Day 2 - Happy Cinco de No No

Day three of my three-week sobriety diet finds us at Cinco de Mayo - the "other" holiday specifically associated with drinking large quantities of booze (St. Patrick's Day being the other). I cried at work today and ate almost an entire pint of Ben & Jerry's New York Super Fudge Chunk ice cream. Things are already looking bleak.

I feel like giving up booze is, somewhat shamefully, so much harder than I thought. Who knew that leaving work to go home and drink was something I looked forward to so much? If riding the New York Subway gives you time to do anything, it's think and read, hence why New York is filled with such well-read, insightful individuals. (In the last year alone I've devoured easily twenty books, including Walden by Thoreau and almost everything Tom Robbins has ever put to paper.) Since it's been cold and rainy for the last two days, I refrained from biking and have been really analyzing my relationship to booze during my commutes, in between periodically, and uncontrollably, falling asleep. I've realized that every evening on my way home I usually sit on the train debating exactly which bar I want to go to, comparing and contrasting the pros and cons of each happy hour or who is bar tending that day, OR trying to decide whether I'm in the mood to drink an entire bottle of wine or just a quarter of a bottle of tequila at home instead. If I'm biking home, it just means I am trying to figure out my route home based on what bars I want to stop at first.

This all must mean I either truly hate my job (which I don't think is true), can't figure out a way to deal with the things in life I cannot change, or have an alcohol abuse problem. I think it might be a little bit of all those depressing things. But really...aren't those the reasons we drink or do drugs or use non-substance based means for dealing with our out of control emotions? (Things like arson, road rage, auto-erotic asphyxiation, biting your fingernails, anorexia, over-eating or obsessively controlling our friends and families, to name a few, are all ways we deal when we can't. Spend some time really thinking about yourself and unless nothing ever gets to you I guarantee you can figure out what your own anxiety outlet is.)

This adventure is starting to remind me of the time I quit smoking cold-turkey, cutting down from a pack and a half a DAY (I kid you not) to nothing in one fell swoop. I threw out or gave away easily a few hundred dollars of cigarettes purchased in a pathetic moment of weakness until I finally was able to stop. The whole ordeal was exasperatingly difficult on many occasions, but I really got down to the nitty gritty reasons I was addicted to smoking and how much of a priority cigarettes were to me.

So anyway, things are gonna get interesting here, that's for sure. Spring is marking off her days of sobriety with "X"s on a calendar at work, and offered me space to do the same in a different color, so I'd have some sort of visible gauge of how far I'd come.

Enough emotional junk for now. This isn't fucking LiveJournal...it's a food blog. BRING ON THE FOOD!

Sunday was kind of a "oooh no carbs for me!" joke day. Well...wait. Ok, it wasn't a total joke. I had nothing but veggies and protein all day Sunday, and then, as mentioned, Mark and I hopped on the two-wheelers and rode over to Bensonhurst to see if L&B Spumoni Garden was really worth it's salt. Or maybe "sauce" would be more appropriate in this case. The Garden has been in the same spot since 1939 and has been featured several times on the Food Network...no surprise there. **NOTE: I refuse to put a link to the Food Network website because in this day and age, there is no reason they don't feature more vegetarian and vegan-centric cooking shows or specials. Screw you, fat, unhealthy lifestyle exacerbating, arrogant meat eaters, especially you, Bobby Flay. You must be really, really funny because your wife is sooo disproportionally hot. (ZING!)** ANYWAY, moving on...

Most people like to spend Sunday evening lazing about the house in PJs, watching movies or going out to eat at a nice restaurant with friends, maybe reading books, cooking a nice dinner or going to a museum. Mark and I, we like to ride 6 miles one way in the rain when it's 55 degrees to a place we've never been in the middle of Brooklyn where everyone is named Joe or Tony (no kidding, you should have heard them calling the tables, "JOE, party of two." "Joe C., party of two." "Tony A., party of three." "Tony R..."). Let's just say that when you read about mob hits in the newspapers these days, (albeit rarely) they all happen in Bensonhurst.


We rode alll the way from point A (our house) to point B (pizza).



Did I ever mention how much I love the rain?? *sarcasm* I think I was a cat in a former life.

