Nobu 57 Menu for 3/27

"I'm going to need your menu back, Meena and I will be taking care of your meal for you. If you need, I will recommend the perfect drink to accompany any and all of your courses."

Your feast will include:

-edamame and lightly fried peppers with finishing salt

-uni with housemade tofu, parmesan cheese and chives aka, the perfect creamy, meaty combination

-yellowtail with pepper and spicy cucumber

-toro tartare with caviar and spicy wasabi puree (melt in your mouth meat)

-fluke with riccotta paste and chile lime

-salmon in sesame oil, vegetable oil, sesame seeds and chives with tiny, tasty, tomatoes

-alaskan cod soaked for three days in miso an broiled to an ethereal perfection

-rock shrimp tempura with chives on salad

-nantucket bay scallops with micro cilantro and yellow peruvian perfection served with...

-rock lobster claw with vinegar jalapenos (pickles be damned)

-brussel sprouts finished with truffle-yes truffle- and grapeseed

-red snapper with okra chips and sun-dried tomato glaze...yes it keeps on coming

-kobe beef with tiny crunchy things on top. Food coma yet?

desert:

-apples, ice cream and awesomeness served atop a flaming dish

-cappuccino deliciousness served with heavenly creaminess on top

-the lightest, fluffiest cake-a-ma-bobber you've ever had with chocolate ecstasy

In case you forgot to count, that was sixteen of the best dishes you've ever had in your entire life and the perfect way to finish off your week in New York.

-Thanks Meena

Paige & Zach: The Syndicated Version

Our friend Christy told me not long ago that I had started laughing like Zach. This is somewhat disturbing since Zach's laugh is very distinct and is often the source of rampant fun-poking. Zach's laugh is high-pitched and involves a lot of 'hissing' sounds resulting from his spastic intake of air mid-laugh. Though I don't necessarily *think* my laugh sounds like this, her comment made me a little paranoid.

Christy also told me that my handwriting is turning into Zach's writing -- she produced the thank you card I sent her after our wedding -- which I wrote -- and a separate card -- which Zach wrote because he didn't realize I had already sent one. It was pretty compelling. Sigh.

I fear our trip has caused us to meld even more. Since approximately 99% of our experiences are shared we've become...well...predictable. We tell the same stories, over and over again (this is aided by the fact that folks tend to ask us similar questions about the trip). In any given conversation I usually know exactly what Zach is going to say before he says it. In any given conversation Zach usually knows what I am going to say before I say it. I think this is pretty typical for couples -- especially the longer they are together.

This hasn't been a problem until just recently. See normally as a couple you interact with the same people on a regular basis...you see your good friends a couple times a week, your coworkers daily. This means you're in the habit of keeping your material fresh. You wouldn't tell your hypothetical friend, Bob, on Monday about Zach's strange devotion to Meryl Streep or about my inability to entertain myself at a campsite for more than 48 hours, only to turn around and tell him the same tid-bits on Wednesday.

Because Bob knows. He knows that I want to see Clash of the Titans because my sister and I used to watch the original all the time when we were growing up. He knows that Zach makes me listen to books on tape even though I don't like them and that he thinks I am horrible at picking them out. Bob knows how we listened to the "This American Life" on Penn State and that we're still disgusted about what that guy said about cleaning his yard after a big football weekend. He knows I'm sick of PB&J and addicted to coffee. He knows I wish Zach would drink it too, so we could bond in the morning, and that I kinda resent that he drinks Dr. Pepper in the afternoon instead. Bob knows all of this.

Of course Bob knows. BECAUSE WE SEE HIM ALL THE TIME.

When you don't see the same people all the time, you scrap that whole "keep it fresh" thing because no one's heard your material lately...at least not the people you're hanging out with right now. You can just recycle your material over and over again. You become the syndicated version of yourself. You're the same show on a different network every time you hit a new city. All this happens subconsciously, of course. You don't even notice it.

