On the corner of Ditmars Boulevard and 33rd Street most days.

These folks live quite near us. We always see them out on their balcony during their off hours. They live right down the street from their cart. I often see the grandmother (maybe she’s even the great-grandmother) pushing a shopping cart filled with kebabs up to the cart to restock it.

In Ditmars-Astoria, you either call a car service you like or you walk over to the elevated subway stop, where drivers tend to congregate and pick up street hails (even though legally they’re not supposed to). For anything other than airport trips we tend to get a car on the street.

By coincidence Claire ended up getting the same driver, Ahmad Roka, on a couple visits to New York–Presbyterian in Washington Heights—and on one unfortunate trip to Beth-Israel in the East Village the time I had a fainting spell and ended up there for a few days.

It must have been on that trip that Claire got his card, because when it was time to call a car for the birth, we made arrangements with Mr. Roka to pick us up early in the morning (Margot was a C-section, so we knew the date and time in advance). We thought it was fitting that the guy who had driven Margot around while she was in the womb be the one to drive us all in on the big day.

The day after Margot was born, I got a call from an unfamiliar number. I picked it up, and it was Mr. Roka, calling to wish us well—and offer to make arrangements to bring us all home. I found that small gesture unusually touching, and now when we’re out and pass impromptu car-service staging area, we always look for him. (Funny enough, we’ve only seen him there once since then. Most of the time we’ve seen him down by Ralph DeMarco Park or at some random intersection while we’re out for a walk.)

It’s just another reminder to me the kind of the community connections you make accidentally in a city like New York, just by going about your life and the of surprising moments of kindness in an otherwise busy metropolis.

Iteration No. 5 was made with less semolina flour. I believe that’s why there are more numerous “pizza bubbles.”

What’s different this time: I backed down on the amount of semolina flour in the dough. This time it’s a 3:1 ratio of AP flour to semolina flour. Still using Bob’s Red Mill SF. The change, I believe, is responsible for the “pizza bubbles,” as AP is a softer flour. The texture was softer overall yet still crisp enough to stand up with no “tip sag.” It was almost a little flakey or crackery in the way Midwestern/Chicago thin-crust can be. Read more on Famous Original A’s »

Bar Pie No. 4 has a shortened dough. I replaced the oil I normally used with Crisco, to see if it would tenderize the dough.

Tried some shortening in the crust to see if that would tenderize it a bit. Didn’t really. Still chewy. Going to try backing down on the amount of semolina flour in the dough. This one was a touch thicker than No. 3, and it has some pizza bubbles, more than I’d gotten before. I kind of like them, but docking the dough is also an option to consider. Read more on Famous Original A’s »

I’m happy with the pockmarked cheese and the sauce but feel the crust could use a little more work. Still, it’s close in appearance to Colony Grill’s bar-style pizzas.

I don’t have all that much to say about my third attempt at bar pizza (first two attempts here) except that I’m getting closer to what I want in a pizza. For visual comparison I give you my target pie: Colony Grill’s pub pizza. That’s a trio of the joint’s pies above. What follows are more pictures of Colony before I reveal my own creation. Let’s go! Read more on Famous Original A’s »

Today my coworkers surprised me with pizza-themed cupcakes. My coworker Joanna is known around the office for making elaborately decorated cupcakes based on the celebratee’s interests. Naturally I got tiny pepperoni and sausage pies.

This cross-section shows how thin this style is. I sliced it into a grid, known as “tavern cut” or “party cut.”

The best bar pizza I’ve had has been from Colony Grill (my favorite) and Star Tavern (a close second). Since I have a purported recipe for Star Tavern pizza, though, that’s what I went with as a target. (The truth is I haven’t had Star or Colony often enough or recent enough to accurately compare and judge whether my aim is true. That said, I’m not so much concerned with accurately replicating them than with making something in the bar vein that tastes amazing. That is my goal.) Read more on Famous Original A’s »

This is from last month’s month-birthday photo shoot. Somehow these shots with and without the pizza lined up almost perfectly with no manipulation. So I made an animated gif from them.

Tonight I watched the short documentary Candyman: The David Klein Story. It’s about the guy who invented Jelly Bellys. I came to it through a Talk thread on Serious Eats that got a bit contentious.

Like a lot of the people on that thread, I thought it was some kind of joke. We get a lot of numbskulls coming on SE Talk and hawking their wares. But then I Netflixed the movie, watched it, and was impressed by the tale. The story is at once joyful, melancholy, sad, infuriating, and hopeful. It starts a bit slow, but it pulls you in.

I truly think Mr. Klein is just sort of eccentric and found SE somehow and didn’t realize what he was doing was not standard practice on the site. But if you watch the movie, I think you’d come to like him and then realize how neat it is that you’ve got a pipeline connecting you to someone who invented one of the most iconic candies in the last 30 years. The INVENTOR OF JELLY BELLYS is pretty much doing an AMA in SE Talk. And that’s kinda neat when you think about it.

Dough is 60% hydration. Flour, yeast, salt, water.

I made this pizza tonight largely as an excuse to keep seasoning my Detroit-style pans. Also, I wanted to try a more faithful rendition of the genre. Read more on Famous Original A’s »

Made with half as much dough, topped with pepperoni.

I made pan pizza last weekend but wasn’t happy with the thickness. I thought it was too spongey, too doughy, too much. What would happen if I halved the dough amount? Read more on Famous Original A’s »

Topped with pepperoni and pickled jalapeños.

It’s no picnic trying to do Pizza Night with a baby in the house. The diaper changes, the rockin’-her-to-sleep sessions, the walks around the neighborhood—all those things tend to interrupt the two to three hours I like to set aside for pizza prep, baking, eating, and clean-up. All that’s a long way of saying I was jazzed to try J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s “Foolproof Pan Pizza” recipe on Slice. It’s basically about 20 minutes of active work—if that—and the rest is just letting the dough rise. Read more on Famous Original A’s »

I posted the above grousing on Facebook, and the thread that sprang up around it had some great suggestions. I’m posting them here for posterity. (Facebook search leaves a lot to be desired.) Normally I’d give props/credit via links, but I’m omitting names for privacy’s sake.

Website and book recommendations

• “A friend recommended the Vegan Lunch Box“ [It looks like it has a nice back log of material but seems to have stopped updating. —AK]
• Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything Vegetarian [As one friend pointed out, "Bittman is not generous with his seasonings." I tend to agree. Though it's easy enough to spice things up on our end of things, so this one might be worth a re-read. And I think we have it here in the house. —AK]
• 101 Cookbooks [We actually cook from this site a lot. I'd never thought about doing make-ahead meals from it, though. I'll have to comb through and see if there are good freezable candidates. —AK]
• “Anything by Lukas Volger,” especially Veggie Burgers Every Which Way (“of which many are freezable and can be used not just as patties but also as the protein on a salad, etc.”) and Vegetarian Entrees That Won’t Leave You Hungry, “which is also freezer-friendly”
• “Coming soon is a new book by Joe Yonan, Eat Your Vegetables which emphasizes plant-based cooking for one (but easily modified for two) and takes freezing and prep and the many-weeknight-dishes-from-one-huge-batch-of-something philosophy into great consideration”
• “I cook a lot from Deborah Madison’s Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone. Easy to double up to store ahead. Or add some sausage, etc., to add flavor here and there. Also, do you have a crockpot? Maybe a subscription to Veg Times is in order?”
• “I also love How It All Vegan and every book that follows by Sarah Kramer & Tanya Barnard—really good, easy and approachable vegan, not fake-stuff-substituting-for-meat-and-dairy vegan. And The Ethnic Vegetarian has a lot of fantastic stew-y type things; it focuses on African cooking among several different traditions, including pan-African, African-American traditional, and African-American modern-adventurous”
• “Have you read Tamar Adler’s An Everlasting Meal? I’m reading it now and it has great ideas for just this kind of cooking”
• “Not Your Mother’s Casseroles isn’t a website, but the vast majority of Faith Durand‘s recipes are vegetarian, and fridge-able for at least a few days. Since she writes for The Kitchn, some might appear on there, for previewing sake”
• “How about the site Fat Free Vegan Kitchen? I like the author’s recipes for make-ahead, big-batch meals that feed me through the week. And you can always add fat ”
• “Try Meatless and PLENTY. Both fantastic w/recipes that are a variety of time-consuming. PLENTY is my fave cookbook (as a non-vegetarian) and has me eating veggie 90% of the time anyhow”

Tips: Soup and Its Storage

It’s not surprising that soup came up as a suggestion. I like the tip for storing it that this friend gives:

“At the very least, soups are very easy to freeze. Get ball jars and you can freeze them in single servings. (You don’t have to seal them in the jars like if you were jarring things for storage, they’re just a nice size and since they’re glass you can just pop them into the microwave).

