A Trip to Queens and Central Asia

Bukharian Jews lived in Uzbekistan in Central Asia on the spice route, so the seasonings in their food are complex and satisfying. These mantu (meat-filled dumplings) are from Salute in the New York City borough of Queens.  It is located in a neighborhood filled with amazing kosher and non kosher food providers with Russian, Middle East and Central Asian specialties ranging from pickled vegetables, cured meats, savory and sweet pastries to cheeses and much, much more. 

A Smorgsaburg in Brooklyn -- NYC Photo of the Day

With 100 or so vendors of all kinds of international treats all around me, what did I choose?  The fries from the Bolivian stand.  And they were great tossed with garlic, cilantro and Parmesan cheese and served with cilantro sauce. Several Smorgsaburg locations throughout the great counties of Kings and Queens depending on day and season.  This one was at the spectacular Brooklyn Bridge Park. 

For more info check out the Smorgsaburg website.

NYC Photo of the Day -- Coffee Soda

Think of the Manhattan Special as the Red Bull of its day, which goes back to 1895. Cold, sweet and intense, this espresso soda fueled many NYU study hours for me.  Now available in diet, which does help with the post drink jitters, it still is an acquired taste.  It is thick and syrupy, very coffee flavored, sweet and slightly carbonated.  Pretty much everything I like in one small bottle.  The Manhattan Special makes regular iced coffee seem like it's for sissies.

I've only ever seen this in New York.  It might exist elsewhere but to me it's something I can only drink when I'm in a New York frame of mind.

Update: BevMo carries the regular non-diet version.

NYC Photo of The Day -- Lebanese "Pizza"

These flatbreads covered with meat, tomatoes and onion are the work of  Manousheh on Bleecker Street in the West Village.  The staff was great, the oven roaring hot and the flatbreads crispy and tasty.

A quick dinner on the go after we sprinkled Aleppo peppers and squirted house made hot sauce on top before we took off to see Post Modern Jukebox in concert.

From Knish to Cheesesteak and Back Again. A Story of Diners, Delis and the Opposite of Dives

Well, this report has been a few months coming, but I'm finally taking a few minutes (when I'm off on another adventure, of course) to report on what Gary and I did on our Thanksgiving vacation.  (Note:  due to the limitations of Blogger aps and ipad interfaces I can't easily add the links to this report. I'll update with those as soon as I can. In the meantime, Google, bing or any other search engine should be able to find what you need. Nothing esoteric here. You can blame Blogger for the mishmash of fonts and odd photo handling as well.  Blogger doesn't seem to do mobile well.)

We spent two weeks on the East Coast, obsteniosuly to visit friends and celebrate Thanksgiving with family, but It was also about eating delicious things, seeing sights and riding public transit.  Below are some highlights. Watch for more analytical and recipe filled posts on some of the dishes and experiences I had.

Gary and I first flew into JFK and took the AirTrain and two subway trains to our hotel by Lincoln Center.   It was a fine hotel, especially since we picked it blind off Hotwire.  Great neighborhood with lots of nearby restaurants on 9th and 10th avenues (Hell's Kitchen) to choose from for reasonably priced ethnic food.  Our first night we had Turkish tapas (that's what the resto called what I'd call a mezze platter).

Next day we headed to my people's version of the Old Country -- the Lower East Side.  We had a late breakfast of Yonah Schimmel's knishes, a full afternoon of tours at the LES Tenament Musuem, and a late lunch of a Katz's pastrami sandwich which was big enough to share.  Yes, Katz's still has that sign posted about sending a salami to someone in the Army.  They also have a sign over the both where Harry Met Sally filmed the "I'll have what she's having" scene.

We also checked out the Essex Market and Russ and Daughters, but we were full, so we only looked and didn't taste.

Next up was the taping of the 13th to last Colbert Report ever with special guest Jon Stewart.  Between Steven Colbert and Stewart we couldn't stop screaming and laughing, although part of that might have been sheer terror the staff would do something to us if we didn't respond BIG.  (At least four staffers had us practice our screams, yells, claps and laughs before the show started.). They need not have worried, we the audience were so psyched on our own and so entertained we would have shouted ourselves hoarse without the pre-show encouragement. 

Dinner that night was back in Hell's Kitchen for more ethnic food, this time empanadas at Empanada Mama, open 24 hours for all your meat and veggie stuffed pastry needs.

