Wilfrid

We ended up on holiday eve with: - Little pastry canapé cups filled with either oysters or smoked salmon (latter with sour cream), both topped with salmon eggs. - A crustless quiche with bacon, mushrooms and tomatoes. - Blistered Brussels sprouts cooked with the fat trimmed from the above bacon. - Deep fried lobster balls from Chinatown, soy sauce. - Tacos with red wine-braised, sliced boneless rabbit saddles, fresh cilantro and sour cream. - Warm mince pies from Myers of Keswick. - L’Abondance, Valencay Affines. Deliberately there is stuff bought there and easy stuff because I just didn’t want to cook another multi-course dinner from scratch for everyone. Sorry.

Silly, but after the last two days of squirting (expressing) lemon juice over oysters and smoked salmon and rabbit tacos, I had a number of cut but unsqueezed lemon quarters. So tonight I made cocktails requiring their assistance, such as the Pegu and the Aviation.

Out running errands yesterday, I develop increasing discomfort in both feet. Doesn't feel like arthritis. I get home and sit down for half an hour, then head out again. After some more walking, I now have really bad pain. I walked about 5.5 miles in total.* That evening, a building party with the neighbors and I am having real trouble standing. Stairs are a problem and I'm not walking as much as shuffling. Start heavy ibuprofen regimen and by this morning, one foot is fine and the other is tolerable. Both fine now. From the main locus of the pain, I am suspecting metatarsalgia rather than plantar fasciitis. The upside is that, if it recurs, I have a good reason to go see my beloved foot doctor after the holidays. Bad reasons include, for example, I got something stuck in my foot again. *In November, I was walking 7 to 8 miles a day in Barcelona; tired and foot weary, but not this kind of problem.

Hinds. Where were they? The last pic of Ana suggests SoHo to me but I can’t place it. https://www.instagram.com/p/C1FQouVIkqA/?igsh=MTVldHU3dXZveDN2bg==

Came home from a long day shopping to find my fellow tenants hosting a holiday party in the lobby. Music, an enormous container of rum punch, cookies (I ate one) and lots of home-baked cakes. I knew most of my neighbors but was awed by how long some of them have been here — including one born here, 60 years. Love where I am right now.

Cuozzo gets it. He has been around the block, knows what’s going on here.

How much are you charging for that damn prawn? 🤣

We will never know as our archive has been stolen by the internet.

I hear Foxface will be serving a cabbage tasting menu for New Year’s Eve, exploring the brassica oleracea from its raw, recently dug and slightly grubby state through a series of iterations, climaxing with a Romanian celebration of cabbage stews. I am just making this nonsense up because I am drinking cheap Spanish brandy. Thank you.

But we don’t do this every year!

Inspired by the brandies in Barcelona, I bought an inexpensive Spanish brandy today instead of my usual aged Armagnac indulgence. This means I can make Sidecars and Champs Elysees, etc, which it would have broken my heart to use upscale Armagnac for (the nearest thing to a boutique wine store in my neighbordhood always stocks Chateau de Laubade VSOP and XO; hard to resist).

I would not have bet a dollar that cabbage would be the hot topic for the holidays on Mouthfuls. Maybe it’s because it’s now expensive. 😄

I loved it. And I still have some souse to eat tomorrow. Nothing against the scrapple, souse is what I have.

Devilled duck eggs…

I don’t want to cook a multi-course dinner for Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. Thinking of small plates/buffet. I know I can do smoked salmon canapés plus other seafood. I am thinking of a crustless quiche cut into bite-size pieces. Hot, I can make small rabbit tacos (I have leftover rabbit saddles in the freezer). Any other ideas? Maybe something involving a vegetable? Or avocado, allegedly a fruit? Cheese goes without saying.

4 out of 5. My answer to the Walker Percy was just dumb.

I’ve been doing that a lot the last couple of months because of travel. Yes you can freeze things, but I try to empty the fridge of perishables, and that can mean you end up with some…improvisation.

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I mean, it’s an every day thing for me, being pitched exclusives because the publicists would rather I published them than just any outlet. I am trying to perceive what the problem is.

Pitching the story first to the best publication likely to accept it. That seems to me to be 101 for a publicist. I honestly don’t know what problem is being indicated here.

Mild souse on toast, cabbage with lardons. I am fond of souse, which is widely available in Harlem supermarkets, at least. But for a long time I believed I could treat it like scrapple. Slice it, gently warm it; or bread or flour it and fry it. No. If you do that, you get soup. Delicious, sticky soup, but soup. And I believe it is served that way in the Caribbean. So why not just pay attention to how it is served where it is made? Sliced and served cold on crackers or toast. I like the hot toast option. :world-of-headcheese:

Not wanting coverage on Eater (or anywhere else) must be a rare thing, given the pressure on agencies to generate unpaid media coverage. I guarantee you that the staff’s inboxes are filled with PR agencies trying to get their attention.

Eater doesn't need to do anything for publicists in exchange for access. That's not how it works. The publicists are begging Eater to pay attention.

To be blunt, it's about the quest for traffic and thus for advertising dollars. And the ads currently running for date nights and espresso martinis tells you the kind of audience they're targeting.

Or you could just order a Pisa Tower -- five burger patties and two kinds of cheese for $100.