“The base I use for most soups is I generally just sauté onions, maybe garlic, if I’m making a mushroom soup I’ll sauté the mushrooms, and then boil sweet potatoes (not yams) and other vegetables (like maybe cauliflower and a carrot or two) in some sort of stock, put in whatever seasoning (like curry or spicy stuff and peanut butter for an African peanut soup), and then use an immersion blender, and voilà. It’s like having a thick dairy soup, but without the dairy. I noticed that most of the Moosewood soup recipes had that sort of base, and started copying.”

Tip: Mix-and-Match Batches

A friend suggested a good strategy that also involved a sort of on-the-go DIY instant soup:

“We kind of do mix and match each week:

• One big batch of beans
• One big batch of greens
• Sometimes a big batch of a grain
• A big batch of 1-2 other vegetables

“Depending on what they are, sometimes we freeze parts and sometimes we just keep the prepped stuff in the fridge. We do everything in mason jars so they can go freezer-fridge-oven, and for lunch at work I frequently put a couple of spoonfuls of several different in one jar, add a scoop of (soy-free!) miso, then when it’s lunchtime, I just fill it with hot water or green tea and have instant soup.

“With different sauces, you can choose different options and have very different meals each day with a base set of ingredients and very little prep time. But if there are websites that are close to what you want, many of our favorite recipes are actually just adapted from meat-based versions. They tend to need more seasoning and fat (and sometimes another vegetable or two to flesh them out), but often they work out great with minimal tinkering.”

Why?

Obviously I want to save time making dinner in the house. Or, if not so much save time, then to time-shift dinner prep.

We’re now six months into parenthood, and while some of the transitions have been smooth, getting dinner on the table early in the evening has been a small struggle. We’re getting tired of a small repertoire of fast recipes. And anything more involved than 30 minutes, well, we just end up ordering delivery.

The sites I’ve been looking at promise a whole package of info. They give you recipes, shopping and prep lists, and freezing/thawing/cooking instructions. What’s more, they give you a whole week’s (or month’s) worth of meal menus. That’s appealing.

But as I said above, the menus are very meat heavy. And I haven’t really loved the vegetarian options I’ve paged through. Ideally, I’d love to find a site where you could join, tell it, “I want 7 nights of meals, 5 vegetarian, 2 meat.” And then it would spit out some options you could check off and then you’d get a custom packet of recipes, shopping, and prep lists. Maybe that’s out there. If it is, I haven’t found it. Yet.

Besides offering the Chicken Maharaja Mac or the Croque McDo, he also imagines McWorld serving discontinued items:

The most important one of these call-back menu items would be Old School Fries, from before they switched from beef tallow to vegetable oil for frying. Everybody says those were insane. I mean, I must have had them when I was little but I don’t remember.

As late as 2005, Simplot Foods has supplied more than half of all frozen fries to the McDonald’s chain.

The thing is, McDonald’s doesn’t serve them anymore, but what’s stopping someone else from doing it? You can get McDonald’s-style fries from Simplot Foods (the same company that developed the original McDonald’s fry).* Get some beef tallow, and BOOM.

* Heck, you can even make them yourself.

To my mind, the burger trend in NYC has run its course. Nobody seems to pay much mind to new burger joints opening these days. This could be one small way to differentiate and generate some interest. And if done right, it would be a win for the eater as well.

That’s my idea, burger joints. Run with it.

Anyway, the coworker and I got to chatting about this, and she asked what music Claire and I used at our wedding. It took me a while to remember, and at one point I had to go into my “Day-Of Schedule” Google doc to look it up. So I’m posting here so I don’t forget.

Processional: “Be My Baby,” John Lennon cover

Recessional: “Stand By Me,” John Lennon cover

First dance: “That’s How Strong My Love Is,” Otis Redding

Parent dance: “The Rainbow Connection,” Kermit the Frog

“Oh, Bean, Papa has a new toy.”

My wife speaks the truth (here, to our baby). No sooner had the delivery guys installed our new dishwasher than I loaded it with whatever dirty dishes we had on hand and spun it up. I couldn’t wait for it to finish the Pots & Pans cycle so I could examine its handiwork. This is the definition of adult toys around our house.

In buying a new dishwasher, we didn’t go crazy. Many friends on Facebook recommended Bosch dishwashers (which start at $700), and one even suggested a fancy $1,400 two-drawer thing from Fisher & Paykel (which I had never heard of before). I ended up on consumerreports.com and found that in our price range (less than $500) they recommended a basic Kenmore unit. Bonus was that its slightly higher-end cousin was on sale for about half the list price.

It replaces our circa-1983 GE Potscrubber 600, which, I gotta hand it to GE, was still functioning this morning—but had been falling apart, and quickly. (Also, “Potscrubber 600″? Sounds like something out of Futurama.)

The funny thing is that when I moved in with my wife (the apartment was hers before I came into the picture), she rarely, if ever, used the dishwasher. She claims it’s an Asian thing (she’s Chinese-American)—that her parents, too, had a dishwasher but used it instead for dish storage. At a party once, I asked at least one other Asian about this, and she came back with the same thing. Her parents stored pots and pans in theirs and did everything by hand.

It didn’t take long before I corrupted my wife with my Lazy White Person ways and had her on the dishwasher bandwagon. Which might be why, after two years of solid use, ours began to show its age.

We’re being unambitious tonight with dinner—some frozen food we have stashed. Tomorrow, I’m thinking of making something elaborate so I can use the hell outta this new toy.

A bit of baguette from our breakfast at Le Train Bleu in the Gare de Lyon, Paris.

This bit of baguette FROM A FRIGGIN’ TRAIN STATION in Paris … FROM A MUTHERFUGGIN’ TRAIN STATION … is better than 95% of all bread in the good ol’ US of A.

I’m sorry, but I’m going to be that guy. The insufferable guy who says shit like, “Even the worst bread I’ve had in France is better than most breads I’ve eaten in the States.”

Americans, WHY DO YOU LIKE SHITTY BREAD?

You know, I wouldn’t care if your bad taste didn’t affect my ability to get a halfway decent loaf of bread. But, no, because you people en masse LIKE SHITTY BREAD and apparently accept any oblong loaf of flavorless fluff, there is no market for delicious bread for me to eat with my soup tonight.

I suppose it’s like pizza. Sure there are some abominable slices in NYC, but almost every neighborhood in the city is going to have at least one pizzeria with an average, solid slice. Maybe not a mindblowing best-of-city slice, but at least something that you might happily snack on. Now, if you leave NYC, those odds decrease dramatically because the people eating these so-called New York slices don’t have the sort of slice culture and eating experience to demand better. I think that’s the best way to think about America’s relationship with good bread.

In Manhattan, it’s not as dire. There are good bakeries there to buy direct from, and stores like Whole Foods and other fancy-pants markets carry breads from Sullivan Street and Balthazar the like.

In Astoria, where I live, it’s still pretty much a bread desert. Our local Italian bakery is good for pizza, but the bread is nothing to write home about. It’s soft and squishy and doesn’t really taste like anything.

Pain d’Avignon’s bakery in Long Island City. I believe it has moved to a different part of LIC since this was taken.

For a split second, relative newcomer Patisserie Pistache on Ditmars and 35th Street was selling Pain d’Avignon baguettes. I was in leaven heaven. Here was a baguette whose flavor and texture was on par with average French baguettes. We bought one almost daily.

But at some point Pistache switched to Tom Cat baguettes, which are inconsistent. Sometimes they’re as good as the old Pain d’Avignon loaves, but too often they’re flavorless, overly dry, and tough. And that’s when they even have baguettes. These days Pistache seems to run out very early in the day.

Which brings me back to tonight. Once again there was no bread to be had at Pistache. And no other place in the neighborhood to get anything close to it. If Americans overall had better taste in bread, the rising tide would lift all loaves.

I could probably post this as a 'TIL' (today I learned) on Reddit and earn 'karma,' but I didn't learn this just today (I remember seeing this episode as a kid), and I'm trying to blog more on Kublog, so here.

Among my generation of aging and recovering hipsters, the accumulation and regurgitation of pop culture trivia used to be something of a sport. Points going, of course, to most apropos and obscure reference—bonus word score if you could sling the reference as part of a catty put-down.

Googlepedia has replaced all that now, and as I push 40, I find Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam melding with Nu Shooz morphing with The Jets.

