Rooh Afza -- It's All Coming Together

http://pakistaniat.com/2007/10/07/ramzan-ramadan-rooh-afza-milk-red-bull-pakistan/

This article, written on the day i got married, shows a man in a pink turban sloshing pink juice around in a gigantic tub. It is a tub full of a shake make from rooh afza, milk, and sugar.

We saw a scene *similar* to this on Easter Sunday this year, in our neighborhood. We got to watch our largely Pakistani neighbors rollicking on Coney Island Avenue at a festive birthday celebration for Mohammad.

The bar in my dining room has two bottles of this stuff; one for my husband and I, and one for my friend Barry, who told me about Rooh Afza after reading about it in Saveur Magazine. Because we are at the epicenter of all things Pakistani, I went out of and bought him a bottle then failed to deliver it to him before he moved to Italy for a year.

We also have a bottle for ourselves, but it makes Matthew sad to think that we have to drink it all before it is gone. But maybe it will make him happy when we are having it as milkshakes! (Matthew, will you try it again in a different formet?)

Also, we saw people drinking something fantastically pink out of a pitcher at a Pakistani restaurant one night when the sun had just gone down--and we thought it looked interesting but they basically explained that what the men at the table were drinking was glucose syrup and that we probably didn't want any. (It was Ramadan and people hadn't eaten all day.) I think now that it was Rooh Afza perhaps mixed with milk?

I have filled the house with pudding, and now am systematically emptying it.

Obviously, too busy to write much. Aside from, happy birthday to my mom!

Yellow Cake in Multiple Formats

This morning the house has the warm clean feel that it does after a party. You look around at the plants, vases of flowers, our enormous tree, new persian rug (⇐), no clutter, happy plump couches, vibrant velvet pillows, and these things look somehow different, because they are still exuding the warmth of the guests last night.

But then you look at the kitchen, and you fall to the floor, despairing. I cannot provide a picture of the kitchen.

My husband sleeps 15% less than I do, but in a scary twist of fate I've gotten up first, and I really must make a dent in all of these dishes, because he also cleans about 80-100% more than I do.

(I know that these metrics, which we only figured out yesterday, make me seem like a bad person. But I have . . . some . . . good qualities. Read his blog to see what they are. Oh, except I just remembered that his blog is about real estate, not me. Well then, one of my good qualities is having a blog where I mention my spouse. Go ahead, turn that into a percentage.)

Last night was New Jersey night in Brooklyn. We had 2 couples over, and both drove all the way from New Jersey. The first couple to arrive brought their teeny, tiny baby, Jacob, who is three months old and therefore still a really good party guest. The second couple brought a cake shaped like a football, which, no offense parents, was an even better party guest.

But what kind of party guest am I? Guest: ok. Host: I am trying to grow in this regard. You may or may not know that my current objective / project is to be able to have people over with less stress. I love to cook but generally it's just for the 2 of us, and one person is setting the table while the other is stirring, or whatever. But when we have people over my objectives are to 1) visit, 2) feed them something extremely delicious, and 3) not be mean to anyone. So being *really* prepared beforehand with a *really* delicious thing to eat that is easily served and doesn't require my attention while people are actually there is my strategy.

Cooking is the bomb (da bomb?) but takes a lot of time, so one thing we've been doing on weeknights, when M works really late is have "crockpot wednesdays," so that we can have a super easy dinner and actually work on other projects in the evening, instead of just cooking and cleaning up and falling into bed. I love Chicken Paprikash and Moroccan Beef Stew but one of my favorite crockpot dishes is Manuel's Beef Brisket Tacos. I learned about this dish when I lived in Texas (which is where I know Manuel from) and actually it's to be cooked for about 100 hours at 100 degrees in an oven--which in Texas basically means leaving it on the counter, ha, ha, ha--but we do the meat in crockpot. I love this for many reasons, but in part because it's one of these recipes where you just need one of each thing, and the devil is in the time rather than in the details. This isn't a delicate recipe--just a delicious one.

