 epic sandwich: roasted eggplant and tomato with goat cheese on focaccia from tazza
 epic ice cream: chocolate with balsamic vinegar and fleur de sel from blue marble
Recently, during an all-too-common conversation in which I proclaimed my obsession with living in Brooklyn, somebody told me that she didn’t think she was “cool enough” to live in this borough. I quickly responded, “Well I’m not cool. I’m actually a huge nerd.”
I really am. I mean, people. I take pictures of food. I listen to musicals on my ipod. I was on the yearbook staff in high school. For starters.
Last Sunday, I spent the afternoon at the Brooklyn Book Festival. The mostly outdoor event was slightly chaotic and seriously crowded, but I loved it. Imagine: hundreds of book nerds swarming Borough Hall, congregating in a single place to be nerdy together.
We all thumbed through dozens of books. We all read back covers and gazed at front cover artwork. We all wanted to see Jonathan Safran Foer and Joyce Carol Oates read, and we were all sad when only a handful of lucky people got in to that panel. We all meandered book stalls and entered contests for things like a free writing workshop and a subscription to Poets and Writers and a getaway writing weekend.
In the midst of the day, my friends Shayne and Daniel and I took a break to eat monster-sized sandwiches on perfect focaccia and lick ice cream from the best shop in Brooklyn [trust me, guys, I've eaten a lot of ice cream this summer]. We waxed on about the deliciousness of buttery focaccia and cheese and roasted vegetables as we finished every last bite. Then we spent more time with the books.
At the Festival, I bought an anthology titled Readings for Writers, and I’ve been reading one piece from it each night before bed [you know, for the two days since I've owned it]. That day, I wore navy blue and black together [I also wore white yesterday, two weeks post-Labor Day]. The strong wind blew my thick curls into a bird’s nest over the course of the day, and a glance in a bathroom mirror was a rather amusing sight.
I’m pretty sure all of these things should place me in the running to teach Nerdiness 101. And yet, looking around, I felt that I fit right in. It’s funny to hear that living here makes me “cool.” Apparently someone decided that being a nerd is all the rage.
Three days before the Book Fest, NYC’s biannual Fashion Week came to an end. I was there, inside the Bryant Park tent, three years ago. I love fashion, but I did not fit in. Fashion people are cool. I’m a nerd.
Good thing I prefer the latter.
Ok, apologies for not actually blogging this week. A Friday afternoon post is better than nothing, yes?
This is a DC edition of the new blog series, including a good-but-not-great book and a similar movie, a free play, and historical museums. Plus an unbelievable brunch back in New York.
Meal: Incredible brunch with the family at Hundred Acres in the West Village.
shared appetizers:
 ricotta fritters, cider syrup, powdered sugar
 sliced heirloom tomatoes, salt
 black kale salad with lemon-anchovy dressing, toasted breadcrumbs, pecorino, poached egg
 warm cream biscuits and banana walnut bread with strawberry jam, blackberry marmalade, and honey butter
 my entree: goat cheese-thyme bread pudding with poached eggs, warm spinach salad, and lemon butter
Book: Sarah’s Key
My parents’ genes afflicted me with terrible motion sickness that appears in cars and on boats, but thanks to a double dose of Bonine, I was able to read during the 4.5 hour bus ride to and from DC over Labor Day weekend. I read this book in transit, and I liked it, but I think I had built it up too much from everyone’s excellent reviews. It was fine and worth reading, but not a life-changer.
Movie: The Help
I think I’m one of the few that thought the book was overrated [good and a page-turner, but overrated]. The movie was a nice adaptation. It’s got these nice moments that make you smile or grimace or shake your head about humanity in general. I wasn’t so sure about the casting of Emma Stone, but that’s Hollywood for you.
Play: The Heir Apparent
My friend that I visited in DC is a forensic scientist who likes Shakespeare just as much as she likes dead things. So we tried to see a free performance of Julius Caesar but ultimately arrived at the line too late. Instead, everyone who couldn’t get in was offered a free pass to the first dress rehearsal of this world premiere English translation of the French play. We gladly accepted and got a lot of laughs – just try and imagine very modern language written in rhyming iambic pentameter.
Other Stuff: US Holocaust Memorial Museum and International Spy Museum
I had never been to the Holocaust Museum and felt I needed to go. We stayed there until the doors closed behind us. The Spy Museum started out hokey [e.g. "Think this is lipstick? Psyche! It's a camera!"], but turned out to be incredibly educational, telling stories from the Civil War to Vietnam to the Cold War to modern times. I only wish I had had more time to read the dozens of stories from Eastern Europe. Living over there and teaching students who survived that time period will forever draw me to those tales.
Also, I went to an acrobatics class this week, during which I climbed up a rope and hung upside down from a trapeze. Then Sofia and I proceeded to wander 20 blocks in pursuit of nutella gelato. Don’t ask.
