Day 79-95: On hiatus.

For these two weeks the blog, which is usually on unofficial hiatus anyway, is on actual hiatus, as I have two weeks off in Montréal. I may well end up posting things here and there, but there's no official New York Message until November 7th.

Meanwhile I'll be reestablishing myself in my known haunts, eating eggtarts, drinking microbrewery beer, frequenting the markets, and mostly just spending time with Pseudonyme. I feel a paean to Montréal food coming on, so I might be back here anyhow...

Day 75: Warm mouthfuls against the cool rain.

Pictured: A second course of homemade noodle soup. Not pictured: The takoyaki, which had to be devoured much too quickly to pause for posterity.

Today was a tired day of rain and lethargy. The night was interrupted by a series of bizarre yet disturbing nightmares and the morning was dim and dreary. Work passed by in a series of strange vignettes, such as a coworker coming by to "give me E.coli".

Done the workday I decided to ramble round Manhattan for a bit, as I'll be going home for a bit of a vacation and will miss the city I leave behind. Despite the rain the East Village drew me in as it always does, and despite myself I headed back to Otafuku.

Otafuku is a snack counter offering a small menu of Japanese street food, and is the sister resto to our favourite ramen bar Rai Rai Ken. It's a tiny takeout place that only has a few things on the menu. I usually get okonomiyaki (Japanese egg-pancake thing) or takoyaki, or sometimes the combo of both.

So today, in the rain, I scurried outside the restaurant and found a place on the little bench barely covered by an awning. My knees protruded and developed little cold water spots immediately. I could see my breath.

Meanwhile, the takoyaki. Six plump little balls of fried dough each with a sliver of octopus in them. I don't usually eat octopus anymore, after an unfortunate incident where I overidentified with the poor creature and nearly passed out in a Portuguese restaurant. However, in a wholly morally inconsistent move I make an exception for takoyaki. The outside of each ball is very crisp, baked in a muffin-tin-shaped griddle. The inside is still gooey and soft and molten hot, and the centre is a chewy piece of purple octopus. You can get them plain or with cheese, but it's not the same. Atop is a squirt or two of brown sauce, another of mayo, crumpled nori and liberal chopstickfuls of fluffy bonito flakes.

Everything around me is cold. The takoyaki are steaming. One bite into the scaldingly hot, crisp, soft, chewy, sweet, salty, creamy ball and I'm both intensely present and miles away, even if there's still rain falling on my knees. Mmm. Takoyaki.

Day 74: And apple cores all in a row.

Pictured: A cluster of apple cores. Below, some tasty little turnovers, perfect for clutching in a small wombat paw for eating on the train.

Monday never smelled so sweet as when working from home. Ah. Today was a beautiful day of working and getting errands done and feeling good to be alive. Doing laundry, finding the late-open post office, spending most of the day in pyjamas.

But mostly it was a day of reckoning, where a goodly number of all those yesterday-picked apples met their maker. Me, that is, maker of an apple crisp, two apple pies, six apple turnovers, and a few cinnamon snails for good measure. The pleasures of domesticity cannot be overrated, especially not when they involve as much butter and flour and fruit as this evening did.

Day 73: Apple picking!

A little tiny apple. I think it might be a Jonathan, but we're not sure.

Today we, even we, went apple-picking.

We set out not so bright and early from our burrow, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed were we not, but we got there in the end.

There, being Terhune Orchards near Princeton, NJ. We thought to find a small orchard less overrun with New Yorkers than the nearer-by ones, so at first we were shocked to see a place swarmed with adults and kiddies, picking out pumpkins, petting pack animals, etc other-things-starting-with-P. Once we figured out that this was not the apple picking venue, we stood "on" line for apple cider donuts with the rest before making our escape. (Actually we also took the time for a little trip through the educational funhouse type thing which took us through the earth's crust, and underneath a tuber's eye view of some lovely potatoes, formed of pantyhose).

The orchard, while by no means deserted by Canadian standards, was pretty empty for New York ones. We were a bit late in the season, and the apples we were most interested in tasting were more or less gone, so we had to scavenge. But it was a beautiful day for the scavenging and we were nothing loath.

After all the scavenging and lugging exhausted us, we trekked back to Princeton for lunch near the seat of privilege, and then it was home for some poor tired marsupials. But never fear, the apple saga continues...

Pictured right, one long coil of apple thanks to an ingenious machine; left, a crumpled heap of tired scavengers amidst the endless rows of apple tree.