We've been back from NY for over a week now, but I've had some, uh, issues keeping me busy. The good news is that Nexium works.
Our journey began, as the first one earlier this summer did, at the Fresh Start Diner in Twinsburg Ohio. This time, both of us ordered the Patty Melt, which was a "special" that day. Our only criticism is that we ordered them medium and they came much closer to well done than medium. They were nevertheless delicious:
Grilled Burger Topped with Swiss Cheese and Caramelized Onions Griddled on House-Made Rye
This was mine, sans cheese.
The potatoes were a tad too salty, but freshly made and delicious. And the service was much improved over our first visit!
A very lovely start to the roadtrip.
As per usual, a pizza from Mario's was waiting for us at my parent's house on Long Island - and due to bad weather most of the way, we got there pretty late. These photos are from our last trip:
Thursday morning, we cooked up eggs for breakfast. Our second meal Thursday was a fabulous Chinese dinner at Chengdu 1 in New Jersey, which will be the subject of a separate post.
Friday morning, my dad went to Bagel Boss for bread and Belly Lox. Then, he got back in his car and drove all the way back after I unpacked his bag and saw the label "Nova" on the half pound of lox. We opened it and tasted just to be sure - but it was tasteless Nova - completely unacceptable, especially at $40 a pound!
After another 20-30 minutes of waiting - we finally feasted our eyes on a half pound of Belly Lox.
Bagels and Bialys From Bagel Boss
Garden Tomato
Lox
Jewish Soul Food
Baked Salmon Salad
For Friday dinner, my mom wanted a Shabbos dinner, since my brother, sister-in-law and their two kids were to join us. We wound up one kid short, when Justin got invited to the Jets pre-season game at the last minute and we had plenty to go around!
We started by combining some fabulous ingredients from our garden (red and yellow tomatoes and basil) with freshly made mozzarella from AS Pork Stores, 530A Larkfield Road, E. Northport 11731, 631-266-1540. The last time that we visited NY, we checked out AS Pork for the first time (the store has been there for many, many years, but my family isn't really a pork family). We came away with some magnificent cheese - scamorza - a type of aged provolone.
This time, as indicated, we scored a ball of mozzarella - still warm from the cooking process. And some amazingly tasty and freshly baked fig cookies (sorry - no photo of those). Add a little EVOO, Kosher Salt and fresh ground pepper and plate over 3 types of garden lettuce - and the first course was simply amazing.
Our entree was roasted brisket, and the sides were all vegetables! First - locally grown corn from the farm stand operated by Louis De Lea & Sons Inc. (L Delea & Sons Sod Farms) at their business premises located at 444 Elwood Road, East Northport, NY 11731. It was wonderful. De Lea's farm stand had a nice assortment of house-grown tomatoes, beets, eggplant, zucchini and other vegetables, and some vegetables brought in from other farms (like the sweet and red onions I bought). They also had some local fruits, and local honey from an apiary in Dix Hills. A terrific farm market well deserving of local support!
Our second side was a room temperature salad of garden beets and green beans, cooked simply and seasoned simply with a little kosher salt.
We repeated the dinner on Sunday evening, with a slightly different presentation for the salad course:
I am now completely spoiled by fresh mozzarella cheese - and looking for a Cleveland source, so I don't have to add this to my list of "to bring home" items from NY.
I didn't bring my camera to the Duke Geological Labs Mexican Fiesta on Saturday - which was a shame. Wonderful food was made by all - including our farm-chicken tacos, Kenny's pork mole and rice with meats, and Jean's amazing cornbread. After - Bob and I shared most of a fabulous Bianca pizza at Gino's Pizza, 6132 Springfield Blvd., Flushing, NY 11364-2336.
Peaches from Richter's Orchard (which I wrote about here)
We brought some of these home to Cleveland with us. Yum. And we did better than just peaches - pizza!
Some people claim that Emilio's has the best pizza on Long Island - I don't know if that is true - but I can tell you that the three pies we picked up as we departed Long Island and drove 8+ hours to Cleveland (with the outside temperature over 90 degrees!) were all delicious! It took us almost a week to polish them off - and they'd have gone even faster if I was feeling well! And you have to admire the cockiness (or lack of promotional savvy?) of a pizzeria that doesn't put any of its contact information on the top of the box (or anywhere else that I recall).
Sicilian
This started out as 10 12"x15" slices - but we'd eaten two of them during the drive back to Cleveland by the time I took this photo!
We enjoyed our dinner with ribbons of garden basil atop the pizza and gently simmered garden green beans on the side.
You cannot get pizza like this in Cleveland.
For our two Neopolitan pies, one was plain cheese and one topped with sliced meatball. I didn't succeed in photographing either of them whole, nor did I get a shot of the meatball pie. However, I did photograph the plain cheese.
Out of the fridge and waiting for the toaster oven to heat
Bob added Crystal Hot Sauce and Pepperoni Slices from our freezer to his.
I'm a purist.
This pizza was perfect - it didn't need a thing
Notice the grease on top - I used to mop that off with a napkin. Silly girl!
A perfect crust. You can't get this from no easy-bake pizza conveyor belt oven. Or a pizza cooked in a pan.
While I am not happy having to cope with GERD, at least we now finally have confirmation that this is the problem, and I will get over it. No acid reflux is going to get in the way of playing with my food! Especially food as luscious as this! Next up - our Sichuan dinner at Cedar Grove's Chengdu 1.