What did you do, see, and read this week?
I was in English class when my friend Mallory sat down next to me and told me what had happened. It was fifth period, and I had spent my morning unaware of the horror occurring just an hour drive away. By the time I found out, both towers had already collapsed.
A classmate of ours raised his hand and asked our teacher, “Mr. Smith, do you think there’s going to be a war?” Teachers had been told not to discuss the events. Some ignored the instruction, shut their classroom doors, and turned on the news anyway. Mr. Smith answered his student. He said he didn’t know.
At lunch, the pay phones near the cafeteria were suddenly off-limits. No one had cell phones back then, and kids in my Connecticut town had parents who worked in Manhattan. To prevent chaos, I suppose, they weren’t permitted to insert a quarter into the machines and find out if their parents were ok. Later, I’d learn that the families of my classmates were safe. A few weeks later, I met a girl who lived 30 minutes south of my town. Her dad had worked in Tower 1.
I walked the half mile home from school that afternoon, as I did every day. My thoughts were usually full of teenage daydreams: my future life in college, stories for films I wanted to someday make, the places I couldn’t wait to be old and independent enough to go. But on this Tuesday, I thought only of reality. I thought of my uncle, who worked in Queens. I thought of the dinner my family had had at Windows on the World on August 11th, 2001. I thought of the university I wanted to attend, located 40 blocks north of what everyone was suddenly calling “ground zero.”
I turned on the news when I got home. My mom walked in from work an hour later. She was crying. We hugged. She said something about Israel, about all the terror that happened there every other day. I nodded. After that, we didn’t know what to say.
My parents and I ate dinner in front of the television. We watched in silence as President Bush spoke. It was the first time we had listened to him without rolling our eyes.
We watched the news late into the evening. I had a biology quiz the next day, but I didn’t touch my notes. The teacher still gave us the exam. My score was one of the only average grades I ever received.
Six weeks after September 11, 2001, I turned 16 years old. Later that school year, we began talking with guidance counselors, teachers, and peers about college. I had had my mind set on NYU for years, and yet people asked me if maybe now, something had changed.
Everything had changed. And as I watched this city rise up on the very evening of the attacks, as I saw the spirit of the millions who lived here on my television screen, as I rode the subway on a day trip with my sister later that fall, I knew that New York was no longer the option I wanted the most. It was the only option.
Every decision I made in high school, every honors or AP class, every good grade, every after-school activity, every bit of extra credit was a means to an end. It was all for NYU, so I could live here like my grandparents, my great-grandparents before them, and all of the incredible people who make this city the most resilient, powerful, inspiring, artistic, multicultural, intelligent, surprising, delicious, ambitious, beautiful city on earth.
No act of terror will ever be able to take that soul of New York away. Six weeks from tomorrow, I will turn 26. I’m still in New York. And I’m still fiercely proud of it every single day.
Before I returned to the city from vacation last month, I spent some time in my childhood bedroom in Connecticut, and I discovered a stack of old journals. One in particular caught my eye: more scrapbook than journal, it was a place where I kept all my ticket stubs, plane tickets, bar bracelets, and other paraphernalia one collects while gallivanting London and Manhattan as a junior in college. Thumbing through the book’s many pages, I was overwhelmed by memories. I’m so glad I took the time to save all of it.
Then last week, my friend Katie changed my life by introducing me to a website called GoodReads. I’m pretty connected to social media: I love Twitter, I gave in to Foursquare, I have a blog, I have a Tumblr. I have a Facebook account that I check almost never, but it is there. Apparently, however, I am still behind the times because GoodReads was a brand new concept for me.
As I thought of my old scrapbook and this new social media method of cataloging all the books I’ve read – not to mention getting to see what my friends are reading too – I started thinking. I do a lot more than cook and dine and practice yoga. Wouldn’t it be nice to keep track of all that? To be able to look back and say, “Oh, I remember the first time I saw that play. I remember where I was when I finished reading that book. I remember who was with me when I bought the ticket for that museum.”
And then I thought of the blog. Sure, we’re here for food. But really, I spend a lot of time rambling about things that don’t relate to food at all, save for the fact that I thought of them while eating a certain meal. I think this is the perfect place for a scrapbook of art-y endeavors.
It’s going to be a weekly thing. Ready? I will include a restaurant meal too, because I consider good food to be art as well.
Meal: Mexican tapas for brunch at Oyamel in Washington, DC
 “gazpacho” salad: pineapple, mango, cucumber, jicama, radish queso fresco, and chile.
 huevos ranchero: poached egg on a flour tortilla with avocado, poblano chile, queso fresco, and a tomato-chile sauce.
 seared scallops with a pumpkin seed and chile sauce, orange segments, pumpkin seed oil, and toasted pumpkin seeds.