Manuel's Beef Brisket Tacos
The Brisket
1 Brisket (2 lbs is good for 6 people, 3 if you want leftovers)
1 lemon
1 bottle beer
1 beer bottle's worth of water
1 can of pickled jalapenos (can be jalapenos and carrots)
1 onion, sliced into rings, rings then cut in half
sprinkle cumin

Salt and pepper the brisket. Heat oil until hot on medium high in a heavy cast iron pan. (If you don't have a cast iron skillet or dutch oven, get one! You will feel better, all of the time. But don't worry about it for this dish--just use a fry pan.) Place the brisket fat-side down; make it sizzle. Brown on all sides, for about 10 minutes total.

While the meat browns, prepare the braising liquid in the crockpot. Pour in the beer, then refill bottle with water and add that. Watching for seeds, squeeze lemon into the pot. Drain the juice from the pickled peppers into the crockpot, reserving the vegetables for garnishing the tacos. Add the onion and some cumin. If the crockpot has an "automatic" setting, put in on that. If not, turn on high, then turn to low 2 hours later. Cook until the meat is done done done. It will fall apart when you pick it up with a fork. This will take about 5 hours, but you can cook it for longer.

When ready to eat, bring into a stove-top pan and shred. Heat on the stove with some juice. Season with salt. Heat flour tortillas, serve with hot sauce (goya or costena in a bottle is my favorite if I don't get to make it myself), cilantro, sour cream, and the pickled peppers. Spanish rice, refried beans, and salad are all you need to go with.

(I also made shrimp taco filling with lime, garlic, red onion, chili pepper flakes, and cumin--and okra and corn taco filling.)

Finally, it was time for the cake. It was a chocolate frosted ball with white creamy stitches, with with a blue "NY" in cursive. Apparently this is in reference to a big game happening today.

They imported it across 2 rivers all the way from the Snowflake Bakery in Northern NJ, which is touted as being very old-fashioned. Indeed, the delicious chocolate frosting was the same taste and texture as the black part of black and white cookies. Inside was a lovely yellow cake with chocolate pudding bisecting the two layers.

I got a small round end of cake, which had a high frosting to cake ratio, which I construe to be a plus. Still, I felt sort of sad because my piece was small. Luckily I was seated next to baby Jake's dad, who said he's on a diet and wanted to lob off part of his own sagittal football slice, so I eagerly complied.

It's not like *I* need any more cake this weekend. Friday night I met a friend and some of her friends in Queens for a birthday dinner. One person arrived late, a girl from Manhattan who complained about coming to Queens. Ironic, because though Queens and Bklyn are contiguous, there is no straight shot to get there, without some walking between 2 transfers. Hopstop, which I love, timed my trip there at 1 hour and 18 minutes, and it was fairly accurate.

We got invited at the last moment, because she felt weird planning a trip to Queens without me. Thank goodness she was plagued by her conscience, because it gave us a great excuse to go out to what is generally written about as the best Thai restaurant in NYC--Sripraphai. I expected no ambience but it was quite nice. We had a wonderful catfish salad with shreddy little fried crunchy bits supposed to somehow be catfish; pickled pork spare ribs (boneless tangy succulent chunks served with lettuce leaves, peanuts, and ginger); Chinese broccoli in oyster sauce; Drunken noodles with ground beef; another sort of not-as-awesome but still impressive noodles with egg and tofu; a duck curry in green sauce; a shrimp Panang curry; and a red snapper with his eyes fried shut and many many delicious herbs and peppers stuffed in and over him. We ate coconut rice (yum) and a very chewy "sticky" rice which is served in little bags in little baskets. The presentation of this rice is very charming but somehow reminiscent of the drug trade. We didn't want to indulge too much because we know that one of the other guests, Theresa, who is discerning yet hilarious and also, a good driver, had made a cake. Yellow with chocolate frosting! It was amazing. Thank you, Theresa. Thank you, Rose Levy Beranbaum.

Onto some reading new: Last night I finished reading Are You Hungry, Are You Cold by Ludwig Bemelmans. It's a first edition I got for Christmas. I'm sad it's over but it was so good! If you haven't read any Bemelman's, you actually have, because he wrote the Madeline books, but also, he wrote some wonderful things about grownups. They all have Madeline's signature naughty streak, which makes them extra lovable.