Our journey began, as the first one earlier this summer did, at the Fresh Start Diner in Twinsburg Ohio. This time, both of us ordered the Patty Melt, which was a "special" that day. Our only criticism is that we ordered them medium and they came much closer to well done than medium. They were nevertheless delicious:
Grilled Burger Topped with Swiss Cheese and Caramelized Onions Griddled on House-Made Rye
This was mine, sans cheese.
The potatoes were a tad too salty, but freshly made and delicious. And the service was much improved over our first visit!
A very lovely start to the roadtrip.
As per usual, a pizza from Mario's was waiting for us at my parent's house on Long Island - and due to bad weather most of the way, we got there pretty late. These photos are from our last trip:
Thursday morning, we cooked up eggs for breakfast. Our second meal Thursday was a fabulous Chinese dinner at Chengdu 1 in New Jersey, which will be the subject of a separate post.
Friday morning, my dad went to Bagel Boss for bread and Belly Lox. Then, he got back in his car and drove all the way back after I unpacked his bag and saw the label "Nova" on the half pound of lox. We opened it and tasted just to be sure - but it was tasteless Nova - completely unacceptable, especially at $40 a pound!
After another 20-30 minutes of waiting - we finally feasted our eyes on a half pound of Belly Lox.
Bagels and Bialys From Bagel Boss
Garden Tomato
Lox
Jewish Soul Food
Baked Salmon Salad
For Friday dinner, my mom wanted a Shabbos dinner, since my brother, sister-in-law and their two kids were to join us. We wound up one kid short, when Justin got invited to the Jets pre-season game at the last minute and we had plenty to go around!
We started by combining some fabulous ingredients from our garden (red and yellow tomatoes and basil) with freshly made mozzarella from AS Pork Stores, 530A Larkfield Road, E. Northport 11731, 631-266-1540. The last time that we visited NY, we checked out AS Pork for the first time (the store has been there for many, many years, but my family isn't really a pork family). We came away with some magnificent cheese - scamorza - a type of aged provolone.
This time, as indicated, we scored a ball of mozzarella - still warm from the cooking process. And some amazingly tasty and freshly baked fig cookies (sorry - no photo of those). Add a little EVOO, Kosher Salt and fresh ground pepper and plate over 3 types of garden lettuce - and the first course was simply amazing.
Our entree was roasted brisket, and the sides were all vegetables! First - locally grown corn from the farm stand operated by Louis De Lea & Sons Inc. (L Delea & Sons Sod Farms) at their business premises located at 444 Elwood Road, East Northport, NY 11731. It was wonderful. De Lea's farm stand had a nice assortment of house-grown tomatoes, beets, eggplant, zucchini and other vegetables, and some vegetables brought in from other farms (like the sweet and red onions I bought). They also had some local fruits, and local honey from an apiary in Dix Hills. A terrific farm market well deserving of local support!
Our second side was a room temperature salad of garden beets and green beans, cooked simply and seasoned simply with a little kosher salt.
We repeated the dinner on Sunday evening, with a slightly different presentation for the salad course:
I am now completely spoiled by fresh mozzarella cheese - and looking for a Cleveland source, so I don't have to add this to my list of "to bring home" items from NY.
I didn't bring my camera to the Duke Geological Labs Mexican Fiesta on Saturday - which was a shame. Wonderful food was made by all - including our farm-chicken tacos, Kenny's pork mole and rice with meats, and Jean's amazing cornbread. After - Bob and I shared most of a fabulous Bianca pizza at Gino's Pizza, 6132 Springfield Blvd., Flushing, NY 11364-2336.
Peaches from Richter's Orchard (which I wrote about here)
We brought some of these home to Cleveland with us. Yum. And we did better than just peaches - pizza!
Some people claim that Emilio's has the best pizza on Long Island - I don't know if that is true - but I can tell you that the three pies we picked up as we departed Long Island and drove 8+ hours to Cleveland (with the outside temperature over 90 degrees!) were all delicious! It took us almost a week to polish them off - and they'd have gone even faster if I was feeling well! And you have to admire the cockiness (or lack of promotional savvy?) of a pizzeria that doesn't put any of its contact information on the top of the box (or anywhere else that I recall).
Sicilian
This started out as 10 12"x15" slices - but we'd eaten two of them during the drive back to Cleveland by the time I took this photo!
We enjoyed our dinner with ribbons of garden basil atop the pizza and gently simmered garden green beans on the side.
You cannot get pizza like this in Cleveland.
For our two Neopolitan pies, one was plain cheese and one topped with sliced meatball. I didn't succeed in photographing either of them whole, nor did I get a shot of the meatball pie. However, I did photograph the plain cheese.
Out of the fridge and waiting for the toaster oven to heat
Bob added Crystal Hot Sauce and Pepperoni Slices from our freezer to his.
I'm a purist.
This pizza was perfect - it didn't need a thing
Notice the grease on top - I used to mop that off with a napkin. Silly girl!
A perfect crust. You can't get this from no easy-bake pizza conveyor belt oven. Or a pizza cooked in a pan.
While I am not happy having to cope with GERD, at least we now finally have confirmation that this is the problem, and I will get over it. No acid reflux is going to get in the way of playing with my food! Especially food as luscious as this! Next up - our Sichuan dinner at Cedar Grove's Chengdu 1.
