Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to my dedicated readers. Kat and I are visiting her family and enjoying mountains of delicious Greek pastries. Secretly though, the bagels and whitefish salad are my favorite items at the Greenberg Christmas.

Thanksgiving 2009 NYC

Happy Thanksgiving to my loyal readership! For the second consecutive year, the West coast Clark clan traveled to brisk New York for a Tiny Apartment Thanksgiving. This year was significantly less stressful than last year because we are more experienced, the kitchen is better equipped, and we didn't order mail order our turkey. We made the following:

• Chive buttermilk biscuits


• Butternut squash soup with ginger and curry


• Red onions pickled in balsamic vinegar, mustard, and red wine


• Homemade cranberry sauce


• Salted heritage turkey with a lemon herb rub and golden turkey stock pan gravy


• Balsamic glazed brussel sprouts with pancetta


• Buttermilk mashed potatoes


• Pureed sweet potatoes with orange juice


• Mushroom and spinach stuffing with Amy's ciabatta breadcrumbs


• Pecan Pie


• Deconstructed pumpkin pie made with homemade pumpkin ice cream and ginger snaps

My mom arrived on Monday and did an excellent job keeping Hadley, Kat, and me organized through three days of prep. Unlike last year, we created shopping and cooking plans. These streamlined the process and made sure that the actual Thanksgiving day cooking wasn't too stressful.

Everything tasted delicious but, of all the courses, I enjoyed the turkey the most. It looked beautiful, was not dry, and had great turkey flavor. We bought a heritage bird from Dickson's Farmstand Meats in Chelsea Market which may explain why the turkey turned out so well. The salt and butter smeared all over the outside probably had nothing to do with it.

Overall, Clark NYC Thanksgiving 2 was very successful and I look forward to cooking more big meals in my small kitchen, especially when my family is involved.

My Favorite Hobbies

There are three things that I love to do:

1. Vacation Travel
2. Ski
3. Cook Big Meals in my Small Apartment

Of these, number three both challenges and inspires me the most. With only one weak oven, three feet of counter space, and four electric burners there is very little margin for error and the consequences are dire. At best, your guests will grumble mildly while nibbling on the sad plate of vegetables and chips that you have presented as hors d'ouerves. At worst, they will mutinously gnaw as you desperately try to raise the lamb's temperature to even mildly safe levels. Thankfully, the upside potential is high and these same guests will sing your praises if you manage to successfully place a hot plate of correctly prepared food in front of them.

My first attempts at dinner parties were pretty awful. One Easter, I was a full two hours late. With the tortilla chips exhausted, the roast barely made it to the table before there was a full scale riot. My cooking has improved over the years. Now I prepare a day ahead of time and choreograph the preparation with the same attention to detail as that with which Mozart composed his most elaborate symphonies. Oven temperature, pan availability, resting times, and dish washing are all accounted for. The result? More courses, more guests, and less mess. Easter, for reasons even I can't explain, is now my main event and last year, I served twenty even though I suffered a disastrous injury halfway through.

Dinner parties have taught me important lessons about preparation, attention to detail, and the virtues of practice. Most of all, cooking has taught me how to share my passions with my friends and given us all an excuse to be together.

Picasa 3.5

I like taking photos but in no way do I consider myself a photographer. It is just too intimidating to me to learn all of my camera settings and how to do proper post-processing. For these reasons, I use Picasa to process my photos and have done so for the past three or four years. Picasa improves every release and they are always adding features that I didn't know I wanted. For example, I can easily share photos with my family and friends using online web albums. And I use tagging to organize my photos regardless of their location on disk. These features, combined with the "I'm feeling lucky" photo adjustment button make Picasa one of my favorite programs. Free or paid.

A week or so ago Google released Picasa 3.5 and the Picasa development team has really taken the program to the next level. Long standing features, such as tagging, online sync, and geo-tagging, are all significantly improved. But the most exciting new feature is face tagging/recognition. Picasa now scans your library, identifies faces, and lets you tag your photos. The face recognition works amazingly well and it didn't take long to tag all my entire library.

The picture information is automatically synced with Google Contacts and because I use Google Sync to transfer my Google Contacts to my iPhone, all of my iPhone contacts now have pictures. Sure, this won't change how I contact people but my entire environment now feels more customized, and that's just cool.

Tessa!

Kat and my good friends Oskar and Noelle had a baby girl on November 3rd. Congratulations to the new family! Kat and I are both looking forward to babysitting duty and I have started to prepare by gently coddling the most baby-shaped butternut squash I can find. After all, squash and babies are the same. Right?

Cupcake... and Birthday Candles

I am normally against "couples" Halloween costumes but this year my individual costume, bird flu, sucked due to poor planning and execution. Kathryn's costume, on the other hand, was awesome. She made this huge cupcake covered with lots of little sprinkles, a collapsible wrapper, and creamy delicious frosting. So Saturday afternoon we called an audible and decided to turn me into the perfect cupcake companion, birthday candles. Three hours, one shipping box, five sheets of poster board and a little bit of bickering later the costume was done. And the results were pretty darn sweet.

 

Halloween turned out to be the best night ever, we got stopped several times for photos, got an ovation at one bar, and danced our butts off. In our entire relationship, I don't think that I have ever seen Kat so happy. Halloween was a great night and I can't wait for what we will be next year.

Ramen & NPR

Today Zane and I went to Momofuku Ramen and had delicious bowls of pork ramen. Unless we are talking about Top Ramen, my ramen experience is pretty limited so don't count on me for the end all, be all of noodle shop recommendations. With that completely unnecessary disclaimer out of the way, I can safely say that Momofuku Ramen is really delicious. Their secret is that they add extra pork fat to everything. The fats congeal to form a delicious and, since its soup, faux-healthy broth. These saturated, also known as dissolved, fats are then combined with beautiful and rich pieces of pork belly. All in, its pretty damn delicious.

As were finishing the meal, the manager walked up to us and introduced "Jessica" (Jesse?), a reporter from NPR. She asked if she could interview me, and since I love NPR more than life, I happily agreed. Three minutes and a couple of poetic thoughts about beef broth later, the interview was over and I went back to my home office. Pretty exciting and I may be on NPR this Saturday. Oh glorious days.