I was reminded of this accumulation of trivia when I mentioned at work recently that Andy Warhol had once appeared on Love Boat. Those old enough to remember it didn’t, and the young’uns there probably didn’t know what Love Boat was. His guest appearance came in Season 9, Episode 3 (airdate, October 12, 1985).

Dmcavanagh’s quick pizza sauce, grana Padano, fresh mozzarella, and Vermont Smoke & Cure pepperoni.

I was going to make pizza today, on New Year’s Day, but it so worked out that I made it last night on New Year’s Eve. That was probably for the best.

I’ve had a couple sticks of Vermont Smoke & Cure pepperoni that I’d been itching to use. The stuff is seriously good. But then I also remembered I had a jar of Kim’s Market candied jalapeños that I got in a food exchange with some folks on Facebook.

Dmcavanagh’s quick pizza sauce, grana Padano, fresh mozzarella, Vermont Smoke & Cure pepperoni, and Kim’s Market candied jalapeños.

Cooked both on my Baking Steel around 550°F. They took about 5 minutes to bake.

One thing that may change things up for me is the sauce. I followed a quick recipe from Dmcavanagh in that same Facebook group:

Dmcavanagh’s quick pizza sauce. It takes about 2 minutes to make. If that.

This sauce was pretty darn good. The dried herbs give it a familiar old-school pizza parlor flavor or maybe that of a mass-market packaged “Italian food,” but not as artificial-tasting. It takes almost no time to make. And one can would probably cover four to five 14-inch pizzas.

If you don’t have brazed-on eyelets to attach fenders to your bike, P clamps will save the day.

As I mentioned in the previous post, I recently slapped some fenders on my 1992 Trek 970 Singletrack. I don’t think a bike looks finished without fenders. But my bike started its life as a mountain bike, a style of bicycle on which fenders can be a hindrance. So I shouldn’t have been surprised that my front fork lacked eyelets for attaching a front rack or fenders.

Googling around, though, I found the answer to my problem in this post on Bike Commuters: “‘P-Clamps’ Are Your Friends.”

Look for these in a variety of diameters near the cable-management or electrical areas of a home-supply store.

As they mention there, you should be able to find these at any big box home-supply store. I found mine at Home Depot in the cable aisle for about $1.79 each. Apparently people must use them for holding down coax or ethernet or electrical cables. I’ve also seen them described as “rubber-lined hose clamps.” They come in a variety of diameters. At 1 inch thick, my bike’s front fork is fat compared to your average road bike or touring bike. Just be sure to measure your fork before you buy, obvs.

For mounting a rack with P-clamps, check out this thread on The Chainlink: “Mounting a rack without eyelets: are P-clamps enough.”

I recently installed a pair of Planet Bike Cascadia hybrid fenders on my 1992 Trek 970.

After almost 20 years I’m back in the saddle of a 1992 Trek 970 Singletrack. I’d been looking for this make and model—in this color (officially “Sour Grape,” per the 1992 Trek catalog [pdf])—off and on for a few years. For some reason, early ’90s Trek 970s are hard to find—or at least they don’t come up that often on eBay or Craigslist.

This is almost the exact same bike I owned through much of college, down to the color—well, except for the handlebars, stem, and seat post. They were all silver on my original 970. (An aside: When I bought that first one, I thought it was blue. For years. Finally someone mentioned “your purple bike,” and I was like, “Purple? Wha?” See, I’m colorblind.)

Anyway, when I moved to Oregon after graduating, I left my Trek at my parents’ house in Kansas City. My mom sold it in a garage sale (with my permission). Turns out, I didn’t know how good I had it with that bike. Every bike since (with the exception of a sweet Raleigh 5-speed English roadster) has failed to live up to the 970.

The bike had the original knobby tires on it when my sister and her boyfriend took it to REI Denver for boxing. I knew I’d be turning it into a commuter, so I had REI NYC put on Kevlar-reinforced commuter tires.

This is the bike as-bought (above). I found it on Craiglist Denver. Lucky for me, my sister lives there. So she and her boyfriend went and picked it up and shipped it to me. (If you need bike-shipping, it turns out that REI does store-to-store shipping and is rather reasonable. Especially if you’re a member—I’m not, but my sister’s boyfriend is, so bingo.)

By the way, good luck trying the same thing with Craigslist if you don’t have someone local to help out. Sellers on Craigs don’t like to deal with out-of-town sales. Cash and carry is the (unofficial) rule.

With the commuter slicks on it, but before the fenderization. Here, you can see I also put bar ends on. I remember having bar ends on my original 970. And I remember liking them, since they give you at least two additional riding positions, but I don’t know if they’re that useful for city commuting.

As soon as it arrived at REI in NYC, I had them put some commuter slicks on (Panaracer Paselas) rather than the knobby mountain-bike tires. I’ve ridden it to work a few times like this, but the weather has gotten rainy lately, which is why I installed fenders this past week (photo at top).

I still need a bell to be completely street legal per NYC law, so that will probably come next. After that, a rear rack, then eventually some new handlebars (I’m thinking mustache bars), and then a new seat.

From semi-rad.com.

Going back to the rarity of this model, I’m surprised there aren’t more 970s out there. The mountain bike boom was in full swing in the early ’90s, and Trek must have made A TON of these bikes. I’ve seen a lot of 950s for sale, but relatively few 970s. In googling around for Trek 970 info, I found this great post on SEMI-RAD.COM about the author’s friend Nick and Nick’s obsession with buying a 970 to turn into a commuter:

Every time I met him for a cup of coffee, he would tell me that he had been scanning eBay, looking for 970s — lugged steel mountain bikes, which back in the early ’90s sold for about $500. Nothing special, not like Lance Armstrong was riding one. One problem with his search was that he needed the largest size, which seemed to be rare. I can’t even remember why this particular bike build was so special — something about one of the last great American-made Trek frames, whatever.

The thing is, I know just how that guy feels. Once the idea of getting my hands on one of these took hold, no other bike would do. I’m just glad the actual bike has lived up to the memory. I’m looking forward to some more great commutes on this thing.

Motorino: My favorite wood-fired-oven pizzeria in NYC. Get anything but the Margherita, which ends up being quite boring compared to their other pies. (Although I’m not a huge fan of the Colatura pie. Not because it’s probably not good, just because I’m not a huge anchovy fan.)

John’s of Bleecker: The one on Bleecker. The others are owned by a different part of the family and aren’t as good. It’s workmanlike pizza. Won’t blow your doors off compared to some of the others on this list, but when I’m in the right mood I love it.

Best Pizza: Great all around, but the grandma pies are excellent. They have killer sandwiches, too. Get an Italian combo to go and eat it later.

Adrienne’s Pizzabar: possibly my favorite grandma pie in NYC. It’s called the “old fashioned” or some such. Don’t even bother ordering the round pie here.

Patsy’s in East Harlem: And only the one in East Harlem. Like John’s, someone else owns the others, while the original remains within the same line of folks tracing back to Patsy Lancieri. One of the few coal-oven joints that offers both fresh and regular mozzarella. I prefer the regular mozzarella. It’s also one of only two coal-oven places to offer pizza by the slice. It’s a good deal, but get a whole pie. For some reason, I think they do the whole, made-to-order pies better than the slicing pies. (They seem to put too much cheese on the slice pies.)

Louie & Ernie’s: A solid pizza all around, but I CRAVE their sausage pizza. Sausage and onion, even better. GREAT sausage here. Yes, you can get it by the slice, but you really have to order a whole sausage pie. A slice with sausage, he just puts the sausage on after the fact and then gives it a reheat. Then the chunks fall off because they’re not melted into the cheese. Oh, this one is in The Bronx, by the way. Pretty far by train, and then a bit of a walk from the train to boot.

Paulie Gee’s: Inventive and inspired topping combos and a great atmosphere. I love the Greenpointer, the Grapeful Dead, and the Cherry Jones. You do yourself a disservice if you order the Regina here (Paulie’s equivalent of the Margherita).

Note: I did this list in, like, 5 minutes. Maybe I’ll go back and add contact info/addresses. Maybe I won’t. You do know how to google, don’t you?

This crust looks good, and on the bottom it is, but the top didn’t finish quick enough.

For this cook, I moved the quarter-inch Baking Steel to the bottom-most rack. On the rack above, I placed a second Baking Steel (half-inch) and my old pizza stone. This stifled air circulation in the oven and tricked the thermostat into not cycling off the burner—to the detriment of my crusts. Read more on Famous Original A’s »

Not only did they not reduce this truncated trunk to a stump, they appear to have decorated it with spraypaint. Keep in mind this listing went up pre-Sandy, so it’s not the result of recent storm damage.