Schnitzi Schnitzl: Around the World But Close to Home

Around the World But Close to Home

With recent trips to Turkey, London, and Arizona, JFK is starting to feel as much like home as home.

Trips to the airport are expensive, long, and involve barreling down the Belt Parkway with an eye on the clock, but they do yield a chance for some human companionship--a precious commodity for a telecommuter like me--because I need to get driven to the airport and back. And car service drivers provide some of the most detailed and interesting information about other parts of the world that I am exposed to. One driver, plumbed for information about Haitian food, pointed out a place on Flatbush Avenue that reminds him of home--a place I will be seeking out later in the blog cycle. Another driver repeatedly mumbled questions about when my husband leaves for work, so he could come over and we could "make friends." He got a very polite response from me ("can you speak up, sir? I'm really having a hard time hearing you") until I suddenly realized he was asking. Yet another driver told me all about the city of Islamabad (only 40-ish years old, built recently to replace Karachi as the government center of Pakistan), he told me about an ice palace in Dubai, and his impressions of Iran and Afghanistan. I know more about the world now than I used to, so that trip compensated for the sleaze of the other guy.

Along with the human interaction, this overland travel lets me see a bit of what's being developed in our area. It seems as if we are being crowded on all sides--well, on the south side--by Schnitzel restaurants. Except for health reasons, I could not be more delighted by this.

Schnitzel Fact Sheet

What is Schnitzel? Can you show me a picture of one? But if I don't want to click on the link--just tell me this. Is it noodles? Or am I confusing it with that cheese thing with potatoes that you can get a separate little oven for?

The noodles are Spätzle. The potato cheese thing is Rösti, a food item that sparks all sorts of other debates. (Should I cook the potatoes before I make it? Is it good? Will I feel less or more existential dread if I buy a tiny little oven just to cook one thing that only Swiss Germans eat?)

Calm down, my friend, because you are about to know more about schnitzel than is, uh, strictly necessary. Schnitzel is German-language word which means pounded cutlet which has been egged, floured, breaded, and pan fried in lard. Generally the cutlet is touted as veal, often the cutlet is pork masquerading as veal, and sometimes it is both labeled as and is actually chicken. Chicken pounded flat and breaded and fried, esp. dusted with salt and squirted with lemon and heaped with arugula and finished with cubed tomatoes . . . ahh, that is the dish known in New York City as chicken milanese (or more colloquially Flatty Delicioso) and that is also a dish that is sadly not to be found in this part of South Brooklyn. But in Milan, where cutlet cooking of this sort was originally codified, purists use veal, eggs, unflavored breadcrumbs, no flour, and cook it in butter. Later, in Germany and Austria, it developed its own set of details, resulting in a slightly lower quotient of lip-smackiness.

However, Ashkenazi Jews who migrated to Israel from Eastern Europe imported the notion of schintzel and once in the promised land, where there is no pork*, started making it with chicken or turkey and re-upped the deliciousness, spicing it up Middle Eastern style, cooking it in oil, spritzing it with lemon, and putting lots of garlicky condiments on offer, and that's what Schnitzi is all about. Oh, that, and a more delicious form of bread: the baguette.

From doing a bit of reading (one way of gathering information other than traveling or talking with a car service driver,) I have come to understand that schnitzel on pita is apparently a very important and pleasing part of life in Israel, and some believe it to be the national dish. It was surprising that before Schnitzi we hadn't seen schnitzel in the nabe, because Israeli sandwich stores are one of the few amenities that our neighborhood does. not. lack. We've got the world-class Olympic Pita a few blocks to the south—which is my favorite—and the Famous Pita just a few blocks north, and this is the one which my husband votes for as being the best. Those deserve their own posts (and perhaps some sort of eat-off contest).


