Step By Step

The best form of exercise.

How fortunate am I that my preferred means of getting my body moving combines so well with my botanical pastime, and that I possess the natural inclination to slow down and see, really see.

[Edited to completion April 6, 2023.]

 

Spring Sprung

First day of Spring 2023.

Daffodils on the first day of Spring, as seen in Carl Schurz Park.

Winter in the morning, Spring by evening. Began cold, ended warmer - just as one would expect. The forecasters say it'll be warmer than usual and wetter than usual.

A season for renewal. For fresh starts, new courses, experiments. And, it feels like sometimes, new relationships - for everyone, except yours truly. For NF, for Long-Term Houseguest, for everyone else. I should simply anoint myself Nice But Not Quite Right. Ah well. So it goes. I look around, and I am not ready to let anyone in anyway. So my renewal should be focused on myself this year.

And that was already the plan - to seek that balance, to be ok that really pretty good is all right, and maybe more happiness-inducing than perfection, than achieving the pinnacles. So I'll just lean in to it, by leaning a little bit out of it.

And maybe half assery will get me farther. Maybe doing less work - like no dig gardening or leaving a messy flower bed - will still yield plenty. Leaving more time, to make room for more people.

[Edited to completion March 21, 2023.]

Winter Finale 2023

Last day of Winter - cold, but warm in other ways.

Vegetarian noodle dish, topped with chili crisp. Chili crisp makes everything better!

Winter had a last hurrah with a dip in temps. But it turned out to have been conducive to a productivity boost on the homefront, and, serendipitously, well-timed. I was readying to dispose of some Long-Term Houseguest items, and reached out to confirm they could go, and learned their owner could take them all back. It'll be nice to reunite them with him, and wonderful to have my space back.

Tofu mushroom soup. Note addition of chili crisp.

But it wasn't all housework... Offset by some yummy Mother Hen food for a traditionally personal celebratory last day of Winter.

Choux a la creme - a favorite from childhood.

The creme at the forefront; the choux bringing up the rear.

[Edited to completion April 7, 2023.]

Penultimate Day of Winter 2023

Scenes from a not quite Spring day.

Sometimes It IS That Easy Being Green

Everyone is a little bit Irish on St. Patrick's Day, enhanced by a bit of emerald adornment.

My green gel-bejeweled pistachio selection from Veniero's's, the old school Italian bakery blocks from my high school...

... set amidst my high school classmate's selections, capping an evening gathering to see a classmate in from out of town, our small clutch of different ethnicities, from different neighborhoods, brought together by a common public high school, the gateway to a better life.

I have a green costume necklace that I wear to jazz up some blah but functional beige work tops. It also comes out each St. Paddy's Day as a nod to the occasion. Growing up in New York, with its deep Irish roots, everyone is a little Irish here on St. Pat's.

By the same token, everyone is a little Jewish - we all know some Yiddish, just from osmosis, and we all eat bagels, because we grew up with them. And we're all a little Italian, from all the pizza. And all a little Chinese, from the takeout and dim sum. We're all a little Black from the hip hop. We're all a little everything. It's our birthright, or, rather, our childhoodright.

Also makes it awfully hard to truly hate a culture or a people, because you'd have to reject a little part of yourself and some of the people you grew up with.

[Rounded out to completion August 26, 2023.]

On a Mission In Search of Hamantaschen

Tale of a New York City-reared Vietnamese American Confucian Buddhist woman seeking Purim cookies.

The oh so elusive hamantaschen, obtained at last.

Primed by Molly Yeh on this past weekend's "Girl Meets Farm," then by all of my friends' posts of baking and buying all the foods and donning all the costumes, compounded by the bevy of corporatey Purim social media posts, I got in my mind by the morning of Purim to pick up some hamantaschen. The plan was to do it post-work, while picking up a Buy Nothing award, after work-from-home, all in the neighborhood, and just in time for the start of the holiday, on an evening that promised to be unseasonably warm. But the Buy Nothing pickup got postponed, till after my Tuesday in-office day, when the weather had turned, back to Winter cold. Not as ideal.

I thought of abandoning the mission. It's not MY holiday, after all. The pickup was in the opposite direction from home, farther west. And then, on top of that, I had seen a curb alert quite a bit farther north that I decided to pursue, and they were there - some not terribly heavy, though rather bulky, storage baskets and a shelf. So there I was, lugging around six storage items, over a half mile away from home, on a frigid evening, the last of Purim. I debated. But I was already out, and the most likely purveyor of the hamantaschen would be en route home, so why not check?

Hamantaschen amid the storage units.

I had high hopes for the Budapest Cafe. I entered its narrow hallway before the display case, while the clerk was helping a patron ahead of me. Rugelach, check; babka, check; black and white cookies, check. No sign of hamantaschen. I could have exited; I was, after all, blocking the means of both ingress and egress with my armload of storage implements. But I was committed to the mission; I figured I could wait and ask - in case there was a hidden supply in the back somewhere. While I awaited my turn, two women came in, discussing the treats they were seeking.

And then my turn. The clerk shook her head; no hamantaschen. I'm not quite sure why I had been so certain a Hungarian pastry shop should have hamantaschen; while I, personally, know Jews with Hungarian roots, post-Holocaust, the Jewish community was greatly reduced, and for all I know, the owners of the cafe (whom, a Hungarian classmate told me, aren't even Hungarian any longer) came up in that post-World War II time with a greatly diminished Jewish influence.

