Day Five Home Cooked Meal (2005-11-29)
Our last free day in New York and there were two more places left on my list to go: a diner and Carnegie Deli. We took a train to Tom's Restaurant (a real diner) for breakfast-- a meal we usually don't eat when we travel lest it ruins KL's appetite for lunch--just for the experience.
No sooner had we finished breakfast than we started planning
lunch! I had to make sure we got the deli checked off on my
list! Since Carnegie is famous for the mile high meat in their
sandwiches, we thought we would get a takeout sandwich and some bread
in a grocery store to make a couple more small sandwiches and have a
picnic in Central Park.
KL spotted a coffee specialty shop right next to Tom's and bought a
percolator there before we took a train to Columbus Circle's Wholefoods
Market. All I really wanted was a nice soft loaf of Wonder white
bread which we didn't find. The store had a big section of bakery
which sold different kinds of gourmet loaves and bread that felt too
hard. I particularly detest crusty bread with a rock hard texture, it
cuts your mouth and is only good as a missile, not food. Anyway
we had to settle for the softest white bread we could find which was
still ten times harder than good ol' Wonder bread. I also
couldn't resist buying a pack of baby yams to bring back to
Japan.
We took our shopping back to Carnegie Deli and changed our minds
about getting a sandwich then. We were still full from breakfast
and couldn't possibly eat again so soon, plus the cold howling wind
made a picnic lunch look quite an unattractive idea. So we
decided to just walk to Central Park which is only 15 minutes on foot
without our sandwich. Looked like I would have to lug the big
loaf of bread and
yams all around town for the day.
We had a rather relaxing stroll in the famous Park and all the trees
there must have buffered the wind a lot because it didn't feel windy
inside. By the end of our walk we were still full so we
decided to forget about the sandwich. Afterall Carnegie got its
name from the big meat filling which is something KL and I could easily
do without. But KL did want to try their famous cheesecake, so we
walked back to the Deli and got one to go.
We then went to Union Square, saw a Farmers Market and went to Petco
to look for worm tablets for our cat. In late afternoon, we
became hungry at last. We grabbed some pizza near Union
Square. Then we took a train to go to Marco's work place in
Brooklyn where he introduced us to all his workmates and I got my
perfectly-altered jeans.
Marco suggested getting grocery to make dinner in his apartment
rather than going out on our last day of our trip. We stopped by
a large Chinese supermarket (now why can't Tokyo have something like
that? Not fair!) and he promptly went to get his grocery while KL and I
browsed the snack and sweets sections. When we met up, I saw a
couple of giant live Dungeness crabs in his basket, woohoo! Marco
paid for the grocery and even insisted on paying for the snacks we
got. Such a generous man.
We got back to Marco's place around 6 pm. If I were him, not only would I ask my guests to help with the cooking, I would make them mop the floor too. But Marco wanted to fix dinner all by himself, so we happily obliged, heehee. While he was slaving away in the kitchen, KL used his computer to check on things and I watched cable TV on the monitor, we are bad bad house guests! Two hours later, dinner was served and we were stunned.
Marco remembered the kind of food we said we liked in passing
comments during our previous meetings and bought such food to make a
scrumptious meal for us. There was the jasmine rice that we like
a lot, crabs, Chinese broccoli which I mentioned I loved and couldn't
get in Tokyo, Chinese sausages, steamed fish and KL's favorite
childhood dish, minced pork with salted eggs. If that's not
thoughtfulness, I don't know what is. Dinner was consumed in a
most enjoyable atmosphere in his room.
After dinner, we ate sweet red bean soup for dessert. It was
something we had
told him we liked it the night before and I could never do it right at
home. No wonder I saw a bag of red beans in his basket in the
grocery store. How he could manage to make the soup in such a
short time I would never know.
Finally it was getting close to 11 pm and we had to go. Marco
walked us to the platform in the train station and it got quite a bit
emotional saying goodbye and hugging each other. The defeaning
roar of the approaching train drowned out the last of our
conversation. A gentle brother and a nice
friend waved a final goodbye at us as our train pulled out the track.
The subway played a final trick on us the last night of our
trip. We wasted yet another hour waiting for a C train that never
came. After much frustration, we learned where we made the
mistake. We had failed to read the instructions given on the
signs above the track to a T, so we're screwed! The instruction
says "blah blah blah Late night A (circled) local to 207 st blah
blah". Oh, it just made SOOOO
MUCH SENSE. The words decipher as: C train users are to
use A trains at late night to go the direction of 207 st. And I
guess 1150 pm would qualify as "late night", although 9 pm would be
pretty late for my granny too.
The NY subway got us the first time we used it and got us again the
last time we used it. At least I can say it is consistent!
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