Schnitzi Schnitzel

But we noticed Schnitzi last summer, when it sprouted up as a bright shiny clean coin on the face of the CIA (Coney Island Avenue). We knew of it before the wedding but didn't manage to eat their until right after. It was yet another foodery with rabbinical blessings from various sects on the doors. but instead of being an Italian restaurant or a sushi one, this somewhat garish orange and blue storefront promised to bring something new to bring to our experience. Once married, we tried Schnitzi. In the time between the wedding ending (early October) and the honeymoon beginning (mid-October) I developed and then secretly nursed a Schintzl fascination, obsession, and subsequent addiction. Luckily, our trip to Turkey quelled it.

With Spanish (chili peppers and bread crumbs) Greek (garlic and bread crumbs), Italian (herbs and bread crumbs), Polish (bread crumbs and MORE bread crumbs), and Chinese (sesame seeds and I will let you guess what else) as some of the exciting things on Schnitzi's menu, you can eat your way around the world without ever leaving the block of the CIA between Avenues I and J. Think of it as a bread crumb tour of the world with juicy glatt** kosher*** chicken cutlet on a yummy baguette with any number of sorts of sauces.

The chicken is breaded and fried fresh, requiring a huge amount of labor in a very small, open kitchen, which is why the numerous young countermen (sort of Coney Island Avenue Israel hipsters, if that is . . . possible) all wear t-shirts which say, on the back "I'll be with you in a moment."

There is another Schnitzel opened a bit closer to JFK, and soon we will go. Hopefully, sooner than I return to JFK, but that is doubtful. Meanwhile, if you have any questions about where, in the airport, to buy a bag of cashews or a neck pillow shaped sort of like a bear hugging your neck, post in the comments tab and I will get back to you asap. However, I would prefer comments on the topic of sandwiches.

* how could be promised land?
** certified as having died without spots on the lungs, ie very healthy
*** blessed but more important, brined in salt and osmosis makes it extra juicy

Happy New Year from Brighton Beach! or [the russian symbols won't paste]

Happy New Year! It's 2008 and I started the year off right with a trip to one of my favorite New York places, right at the end of the Q and B lines: Brighton Beach.

Non New Yorkers immediately think Brighton Beach Memoir, a Neil Simon play about growing up Jewish in the 1930s.

The Brighton Beach of the late 90s and aughts or naughts or whatever we are now in is a Russian ex-pat community. A trip out there is about as as close as you can get to leaving the country without actually leaving the country. Not just because it's far out on the edge of NYC, on a body of water overlooking what may seem, to the spatially challenged, to be France, but because of the chance to be spoken to first in Russian and the necessity of asking people to withhold the shaved dried smoked beef from your salad. It's a singular experience.

I love this neighborhood for the Tudorish seaside apartment buildings along the boardwalk and the chance to watch old Russians stroll (or be wheeled) and young ones pony for one another's attention. You can while a day away looking at the ocean over a plate of french fries drizzled with garlic butter and parsley. A few notable experiences aside from the obvious Russian ones don't fit well into narrative format and will therefore be arranged into a chronogical list:

1. She's a Mush
New to New York and battling mice in a tenement apartment in the East Village, I call a 718 number in response to an ad for a kitten. 718 = Brooklyn, I thought, and while I was not technically wrong, I did not yet realize that going from the edge to the middle and back out to a wholly nother edge still requires a hefty train ride. (Now that I've moved deep, deep into this borough, it is an unforgettable fact.)

Arriving in Brighton Beach an hour later, I pick my way over to and ring the bell of a house ponged sour with cat urine. The owner of the house came down to explain that she was eating a roast beef sandwich and that I should wait. (Sandwichless, in the stink.) She let me in the outside door but left me in a vestibule lined on both sides with cages. The staring cats cried and stuck their paws through the bars to get at me. I felt repelled.

Finally I called up to announce that I wasn't going to wait any longer, and the woman, still wiping mayo from her lips, ran to show me the real cat storeroom, which was in the basement. She was particularly eager to give me a 4 month old striped gray one tabby who fell over when she reared up to play with me. I felt a connection to her slight ungainliness. "She's such a mush," the crazy cat person explained. "A mush! Like a dog!" She told me that the cat was half "Russian Blue," which is supposed to be a sexy brand of kitty. Promised an animal with mousekilling abilities but dog's character, I brought her home. In reality, the cat I came home with is standoffish, angry, and insecure. Despite my attempts to name her Katrina or Katrinka or Sabrina or something little and tinkly and Russian sounding in homage to her geographic and genetic roots, I ended up calling her George because of her lack of grace. There is another kind of cat--a French kind commonly described as a "potato on toothpicks," and surely this better describes her. Still, who needs a graceful cat? Character trumps grace, and I could not love her more. And once you fall in love, you don't want your pet to do a job, like eat dirty mice. Pets are for snuggling.