The woman ahead of me, whose exit I blocked, helpfully suggested William Greenberg. Too far, too late, and back uptown from where I had just come. And then one of the ladies who had come in after me, whose advance to the counter I blocked, said, "You're just looking for hamantaschen? I have some here in my bag; I got them just today. You can have them." So sweet, so generous, so kind. Of course, I declined. She was a white woman, whom I assumed had come from a Purim celebration. How could I take the spiritual hamantaschen that were her birthright to satisfy my mere sweet hankering and cultural appropriation? I couldn't. "Thank you so much, that is so nice of you, but no, please enjoy them. I'm sure Agata and Valentina will have them." And with that, they backed up and held the door open for me so I could exit, and get out of their way en route to the counter.

Agata and Valentina? Why would I think an Italian gourmet grocery would carry intrinsically Jewish holiday cookies? Because I live on the Upper Eastside of New York City, and it was Purim, and Agata has a pretty extensive bakery counter and selection. New Yorkers, and New York City businesses, are agnostic as to religion, culture, too, to an extent. That's why we love it so. So why in the world wouldn't culturally Catholic purveyors in New York City carry hamantaschen for Purim? But Agata is south of home. So I figured I'd check the Morton Williams on the way; but no luck. Arms tired, I debated with myself again. But by then I was invested. So, onward toward Agata. First, to Agata's gluten-free outpost, pleasantly empty and spacious. The clerk there had none; "We have rugelach, but we haven't done hamantaschen yet. But I'm sure across the street will have some." So across the street, to the older, narrower store. I looked - on the shelves, in the bakery case; I didn't see any. How could there be no hamantaschen anywhere on the Upper East Side? Well, I suppose it was the last night of Purim. But really, everyone had purchased the entire supply of hamantaschen?! Then I spied a clerk behind the bakery counter, looking like she was readying to leave for the day. And I asked. "Yes, but they'll only be the assorted ones." Holy grail!! No need for the fresh baked gourmet ones in the case; pre-packaged would be perfectly fine. She came out from behind the counter to help me look on the shelves. And there it was, high up; "These are the last ones." I got the very last hamantaschen.

And with that treasure, home I went, to partake of the cultural heritage of my city. It was my dinner that night - far too many hamantaschen in one sitting. But whatever. Not my spiritual or cultural birthright; rather, my New York City-raisedright.

Exchange with the Sissy.

[Edited to completion March 17, 2023.]

It's Not Easy Being Green

Kermit's song, as expressed by a beleaguered Thai lime tree overwintering indoors, and tulips trying to hang on outdoors.

Tiny little full leaf.

In particular, if you are a Thai lime tree living in my household under a regime of benign neglect. Despite watering - ok, make up watering after two weeks of deprivation - the Thai lime dried out and shed its leaves. Every time I brushed past it or bent my head near it, and thorns caught my hair and I tugged ever so slightly on the tree to disentangle myself, a few leaves dropped. But then, with the compensation watering, which I had hoped would stem the leaf shedding, it only got worse; they all seemed to want to end their misery and separate themselves from the unnourishing limbs. So, I decided to embrace it and collect the leaves for cooking.

Five fresh leaves remain. Well, really, four half leaves and one teeny tiny full leaf. Hopeful for more to grow in, as happened last year. It's always bounced back for me.

Withered upper half of a leaf, and normal lower half.

Full on dry shrivel.

I took to gathering the shed leaves in the rim of the pedestal planter...

... and then gathered them all into a container.

The mostly bald limbs.

It's not easy being tulips in the Jardin, either. I've neglected the Jardin more than usual the past year. There is a bag of mulch from Mulchfest that Sissy so helpfully retrieved for me (the weekend I left town on a work conference), but I have yet to deploy it. 

Tulips emerging.

So the tulips are shivering.

Somewhat older bulbs, not quite so vigorous.

Or, alternately, they are fooled by our False Spring into thinking they need to sprout like crazy to catch up to the intermittently brief early Summer temperatures. Yo-yo. Par for the course for New York City.

First real snow blanket.

[Edited to completion March 17, 2023.]

Happy Pi Day!

Math nerds, unite for mid-March pastry-enrobed filling dessert day!

After a disappointing dearth of pie options at my workplace cafeteria at lunch (where were my fellow Pi Day celebrants?! One would think there'd be some math geeks in the financial services industry...), I ended the workday still in search of pie.

Would it have been easier to pick up store bought? Sure. But, having found a single serving pie recipe online, I got the Icarian ambition to bake from scratch - sometimes I get these ideas 🤷🏻‍♀️. (x2, actually - 'cause Pi Day is more fun with more pies and more people, or, another person - the Sissy - in any event.)

Was it the best ever? No. Could the crust have used a nice egg wash? Yes - but for a single serve quick pie, a whole egg? Could the filling have been more bubbly? Sure. But did it present justifiably as pie from scratch on Pi Day? Yup! Did it taste apple-y and buttery crusty and pie-y, and all accomplished last minute, post-work (yay for somewhat better work/life balance!), with ingredients I already had in the kitchen? Ding, ding, ding! 

I shall chalk it up as a success! All of it.

[Edited March 15, 2023 to complete entry, after publishing only a partial title to ensure the correct date of observation.]