The next day we headed to the 9/11 Memorial and Museum.  It was moving, affecting and extremely effective at making the stories of victims and their families come alive.  A somber but necessary high spot of our visit.

Dinner that night was with friends at the vegetarian Candle 79.  The company was great, the food tasty as well as beautifully presented and it's quiet white tablecloth ambiance  perfect for catching up with old friends.  Afterwards we took in as light but fun Broaway musical -- Honeymoon in Vegas.

Next up was a subway ride to Penn Station, a short jaunt on NJ Transit and AirTrain to Newark Airport to rent a car for a visit to friends in Philly.  Highlights included Independence Hall, the Barnes Collection, a great tapas meal with some college friends and lots opportunity to visit with other dear friends who also hosted us.

Of course and we had a cheesesteak, which we split.  I've eaten the classic Pat and Geno cheesesteaks before, so I was willing to try something new, Sonny's. It was good, but surprisingly NOT that much better than my local cheesesteak shop.

Then it was off to Long Island where my sisters made a scrumptious Thanksgiving dinner and I got a chance to eat in a number of diners where I had my old standby soup and tuna melts. (Until they bring back automats, diners are my fave retro food destinations.)

A few days later we wrapped up our trip by returning our car at John F Kennedy airport and taking public transit to NYC.  We stayed at the Hyatt Herald Square, this time a Priceline find.  We ate breakfast and a few other meals at one of the city's amazing salad bars which was part steam table, part short order cook, part grill and part sandwich shop. 

We walked and walked.  Spent time at the Cloisters, New York's restored middle ages monastery, explored the Met museum, and saw the Tony-winning Gentlemen's Guide to Love and Murder.  

We also had dinner in the West Village with high school friends of our oldest son.  

Soon enough it was time to roll,our suitcases out and return to JFK for the trip home.

A Great Cookie -- In Black & White

Maybe you had to grow up a New Yorker, but there is something special about the magic of black and white cookies, giant cakey cookies frosted with half chocolate and half vanilla icing.

Growing up, they were an occasional treat that my grandmother would buy me from Ebinger's (I think) bakery in Brooklyn. (This is the bakery that was famed for it's chocolate blackout cake, but that's another post.) These never disappointed, with the alternating pleasures of rich chocolate and sweet vanilla over a cake with great taste and lots of crumbs.

In later years, black and whites stopped being just bakery treats and began to be an ubiquitous prewrapped staple of deli take-out counters, an impulse purchase that tugged on the heartstrings and taste memories of New Yorkers (and others inducted into the canon of black and white cookies by such cultural icons as The Seinfield Show, click here for YouTube clip with Jerry's musing on the pastry).

I had pretty much given up on black and whites, finding them stale and tasteless, the chocolate icing more chemical than cacao and the vanilla frosting only tasting of sugar when I found Molly O'Neill's recipe in her New York Cookbook. It was a revelation. The cake was good, not bland, with a lilt of lemon to it, the vanilla frosting fragrant, the chocolate frosting actually chocolaty. It became my standard and if you crave black and white cookies, it should become your standard, too.

O'Neill's recipe is available here, in a New York Times article from 2001. It is based on a recipe from the famed Zabar's emporium. As O'Neill wrote in her cookbook: "Zabar's versions are to deli black and white cookies what pate is to chopped liver." (Although to be honest, a good chopped liver is nothing to sneer at.)

Want the original from Zabar's? You can order them here.

Some notes: Be prepared to ice the cooled cakes quickly, or the frosting will become harder to spread. Reheat gently to soften. I keep the frostings in gently simmering jury-rigged double boilers while I work with them. The recipe makes 2 dozen cookies, but I often make them smaller than the traditional oversized size for parties. The "mini" black and whites are always a buffet pleaser. Be sure to use butter to grease your baking sheets, oil or oil spray will allow the batter to run too much.

Here's another version from the wonderful Smitten Kitchen, also based on Zabar's cookies. I'd love to know if anyone has a different black and white cookie recipe out there they could recommend. Leave a comment and a link and I'll check it out.

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About the photo: Black and white cookies in (what else) black and white.

The Jewish Deli -- It Wasn't Just for the Food and That Ain't Just Chopped Liver (Although the Recipe Is)

The professor had come to talk about the history of the American Jewish delicatessen as a cultural gathering place for second and third generation Jews. The crowd had come to talk corned beef, pastrami and maybe a little smoked whitefish. It was an uneasy mix, kind of like pastrami with mayo.

