Thanksgiving at the Jersey Shore

We walked the boardwalk and played a rousing game of skee ball.





There were many starfish washed up on the shore.



Buster loves the beach.



We had so much fun! The beach was beautiful, but cold.

You Are What You Eat

Thursday night I attended a reading and discussion session with Jonathan Safran Foer, author of Eating Animals. Jonathan is a fellow resident of Park Slope, and was presenting his book in support of the Community Bookstore, which is a wonderful privately owned establishment here in the neighborhood.

There are some thorough reviews of Eating Animals, written from different perspectives. Links to a few of the best are below:

New York Times Books: Hungry?
The Washington Post: Jonathan Safran Foer’s Animal Farm
USA Today: Ready for Dog Stew?
Natalie Portman: Jonathan Safran Foer’s Eating Animals Turned Me Vegan

Omnivore, Vegetarian, Vegan, Human Being, I encourage you to read this book. The subject of eating animals is provocative. The issue is fraught with emotion and conversations can often become divisive, with meat eaters on one side and those who would eschew meat on the other. That is a shame, because that division obscures the facts. Unless one is a sadist, as humans we can all agree that animal cruelty in any form – even one that is sanctioned, subsidized, and supported in every supermarket across America – is just wrong.

The realities of factory farming are beyond cruel, and are so far removed from the pastoral image of Old Mac Donald’s farm that we all grew up with. This transition from humane family farming to ‘crank ‘em out at any cost’ factory farming has happened so rapidly and subtly that none of us really knew what was happening.

Safran Foer spent 3 years exhaustively researching (his statistics are backed up with 70 pages of footnote citations) the truths of factory farming. And the reality is that the cost the factory farming industry exacts on the environment, the land, the animals, and ultimately the consumers of the meat products that it spits out is too high for any of us to continue to pay. It’s time to know the facts and make important choices about where our food comes from. Too much is at steak.

Mama Mia!

My Mom was here for a visit this past weekend and did we ever have fun! We visited The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the famous Apple Store on Fifth Avenue, we strolled along Central Park, took Buster to Prospect Park, explored the shops and boutiques of Brooklyn, and spent a marathon day shopping in SoHo and NoLita.

A Painfully Obvious Tip for the Painfully Naive

Here's a tip for those who are new to life in New York: If you live in Brooklyn and decide to leave town for the weekend, make sure that you don't try to drive home to Brooklyn during the New York City marathon.

This tip brought to you by me, Chairperson of the Association for Horrendously Apparent Truths (AssHATs).

I Recall Central Park in Fall

A perfect day.

Colors from Nature

My hair grows really fast. I credit this feature to my dad’s side of the family: the Orlandos all have thick and lush heads of hair that tend to go rather prematurely grey.

I haven’t seen more than an inch of my own natural hair color since I was 13. I’ve colored my hair for years, sometimes myself, but more often I have sought out wonderful stylists with artistic vision who could bring out the very best of my head suit.

Since moving here, I’ve visited one salon and it was an OK experience but at a high cost. And unlike at my beloved Salon Visio in Hood River, I WASN’T offered a delicious and soothing cup of tea, I WASN’T treated to a world-class head and neck massage, and my stylist WASN’T paying attention when I described to her what I wanted.

Now, New York is a mecca for world-class salons and stylists. The tricky business is that they are also some of the priciest salons and stylists. While I don’t mind paying good money for great hair, my hair grows just a little too quickly to pay top dollar for a touch up every 4-6 weeks.

With my mousy, ashy blond roots starting to show I decided to save a few bucks and touch up my color at home. This can be a risky endeavor, so I conducted lots of research. Drugstore color can be really damaging to the hair and also not provide the results one is hoping for. The worst-case scenario would be to color at home and then still have to go to the salon to pay for a color correction.

After reading through tons of reviews on my favorite beauty product review web site, Makeup Alley, I decided to try Naturcolor. Naturcolor is a low peroxide dye (only 3% so it can’t really lighten the hair) formulated from herbal extracts that is really gentle on the hair, the body, and the environment. It’s made in Italy and is only carried in health food stores – I found it at the Whole Foods in SoHo.

After calling the 800 customer service number and consulting about my desired effect, I decided to mix two colors in order to get a rich, dimensional auburn color. You can see in the picture above that is exactly what I got! And my hair is seriously silky, shiny, and soft. Naturcolor is THE best at-home color I have tried.

I’ll have fun finding and trying another salon next month. In the meantime, I’ve found a great way to stretch my style budget.

The Real Joy of Cooking

I just love to cook. Partly because following a recipe is so much fun - measuring and chopping and mixing feels a lot like playing with my food. I also enjoy cooking because I love to eat, and nothing tastes as delicious as a meal made at home with fresh ingredients. Lastly, I relish the act of cooking because the process always makes me think of so many wonderful people in my life.

For example, tonight I cooked a cauliflower curry recipe from my Moosewood cookbook. Since becoming a vegetarian, the Moosewood has been my go-to source for delicious and nutritious vegetarian recipes. My particular copy of the cookbook came to me from the library of my dear Aunt Jan. She must have enjoyed the book as well because it is dog-eared and has notes on some of the pages. It is special to me to have something that she liked so much.

The Moosewood cookbook is a compendium of recipes from the famous Moosewood vegetarian restaurant in Ithaca, New York. My friend Chesua is from Ithaca, and my stepfather Steve is from a city nearby.

The last time I cooked a new recipe entirely from scratch, it was an attempt to reproduce a truly mind-blowing macaroni and cheese dish that my friend Jen made for a party at her house. Jen likes to cook, too, and we all love it when we get invited to Jen's house for dinner. My mac and cheese tasted good, but not as good as Jen's. She's got the knack.

The pots and pans that I used tonight to fry the onions and simmer the curry were wedding gifts from my uncle Dave and his family. Both Dave and his wife Michele are such amazing cooks that the word "cook" doesn't really apply. They are Chefs - artists of the kitchen who are gifted with a flair for flavor and can concoct exotic dishes without recipes.

As I moved through the step-by-step instructions of my recipe, I remembered the advice of my grandmother to "clean as you go." A tidy kitchen makes the reward at the end of the process - relaxing and tasting the fruits of your labor - that much more enjoyable.

As the heady aroma of curry filled the house, I thought about my high school friend Carrie. Carrie now lives in India with her husband, and just had her first baby boy. Carrie eats a lot of curry and vegetarian dishes these days, but would kill for some fresh avocados like the one I had for lunch earlier in the day.

In the end, my Cauliflower Curry turned out beautifully. I served it over rice and lentils and topped it with raisins. Rich and I both found it to be delicious...spicy and sweet with the perfect amount of heat. It was, as with many of the dishes that I have tried from Moosewood, one of the most successful recipes I've ever followed.

My love of cooking isn't just about the steps on the page, learning what flavors work together, or even the tasty end result. The best part is having people I love along for the ride in my mind as I twirl through the kitchen stirring this pot and chopping that veggie. It's a dinner party and everyone's invited!