Wilfrid

I’m reading Waverley Root’s Food of France yet again. And should I be embarrassed I still get recipe ideas from the Nero Wolfe cookbook?

First drink at a bar in 69 days. Open air Table Green in Battery Park.

A few months ago, I ate here and thought the quality of the chicken they were serving had declined. Either I was unlucky or it was my imagination. We've picked up several times here during the lockdown, and it has been consistently good. Of course, you have to be in the mood for fried chicken.

I think we're averaging one restaurant pickup per week, but since I won't eat out of cartons, it only slightly reduces the dish washing. Some months ago, I swapped the dishwasher out for a washing machine. The former was hardly used. For the first time I am thinking of it wistfully.

Can I just say this? A lot of us are having fun sourcing great ingredients and making meals which are even as good as casual restaurant meals. Fine. But with three to six meals coming out of the kitchen every day (different dietary requirements mean only some meals are family meals), I am cleaning more dishes than at any time in my life. Thank you for letting me whine.

The last few days, I've been playing Rzewski's own recording of The People United... He's very good on the piano, isn't he?

And a growing software segment is, of course, software to track productivity. Meanwhile, this weekend might give some indication of how younger New Yorkers, at least, respond to opening up (when it's not raining, anyway). I just took a walk to Foxface and back, and people are already foregathering in front of bars.

There is good blood headcheese at NY Bread Inc on Neptune Avenue too.

“I miss bars.” https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2020/05/21/nyregion/nyc-bars-coronavirus.amp.html

I tend to forget I have a free subscription to CloudLibrary through my New York Society membership, so I just borrowed the eBook edition of Claude McKay's Romance in Marseille, reissued this year by Penguin. That will allow me to kick Nunquam further down the road.

Ben Leventhal was only ten-plus years out predicting that.

I'm not surprised at the behavior where re-opening is taking place, but it's still too early to know what the consequences of that behavior will be.

Re-reading "Song of Myself." Negative Dialectics, Adorno -- I've studied passages, but never read it right through. Just finished The Egyptologists by Kingsley Amis and Robert Conquest. Dreadful.

Karen Karp: Estimates show 30-60 percent of New York City restaurants to close permanently; she thinks around 30 percent is the best estimate. ETA: Here's the link to the discussion referenced. It's all interesting, but the restaurant part starts about 20 minutes in.

The People United is amazing.