2. "Cheese Eating Cheese"
During a spate of unemployment in early 2002, I have as little energy as I have money. I live in a studio apartment on the ground floor. It's dark and I spend a lot of time alone. One day I muster collect myself as best I can, haul on a blue two-piece and go out to the beach with a paperback, giant hat, and towel. I am alone on this trip. It is a weekday, I will see no one I know, and I will wear my bikini no matter how I look. (How I look is both pale and like I do not have washboard abs.) The moment I set foot on the sand a pretty lithe brown man with big curls runs circles around me, working himself up for an introduction. He's recently moved to New York from the ancient city of Fez, where he worked as a tour guide. He's very bright and very sensitive. I enjoy both his company and his washboard abs. We talk while we splash in the water. Later he walks me to Coney Island, buys me some fried shrimp. We watch people fish off the pier. "You are so crrreeeeeamy and whiiiiiiiite," he describes, in a truly appreciative tone. "You are like cheese," he continues, as we enter the arcade, which makes me laugh, even if that wasn't the intent. He rides the train back to my house with me so we can continue our conversation, before he turns back to Sheepshead Bay to go home, and we agree to see one another again. We date for 2 months until cultural differences intercede. Cultural differences include his proclivity for quotes such as "You are so pretty. Not beautiful, like Monica Lewinsky, but very nice to look at. More like Princess Diana, but your features aren't all in synchronicity such as the lovely Diana's were." But these conversations are amusing, and he does seems to like me. At one point during our relationship he watches me eat a spinach pie on my couch. It is full of fenugreek and fresh mozzerella. He watches intently. "So creamy and white," he breathes. "You are like cheese eating cheese."

3. Booties
I like to go to Brighton Beach with my friends Jennifer and Mike. Jennifer and Mike can both lie in the sun (I need an umbrella) and like to take what they call a "freak walk," which is where they admire the crazy old ladies in leopard-pattern bras, or men in banana hangers, or people with legs splayed in large nylon undies surely never meant to see the light of day. Brighton Beach makes you realize that you're really in the middle, physically and in terms of your taste, and that can be a good thing. In addition to the "freaks," Jennifer is gay and likes to look at ladies. Mike is straight and likes to look at ladies. Mike is married to an upright swimmer with lean haunches, but that's not the sort of thing they're on the prowl for out here. Mostly, they traipse the beach looking for big jiggly booties on girls with smooth brown skin. "You always want things you don't have," says Mike, presumably referring to wife's own booty, in addition to his own.

There is so much more to tell about the wonders of Brighton Beach. On New Year's, my husband and I decide instead to pop into the grocery stores along the Avenue, instead of walk over to the beach. We end up looking at real estate, as all New Yorkers do. What would it be like to live here on an all-Russian 'cept for us block? We could live in a gingerbread house . . . we enter into one grocery store with pastries piled everywhere, and smoked fish sitting in boxes. Steam trays of stuffed cabbage fail to provoke any hunger in me, because I can't help but wonder whether they are holdouts from last year, though it was only 12 hours before.

We check out the holocaust memorial on the Bay, as we are walking up to Sheepshead. It seems that families can pay in with other families to get a stone to honor their dead. It's sobering but moving that a community from the USSR seems intact again in Brooklyn. I don't feel that I have a community that intact.

We stopped into a cafe, which I'd like to write about but it was in Sheepshead--that's another story. In a post coming soon!

Settled in at last. Want to know what we are eating?