It wasn’t too long after we brought our daughter home from the hospital that I started longingly browsing Trulia and Zillow looking for a bigger place with MORE SPACE. We own a small two-bedroom apartment that’s good for now but is slowly filling up with the accoutrements of family life.

We’re hoping to stay in Astoria. I’ve grown to love the neighborhood. And I think even Claire, who was originally not so keen on Queens, has caught my enthusiasm for the borough. (If you’re from Brooklyn or Manhattan, though, I think you would HATE IT. Don’t even think of moving here.)

Anyway, the point of my post is that in browsing homes for sale in Queens, there’s just some real craziness going on in some of the photos. It’s like these people have never watched Flip This House or Curb Appeal.

Seriously, I could probably start a great single-subject Tumblr blog with some of the photos I’ve seen.

Further reading: I should take this opportunity to plug the blog Astoria Ugly, whose tagline is, “Pretty is for pussies. Embrace the Queens aestethic.”

I usually use one of two recipes when making pizza at home. This Cook’s Illustrated Thin-Crust Pizza dough or The Pizza Lab’s New York–style pizza dough. Both have worked well for me (although I usually go with the Cook’s recipe because it’s a smaller load for my 11-cup food processor, which already strains to mix this amount). Read more on Famous Original A’s »

Robicelli’s sells brownies and loaf cake via mail-order, as well as hot cocoa mix. (Their famous cupcakes, alas, are not available for shipping. But that should not stop you from buying.)

The short version of this post: If you want to help someone who is in turn selflessly helping the hardest hit by Sandy, all you have to do is order some of these delicious brownies or loaf cakes for Thanksgiving and/or the holidays.

The longer version:

Superstorm Sandy dealt the New York/New Jersey area a world of hurt. You know this. But maybe you haven’t read about some of the truly inspirational acts of kindness, compassion, and selflessness taking place among the ruins. I am especially touched by baked-good retailer Allison Robicelli‘s herculean effort to help out the hardest-hit areas of NYC.

On Friday night she announced on Twitter that she’d be driving a crapload of PB&J sandwiches to Staten Island:

I have a car that will bring all sandwiches to SI tomorrow. Need PB, bread, and sandwich baggies. In vicinty of 86th & FHP.

— robicellis (@robicellis) November 2, 2012

By Sunday, she and helpers had sent out more than 3,000 sandwiches from her apartment in Brooklyn. Three. Thousand.

Not only that, but Allison had turned into a one-woman Twitter-based food-aid dispatcher, directing volunteers and food-bringers to areas where nourishment was needed most. Her Twitter feed has become a great resource for finding out how to help people in the neighborhoods that aren’t getting a lot of press.

Allison and Matt Robicelli [Photo: The L Magazine]

Thing is, Allison and her husband, Matt, were affected by the storm, too, having “lost a fortune in inventory last week.” The good news is that they seem to getting back on their feet (I’ve watched them bounce back from hardship after hardship before, so I have no doubt they’ll make it through this, too), but it can’t help their small business that Allison is working her butt off helping others in need.

I don’t really know Allison outside of Twitter, where I’ve followed her for a couple years now, but my sense is that she’d say there are other people way worse off than her and Matt. And there are. People are still in dire need in Staten Island, Brooklyn, Queens, Long Island, New Jersey, and elsewhere—and I’ll follow with links to places you can donate.

But I also think someone should look out for kind folks like the Robicellis, too. So I ask you to consider ordering Thanksgiving and holiday desserts from Robicelli’s. Here’s their online store: http://robicellis.tumblr.com/privateorders

Robicelli’s offers five types of brownies (I think I’ll go for the Guinness & Pretzel variety myself), a three-pack assortment of seasonal fall loaf cakes, and a hot-cocoa mix (served at fancy-pants places like Bergdorf Goodman).

My wife and I will be serving them on our Thanksgiving table this year and will give thanks that we made it through Sandy OK and that there are such inspiring people among the heartbreak out there.

How to help with Sandy relief

On Twitter Allison makes specific mention of these charities/organizations:

• Tunnel to Towers Foundation (Staten Island)
• The Mayor’s Fund to Advance New York City
• Brooklyn Recovery Fund

Other good local organizations that could use your help:

• Occupy Sandy
• City Harvest
• Kitchensurfing — Chefs for Sandy
• Red Hook Initiative
• NYC Food Truck Association (NYC food trucks trucking free meals out to where it’s needed most)
• Rebuild Hoboken (New Jersey) Relief Fund
• Restore the Shore (Claire and I love the Jersey Shore; this one is near and dear to our hearts)
• Hurricane Sandy New Jersey Relief Fund

If anyone out there knows of good Long Island–specific relief funds, please let me know. While the outer boroughs here in NYC may be overshadowed by news of Manhattan, Long Island might as well be on the moon as far as coverage goes. They need help, too.

Update: Other Small, Food-Based Businesses to Help

There are a lot of other folks in the NYC food community doing the Lord’s work out there. Focusing on Allison isn’t meant to take away anything from what they’ve been doing.

• My friends at Lonestar Taco have fed people in Lower Manhattan and Gerritsen Beach (and in fact were the first people I saw to do guerrilla-style food aid).
• The people behind Whimsy & Spice volunteered while their commercial kitchen was without power (and are another small business that could use your help.) From the looks of her Twitter, Whimsy & Spice’s Jenna Park looks just as active with the organizing as Allison.
• If you like cured meats, try supporting Brooklyn Cured, who share Robicelli’s and Whimsey & Spice’s commercial kitchen and have also been helping with relief efforts.
• The NYC Food Truck Association (mentioned above) is taking food to where it’s needed most; I know I’ll be looking for participating trucks to give my business to when they’re back at their usual spots.
• Many of my foodo Twitter friends helped with their own sandwich brigades as well.
• And Brooklyn food force Cathy Erwell has great tips on cooking for the masses.

Toques off to all.

Today we essentially rented a car TO GO EAT GAS STATION SANDWICHES in Philipstown, New York.

(This is especially frustrating, since, as a food enthusiast, I often map stand-out lunch and dinner opportunities along the planned route. A prepackaged Boar’s Head Italian combo ain’t exactly stand-out.)

See, we originally set out to go to the New York State Sheep & Wool Festival in Rhinebeck, New York, which is about 2 hours by car from our home. We left by 11:15am—a little later than I’d hoped, but, hey, we’d still make it there by 1:30 at the latest, right?

HAHAHAHAHAHAH.

For some reason, The Bean kept wanting to eat and pee and poop. And so by the time 1:15pm rolled around and we hadn’t eaten lunch yet AND The Bean was crying again AND we hadn’t seen civilization for miles … well, the Hess station looked pretty good.

Long story short, we never made it the Sheep & Wool Festival. We rolled into town at 4:10pm. The festival was closing at 5, but they weren’t letting people in anymore.

The trip wasn’t all a wash. We learned two valuable lessons:

1. It literally takes TWICE AS LONG as the Google Maps estimate to get somewhere via car.

That’s because the baby is going to need to eat. And then she’ll poop and have to be changed. So you’ll change her and get back on the road again, and she’ll pee, and you’ll have to drive around and look for a safe place to pull over to change her again. And then YOU’LL get thirsty or hungry and stop for your own food. Repeat for the duration of the trip.

2. You should always establish a back-home-by time and ABORT THE MISSION (or cut it short) if it looks like you’ll overshoot that time.

At some point, around 3pm, it should have been clear to us that even though Margot was fed and changed, she was fussing. We would have avoided a lot of crying, fussing, and agita if we would have just ended the trip with gas station sandwiches and turned around for home at that point.

Next time we’ll know.

Still, we got to see some beautiful fall foliage in the Hudson Valley, and it was nice to get out of the house. We’ll just know to go somewhere closer to home next time. Maybe Central Park.

Margot falls asleep on a recent evening while listening to my New Wave Nights mix.

I probably shouldn’t post this because I’m afraid I’ll jinx it, but guess who slept through the night last night? If you said Margot, I’ll give you partial credit. The full answer is Margot AND HER PARENTS.

A couple weeks ago she started sleeping longer and longer, first for 4-hour stretches, then for 5. Apparently they’re able to snooze longer as they get bigger because their stomachs hold more food and they don’t need to wake up to feed. THANK GOD FOR GROWING STOMACHS.

This morning I heard the usual grunting and squawks coming from her co-sleeper. I did what I normally do: reach for my phone and check the time* … WHAT!?! SIX FIFTEEN A.M.?!? We put her down at 9 last night. NINE SOLID HOURS? Of course I assumed that Claire just let me sleep through the usual 3am feeding. But no. THIS IS THE TRUTH.