Ted Merwin, who teaches religion and Judaic studies at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania, spoke about the research behind his upcoming book Homeland of the Jewish Soul: A History of the Jewish Deli last week at San Francisco's BJE Jewish Community Library. (Merwin is also the author of In Their Own Image: New York Jews in Jazz Age Popular Culture.)

Merwin served up the history of delis from their German antecedents through the modern survivors from gourmet shop to famed restaurants. He talked of the meaning behind the overstuffed sandwiches while the audience was clearly fondly remembering sandwiches past and wishing they could find a deli worthy of the word that could equal the delights of their New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Florida, Toronto and even Argentinean youth.

According to Merwin, and echoed by the deli devotees who came to hear him, deli food "really nurtured Jewish people in America. Something about the deli meats was at the heart of the Jewish experience."

Merwin says that our remembrances of delis past has less to do about the food than they do about what the place and experience meant for us. He says we are nostalgic for delis because they are part of the American Jewish identity (you could practically hear the crowd say "amen"). He quoted a patron of the (recently resurrected -- on Third Avenue) Second Avenue Deli in New York as saying as walking in, taking a whiff of the pungent mix of dill pickles and smoked meat and saying " 'Ah, I smell Judaism.' "

Jewish delis have become "almost sacred" as a "substitute" for not just religious identity but "on par with the synagogue as a communal experience."

The foods we associate with the Jewish delis -- lavish, meat-filled sandwiches, mountains of chopped liver, giant bowls of boiled chickens glistening in broth and all the rest are uniquely American, not Eastern European. Our Jewish forefathers and mothers could simply not afford to eat like this in their old countries.

The first Jewish delis in America probably started about 1880s in the Lower East Side and were basically purveyors of German-Jewish brined and smoked foods. They were strictly take out. A census of the 10th ward of the Lower East Side with a population of 75,000 Jews revealed that the residents of the district could select from only 10 delicatessens, but had 131 kosher butcher shops to select from. Jews who could afford to eat out ate in cafes, saloons and, probably most often, at very inexpensive lunch counters in candy stores.

The delis gain importance, according to Merwin, in the next generation, about the same time they began to gain tables and chairs and eating in at a deli became part of the Jewish landscape. This was in the 1920s and 1930s, which also accounts for the Art Deco style frequently associated with delis. Delis also spread and thrived away from the inner cities were the local Jews first arrived to the outer boroughs and other areas where the next generation moved.

As delis became part of the Jewish-American scene, they became a favored "third place" to many Jews, the place outside of home and work where you could feed your hunger for casual community. It is Merwin's thesis that the assimilated sons and daughters (and grandsons and granddaughters) of immigrants felt more at home with these culturally Jewish institutions than they did in synagogue sanctuaries or social halls.

"The food is less important to them then the context of community," Merwin says while his listeners' stomachs began to growl after all this talk of deli food. One could sense that they disagreed. The food seemed to be just as important to them. Merwin admitted the food was important, but it was the association of the food with the experience that created the nostalgia and longing they felt. To hear the gossip, to be insulted by the waiter (who may have been a veteran Yiddish theater or vaudeville actor), to have a sense of mastery and sense of place gave Jewish deli customers a sense of acceptance and belonging.

Merwin makes a distinction between kosher delis (following the kasruth laws of food preparation including the separation of meat and milk) and those that were kosher-style (where you could have pastrami AND cheesecake). Kosher-style delis were for the most part the glitzy stars of the deli scene with sandwiches named after famous patrons and public figures (think Stage and Carnegie delis in New York). Truly kosher delis were found less frequently and played an important role in the life of the observant but did not function as frequently as this "third place" since religious observance and synagogue life retained its importance among many of their patrons.

The importance of delis began to decline in many communities by the 1950s and 1960s as the food was seen as "too ethnic" and as Jewish food (such as deli meats, kosher hot dogs and rye bread) began to be mass marketed through supermarkets.

As Merwin wrapped up his talk about the cultural context of delis and opened up the discussion for questions, the crowd could no longer hold back their longing for the deli meats and other treats he had discussed for the previous hour. Animated listeners demanded time to discuss their favorite delis, foods and what, to them, made the perfect Jewish deli. A disagreement broke out among several in the audience if smoked fish (whitefish and sturgeon) and lox (cured salmon) were proper deli foods. I'm glad we didn't have a show of hands of pastrami versus corned beef fans. It could have gotten ugly.