Until someone points it out to you.

Sigh.

Sorry Anna and Dan -- you're the first people we've spent more than 48 hours with in a long time. We promise we'll have some new episodes of the Zach and Paige show next time we see you. In the meantime, thank you for being patient with the reruns. ;)

In other news, we've made it to Vermont and New Hampshire since leaving NYC yesterday. Turns out, Vermont is amazingly beautiful. Today we enjoyed all that Vermont is famous for -- ice cream, cheese, and syrup.

Apparently it's Spring Break this week, which means a lot of other people had the same ideas we did -- visit Ben&Jerry's for the ice cream tour, visit Cabot Creamery for the cheese tour, and visit a sugar house (where they make maple syrup). Everything was tasty. Instructions on how to make cheese coming soon.

We're headed to Acadia as soon as the east coast storm passes, and we're definitely pumped.

We'll post pictures soon of these adventures as well as give you the gory details of our awesome meal at Nobu 57. I'm going to let Zach do that post since he took notes on his phone as we were eating (yea, he's a huge dork, but the food was so good it was warranted).

A big, big, big thank you to Andrea, Anna and Dan, and Meena for hosting us while we were in the city. We couldn't do this trip the way we want without folks like you...

Much love.

Pictures Finally (New York)

Washington Square Arch in Washington Park, NYC

Times Square, NYC


Not Anna and Dan's favorite bar, NYC


Cathedral we walked past frequently on the upper west side NYC


Saturday at Central Park, NYC


Performance artist Marina Abramovic at Museum of Modern Art, NYC


Drag Queen Bingo


Cupcakes from Crumbs


We ate the cupcakes in Bryant Park

Pictures Finally (Philadelphia)

The oldest neighborhood in America (not counting the TeePee neighborhoods that the colonists got rid of)

Constitution Hall, Philadelphia, PA


Constitution Hall, Philadelphia, PA


The first Bank of America (I think...) Philadelphia, PA

Pictures Finally (Washington DC)

Most of these pictures were taken with a pocket camera. Since the camera was carried in my pocket, there was a fair amount of lint on the lens meaning the quality of some of these might not be the best in the world

Paige at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC


Paige in the atrium at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC


Some building in Washington, DC


Washington Monument, Washington, DC


Washington Monument, Washington, DC

Modern Art

I'd like to consider myself an artist. Unfortunately, when I look at the art I produce it becomes all the harder to consider myself an artist. I suppose I should stop relying so heavily on macaroni and magic markers, but what can I say, I consider myself an artist of the old school--aka the "pre"-school.

Anyways, I mention this because Paige and I recently went to the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. We had a lot of fun checking out the Rothko blocks, the Kandinsky swirls and the Picasso cubes. But to be honest, the most interesting exhibit was the performance art by Marina Abramovic. For those of you that are unfamiliar with Marina Abramovic's art work (I'm going to assume that includes everyone), she is an avant garde performance artist who's work can generally be summed up by the following description: she does crazy shit and calls it art.

Her more famous works include screaming until she lost her voice (I have nieces and nephews who could be considered artists by this standard), dancing until she collapsed (who among us hasn't done this after a dozen beers), and saying random words nonstop until her mind goes completely blank (sounds like a bad first date-am I right guys?!?). But the cool thing about Marina Abramovic is that she does all this naked. Well, at least it was cool when she did it back in the 60s. Now that she's pushing 70 years old I find it less cool. Maybe it makes me a chauvinist pig. Maybe it makes me an art critic. You be the judge.

The NYC Museum of Modern Art is currently doing a retrospective of her work where they have "artists" perform her past work (http://moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/965). The museum has films of the aforementioned works, plus several live exhibits of people re-creating her past works. There were a naked man and woman standing close to one another in a doorway people had to walk through to make people think about which way they would turn to squeeze through. There were two people facing each other that were almost touching fingers in a symbolic gesture of the tension just before touching. There was a naked woman sitting on an elevated bicycle seat slowly spreading her arms and legs because...I don't know why...maybe it is because bicycles are fun--look ma, no hands!