That’s not to say we’re out of the woods, but there’s been a slow and steady progression. And of course, there’s the possibility of the “four-month sleep regression”, which she’s coming up on.

I have mixed feelings on this. I’ll enjoy getting a better night’s sleep, of course, but I think I might miss spending time rocking the little bean to sleep in the wee hours.

A note about the picture above: Claire took that earlier this week during the “witching hour,” a period of the day when babies often don’t want to go down for a nap or sit in their bouncer or their My Little Snugabunny, which takes up half their parents’ living room and oh, God, why did we buy it if you WON’T SLEEP IN IT.

Anyway, Margot’s witching hour is usually from 5 to 7pm, and the only thing that keeps her happy is if you hold her and walk around with her. You can’t just hold her and rock quietly in the glider. You can’t hold her and stand contemplatively at the window looking at people on the street below. No, you have to hold her AND BOUNCE AROUND. (Side note: I remember reading someone write once about “that gentle swaying bounce that automatically marks a person as a parent”—or something like that; I totally get that now.)

Luckily, I found that the witching-hour hold session can be combined with music appreciation. Her mother plays her Billy Joel in the mornings. So I’ve taken to playing her a mix of New Wave classics at night when nothing else consoles her. As Claire put it, “My daughter fell asleep dancing with her dad to Erasure. Compliment or insult to Erasure?”

NB: I love the fact that Andy Bell was a meat-packing-plant worker when he answered Vince Clarke’s ad looking for a singer. Also, this video is such a literal interpretation of the lyrics as to be hokey. (Also look for the Depeche Mode reference around 2:50.)

* To calculate how much sleep I’d be able to get between obscenely-early-morning feeding and early-morning feeding. There are all sorts of factors to take into consideration: how long she feeds, her burping time, how long it takes to rock her back to sleep…

Colonel Jack O’Neill (Richard Dean Anderson) sits in an “Ancient” control chair on one of the Stargate shows.

“Change her diaper and I’ll feed her in The Chair.” <-- That's my wife in the morning. "The Chair" being the glider in The Bean's nursery. In the morning she has to make the distinction about nursing location, since she often feeds the baby in a side-lying hold in our bed. I know the day has begun in earnest when my wife takes The Chair.

She doesn’t know this, but I get a kick out of her calling it “The Chair.” Every time she says it, I think of the Stargate franchise and its control chairs, which were neural interfaces allowing humans to control the technology of “The Ancients.” Who are The Ancients? I’m not even going to try to explain. Go wiki it up.

In Stargate, “The Chair” (they called it that, too) was essential to piloting starships or firing powerful weapons that could make mincemeat of the Stargate teams’ enemies. In our house, The Chair is also powerful. It can make mincemeat of Margot’s crying—either because she’s being fed or getting rocked to sleep in it. It is the most powerful seat in the house.

UPDATE: Of course, as soon as I posted this, The Chair lost some of its power. It’s now apparently not enough for Margot to be rocked to sleep in the chair. She now requires her rocking slave to walk around while holding her. Or else she wails. Maybe The Chair needs a new ZedPM (Stargate fans will get that reference).

My Breezer Village on the Hudson.

It was totally my fault. All my dumbass fault. For years I’d been locking my bike right, with a series of heavy-duty primary and secondary locks. But then my big-ass honkin’ padlock rusted. Once I finally got it opened, I couldn’t get it closed again. I put a rinky-dink lock on it, “just until I get a new big-ass padlock,” I thought.

I waited too long. I should have gone lock-shopping the next day. Instead I waited a week, in which time some assholes came through our apartment complex and stole a number of bikes, my beloved Breezer Villager among them.

Commuting to work over the Brooklyn Bridge on my Breezer Villager.

It was a great bike. I’d say in the top 3 of bikes I’ve ever owned. It was the perfect commuter. Fenders, a chain guard, built-in generator lights. Seven speeds, low and high enough to tackle the (minimal) hills and flat stretches of NYC’s streets.

I hadn’t ridden it into Manhattan since moving to Queens in 2010, but I always told myself I’d start, “one of these days.” (Thing is, the route from Astoria through Midtown Manhattan seems a bit scary.)

Commuting to work by bike remains a goal, though, so I needed to start over. Enter the Manchester Imperial De Luxe 3-speed light roadster I just picked up off Craigslist:

Manchester Imperial De Luxe.

I’d had my eye on vintage 3-speed English-style light roadsters for a while. I had one once before, in the late ’90s in Portland, Oregon (yeah, Portlandia all the way). It was one of the most enjoyable bikes I’ve ever owned. I never worried much about it getting stolen because at the time nobody wanted bikes like it. As a consequence, I rode it everywhere and all the time. It was built like a tank and was simple enough that I could fix basic problems myself. And, hell, it was stylish, too. (In fact, my friend Andy used to call these “fashion bikes,” claiming they were impractical and that hipsters only rode them because they looked cool. He had a similar take on “fashion cars.”)

When I saw this bike appear on Craigslist, I jumped on it and picked it up for a bargain. It’s a Japanese knock-off of a classic English 3-speed. It’s in amazing shape, like new, and is all original, down to the tires, which I’m going to have to replace since they’re showing signs of dry rot.

I’m already planning my route to work, though I’ll probably have to build up some strength before then. Low gear on this thing is still pretty brutal on even the gentle hills of Astoria. I can’t imagine tackling the Queensboro Bridge with it yet.

I’ve got my eye on some rear folding baskets to transform it into a great grocery-getter and a beautiful bell. Those will come later.

You better believe the first thing I bought for it was a big-ass fuggin’ lock.

Bonus material

‘Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before’

When I was in junior high I would have killed a puppy to have been able to order up Smiths videos on demand on a computer. We used to have to watch MTV’s 120 Minutes and hope they’d play a Smiths video. (Which we would then record on VHS, of course.)

Anyway, I’d never seen this video until recently, but stuff like this is where I developed any romantic notions of tooling around on a 3-speed bike.

How to lock a bike

Who holds the record for fastest diaper change? Not me, to be sure, though I have gotten pretty good at swapping out shit britches over the last four weeks. It takes me less than a minute now for cloth diapers—and less than that if I’m putting The Bean in disposables (no diaper cover to worry about).

That’s still not as fast as the various procedures above. But they have nothing on this guy:

Going up the block for croissants.

I like it. It might be all due to the fact that the temperatures were in the high 70s, low 80s this weekend, but the Moby Wrap seems far cooler than the Bjorn. I didn’t think this would be the case, since the Moby is essentially a long-ass strip of fabric that you wrap all around your torso, inserting the baby into a little pocket that’s created in all the criss-crossing.

As far as being cooler in the hepcat sense, there’s room for debate. I’m not super down with the purple color and would like to get a Moby in gray for my own “baby-wearing” (that’s what this practice is called), but I don’t know if I can justify the extra $50 to double up on something we already have.

On a funny note, my wife’s grandmother visited last week (while I was at work) and told Claire that the Moby was a neat new-fangled device. Claire pointed out that it’s just a new twist on an old idea. Women have been twisting straps of fabric around them for centuries and stuffing babies inside them. And in fact I always like to refer to the Moby as “the medieval baby sling.”

From peopleinpizzaslicecostumesbecomingpizzas.com.

Some of you may know me as the founder of Slice, the long-running weblog dedicated to pizza, which is now a part of Serious Eats. One thing I’ve learned over the years of pizzablogging (yes, Margot, pizzablogging is a thing, a weird, weird thing) is that everyone has his or her own way to make pizza and everyone’s way is THE RIGHT WAY. That is to say, if you don’t mix a dough, stretch it out, top it, or bake it the way John Q. Pizzanerd does it, YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG. Variables like bake times, dough hydration, and seemingly innocuous things like whether you put sugar in your tomato sauce spark fierce debate.

My wife and I observed something similar in babyland when we were in the hospital shortly after Margot’s birth. Especially around issues of breastfeeding.

If you have ever spent the night in a hospital, you get used to a parade of nurses changing shifts. There’s the usual day shift and night shift, so you’re going to have at least two nurses. But you’ll probably meet more than two simply due to days off in the nurses’ rotation. Every nurse we met had different advice regarding bottle-feeding, the use of pacifiers, etc. And that’s before we met with the hospital lactation consultant.

One of the more contentious issues surrounding breastfeeding is “nipple confusion.” That’s the fear that in giving the baby a bottle or pacifier, she will gain a preference for something other than the mother’s nipple. I’m not denying that it is a real concern, just saying that people can be very strident about doing “breast only” feeding.