See the notes below for more resources about Jewish delis. Once there is a website for Merwin's book, I'll update this post with it.

All this talk of Jewish deli food made me hungry, too. I went out and bought some good bread, pastrami and the makings for chopped liver like my grandma used to make. Serve the chopped liver as an appetizer on Tam-Tams, pieces of matzoh or cocktail rye slices. Or use it to make my favorite deli sandwich, pastrami on rye with a thick shmear of chopped liver and a few ribbons of sharp deli-style mustard. Need a pickle to go with it? Try making your own. Directions are here.

Grandma's Chopped Chicken Liver
Serves 6-12 depending on diners'cholesterol levels and if there are witnesses

Grandma was kosher and therefore had to cook the livers under the broiler in order to obey the religious restrictions to remove the blood. (Other cuts of meat could be salted to accomplish the same thing.) Broiling the chicken livers gives the dish that authentic taste.

This recipe makes a lot, but the chopped liver will last a few days well covered in the fridge. Feel free to halve the recipe if you'd like. A note about chicken schmaltz. It is rendered chicken fat and is available in some supermarkets, butcher stores and Jewish markets. Look in the freezer section. You can also render your own or substitute vegetable oil or shortening.

2 pounds of chicken livers
4 tablespoons chicken schmaltz (see note above) or vegetable oil or shortening
2 onions, thinly sliced
1 clove garlic, minced
4 hardboiled eggs, peeled
2 or more tablespoons of kosher concord grape wine (such as Kedem or Manischewitz)
1/2 tsp. salt, or more to taste
1/2 tsp. ground black pepper, or more to taste

Preheat the broiler and line a large baking pan with aluminium foil. Place the chicken livers in a single layer and broil (do in batches if necessary), turning once until the livers are cooked through and are a rosy brown inside. Sprinkle the cooked livers with a bit of salt. Remove the livers from the pan and put into a large bowl. Set aside.

Heat schmaltz (or substitute) in a large fry pan over medium heat. Scatter the onion slices and saute until beginning to color. Add garlic. Reduce heat to medium-low and slowly cook, stirring occasionally, until the onions are caramelized. They should have a deep, rich bronze color, be very soft and have a slightly sweet taste. Set aside.

Place the eggs in the bowl with the livers. Use a potato masher or fork and break them into large chunks or pieces. Add in the onions and garlic and all the schmaltz they were cooked with as well as the remaining salt and the pepper and 2 tablespoons of the wine. Mix well. Chop in batches by hand using a wooden bowl and a half-moon shaped mezzaluna chopping knife or in a food processor. Be careful not to over chop, the mixture should have a rough, slightly crumbly texture, it should not be pureed. Return chopped liver mixture to bowl and combine the batches. Taste and add more salt and pepper as necessary (I probably use quite a bit more, I like it just a bit too salty so it compensates for the blander cracker or matzo.) If the mixture is too dry, you could add a bit more of the wine. Then, essen min kinder (Yiddish for dig in).

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More background on the history and future of the Jewish deli can be found here on Serious Eats.
Author David Sax is trying to save delis one sandwich at a time. You can find out more about his efforts and book on Save the Deli.

For a list of commendable Jewish delis worth the calories in NY (and in the comments section elsewhere), click here.
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About the photos: Top, freshly chopped chicken liver like Grandma used to make. The other photo is of Ted Merwin during his lecture at the Bureau of Jewish Education on 9/30/09 in San Francisco.


Update: More on delis from around the web: Bitten blog and Joan Nathan in the New York Times.

Update 6/11: See a discussion on the recent Deli Summit about the future of the food and the institution on Zester.

Pickles With a Purpose -- Kosher Half Sours Help Students Connect with Heritage and More

My son, the one once known as the Future Pastry Chef (now we think he could be the Future Architect), aka Noah, attends a Jewish high school. Every day starts off with a morning prayer session to help center the kids and make them mindful of their shared heritage and interests.

Students at the school can pick from a variety of morning prayer meetings ranging from very traditional to very non-traditional. Noah, or Rusty as he is self-nicknamed (long story and too much of a digression for here), chose one that combines food with discussion and religious study as away of achieving a connection with meditation and prayer. That’s my boy.

