Delectable Dinners, Delighted Diners

Can I make an entirely separate entry just to talk about how well we ate this weekend? Bear with me... I can't help it, really.

Saturday night, the night mother Mother arrived, we went to Sol de Cuba, a delightful, tiny, busy Cuban restaurant, wall covered with pictures of that country, the ten or so tables always full--we were lucky to be seated right away. I had a bowl of black bean soup, and my mother had black bean chile. We shared a plate of fried yuca, served with a very tasty sauce.

Sunday's lunch was at Whole Foods in Manhattan, and as I've already describes it, I won't burden you by doing so again. Sunday for dinner we went to Miya's Sushi, a great sushi place just a few blocks away. Aside from the tuna-goat cheese-cranberry sushi, we also had a curried okra roll, an artichoke-cumin roll, and the "Devil's Black Fish Sampler," three small pieces of pan-seared fish on rice.

Monday morning we went for coffee at Fuel, my favorite place for that here, though it is a bit of a walk. Last night's dinner was at Zaroka, an Indian restaurant which I had heard good things about but had not yet tried. It was very good, and beautifully decorated--the walls were set with subtle pieces of mirror, and lighted altars hung from them. It felt like the interior of a palace. I had Mattar paneer, and Mother had lamb vindaloo, and a sweet lassi. They brought us papadum with three very tasty chutneys.

For lunch today we went to Mamoun's, our favorite dark, funny falafel place. They sesrve you off of paper, but it's incredibly tasty. And reasonably priced.

Everything we ate was quite reasonable, in fact. That's really one of the very nice things about New Haven. There is a profusion of very good, very diverse food, all within a small radius, and all very affordable. Can't ask for much more, really.

New York City Sunday (from 11/11)

It was by the skin of our teeth and not much more that we (mother and I) made the 7:55 train to New York City this morning. Our cab picked us up at 7:41, and dropped us at the station at 7:50. “Do you think we’ll make it?” we asked the man at the ticket counter. “Ehh…,” He looked at the clock. 7:53-ish. “Yeah, you should,” he said. We scurried down the stairs to the long, gleaming metal corridor that leads to the platforms. My mother looked at me. “Trot?” she suggested. We hurried back up the stairs to the platform, and hopped of the still-waiting train, just a minute before the doors closed.

New York city, urban canyonland that it is, was cold this morning. We wore leather gloves and walked quickly up 5th Avenue towards St. Patrick’s Cathedral, where we hoped to catch a mass. It’s an immense cathedral—there must have been a thousand people at mass. It was being broadcasted on television and on the radio, and I wondered if Aunt Mela was watching.


At the end of the mass, we were informed that we would have to use the side doors to exit, as there was a parade on 5th. It was the Veteran’s Day parade, being led by ranks of motorcyclists, flags waving, hogs growling. We caught the metro to 28th Street (and on our way to the metro stop passed a smiling man on the sidewalk. We both paused in our strides, brows furrowed. “Was that Mark Wahlberg?” I said. It was), where the parade continued, now in the form of row upon row of National Guardsmen, the Navy marching Band, and myriad high school ROTC troops. Behind us, in the Madison Square dog run, sweatered dogs yipped at each other.


We continued down 5th until it turned into Broadway, down to Union Square, where we had lunch at Whole Foods. The Union Square Whole Foods is a marvel of compact efficiency. Instead of expanding outward—horizontally, that it—as those of us who live where there’s actually open space would expect, it extends vertically, including the main level, with the bakery and deli and hot-food and salad bar (very good selection in these latter two—my mother had turkey, cranberry sauce, and salad, I had falafel and hummus, the same salad as she [pear-frisee-radicchio-feta] and pumpkin risotto), the basement, with all the actual groceries, and an upper level, with a coffee bar, juice bar, and sitting area. This sitting area affords quite a nice view of Union Square. We sat up there for a good while with our hot-bar lunches and out hot beverages to catch our breath.

The sun slanted westward early. We exited Whole Foods, and meandered through the art market—good Christmas presents. There were some wonderful things—photographs and hand-printed t-shirts and origami jewelry. It was quite cold, and when we were done at the art market we headed down into the subway to go to the Brooklyn Bridge. From there it was back to Grand Central. Our train left at 5:07, and by the time we emerged from underground, it was completely dark—I didn’t even notice we were above ground.

That was about all the NYC I can take at once. It’s certainly a hell of a lot of fun, but a lot of other extraneous things too—noise, smells, crowds, concrete. Country mouse that I am (my suitemates like to remind me that, at 70,000 people, Santa Fe does not count as a real city), it’s exhausting for me. In small doses, though, it’s great. We ended the day with wonderful and exotic (tune-goat cheese-cranberry) sushi at Miya’s here in New Haven.

Catching Up

Oh dear... I always say that I'm going to be more prompt about this thing, and then I'm not... I suppose I do have a pretty decent excuse, though... You know, college...

It was quite a busy weekend: The Real Food Summit, which I have been helping the Yale Sustainable Food Project to organize (in the form of typing lots of names into innumerable spreadsheets), finally rolled around. Some two hundred students from about 50 colleges all over the Northeast came, and for two days talked about getting "real food" (ie local, organic, fair trade, humane, etc) into universities and other such influential institutions as a was of affecting broader social change. I did mostly a lot of running around for it, but the events that I did get to attend were great. It's a really important issue, and I am becoming increasingly aware of my need to do something about it in my life, to stay involved.


Halloween was last week, which is a pretty big deal here. The Yale Symphony Orchestra performed a sold out concert that night, set to a student-made film: "Harry Potter Goes to Yale." My suitemates Ally and Adanna dressed up as Michael Jackson then and now. Molly was his hooded child. The suite on the first floor carved a pumpkin and put it out on their window sill. Unfortunately, the squirrels ate its face, which is at once gruesome and humorous.


On November 1, in honor of Dia de los Muertos, one of the Mexican Student groups set up an altar outside of Commons, and gave away atole and pan de muerto. There were four men playing music, two on guitar, one on flute, and another singing sad and beautiful songs.

I had to write a paper on a sculpture of the Aztec rain god Tlaloc, in the Yale University Art Gallery, a few weeks ago. I spent a great deal of time looking at pictures of him, as well as at the postcard I had purchased with his image on it, pondering his meaning. I was ready to never look at him again by the time I finished. Yesterday, in my drawing class, the assignment was to sketch images from postcards from the Art Gallery. The professor held them out face-down to us. I was one of the last people to select a card. "Oh no!" I cried. "It's Tlaloc!" I suppose he's trying to tell me something... Something good, I hope.

I just finished an 8-page paper, and my mother is coming to visit me this weekend, which will be fun. I'm quite excited about the upcoming Thanksgiving break, in large part for culinary reasons--I intend to make many lovely pies, and other such things.


It's been getting cold here--I think it's around freezing at the moment. It's been crisp and fallish, and there have been some nice sunsets. The light at this time of year is always lovely, regardless of where you are, it seems. Fall is such a lovely season, meditative and fleeting, smelling of wood-smoke and trodden leaves.