The nurses, of course, are trained not to tell parents what to do. They get around it by talking in generalities when asked. “Well, many people supplement breastfeeding with bottle feeding.” Or, “I’ve seen people give a newborn a pacifier.” But they’re not going to come out and say, “You should give that screaming baby a pacifier STAT!”

Because our baby was born C-section, we had three nights in the hospital and we tried breastfeeding exclusively. When Margot got close to losing 10 percent of her birth weight by the fourth day, the staff pediatrician recommended giving her a bottle and to follow up on this line with our regular pediatrician. You would not believe the difference that made. She calmed down, slept better, and, given continued bottle-supplementation, started gaining back her weight quickly.

If we had listened to the lactation consultant, who was very much in favor of breastfeeding-only, we might have seen slower weight gain. In the end, we continued with the formula supplements, and Margot still has no trouble feeding from the breast. I’m not going to say that we’re not concerned with inducing a formula preference (which is why we’re careful only to feed her formula on a limited regimen), but that we found a solution that worked for us.

Which is what happens in much of pizzamaking. You adapt various methods from various schools of thought to find something that works for you.

Margot, shortly before waking up.

“Is she sleeping through the night yet?” You’ve probably overheard that phrase if you’ve ever been around a group of newish parents.

I’d heard it before but never quite grasped the meaning. I just assumed that babies were finicky and that, sure, they’d wake you up here and there, but some nights they’d sleep for hours and hours (just not the whole night) and that other nights they’d sleep a little less. You know, that it was just sort of luck of the draw from night to night. And then eventually they’d sleep through the night and let you get eight hours.

Nope.

I didn’t realize these little suckers NEED TO BE FED EVERY TWO HOURS. So regardless of what you’re doing—the crossword puzzle, tying lures for fly-fishing, corresponding with prison inmates—you have to stop and feed them.

That means you have to set your alarm at night and get up every couple of hours.

Here’s the rub, too: the countdown clock for the next feeding starts at the beginning of the current feeding. Our bean can sometimes suckle for a total of 40 minutes or more. That’s not including the burping (10 minutes after each breast) and the inevitable diaper change before and after feeding (3 minutes per). So if you’re lucky you get an hour’s sleep between feedings.

(OK, I’m probably going for dramatic effect above. Our pediatrician told us we could go two to three hours between feedings, and we try to feed Margot heavily at night so she can hold out longer. But even then, the most we get is 2.5 hours of shuteye at a stretch.)

Anyway, that’s all nothing new to veteran parents out there, but since this is my blog for myself and maybe some of my non-children-havin’ friends are reading it, well, that’s a TIL—Thing I’ve Learned.

DON’T ask a woman if she’s pregnant. Ever. If you remember this, you can never go wrong.

But what if it’s obvious, you say? If it’s obvious, THEN YOU DON’T HAVE TO ASK.

Guess who in our family has violated this rule? Not me! That would be my wife. WHO SHOULD KNOW BETTER. And she did it while she was pregnant, to a coworker who was NOT.

One of the other things I learned is that many parents-to-be usually don’t tell until 12 weeks along (the first trimester), which is about when eagle-eyed friends might be able to notice anyway. (The risk of miscarriage is highest in the first trimester, so the thinking is don’t tell, and if you miscarry, no one knows. I think this blog makes a good argument against that logic, though.) Some people let on fairly early, some wait. The point is, if you don’t ask, you’ll never offend.

Is this a baby baby or just a “food baby?” Ooh, baby, that’s a tough one. Answer: This is my wife at 12 weeks, around the time we started telling our friends. (We had already told our parents around Thanksgiving, just a few weeks in.)

DO give up your seat on the subway to a pregnant woman. It’s just what you do. I don’t have to tell women that. From what my wife says, 70 percent of the people who gave up their seats to her were women. Men, you are dogs. And you are missing out on an opportunity here. Next time you think about “READING” REALLY HARD to ignore the pregnant lady in front of you, look around the subway car. Is there a cute girl nearby? She’ll think you’re a real stand-up guy if you give up your seat. Parlay that good deed into a phone number.

‘Upstanding Citizens,‘ by The Letter Office

That said, graphic designer Elizabeth Carey Smith (The Letter Office) spent four months noting who gave up seats to her when she was pregnant, and her numbers showed that men were more likely to swap seats (chart at right). It’s interesting to see how the split plays out on the city’s different subway lines. Check out the line-by-line breakdown on the full chart here.

(What would be even more interesting is to chart this by race. My wife’s feeling was that white men were the least likely to give up a seat, that women of all races almost always gave it up, and that men of color did more so than honkeys.)

I do think there’s a gray area here. There’s that certain period of pregnancy, maybe around 3 months, where she could either be “with child” or, how shall I put this? … just a little paunchy. (See photo above.) If you find such a woman standing in front of you while you’re seated on the train, I think it’s perfectly OK not to offer the seat. My wife said she didn’t mind if guys* didn’t give up a seat to her during this awkward stage. She wasn’t big enough to be uncomfortable yet. As someone who has refrained from standing in this situation, I like to think the woman understands. I’m just trying not to embarrass anyone (myself or a paunchy non-pregnant lady).

If you feel a bit scummy about just sitting there, then get up to fake-consult the subway map and don’t return to your seat.

DON’T ask or comment about the following:

• Delivery method (C-section, natural birth, water birth, home birth, underwater basket birth): This is often very personal, because there are many different opinions and world views around the various methods. And many of those opinions would have you believe you’re irreparably damaging your baby from the get-go if you don’t use X-method. People can get touchy and defensive if you criticize their delivery method. Just refrain from asking. Or, if you do, don’t comment
• Circumcision: I’m not a huge fan of this practice. And if our baby had been a boy, we weren’t going to have him circumcised. I think it’s a crazy, useless practice based on ancient hokum. But I would never tell any of my friends that. (And since none of them read Kubaby—because no one reads Kubaby—my secret is still safe)
• Whether mom- or dad-to-be prefers a boy or girl: I had plenty of people ask me this. Honestly, I did want a girl. But if I had answered truthfully (instead of “Oh, I’d be happy with either”) and we ended up with a boy, then people would have remembered and/or thought I was disappointed.

DO feel free to speculate about baby’s sex. OK, for some people that’s probably a DON’T, but my wife and I found it amusing and actually noticed a trend:

• Foreign-born people almost always predicted a boy. We think because many of their cultures prefer male children. East Asian, Middle Eastern, and South Asian people almost invariably pegged Margot as a boy. (Latinos seemed to be an exception to this rule. More often than not, they went for “girl.” But that also might just mean they have a secret baby-sexing skill they’re keeping from the rest of us)
• Then again, U.S.-born people from these cultures seemed just as likely to predict a bouncing baby girl (actually in our case, most of them predicted a girl)

I probably have more DOs and DON’Ts in me, but I think this is a good stopping point. I’ll be up late plenty of nights for a while, so there’s no shortage of baby-blogging time in my foreseeable future. I’ll add new “life lessons” as I remember them.

Margot napping in her stroller.

Note: It looks like a lot of people are finding this post through Google searches for “strollers for walk-up apartments.” Here’s the TL;DR for you: I didn’t test all the strollers mentioned below. Just checked them out in-store and feature-comparisoned them via spreadsheet. We wanted a full-feature stroller that my wife could still lug up and down stairs. We narrowed it down to the Baby Jogger City Mini and the Bugaboo Bee. We would have gone with the City Mini (best value, universally stellar reviews) but some friends gave us their old Bugaboo Bee.

The one baby item I spent the most time researching was the stroller. I think it’s a guy thing (even though I’m usually loath to trot out mindless gender-normative stereotypes). If it involves gear—especially if that gear involves wheels—then guys are there, crunching numbers, analyzing minutiae, planning how they’re going to trick it out.

My wife and I (and now Margot) live on the third floor of a walk-up building in Queens. We don’t have a doorman. We don’t have space in the lobby to park a stroller. So we HAVE to carry it up and down when we want to use it. And that’s the real reason I tell myself I spent hours watching stroller demo videos on YouTube (where I learned that the fold is the money shot of stroller-review videos).

My main criteria were size and weight, followed by ease of fold and price. Despite the concentration and confluence of media and persnickety parents in NYC, there is precious little info on the web if you’re looking for “the best stroller for a walk-up apartment in NYC.”

Much of it is dated or focused on big, crazy-expensive strollers or both. But, duh, I should have known the place to get real advice would be on the baby boards. Long story short, a trip to Buy Buy Baby, a fair amount of street observation, and some time on baby forums helped me narrow it down to these options below. I’m posting my spreadsheet here in case it helps you.