One activity that explored those connections was preparing the traditional Jewish-style pickle. I was thrilled to find out about this project, because, to be honest, 17-year-old young men don’t often tell their moms what they did at school that day, and because of my personal pickle history.

First, I am of Eastern European Jewish heritage, so kosher-style cucumber pickles, crunchy, garlicky and sour, are part of my food heritage. Second, my grandfather is said to have hid one night in an empty pickle barrel from the Russian troops when his family was trying to escape czarist Russia. Next, I’m an ex-New Yorker, with a fondness for both the historic and modern Lower East Side, home of some of the last open pickle barrels and the setting for the movie Crossing Delancy, where Amy Irving finds true love with a pickle maker. One of the entries I researched and wrote for the food encyclopedia that was published last year was on the business of pickle making. Lastly, my husband and I are big pickle fans, enjoying all sorts from all cuisines.
Here’s the directions for My Very Excellent Manchild Just Served Us Nice Pickles (which I think you’ll agree taste out of this world).

The recipe is as used at Jewish Community High School, San Francisco, CA. When I make these myself, I’ll rework it, if needed, to reflect my experience. Meantime, this process resulted in a pickle with lots of crunch, taste and history in every bite. The school cites the website Wild Fermentation as a resource. It’s full of info and recipes for making pickles and other fermented foods.

Half-Sour Pickles


These pickles, called Zelig's Pickles at the school, after the pickle expert who helped the students make them (I think, Noah was a bit fuzzy on this) "are raw and lacto-fermented, made in the old style without vinegar. Natural fermentation creates pickles rich in live, active cultures, anti-oxidants, enzymes, and an abundance of nutrients that are essential to a healthy diet.”
(Quoted from the recipe shared with the students.)

1. Place at bottom of 5 gallon crock (or food grade bucket) 1 cup fresh grape leaves (for crispiness), 1.5 cup fresh dill, 5 cups whole fresh garlic cloves (approx 12 heads), 1 cup dry bay leaves, 1 cup mixed pickling spice (wrap in cheese cloth and toss in bottom of crock for best results).

2. Fill crock with fresh, clean pickling cucumbers.

3. Cover with salt water (brine) with a ratio of 3/4 cup sea salt per gallon water For 5 gallon batch, dissolve 3 cups salt in 4 gallons warm/tepid water . . . then pour brine over cucumbers until cukes are completely submerged.

4. Completely cover/seal crock with sturdy plastic bag (double bag to prevent breakage/spillage) filled with water so that the pickles are submerged in brine and pickles and brine are not exposed to air.

5. Leave crock at room temperature for approximately eight days. The warmer it is, the faster the pickles will ferment and sour. Six-to-eight days will generally result in a very fresh, crispy pickle. For a sourer pickle, ferment longer.

6. For storage: pack pickles in glass mason jars and fill with brine so that pickles are submerged. Refrigerate to prevent further fermentation. Sealed jars can be stored for six or more months if kept in refrigerator.

Five Things (Well a Lot More Than Five) That You Probably Don't Know About Me Plus My Egg Cream Recipe

Sylvie of the wonderful Soul Fusion Kitchen (which I will add to my blog roll next time I update) tagged me for my very first MEME -- Five Things About Me.

So here's some things about me that might help explain me, Blog Appetit or both. Since I tend to digress and over explain, I suspect it will end up being 500 things about me.

1. I'm an ex-New Yorker with a not-so-secret weakness for black and white cookies, pastrami sandwiches, subways (and public transit systems of any kind), ethnic enclaves and egg creams (see below). I like the Chrysler Building more than the Empire State, like to ride the Staten Island Ferry, and enjoy wandering around the Upper East Side and the Lower West Side. The Strand bookstore ("18 miles of books") is my idea of heaven as is Kitchen Arts and Letters. My two current favorite museums (besides the Metropolitan) are the Lower East Side Tenement Museum and the NYC Transit Museum (in Brooklyn). I nominate Brooklyn for my second favorite borough (county -- New York has 5) and not just because I was born there! My last "name brand" meal in NYC was at the Spice Market in the meat-packing district, which was wonderful, but I still miss the $1.80 duck lo mein (and big enough to share) I used to get at Wo Hop's when I went to New York University a gizillion years ago. My tourist tip is to buy the day or multi day pass for the transit system. Good on buses and subways, it saves you money and aggravation.

