Manhappenings

FOODIE FILES: BIG GAY ICE CREAM SHOP (PART TWO)

Fri, 24 May 2013 15:11:13 -0400

I’ve been a fan of Big Gay since I first moved to Manhattan. I loved the decadence of their concept - the flavors and flamboyance that brought out my inner child and suppressed sweet tooth - and how seamlessly it melded into something rather simple: an old-school Mister Softee truck and a we’re here attitude. It felt like they were saying, Girl, you’re fabulous. Treat yourself. So I did, when they opened shop in my hood, with their bedazzled unicorn and a line that always looped out the door, even in winter. What really won me though wasn’t so much their coconut toppings or their kindness but rather one particular taste, one that got me straight to the core: decadent, yes, but simple. That’s me (and probably you). A little salt, a little sweet, depending on the particular bite. It was, specifically, their crack-comparable ice cream cone that’s rolled in pretzel, dipped in chocolate, and sprinkled with sea salt - the American Globs.

And I ranted about it. I raved. Last summer, I ate it for days in a row. I thought it could never be replaced, that I’d never go astray, but then my fandom got a bit more Beiberish.

You see, I recently came down from a serious soft cone kick (don’t get me wrong: still eat ‘em, still love ‘em) and I’ve found a new fixation: the ice cream sandwich. The chipwich. There’s something about them. The physical grasp. The crunch. The salt to the sweet. So last night, I switched it up. I stayed true to Big Gay, but I tried one of their three Melt Bakery sammies. Like any girl with a mouthful of childhood cavities and a disposition for a good cocktail would, I went with the Rue McClanahan: bourbon ice cream between two buttery pecan praline cookies.

It was rich. It tasted more like butter than bourbon but that was fine by me. I ate it slowly, bite my bite, on the warm walk home through Tompkins Square Park, and I licked every crumb from my fingers, lapped up every spot of sweet. It’s good for splitsies, with a pal, but in the end, that might be a decision you rue. Go on, treat yoself.

Photo via Foodspotting

Photo

Thu, 23 May 2013 18:08:19 -0400

FUCK POTATO SALAD.

Thu, 23 May 2013 18:07:31 -0400

Read the rest and get the recipe here.

Because even if Joanna’s a madwoman, this messy, dreamy...

Tue, 21 May 2013 17:47:00 -0400

Because even if Joanna’s a madwoman, this messy, dreamy song will always take me back to the steep and narrow, winding roads of the Pacific Coast, after a beautiful gray day of oysters and redwoods with my friends.

Welcome back to Maryland, Mads.

Some hot river runs so far this week. So long, Spring. Summer...

Tue, 21 May 2013 17:20:16 -0400

Some hot river runs so far this week. So long, Spring. Summer and her boypal, Sweat, just drove in town.

Video

Sun, 19 May 2013 16:06:31 -0400

Finding myself listening to this song and thinking about years...

Sat, 18 May 2013 12:01:23 -0400

Finding myself listening to this song and thinking about years ago.

And NYC is ready to play…

Fri, 17 May 2013 18:00:54 -0400

And NYC is ready to play…

It’s Fri-Fri-Friday ya’llllll!

Fri, 17 May 2013 14:58:04 -0400

It’s Fri-Fri-Friday ya’llllll!

My first Of a Kind designer goes big at one of her favorite...

Fri, 17 May 2013 11:00:00 -0400

My first Of a Kind designer goes big at one of her favorite parks. We spoke about an art installation she loved there, by Jim Campbell, and some others that inspired her. Now she’s there, with her own art, and that’s so rad. The biggest congrats.

momatalks:

Have you strolled through Madison Square Park lately? If you do, you will find a beautiful and unexpected, colorful installation by artist, Orly Genger called Red, Yellow, Blue, on display through September 8 this year.

“This site-specific installation features over 1.4 million feet of
layered, painted, and knotted rope —the total footage enough to span the length of Manhattan nearly 20x’s over!”

It wraps, coils and folds it’s way through the park. Check it out this summer!

"New York? It was big."

Thu, 16 May 2013 17:46:00 -0400

“New York? It was big.”