The entire idea for the blog has changed. Why? Because we no longer can look to Church Avenue as the main drag where we will eat. We are still living South of Church Avenue, probably about a mile. But the new focus will be to explore edible things on Church Ave. and South--out towards Coney Island, which we are getting eerily closer to. We're going to be doing some ethnic food tourism with Israeli sandwiches, Turkish food, Italian in Gravesend, Bangladeshi, maybe some Thai. Check back after we've eaten . . . .

UPDATE: We're abandoningship. Well, not ship so much as our new place.

It's an irony that this place was where people came to drink in fresh air in the summer, because though the mold inspector we asked our landlords to hire called it fine, I can see from the readings that is has spore counts similar to a building that's been flooded. I've actually been diagnosed with asthma since we moved in our apartment. I now have purple flying saucer of an inhaler that for all its Jetsons charm, terrifies me. After some sturm and drang M and I have both decided to get out of here.

We did a brief search. The first house was around the corner, and we thought we might live there because it would be easy to carry all of our belongings over and we could save on movers.

I thought we might even save on boxes. "We could buy about 4," I thought, "and then fill them up, and then tote them over, and then unpack, and then tote them back" . . . it's an easy way to drive oneself crazy. It didn't work out anyhow: the owners were delightful, the current tenants were delightful, and the house itself was delightful, but we smelled mildew in the all-weather carpet on the back stairs leading up to the second floor of the house. Lately, M and I just walk around sniffing in then neighborhood. So I had to turn the lovely Irish dr. down and then I had to explain why. Luckily, instead of being offended, he probably just wrote me off as crazy.

We looked at another on the same block about 2 subways stops farther out. It's where M's mother stayed when she came to visit us a month ago. His mom was going to stay with us but I was afraid that the bad air, which gives me a horrible cough, would poison her, too, so we suggested a B&B. We didn't check this one out before she came and when we went for the first time, were were greeted by a plump (dead) bunny taxidermied on the newl post. What a fluffy tail! It's really the central focus when one walks in the house. I found it terrifying and delightful in perhaps equal measure.

The inside of the B&B was the second floor of one of these old houses, and it was actually a complete apartment, full of some bad furniture choices and someone else's clothing. M's mother is a huge sport though, and took it in stride, even though the proprietor demanded that she pay in cash and also explained that the lock on her door didn't necessarily function.

On our way over to the B&B to pick up M's mom, he and I stopped to ask which was the closest subway stop of a woman pulling weeds in her yard. She was very pleasant. In a twist of fate, that weed-pulling woman will likely be our new landlord.

Must go to work!!

After a long day of priming the living room (which doesn't appear large to the naked eye but which contains hundreds of tiny, nearly unpaintable details) I was hoping that M and I and perhaps a few others would go to Jerk City, a chicken place on Church Avenue that was written up by Peter Meehan in the $25 and under column in the New York Times.

That article appeared in the food section just days after I'd come up with the idea for the blog, and it reinforced what I was already hoping: that Church Avenue is a wellstorm of low-priced ethnic wonders. I'd first read about a place called E & R (seen elsewhere as ENR) which Robert Sietsema wrote up in the Voice. To paraphrase his sentiments: you are stupid if you spend money at French restaurants in Manhattan, because this Haitian restaurant with terrible ambience where no one speaks English is better. I quickly disseminated that article to my boyfriend, to my friend at work, and to my friend John in order to perk up interest in a) exploring food in Brooklyn and b) being enthusiastic about an eating in a neighborhood that could go either way. (I am a food enthusiast but sometimes I need other enthusiasts to help me along to realize my dreams of eating delicious food.) All of these people nodded vigorously, and I became very cheerful.

(I think that E & R has changed hands, but here is the article, in case you are interested:

http://www.villagevoice.com/nyclife/0044,sietsema,19402,19.html)

These events led me to looking around for writings about other Church Avenue places, and I found some, and then the piece about the chicken joint appeared.

http://events.nytimes.com/2006/05/24/dining/reviews/24unde.html

I was delighted to see it there, but M pointed out that it's pretty sad that NYC is so pricey that the $25 and under column is relegated to chicken shacks way, way in the outer boroughs. He does sort of have a point.