Book: Shadow Divers
The girl who I replaced in my new apartment left behind a shelf full of books, and this caught my eye when I remembered both of my parents reading it a few years back. It’s nonfiction, but once you get past the second chapter where the author describes the terrible things that can happen to your insides when you’re 200 feet underwater, the book reads like a novel. It had me on the edge of my subway seat from cover to cover.
Movie: Another Earth
I saw this at BAM, which is my new favorite place to see movies because I can follow the film with a 20 minute walk and arrive at my building’s front door. The movie is a mostly depressing coming-of-age story set against a zany sci-fi backdrop [scientists discover a planet that appears to be a carbon copy of earth]. The sci-fi aspect is barely relevant and there isn’t a single fancy special effect; it’s really about the main character’s story. I liked it.
Play: Death Takes a Holiday
The redeeming factors of this terrible musical adaptation of the play were that my tickets were heavily discounted, and one of the male supporting actors was very pleasant to stare at. I keep seeing new musicals in the hopes that one will sweep me away like The Light in the Piazza or Next to Normal once did, but it hasn’t happened yet. Still, I’d rather die trying.
Shop: DeKalb Market
I took a long walk across my area of the borough a couple Saturdays back with the intention of going to this new market. Lots of handmade jewelry, a few vintage stores, typical gentrified-Brooklyn food [fresh pressed juice, Joe coffee, fancy tacos, vegan things], and a live DJ spinning in the middle of the day. I found a gorgeous handmade necklace and will likely be back.
♦♦♦
The cool thing about putting this on the internet instead of in a book is that I can ask what everyone else has been doing too. So tell me: what’s something you’ve seen, read, or done recently?
 breakfast at first watch in rockville, md: muesli with strawberries, raisins, pecans, and almonds; vanilla yogurt; extra cinnamon; black coffee.
I spent Labor Day weekend visiting my oldest friend in the world just outside of DC.
I first met Mallory at the age of nine. A friendship founded on bites of a brownie grew into endless elementary school sleepovers, shared obsessions with the Olsen twins, matching pairs of overalls, and magazine cutouts of Jonathan Taylor Thomas. It took us through middle school, through bad haircuts, bullies, and boy bands. It took us to high school, to college, and for Mallory, to graduate school. It’s been with us in many new states and more new countries. Last weekend, I visited my friend in the newest state she is calling home.
We two are very different people from very different backgrounds: her parents met in high school and began working upon graduation; mine met in their late twenties, after college and grad school, travel, and first full-time jobs. Her father is a hunter who would bring home elk meat for a family dinner; my mother cooked vegetables and chicken breasts in a hundred different flavors. As a teen, she adored science and Roman history; I liked to dance and make movies and couldn’t pick just one country that fascinated me the most. She chose a university with an arboretum on campus; I took the path of concrete and subway tracks.
And yet, our differences have never mattered much. She’s always supported me as I’ve gone after my dreams. I’ve always tried to encourage her to go after hers as well.
This weekend, we talked of our separate lives. I spoke of the ups and downs of coexisting with new roommates as she confessed her struggle to adjust to living alone. She told me about leaving her apartment 5 minutes before work and still arriving on time; I considered how 5 minutes from my office would put me in the heart of Manhattan’s tourist central, a place I couldn’t imagine calling home. I responded with my 40 minute commute: a walk, a subway ride with a book, a shorter walk.
My friend told me how she doesn’t like to be in the city alone at night; I thought of how I walk alone in the late hours – with some street smarts, of course – and feel safe. I mentioned that I don’t have cable or even a TV; she said she likes the hum of the television to fill up her quiet apartment.
And yet…
When we laid on the beach overlooking the Bay Bridge last Sunday, it was as comfortable as the days we spent together on the beaches of southern Croatia. When we somehow scored free passes to the first dress rehearsal of a world premiere play, our position next to one another in the theater was as familiar as the first time we saw Rent together in our teens. When we purchased tickets for a late night movie, it felt just like all those summers in Connecticut when we’d see every film playing at the local Crown Marquis.
As we talked this weekend, I realized that difference has been the defining element of our friendship all these years. We’re different people, but for a few weekends every year, we share experiences together. We bring our dissimilar lives together and enjoy the comfort of being with someone who has known you since you were nine years old. I think that kind of friendship is pretty rare. I feel lucky that I have it.
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about. thank you for visiting the whole plate! i'm leslie, and this blog is my way of navigating twentysomething life one meal at a time. i usually require a glass of wine alongside.
questions? comments? email me: thewholeplateblog@gmail.com
you can also check out some more of my food photography over on tumblr.
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epic sandwich: roasted eggplant and tomato with goat cheese on focaccia from tazza
epic ice cream: chocolate with balsamic vinegar and fleur de sel from blue marble