Because I was a bit confused I meandered down from the "adults only" exhibits on the top floor down to the "Artist is Present" exhibit on the second floor where Marina herself was sitting (fully clothed thank goodness). She is currently spending three months at the Museum of Modern Art as her next performance piece (http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2010/marinaabramovic/). In an effort to better understand her artwork I decided to sit down with the artist and ask her about her current work. She was suspiciously silent*. To be honest, she didn't say a single word--not to me or any of her other admirers! To quote another artist I admire: "How rude!**" I took her ominous lack of response to mean that I had out-arted her***.

Then I went and had a cupcake. It was delicious. More later.

*Her preparations for the project include a strictly regulated vegetarian diet, and although she is likely to be surrounded by milling crowds in the museum, Abramovic will not speak or respond to anyone during the entire run of the exhibition, an experience she likens to “going into seclusion in the middle of New York”. “It’s a huge experiment and I’m very nervous. http://www.theartnewspaper.com/whatson/results.asp?id=1110633

**Stephanie Tanner from TGIF's Full House circa 1993

***In all seriousness, while her art was not something I was used to, it was actually very interesting and thought provoking****

****But in all seriousness, I still think I out-arted her.

What's better than a hot dog?

The answer my friends is a hot dog wrapped in bacon, flash fried and served with chili and coleslaw- unless you're talking from an artery perspective in which case the answer is an apple, a banana, or really almost anything. In case you don't know, I love hot dogs. I say "in case you don't know" because you probably actually don't know* since Paige refuses to eat them or let me eat them. Naturally when our friend Anna mentioned "gourmet" hot dogs served up at Crif-Dog's here in NYC and Paige didn't instantly say no, I suggested we go immediately. It was everything I'd imagined and more.

Since Paige and I arrived in New York City, we've enjoyed tasting the expansive culinary offerings of this, the food capital of the country. Since we've been in "the big apple" we've sampled vietnamese sandwiches, local burgers (at shake shack), fresh bagels, Sri Lankan food, jumbo slice pizza, milk shakes from the "Seinfeld" diner, all-you-can-drink sangria brunch, street fruit, fancy french food, dumplings, and yes, the aforementioned bacon wrapped crif-dogs. If we are able to squeeze into our pants by the time we leave this city, it will be a true miracle.

Aside from the all out gorging, we've managed to see quite a bit of the city. Friday we enjoyed finally having good weather and walked around the city for the better part of the day before we settled down at a sports bar to watch the first rounds of March Madness with Anna's boyfriend Dan. By ten o'clock we were exhausted and crashed at Andrea Lee's who was nice enough to offer up her apartment to us for the weekend. We spent all day Saturday wandering around Central Park with Anna before we went back to the park for a run with Dan. That evening we had our first experience with Sri Lankan food courtesy of Andrea. Needless to say, the spicy food caused significant sweating on my part, but was well worth the pain. Since I was already sweating, we decided to meet up with Anna and go dancing. We finished up the night with Dan's tour of his neighborhood's late night food. Sunday we walked around Harlem, stopped in at the Natural History Muesum (the best I've ever seen) and then had a lazy, boozy brunch near the park with Andrea Lee and her boy toy, Ben.

Since Sunday afternoon we have been enjoying the hilarious company of Anna and Dan. Anna is probably the funniest landscape architect in all of New York. Dan tells jokes similar to the ones I tell. Naturally Dan is the funnier of the two. We are staying in their spare bedroom for the rest of the week and are looking forward to enjoying their comedy show in the days to come.

Since it is getting late and we have a big day tomorrow, I'm going to have to sign off for now. I'll have to catch you all the way up to speed later.

*Christy and Tommy do know this since they witnessed me eat 18 free hot dogs after a long bike ride....ok, just after a short bike ride