Keep in mind that these prices and features reflect strollers as of May 2012. One thing I learned is that strollers are constantly evolving. (I mean, velcro peek-a-boo window? As if. Everyone knows magnetic closure is the shit.) Any feature that makes things easier for moms is a competitive advantage.

In the end, our choice narrowed to the Bugaboo Bee and the Baby Jogger City Mini. I wanted something that my wife could reasonably handle on her own when I was away. And the Bee and City Mini were some of the lightest full-feature strollers out there.

We loved the Bee for style and the fact that the seat was reversible. My wife got suckered in by studies showing that language acquisition is faster in babies who got significant face time with parents. So a rear-facing seat was important to her. My take on this was, How much time is the baby really going to spend in the stroller? Especially when that one feature on the Bee would have represented hundreds in extra cost.

Update (August 10, 2012): A buddy of mine, Loren Schlaes, who’s a pediatric occupational therapist specializing in sensory integration, points out in this article out that strollers and the BabyBjorn–style carriers can have a negative effect on coordination, visual skills, and the like. It was an eye-opener for me. And I’m happy that my wife has recently been putting Margot into a Moby Wrap.

We were set to buy the City Mini, whose one-hand fold I really liked, but then some friends offered us the Bee that their two kids had outgrown. (Thanks, Meg & Jason!) So that kind of made our minds up for us.

So far the Bee has been wonderful. But the City Mini is supposed to be amazing too. Seriously, I did not read a single negative review about the Mini. (While the Bee did come in for some criticism here and there.)

Or, skip the stroller for a while

Another approach that some other parents I’ve talked to have taken is to forgo the stroller altogether until the child is old enough to go into a so-called umbrella stroller—those lightweight, folding strollers that are more canvas than frame. (Newborns can’t ride in an umbrella stroller because the seat is upright; tiny ones need to lay as flat as possible—which is why back in the day they went out in prams.)

Margot Ming, just minutes old.

Hello, world, meet Margot Ming!

In computing, a hello world program is a small program often used as a test to verify that a computer’s programming is properly configured.

The phrase often shows up on blogging platforms, like the one I’m using for Kubaby, it’s often the default sample post that’s already published when you start a new blog. I usually delete that post, but here, it seemed fitting, so I kept it and modified the contents.

Margot Ming Lui Kuban was born on Tuesday, July 24, 2012, weighing 8 pounds, 3 ounces. She is our first child. I started this blog to share photos of our little bean with her grandparents.

31st Avenue near 32nd Street.

Oh, Astoria. Someone just had to have something a little different. But, you know, I kinda like it.

To me, “college town pizza” (University of Kansas — Rock Chalk Jayhawk!) will always be Pizza Shuttle, Gumby’s (since closed), Papa Keno’s, and Rudy’s. (Pyramid was for folks in the Greek system.)

Rudy’s was as close to what J. Kenji Lopez-Alt, writing on Slice, describes as “college town pizza,” which he defines as pizza being over-topped and over-cheesed. Except that kids at KU tended to not overtop it — at least not those who I knew. Not because we were enlightened pizza purists looking to avoid a “garbage pie” but because it cost more. We were cheap bastards. Like most college kids. Hell, we’d rather spend our money on beer. (In my case, beer and pinball.)

Pizza Shuttle and Gumby’s were delivery and take-out only. I don’t know anyone who ever went to pick it up. If you owned a car, by the time you were in a state to actually crave Pizza Shuttle or Gumby’s, you had no business behind the wheel.

The pizza from both was essentially the same, with minor differences. Coke and Pepsi. Dr Pepper and Mr. Pibb. Both served one size only, a small 10-inch pizza that was mostly crust. A big, puffy, spongy crust with a fairly wide cornicione (not that you should EVER use the word cornicione in reference to this stuff).

No matter which one I ordered, I usually got mine topped with green peppers and sausage. Two toppings was livin’ large in the dorms. And the dorms were probably 80 percent of these guys’ business.

Gumby’s had the distinct advantage of printing “points” on its boxes. Cut out enough points (10 or 20, I can’t remember) and you’d get a free pizza.

I cut out my points religiously. But, WTF!?! A lot of kids in my dorm didn’t. How did I know this? Because I hit upon a scheme early on in my freshman year. At the end of each wing on each floor was the recycling room. Do you see where this is going?

Whenever I was hungry, I’d do a sweep of Hashinger Hall, keychain Swiss Army knife in hand, and cut out all the unclaimed Gumby Points. I didn’t always scrounge up enough on weeknights, but Fridays and Saturdays were a cardboard goldmine.

The pizzas at the time were about $3, if I recall correctly. Gumby Points subsidized many a 40-ouncer of Colt 45 ($2) and Addams Family. (“Hit Cousin It!”)

You know, I never did figure out why it was called Gumby’s. Must have been a reference to the crust.

Related

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The Ethics of Free Pizza »

The ‘Matthew’ on white bread (Sullivan Street Bakery’s ‘stirato’ bread).

There are so many great sandwiches in New York City that I want to eat my way through, and yet I find myself at Alidoro again and again.

But there’s a reason this longtime NYC favorite calls to me. Owner and sandwich virtuoso Walter Momente slices impeccable ingredients to order onto each sandwich, and each one is so carefully balanced in terms of flavor and proportions that you almost can’t go wrong ordering any of the 40 on the menu (each one is named).

The Matthew ($11.25) is a crowd favorite, to judge by online reviews and observations made while waiting in line (which is often out the door of this tiny shop around lunchtime). Paper-thin slices of prosciutto join pencil-thick slices of mozzarella along with a fistful of peppery arugula on the bread of your choice. Just enough oil-and-vinegar dressing lends a spicy bite and additional moistness to the assemblage.

It’s enough to fill you up without leaving you feeling bloated—the right amount of sandwich to prompt contemplation of which name you’ll call out next visit.

Alidoro
105 Sullivan Street, New York NY 10012 (map)
212-334-5179; alidoronyc.com

Patisserie Pistache opened this morning in Astoria, Queens. It’s just north of Ditmars Boulevard on 35th Street—behind the yet-to-open Francis Cafe.

The croissants are pretty legit. Comparable to those I’ve had in Paris.

They also serve almond croissants and little tarts and such. Not a huge selection this morning, but maybe they’re starting slowly.

It also sells baguettes from Pain d’Avignon, and they’re great. Totally on par with everyday baguettes in France. I can see myself grabbing one in the morning and making simple jambon-fromage sandwiches for the day ahead. Update (11/7/2012): Pistache has recently changed baguette suppliers and is getting them from Tom Cat now. I don’t think they’re nearly as good as Pain d’Avignon’s. I hope Pistache reverses this decision.

Update: After seeing a tweet about a possible Cannelle Patisserie connection, I called Cannelle to follow up. Turns out that Pistache is not necessarily backed by Cannelle but is carrying its pastries. So, pastries from Cannelle and baguettes from Pain d’Avignon.

Patisserie Pistache: 21-75 35th Street, Astoria NY 11105 (map)

A rendering of the shelves we're ordering

Ever since I moved in to my wife’s apartment shortly after our engagement (she owned, I was renting, it was a no-brainer where we’d live) we’ve been slowly moving toward some semblance of organization. Today we took a big step toward finally putting everything in its place—we ordered a custom shelving system from ISS Designs.

Ours is compression-pole shelving—the poles sandwich between floor and ceiling and use a compressed spring to jam into place. Like a tension rod for a shower curtain. We didn’t want to have to drill any holes in the walls to put these up.

To the right of the bedroom door is a mini work station. To the left, enough shelving to accommodate all the books we currently keep in what is now the “office.”

Delivery comes in 2 to 3 weeks. I cannot wait to install this system and clear out a large portion of office.

'The Famous Original A': mozzarella, pizza sauce, Italian fennel sausage, shaved red onions, and a post-bake drizzle of Mike's Hot Honey.

Pizza Night tonight. It’s been a while. Tried a naturally leavened dough this time. That is, a dough made with starter only — no instant dry yeast, no cake yeast, nothing. Just my super starter, Cavanagh.

Made the poolish last night and mixed up the dough this morning. All based on the Tartine Bread cookbook that I’ve been working from lately. It’s basically just the Basic Country Bread dough shaped into six ~300-gram balls instead of two 900-gram boules. It’s a 75% hydration dough. I used 100% all-purpose white flour, since that’s whatI had on hand. I didn’t do the 10% whole wheat that the bread recipe calls for, because I am not a fan of whole wheat pizza dough.

The dough, after two hours bulk rise.