2. While I always wanted to be a writer of some sort, my secret desire was to write the books for Broadway musicals. The book is the "story" part, not the music or lyrics. I have no musical talent, so I guess my ambition was at least partly realistic. At other points in my life I wanted to be a university professor (of history, big surprise there), a marketing vice president, a newspaper publisher and an urban affairs and planning newspaper columnist. I have been a reporter, editor, copyeditor, public relations specialist, marketing communicator, and a few other things. The closest thing I came to writing plays was in second grade. I wrote a stirring one act play on the industrialization of shoe manufacturing in New England. (I think it was second grade, but that seems more like fourth grade sophistication to me). No copies survive. My fantasy jobs now musical book writer (who knows, Broadway musicals could make a comeback), magazine editor and talk show host.

3. I tried to learn tap dancing as an adult. It was not pretty, but it has made me a better critic of tap performances on screen and stage. I prefer Fred Astaire over Gene Kelly, Ginger Rogers over Ann Miller, and still mourn the untimely passing of Gregory Hines. When Fred passed away I put on my tap shoes and lugged out my portable dance floor (which doubled as a carpet protector under my desk chair.) When I was dating my now husband, I took it as a favorable sign that Fred and Mr. Blog Appetit shared the same birthday (May 10). I guess it is no surprise to you that I'm an old-movie fiend, that Turner Classic Movies is my favorite cable channel and my top old movie faves (for now, they change regularly) are Some Like It Hot with Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis and Marilyn Monroe and Reckless with Jean Harlow and with Rosalind Russell, another screen fave. From screwball comedies to musicals to film noirs, I pretty much like anything that is decently written, well acted and gives a good sense of the time and place.

4. Besides New York, I've also lived in Baltimore, MD, Irvington, NJ (just outside Newark), Palo Alto, CA, San Francisco, CA and now Oakland, CA. My husband grew up in Chicago so I pick up the midwest perspective from him. I still like my pizza with a nicely blistered thin crust, which I eat by picking up the slice and folding it over. Eating deep dish Chicago pizza with a knife and fork just isn't the same.

5. The most recent best thing I ever ate was a roast mutton soup in Xi An, China. It cost about $2. The night before I had a meal that was almost as good in Shanghai. It cost $125.

The Perfect (At Least to Me) Egg Cream

There are still a few soda fountains and candy shops that make this around NYC. The last time I had one it was in the East Village and it was served in a paper cup, which made me feel that you can' t go home again. Think of an egg cream as kind of like the Frapuccino of Old New York.

Large, clear glass
Good chocolate syrup (the traditional is Foxes U-Bet, but I'm not a stickler on this, it should just have a good chocolate taste), more or less to your taste. I like my chocolate strong!
Milk (whole, non-fat, I don't care)
Seltzer Water (sometimes called soda water, but not club soda if you can avoid it -- club soda adds salt which affects the purity of this holy drink. No sparkling mineral waters, either. Use the plain type without any flavorings.)
A long, metal spoon

Add an appropriate to you slug of chocolate syrup to the bottom of a tall class. Pour in about an inch or so of cold milk. Top with seltzer (be careful, it will foam and threaten to go over the top, so pour slowly and add more when the foam subsides if needed.)

Use the long spoon to carefully stir. This will result in a milk chocolate colored drink topped with white foam. Some people prefer to stir twice, once after adding the milk and again after the seltzer is added. This results in an all-brown drink which would leave me aghast, but it is your choice. Some people claim pouring the seltzer down the back side of the bowl of the spoon will reduce the foaming. Since I like the visual of the foam and I'm picky enough about the process to begin with I'll let you decide if you'd like to include this in your egg cream choregraphy. Also I assume you've realized there is no egg and no cream in the drink. Stories abound about why.

Serve with a straw. And maybe a black and white cookie.

Variations: Make it a Reform Egg Cream Instead of an Orthodox one by subbing out other syrups. A vanilla egg cream tastes like a marshmallow. One of the best I ever had back in my New York days was at David's Pot Bellied Stove on Christopher Street. They made it for me with mocha (coffee mixed into chocolate syrup). I think they are gone now, but McNulty's is still there across the street. That's the place I first got into teas, but I digress.

As part of the rules of this MEME I'm supposed to tag five others. I will do so later. Watch this space.

Thanks again, Sylvie!

Bonus Info: My sons used to be very proud of me because I could drive a stick shift.