We walked up to the place and immediately the first thing that tickled my nose was the pungent, sweaty, salty smell of real parmigiano-reggiano wafing from the open pizza parlor windows. I almost would have been content just to stand outside smelling the food, rather than eating it, considering I was blatantly ignoring the promise of carbo-abstinance I'd made to myself (and God) for the next three weeks. Of course, one of the most important parts of a relationship is learning how to compromise, so Mark got us a spot on the list for a table for two and we picked up a menu to amuse us for the next twenty minutes. (It was Sunday night at 7 o'clock, what do you expect?) Salivate while you wait.

The quintessential "Autographs of Famous People Who Love Our Food" wall, including most of the cast of the Sopranos, every Italian-American character actor ever...and Marie Osmond.


Just a small part of L&B's menu.

After scouring the menu for meatless options - of which there were surprisingly many that sounded delicious - and watching ten minutes of America's Funniest Videos, now shortened to AFV for today's Adderall generation, we were seated, and ordered two glasses of vino. Sorry, how could we go to a place like this and not have wine with our dinner? I'd be afraid John Gotti Jr. himself would burst through the swinging kitchen doors, guns blazing and mow us down in our utter disrespect. You know, were he not in jail.

Frosty glass goodness. L&B's...doin' it right.

We decided that the only way to really determine how deliciously prime the food was there would be to order pizza and pasta. And boy, did we carboload to the max.

Between the both of us, we ordered five slices of Sicilian pizza (the square stuff) and an plate of bow ties with Vodka sauce (which delightfully included onions, mushrooms and peas). I thought for sure there was no way we'd ever fit all that in our two stomachs, but lo and behold, all we took home with us was a little container of pasta.

VERDICT?

BEST SICILIAN PIZZA EVER. No joke. LOOK AT IT!

Now, having never been to Sicily, I can't really say this is the best Sicilian pizza in the world, but as Mark put it, "I think I might just have to judge every future slice of pizza I eat against these...they are sooooo goood." And then he stuffed four slices down his pie-hole. (Heh...get it???? Pie hole???!? AHAHAHHA!! Yeah, oh- ...oh ok. Yeah, I figured you got that one. Sorry. I'll calm down.)

Now I will say this in all honesty, and with small fear of my life given that I posted that Google Map up there showing the whereabouts of our apartment: the pasta wasn't that great. Maybe I don't know much about traditional Vodka sauce, but the Vodka sauce I've had in the past had WAY less cream, way more tomato, and a heaping helpin' more flavor.


The ultra red color cast of the lighting in L&B's severely discolored my photos,
but even with color correction, it still comes out looking mega orange.
Granted, it's not like Vodka sauce is some old-world Italian heirloom recipe, but it should have tasted less like Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, in my most humble opinion. The saddest part is that when Mark reheated the leftover portion the next day, the sauce separated into basically water, oil and something else of suspect nature and he found it generally unappetizing. Sorry, L&B...I'll have to try a different sauce with no cream next time, I think. (Can't go wrong with Broccoli Rabe, garlic, butter oil and fresh pasta, now can you?)

Other points of interest: the mirror-covered ceilings, which are both good for watching yourself do it and spying on what other people in the dining room are eating....


A super family-sized portion of pasta for five...and a portion of Mark's head.

...and the gargantuan plate of spumoni ice cream stuff you get on your birthday.


"Eat up kid...you only live once!" *shakes cane*

All in all, the trip was a success. They have a huge amount of al fresco dining (aka outside) and all I can't wait to ride back over there after a day at the beach, all sunburned and salty, to sit outside with a couple beers (see...damn you fantasy, can't you be beer free?) and eat a whole pie of regular thin slices to see just how good those are...because I bet they are divine.

Beer and Viscious Bacterial Attacks

How somewhat unfortunate that I begin this new blog of mine - a long time coming, no doubt - after suffering through the worst 36-hour period of stomach flu I've had in quite some time. Let me assure you, that my vomitous experiences this last day and a half have no apparent connection to anything I ate, as my partner in crime Mark (also a fellow veg-head) ate everything I did with no side effects whatsoever. Of course, he wasn't stupid enough to let our cat lick something he was eating...and then eat it himself. I one day aspire to his level of common sense.

That disgusting tidbit out of the way, I was inspired to turn this previously antique-lighting-based blog (I work for an antique lighting company in Manhattan) into a food blog by a little place in Gowanus/Park Slope that Mark and I have ridden our bikes past many times in the last two months since its opening.