We wanted to go, though, and would have if we hadn't been distracted by some leftover fried chicken left over from a very succesful fried-chicken and Jaws-watching party we'd been to the night before, an event designed to kick off the summer season. That chicken was from Dirty Bird, a place on 14th Street in Manhattan that boasts fried organic chicken. When it opened, rumor was that it wasn't salty enough, or spicy enough, but then the Dirty Birders realized their errors and from the taste of it, they also added a bunch of sugar to the mix--which is not a complaint. (Knowing that in the best of foods the line between sweet and savory is somewhat wiggly, I add both sugar and cinnamon to my spaghetti sauce but only when M isn't looking because it grosses him out. M, if you are reading this, I am just kidding honey, of course I would not do that to you.)

Because we love fried chicken and because we have been sulking about our lack of kitchen, our hosts from the night before had given us leftovers. During a particularly horrible part of the painting, we were therefore forced to stop and eat cold fried chicken which is even better than greasy hot fried chicken. M knew that it would ruin his taste for chicken but I didn't think it would matter. It did, however, curb my appetite. Not for poultry, but just in general. Instead of the Church Ave project, we decided to go out to Coney Island instead to say hello to the ocean. But after painting, I was too tired for even that. Eventually we went out for a walk and M steered us in the direction of Church to see what we could see.

What we saw is a complete split from one side of the street to the other. On the south side are gigantic old rarefied houses that you wouldn't imagine you'd find in Brooklyn. Where did they get shingles, why aren't there bars on the windows, etc. But the north side of Church Avenue is PURE brooklyn, with bodegas and kids in do-rags and a couple examples of the kind of car service that aren't even regulated by the Taxi and Limosine Commission.

After walking up and down a few blocks and realizing that we're far from any of the places I've read about except for E & R, which is closed, we happen into a brand-new Mexican place called La Huasteca. We're wondering whether they're closed, but they're not. Can we eat there? Yes. Do some drug dealers follow us into the restaurant? Yes. But they finish their business in the bathroom, quickly, and we're left with a bunch of nice Mexicans who basically speak no English but seem at the ready to give us Al Pastor tacos, and me a lime agua fresca.

We brought it home to eat and M actually glowed with pleasure at his enchiladas, whose tortillas had been passed through some rich mole sauce before they were filled with chicken, and then resauced with tomatillo. Even though I don't seek out mole, I do, as a maximalist, approve of multiple saucings for the same plate of food. My tacos al pastor were actually pork in red sauce accidentally, but I also really enjoyed it. We have since been back and I will write further about that meal but in brief, El Huasteca has cleaner flavors and fresher-seeming food that our local Mexican on Cortelyou, called Cinco de Mayo. I will defend Cinco de Mayo to the death in part because it's one of the only restaurants REALLY close to our house, because since living in Texas I love all real Mexican food. However, we both *love* La Huasteca. They have many different kinds of soup, including a ranchera-style tortilla soup, as well as chicken caldo. The quesadillas are on flour tortillas (as opposed to the unusual cornboats that CdM serves) and the pico de gallo is chunky, bright, and hot.

Unfortunately, I haven't yet been to other Church Avenue restaurants.

This is for a few reasons:

During the week ,we work too late to consider straying too far for dinner, and even though Church Avenue is only 3 blocks up, it's still 3 long blocks up.

The REAL reason, though, is because the real project at hand is the house project. And while we've made some steps forward, we've also taken some steps back. I will tell you a little bit about our house using LISTS as a medium.

LIST OF GOOD THINGS ABOUT OUR HOUSE:
1. M and I live in it together
2. It doesn't cost very much
3. The ceilings are weirdly fantastic: 6 different tin ceilings
4. There are picture moldings on the walls, so it's sort of like we live in a castle
5. It is 1 block from the Q, which is an express train that takes M and I to work
6. There is a family of baby kitties in the backyard, and even M., who is theoretically opposed to kitties, realizes how excellent it is to have a pile of kittens outside. He might call it a tableau vivant, because that is the sort of thing he calls things. We can't get to them since we can't get down into the yard, which M. thinks is fine but I think is bad because c'mon, it would be good to pet these kitties AT LEAST ONCE but he knows where it would go. But we, and the cat we already live with, can watch them through the window. In this way, it is like we are at the zoo, but it is like WE are at the zoo, and the kitties are the patrons, since we are the people locked in and they are the free ones frolicking around through the weeds, which are very tall, so the tiny ones have to hop, which is enormously cute. I don't think they paid to get into the yard, though. They are feral.


