what's been going on

hey, this has been a busy month!

2 food festivals, a wedding, and atlantic antic. there's been a lot going on.

and did i mention i moved? i'm finally doing the domestic partnership thing and it sure is nice. i got a cute boy to live with and a cat out of the deal, so i win!

earlier in september i attended the farm city fair which was an all day food fest conveniently located in my neighborhood. there were lots of yummy freebies, including a slow poached egg prepared and served by master chef wylie dufresne!

another highlight was a "geographically inspired new ice cream flavor based on bergen street and the festival" created by food artist, miwa koizumi. this was so cool...she created a flavor called bread & cheese which was inspired by the fromageries that used to line bergen st. back in the day (still looking for info on this) miwa has created a project called ny flavors which she creates new flavors inspired by local neighborhoods flavors and histories. she describes her work as an installation "mapping the tastes and smells from nyc's different tribes into a comestible frozen liquid." other flavors include a lox and bagel ice cream for the lower east side and kimchi sorbet for korea town in the the east 30's. i was skeptical at first, but her ice cream was delicious--i don't know if tasted like bread or cheese necessarily, but it was yummy and amazingly creative. check out some of her other flavors here. 

inside the festival, which was held at the invisible dog center there were these amazing grass sculptures of human bodies. the sculptures were constructed out of soil and exhibited after grass seeds had begun to grow.

the artist, mathilde roussel giraudy, says the sculptures demonstrates how what we consume affects our bodies on a level beyond just taste, i.e we are what we eat. although i believe it to have been unintentional, the sculptures were eerily reminiscent to me of some of the very disturbing preserved bodies i saw when i visited pompeii a few years ago. those were casts that had been created of the petrified exteriors of humans who had perished in the volcanic explosion of mt. vesuvius in 79ad. the positions of the grass sculptures were similar to those of some of the casts, and i assumed it was an interesting commentary on humans who has perished in ash vs. humans growing and generating out of earth. i liked the dichotomous idea of dying in soil and being reborn into earth, but i think my theory may have been a bit farfetched.

recently i was lucky enough to attend just food's let us eat local event, which made me feel like i had graduated to being a real foodie, at least for one night. i've been volunteering with just food, which is one of the coolest organizations ever. they help communities get access to local food and support the farmers who provide it. they also do free workshops about community supported agriculture groups and provide education and support to schools and neighborhoods throughout nyc. they generally rock and i was pretty psyched to be at their benefit, which featured the best restaurants in new york and the local ingredients used in their menus. basically i spent the whole night being fed from chefs from abc kitchen, dovetail, gramercy tavern, etc...and i got to drink beer sponsored by nyc craft beer week. yep, it was a very good night. here are some pics of the food at the event that i got off the metromix website.

beets and watermelon salad from gramercy tavern

cucumber vichyssoise from dovetail

smoked tomato soup from almond.

speaking of food and festivals, last week was one of my favorite events, brooklyn's atlantic antic. it only happens once a year, so i've made a point to go the past three years. it's an all day festival of food, music, art, and general fun. the spirit is infectious, and i got some pics that i think really captured the energy of the day.

and yes, we did make it to a wedding in boston and had a great time catching up with good friends, hanging out with babies, and seeing some of the city. congrats again to brett & lindsay, who threw a pretty great party and esp. to lindsay for her choice of stylish and comfortable footwear on her wedding day.

oh yeah, i'm obsessed with this snake ring from st. kilda in park slope. it's only $13,200. let me know if you have the extra money laying around. i'll pay you back...not.

what it means to me

tonight marked the beginning of the jewish new year, which for most of us who are more jew-ish than observant, it is yet another opportunity to get a head start on all those resolutions we have probably broken since we swore them on jan '01 of the previous new year according to the christian calendar. yep, us chosen folk get not one but two shots to swear off smoking, or resolve to exercise more and eat junk food less. both new years symbolize renewal; a chance to be reborn and reinvent ourselves. as humans we spend every day either indulging in or fighting our vices. often we feed our temptations with very little recognition of their consequences until that one day out of the year when we are forced into a tete a tete with our flaws and we convince ourselves that next year will be different. we promise ourselves that we will be a little less, well, human. we are after all nothing, if not imperfect in every way. so tonight I accompanied my fantastic friend, franny, to these crazy hippied-out services she goes to to welcome in the jewish new year. they were unconventional to say the least; held in a winery instead of a temple, led by a new-agey gay man who was more guru than rabbi, and accompanied by a band dressed like the cast of mad men, most with multi-colored hair cuts...i liked it right away. i grew up in synagogues, but i thrived on praying outdoors. never religious but naturally humanistic, i resented stuffy crowded rooms of worship but was easily enticed by acoustic guitar harmonies and outdoor services. i got my fix of this at the jewish camp i spent every summer from age 8 to 18 at. i matured and grew in those wooden cabins and rocky roads. i had heart-break and accomplishment, pangs of loneliness and exalted freedom. i went from student to teacher, child to adult. i endured a full cycle of being and i know i am better for it. the feeling i have when i think of that place is a feeling of home that connects me to my mother, my father, my sister, and every ancestor i've ever had. it makes me feel big in a small community of people i would see year after year, and small in an infinite community of my cultural relatives. sometimes you can just show up somewhere and know all the words to the songs, even if the tune has slightly changed, like tonight. a room full of frizzy-haired adolescents, skinny-jeaned hipsters with suspenders and yamachas, well dressed mothers with better dressed children. whatever--this is new york, and we all came out to see the alternative services with the guru rabbi guy. he talked a lot about that whole renewal thing, and he said it wasn't about making huge changes, it was just an opportunity to be better. we have that ability, as people to always be a little bit better, cause we just want peace, right? we could all just be better and maybe be that much closer to what we want. i have this amazing friend named caissie who is a performer and through her work has been able to do a lot of international travel of late. i woke up with an email from her wishing me and some of her other friends a happy jewish new year. caissie is in morocco right now and she is one of those people that when you meet her you are inspired to be better because she just radiates kindness and love. she's seen a good amount of the western hemisphere in the past few months, and she finished her email by saying that what she's really learned by this journey of travelling and performing abroad is that the world is cool as fuck. i think that's just it. during the service i thought of my parents in california and my sister and my friend standing next to me and caissie in morocco and all the places i've been and the strangers in the room and i just thought, yeah, the world is cool as fuck. i walked back to my apartment tonight under a sky lit with two beaming lights memoralizing two towers that once stood and the many people that stood inside them almost 9 years ago. if we could all just be a little better...

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