I finally got my Flickr pro account, and uploaded all of the pictures that have been sitting in iPhoto on my computer. There are so, so many pictures of the cats…an unhealthy amount, some have said…well, there will be more, I promise.
But more importantly, there are pictures of last weekend’s Hudson Valley belated 30th birthday extravaganza, which involved the most devastating trifecta of activities: eating at Blue Hill at Stone Barns, museum-going at Dia: Beacon, and shopping, all made possible by Evil and a Jeep Cherokee.
First, the dinner. We arrived at Stone Barns a good two hours before our reservation. We got to poke around the greenhouse and check out the food that would be sitting on our plates a few hours later. Here’s the menu, courtesy of Evil and his beloved Crackberry:
1. Tomato consomme (or “tomato water,” as I’ve heard it called previously) with olive oil and ginger.
2. Tomato burger, which consisted of two tiny slices of sweet, flaky cornbread sandwiching a tomato compote of sorts. Delish.
3. Tomato tartlette, served in a tiny pastry shell.
4. Maine shrimp with sweet corn soup. The shrimp was barely cooked, so it still had that nice shrimpy flavor that usually gets lost, especially in soups.
5. Summer bean salad, served on a slab of slate. Paper-thin slices of lardo on top were the best part.
6. Summer vegetable ragout with braised pork belly. This was Evil’s favorite.
7. Housemade pasta with fresh and sun-dried tomatoes. This was my favorite, but I was in the minority. I loved the super fresh taste of the regular tomatoes mixed with the sun-dried ones, which didn’t leave that gross aftertaste that you often get with sun-dried tomatoes. The pasta was perfectly al dente. It even had the perfect amount of opal basil garnish. The dish was so fresh, and clean: the perfect summer dish.
8. Baby lamb with chanterelles and smoked corn. At this point I was getting quite full, and while I enjoyed this, especially the chanterelles and corn, it wasn’t my favorite. Of course I had to leave room for…
9. Fresh berries with honey milk granita, which was a pre-dessert palate-cleanser. What a great idea…I’m a fan of anyone who believes in more than one dessert.
10. Poached peach with lemon verbena ice cream and rasberry coulis. Devastating. Love love loved it. Evil told me that the genius monsieur Dan Barber turns all this out himself, sans pastry chef.
We finished off dinner with coffees on the terrace, where we watched some trashy wedding guests stumble around and try to light their cigarettes while intoxicated. Fun!
The next day, we drove up to Dia. I learned about negative sculpture. I liked Michael Heizer the most; for me, the highlights were the Smithson, Serra, and Nauman. The Serra, as Phone insisted, was amazing. I had my doubts when I first saw pictures of the Torqued Ellipses. You have to admit it looks pretty lame when you just see a picture in a magazine, but when you’re standing inside them, walking in and out and between them, and actually experiencing their size and get a feeling of the weight of them, well, it’s fantastic. And I couldn’t explain what it is about a pile of big shards of glass sitting on the floor…perhaps it’s just imagining the artist creating it…anyhow, it was also cool. It also made me wonder how the people who have to install the pieces figure out how it’s supposed to be. Do they have a drawing from the artist? Written instructions, like “place shard A perpendicular to shard D?”
Woodbury Commons is a huge, sprawling outlet malls–reminded me of the ones at home in California. I dropped a wad of cash on some All-Clad at the Williams-Sonoma outlet, and then spent a few hours making the rounds to the other stores–nothing was as great as new pans.
On the way home, we saw hitchhikers! We would have offered them a ride if we were in the right lane. I think…
Of course, no trip with a car is complete without stopping at your favorite supermarket to load up on essentials. The Red Hood Fairway it was, and then for dinner, to balance to somewhat-excessive meal of the night before, we went to DiFara’s in Midwood. Time moves very slowly when you’re waiting for a really old man to make your pizza. It’s witheringly hot out, even at 9:30 PM, and there’s no where to sit, so you have no choice but to wait on the street and stare at Dominico as though it will make him move faster. It does not. One-and-a-half hours later, we were munching on a scrumptious pizza that I daresay was nearly worth the wait in mosquito bites I got that night. Great pizza, truly, but my god that man moves slow.