Okay, 6 is enough for now. Don't want to exhaust them all at once. I will try to think of a succint list of bad things about the house:

LIST OF ONLY 5 BAD THINGS ABOUT OUR HOUSE
1. It makes me cough
2. This is because we have a mold condition but we don't know where it's coming from
3. We don't really have walls in the kitchen and if we want them, we have to pay to get them. Same with a vent in the bathroom, which is perilously small and in a weirdly public part of the apartment.
4. The house has recently settled even further and the bathroom door, formerly very wonky, now won't even close, and if you do force it, you are afraid that the pressure will be the final force that makes the back wall fall off into the back yard.
5. There are acoustical tiles first thing when you walk in the door which everyone--or everyone with eyes, at least--hates.
6. Pigeons hang out on our ledge in front, which is bad except for the fact that it makes M suggest nearly every day that we get an owl, which is a really interesting idea.

Would more birds really help us?

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A good piece of news is that despite the fact that our sink is on sawhorses and we don't have walls in the kitchen, we've actually been using it. More later.

The Idea

I am a tiny bit tired of New York, maybe a little bit ready to move out of the city. But it isn't time to move out yet. New York is big and deserves credit for lots of different kinds of neighborhoods, so why not seek a new one out? My strapping yet civilized boyfriend, M, felt much the same way. When it recently came time for us to join households, we decided to move to a new neighborhood in Brooklyn, one with bigger houses, lower rents, swaying trees, stay-at-home dads.

Ditmas Park is a turn of the century "suburb" of New York within the city itself. It's a place with enormous trees and 11 bedroom Victorian houses, some of which have turrets. It's said that wealthy New Yorkers retreated here to escape cholera here during the summers, though the person I hear saying that most is me, and I can't remember quite where I heard it.

We're very much middle-class Brooklynites who are retreating here to escape escalating rents. We were seriously considering $2400 apartments before we settled on this place, but this far out in South Brooklyn hasn't reached the frenzied pace that our last neighborhoods have. In fact, we chose a place where the deposit for our apartment was exactly $100.

As we searched for a new neighborhood, I knew that I'd wanted to live somewhere superlative in at least one way--and this certainly fit into that category. Super big houses. On the other side of a ridge that precludes us from even seeing Manhattan. Very low rent on a 100plus year old house, but a lot of work that we'd have to do ourselves.

Lest you think we've moved to either Chappaqua or Staten Island, Ditmas Park also claims a a growing gay population and an elementary school where 52 languages are spoken. In other words, it's diverse. Afghanis, Mexicans, fill in the blank, I guarantee that there are some of them here. Would you like to see someone in a chador? Come on over! I guarantee you a good parking spot. Except, please pack a lunch, and pack one for us, too:

None of these interesting people seem to be cooking too much delicious food for us to eat.

There aren't too many restaurants, or at least, the kinds of restaurants that we think of when we think of such. Ditmas residents are said to have pooled together to lure another restaurant to the neighborhood, and it's under construction right now: it will be exactly the second gentrified restaurant in the neighborhood--but even the ethnic places don't seem to be abounding on the main drag of the neighborhood where we live.

Since we've decided to settle in a bit more than usual, we thought that was okay. What we *didn't* realize was that our kitchen in our fixer-upper rental would need to be wholly remodelled and that the only contractor we could afford would take a long vacation in Guyana before he could help us. We moved in a month ago, and in that time we've been limited to things that either cross the threshold already warm or are simply toasted.

So welcome to Church Avenue Chomp. This is where we hope to explore and report upon what Church Avenue has to offer. Church Avenue is a commercial strip's several blocks to the north: a bustling bazaar of things that we might like to eat. It's a utopia of lower-middle class ethnic groups in Brooklyn. Caribbean? Polish, Russian, Dominican, these are the things we are hoping for. More later!