- Yogi Berra, former Yankee and one of the most famous baseball players of all time, when asked about his first memory of New York.

I’ve mentioned my love for this quote once before, and tonight I’m heading to Yankee Stadium again, two years later, for my second time. It still and always will make me think of my dad - about when he was a boy and went to the games with his dad. Back when Yogi and Mickey Mantle used to reign. Tonight I’ll have a beer for those great men, wishing they were there. And a hotdog too.

Yankees vs. Mariners

Thu, 16 May 2013 17:39:19 -0400

Yankees vs. Mariners

Today in amazing headlines

Wed, 15 May 2013 13:19:00 -0400

The NYT Dining & Wine section does it again #rkelly

Won’t miss ya, Winter.

Tue, 14 May 2013 23:01:00 -0400

Won’t miss ya, Winter.

Summer’s coming to the East Village.

Tue, 14 May 2013 22:44:15 -0400

Summer’s coming to the East Village.

Mon, 13 May 2013 13:14:53 -0400

On the occasion of Mother’s Day, I give you one of my favorite pieces of food writing, by the...

Sun, 12 May 2013 16:01:00 -0400

On the occasion of Mother’s Day, I give you one of my favorite pieces of food writing, by the ever-brilliant Tom Junod, unedited, nominated for a James Beard award, and published in our September 2010 issue:

I cook for my family. To put it another way: I am my family’s cook, and so I cook almost every night. I cook three hundred days a year, and have cooked three hundred days a year for years. I cook for the three of us — for my wife, my daughter, and myself — and before there were three of us, I cooked for the two of us. I am a husband who cooks for his wife, which makes me a man who cooks for his woman and now his women, which in turns makes me a man who to some extent cooks like a woman: out of love and generosity, yes, but also out of service, out of duty. I cook because it’s my job. I don’t get many days off from cooking. I don’t take many days off cooking, because I only like to eat at restaurants that serve food better than my own, or that serve Mexican food or sushi. Hell, I don’t even take days off from cooking when I go out for days on the road, because before I leave I prepare my family food to be eaten in my absence. I cook so that there is no absence. I cook so that I am always there, even when I’m gone, even when I die, and my cooking translates in my daughter’s memory as, simply, this: time.

This, however, is not a story of my cooking, or the odd combination of freedom and thralldom it confers. It’s the story of what — or who — inspired my decision to be my family’s cook, gave me the will to do it, and made it both a practical and, apparently, a psychological necessity. It is the story of my mother — of my mother’s cooking.

This is not to say that my cooking is selfless. It is anything but, because in order to endure cooking like a woman I have to cook like a man — which is to say, for myself. The food I cook for my family is the food I like to eat. The food I like to eat is the food I cook for my family. I cook out of hunger, and so, to the degree that I am selfless as a cook, I am also despotic and fanatical. I do everything myself, make everything myself, from salad dressings to chili powder. I do not ask for help and I do not consider shortcuts. I want to take time, not save it, aware of the paradox born of my driven dedication, aware that if the time I spend at the stove is time given to my family, it is also time taken away.

Read the rest here.

The Mama

Sun, 12 May 2013 08:01:02 -0400

Read the rest and get the recipe here.

to the woods

Fri, 10 May 2013 16:01:00 -0400

I felt like lying down by the side of the trail and remembering it all. The woods do that to you, they always look familiar, long lost, like the fact of a long-dead relative, like an old dream, like a piece of forgotten song drifting across the water, most of all like golden eternities of your childhood or past manhood and all the living and the dying and the heartbreak that went on a million years ago and the clouds as they pass overhead seem to testify (by their own lonesome familiarity) the feeling. - Kerouac, The Dharma Bums

They sure do.

I felt that in the Redwoods last Sunday. Oh San Francisco…with my friends, my heart. Thankful to be heading home to some again so soon. And to the river. So I’m Chesapeake bound…to my family, to our woods, and to that salty, spring, other-Bay air.

madeleinethomas: I want to lie down under a redwood again.

Fri, 10 May 2013 14:50:29 -0400

madeleinethomas:

I want to lie down under a redwood again.