It's called "Draft Barn", and if you blink twice as your traveling down 3rd Ave. in Brooklyn (bet. 12th & 13th streets) you might miss it, as Mark had several times on our way by. Not so much because its facade blends in mildly with the surrounding industrial landscape, but because you just don't expect to see such a classy-looking establishment in that neck of the woods , a block down from the fast food siamese twin of Dunkin' Donuts/Taco Bell. Well, with the exception of Bar Tano, another one of my faves in that hood, whose website might be lacking but whose inventive mixed drinks are divine.


Draft Barn exterior, courtesy of Daniel P.

Essentially, every time we rode past this intriguing new bier-haus style bar (it seemed, from the outside anyway) I felt pangs of desire emanating from my liver, begging me to stop just for a moment, even if all they served were cans of PBR. From across the street, traveling at 12 miles an hour, it always appeared to be empty, and it thought it would be a shame not to stop in just once on the sad chance it went out of business. As we rode past on our weekly bike jaunt to the new Trader Joe's in downtown Brooklyn, I hollered at Mark, expressing that it was high time we stopped there on our return trip home. He agreed.

We were delighted upon entering (they were so kind as to let us store our bikes under a table inside, as there was nowhere close to lock them up outside) to find that no only do they serve food but they have hands down the largest selection of beers from all over the world that I've ever found in any bar in New York. Most impressive to me were their selection of pricey Meads (which are essentially beer-wine, if you will) and the $400/bottle Sam Adams Utopia, which I'd never even heard of. Our bartender, Yuliy, answered all of our questions at length and even let us sniff the Utopia cap, which probably cost $5 in itself.

Some of Draft Barn's beers, courtesy of Daniel P.
We each ended up downing three beers - Mark toured the IPA region, while I chose the Porters, and shared an amazing plate of their home-made cheese spread with toast and tomatoes. It was insanely good. Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, their menu has almost nary a vegetable to be found. But for our carnivorous comrades, it is a specialty sausage-laden gastrointestinal den of desire. Yuliy informed us that they were still working on finalizing their menu and would hopefully have some kind of vegetarian Hungarian dish available in the near future. He was even nice enough to ask the chef if they had the means to make it for us that evening. Totally rad.

Before we left, I went outside to give my mom a call and was raving about the place, but also lamenting the fact that as I'd thought, the joint was empty except for the two of us. Thankfully, a group of three wandered in while I yakked on the street, followed by a couple I managed to persuade inside, after they stopped to peer in and wonder aloud, "Oh...I wonder if this place is any good?" I felt I had done my good deed for the day.

As we began to put our winter bike gear back on to finish the trip home, Mark point out to me that I ought to consider revamping the whole of my blog to reflect my love of food. He recently started an art blog, and has been so enraptured with it, he felt I should give my eats its blogging respect. And so here we are.

Lastly, I discovered this afternoon that I am not at all the only one to have blogged about Draft Barn since it's opening. Apparently the Park Slope venue is actually the second of these beer halls, the first being all the way down on Avenue X in Gravesend. If you'd like to see what others have to say about Draft Barn (because how could I ever know what's hot and what's not...right?) here you go:
Beerlord - Draft Barn
Gowanus Lounge - Draft Barn Now Open (gotta love the whiny, spoiled Park Sloper comments)
the Villiage Voice - the Early Word: Draft Barn

I hope you'll continue to stick around and follow my scrumptious scripts, as I get them together. In the meantime, check out my Flickr Food Set of many images of things I've made and eaten in the last year or so. One of my other goals is to start paying attention to how I make many of the things I cook from scratch so that I might be able to give you recipes to follow here. You know...if you care that much. My friends tell me I'm a good cook. Maybe you should be the judge too.

**UPDATE**: SO, for Mark's birthday back in January, I wrangled our outlaw friends together to hit up the Draft Barn for some good beer and good fun. Turns out, they had their menu almost totally finished, so there was good food involved too. I got the mushroom stroganoff (or goulash or something...I forget exactly what it was called and Draft Barn doesn't have a website with their menu items listed). Point being...it was delicious!!! Click the thumbnail images below to see larger sized versions. Of the food pictured below:


Draft Barn's home-made cheese dip platter, gardenburger (those things will always suck!), mushroom stroganoff, cheeseburger, sausage platter and fried croutons.