Working with 75% hydration dough is a bitch. I’ve only recently gotten OK at working with it to shape the boules for the book’s Basic Country Bread. At least with the big dough, I can quickly rotate it between cupped hands and along the countertop to help develop surface tension and seal the sphere. But this trick is difficult with the small 300-gram dough balls. Trying to create surface tension by picking up the dough and turning it in upon itself is near impossible, because it sticks to my fingers something fierce.

I managed with a fair amount of bench flour, my bench scraper, and some fast tuck and folds. The dough balls weren’t perfect, but they worked OK.

The first couple of pies out of the oven were a little pale, but by the time the temperature ramped up, I got some decent color along the edge.

After balling the dough, I put it in individual Gladware bowls and threw it in the fridge. I was afraid letting it rise at room temperature would allow it to get too sour.

I was also afraid the coldness of the fridge would make it hard to stretch the dough, but the rounds were as extensible as ever. Not as much as they would have been warm, but for a cold dough, they stretched as easily as my usual 65–67% hydration dough that I normally have to work with at room temp.

In fact, it almost stretched too much. I was worried it was going to break at a couple points.

On 'Slice,' we moved away from the term 'upskirt' for this kind of shot, but here I can use that term with impunity. Ha ha.

I think the bottom looks pretty nice. The end crust, though, probably had a little too much bench flour on it.

Hole structure was only OK. It didn’t get as much oven spring as I would have hoped. I’m chalking it up to the coldness of the dough. In the future I’m going to try some of this formulation at room temperature.

I’m also going to let it do a 3-day cold ferment. The wife said she didn’t think the crust had much flavor to it.

I would agree. But it still had enough flavor to register, and it didn’t offend with blandness.

Homemade Italian fennel sausage, according to the recipe given me by Mark Bello at Pizza a Casa.

The first two pies were simple plain pies. Jarred pizza sauce (yeah, I was lazy), Polly-O whole milk mozzarella, fresh-grated Parmesan cheese, and a little olive oil and salt.

For my third and final I did the Famous Original A — mozzarella, sauce, Parmesan, homemade sausage, and shaved red onion — with a post-bake drizzle of Mike’s Hot Honey. I love the pizza sausage recipe from Pizza a Casa‘s Mark Bello. And now I’ve got half three-quarters of a pound of it sitting in the freezer. It’ll go on my next round of naturally leavened pies.

Hasta la pizza,
Adam

From Mezzo Mezzo to … Michael Psilakis?

Construction at the former Mezzo Mezzo started in earnest last week.

That’s the word on Astorians, where the speculation is that the defunct Mezzo Mezzo will become a second location of Michael Psilakis’s MP Taverna (the original is in Roslyn, a short way away on Long Island).

This makes some sense. The bilevel space is enormous, stretching all the way back to where the blue plywood ends. Seems like it would take someone with a proven track record and a name to hit the ground running here and do the kind of business that would cover the rent.

UPDATE: And now it’s confirmed. Psilakis is opening in this space.

31-29 Ditmars Boulevard, Astoria NY 11105

Hinomaru Ramen

It’s moving into the old St. Honore bakery space near the corner of 35th Street. Grub Street brought word earlier this year that it was set to open February 15. Well, obvs, that’s come and gone. Peeking through the plywood, I can see the interior looks most of the way there. There’s a long bank of counter seating on the left of the space and plenty of room for tables on the right. 

The guys behind it seem to be more into Asian-fusion “concept” restaurants and are bringing in a “consulting chef from Japan.” I was hoping it was a labor of love by some secret Japanese ramen master who happened to live in Astoria (the neighborhood has a large Japanese population), but even if it’s only as good as Sapporo in Times Square, I’d be happy. It’ll be something new, and at least it’s not another Thai joint or forgettable sushi spot. 33–18 Ditmars Boulevard, Astoria NY 11105

Unknown venture at 31-13 Ditmars

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The former halal deli in this space has been vacant for a while now. A few weeks ago, new glass went up, covered by butcher paper. The paper was down the other night, and it looks like it’s going to be some sort of food-related venture.

Flat-screen TVs on both east and west walls would normally suggest sports bar. But they’re small, and the interior looks like it has a griddle in the back, and I think what I saw in there was a baker’s rack.

I’m guessing it’s going to be some sort of deli/coffee shop/bakery/cafe. Not quite a diner, but maybe a place you could grab a muffin, a breakfast sandwich. Come to think of it, there’s not really any place like that in this area, so it might be a welcome addition to the neighborhood, but that prospect is not as exciting as some of the stuff happening down on 30th Avenue or Broadway.

Francis Cafe & Patisserie Pistache, 35th & Ditmars

This place has seemingly been finished and ready to go since the first week of January but has not yet opened. It replaces the former 718 restaurant, also a French joint. Patisserie Pistache takes the place of the little doomed space on 35th Street proper, which was most recently Mally’s Shoes and before that some sort of little Southeast Asian video store. There’s been no activity on the Francis Cafe Facebook page since January 5. Maybe they’re waiting to finish the patisserie before opening? Let’s hope it’s soon. My wife and I could use another brunch option in the area.

Watawa

Watawa, the popular sushi place between 33rd and 35th streets, remains closed for renovations. Typically “closed for renovations” is just a euphemism for doneski, but here they’re merging with the next-door space, which has been under construction for a year or more. I sorta figured Watawa would be back open by this point. It’s been under plywood since late January. 33-10 Ditmars Boulevard, Astoria NY 11105

Astoria’s Finest Bagels

With four bagelries on Ditmars, how long would it be before one of them fell? Last in, first out, I guess. Astoria’s Finest Bagels closed this weekend. There’s a marshal’s notice in the window that the place has been seized. 33-06 Ditmars Boulevard, Astoria NY 11105

My first loaf of Tartine Bread's "basic country loaf."

Haven’t updated on Tartine bread because, well, it was pretty damn successful the first time I made it. Figured, hell, what do I need to say besides, “It works!”

But you know with gambling — and this is what I’ve only heard — is that if during your first time gambling you win big, you just assume you’re always gonna win big. Similar thing here.

My first batch of bread was pretty damn good. Seriously, better than anything I’ve had from the bakeries in my neighborhood. But …

1) Too much bench flour on the exterior

I’ve now made this recipe about 5 times. Until tonight, I had a hard time pre- and final-shaping it. It is very wet. Going by the written instructions, I had a hard time shaping into a ball with the proper surface tension. (There is supposed to be enough surface tension built up to hold the dough in a ball shape — this is meant to contain the expanding loaf so it keeps its roundess.) I watched a bunch of videos on shaping high-hydration boules, and there are a number of techniques. I used one similar to what I use to pre-ball my pizza doughs, and that worked. It took a fair amount of bench flour to keep my hands dry, but I think I can slowly cut down on this flour as I get better. The trick is to work quickly and confidently, handling the dough as little as possible — both so your hands don’t stick and so you don’t overwork it.

2) It was maybe a little overdone

By just a little. Initial bake with the lid on the Dutch oven is 20 minutes. Final bake (with lid off) is 20 to 25. I’ve since learned that in my oven, 20 minutes on final bake is sufficient.

3) It was a bit too sour

It tasted fine to me, but wasn’t as light on the sourdough flavor as the recipe hinted. And my wife likes it less sour. Easy solution here. I simply have to pay more attention to the bulk rise time and the final rise. In my first batch, total rise time was about 6 hours. This is 2 hours longer than the recipe recommends. What can I say, sometimes life (and laundry) gets in the way. I’ve since timed things carefully and end up with good flavor without excessive sourness.

The crumb of my first Tartine Bread loaf.

Further observations

• Scoring the bread: Scoring the dough — slashing it with a sharp razor — is not only decorative but allows the bread to rise higher than it would unscored. Remember I talked about surface tension? Scoring the dough along controlled lines breaks some of that surface tension and allows the bread to spring up dramatically higher and in a dramatic, visually pleasing fashion. At first I was trying this with a single-edge razor blade (like one you’d use to scrape masking tape off a window). I finally found the double-edge face-shaving razors at my local drugstore and used those. They work much, much better.
• Temperature: On my latest round of breads (tonight), I preheated the Dutch oven at 550°F for far too long and then neglected to drop the oven temperature down 50°F. MISTAKE. The recipe calls for 500° initial preheat and 450°F final bake time. I burned the shit out of the bottom. Plus, I did this in our top oven (we have a dual-oven range), which seems to run much hotter than indicated by the dial.
• Storage: I need to find a good way to store these loaves. We tear through about half a loaf with dinner, but the whole other one and a half … I need to look up good ways to store. Not that it lasts long in our house.