin (B2), Folic Acid, Thiamine, Calcium Propionate (to retain freshness), Contains Wheat and Soybeans
(thanks to my beautiful wife for typing up the ingredients!)

That is not food, it’s food science. This is bread – flour, water, yeast, salt and honey:

Granted, this was not great bread, but I made it over the course of an evening and so far it’s served well as breakfast toast, accompaniment to soup, appetizer to salad and as a little garlic-cheese bread. With a little more time, it’s even easier to make great bread! Even if a loaf of homemade bread is as far as you go towards eating real food, what are you waiting for? Oh, and read the books! Adrienne’s up next in the queue, and we can ship them to you after that, so long as you promise to ship them to the next person (and eventually back to us)!

Before:

After:

Pretty good! I would vote for more carrot and less celery (never been my favorite).

Yeah, it didn’t always feel like vacation, what with all the stupid travel issues. But it was still nice to get away and see everyone. Hope your holidays were equally thrilling!

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