Category: Blog

The Biggest Apple

October 11, 2021

We went to NYC for a KLS birthday trip. We stayed in the same hotel we always do and our room this time was amazing!

It even had a balcony, with a view of the city and Bryant Park:

Since dining-in hasn’t really returned (thanks Covid!) we made use of this balcony many times enjoying a meal with a view:

The city has also added many more tables and chairs everywhere for outdoor dining, which we took advantage of more than once:

So what did we do? Mostly shopping! We bought so much stuff, especially from the Japanese shops. Food, cosmetics, books, toys and souvenirs. I also sent too many postcards!

We walked everywhere visiting all our favorite stores and it was good to see they are mostly in good shape, obviously having navigated the pandemic well enough. There’s a lot of shops that haven’t though, with far more than usual shopfronts for rent. There’s more construction than usual as well, and this is in a city that is always busy with construction:

We also walked The High Line, a converted elevated rail line which is now a public garden. This took us to a brand new NYC attraction, Little Island, an artificial island/garden built on the Hudson waterfront:

Of course we went to Times Square as well:

And took a brief walk to Central Park to admire the newly opened tallest apartment building in the world, which was disappeared into the clouds the morning we saw it:

We filled our 3.5 days and had a lot of fun:

Covid is here to stay and I believe will be affecting our lives for years to come, especially in a country like the USA where a large contingent fails to take it seriously. It was reassuring to take a trip (including rail travel) amidst all the covid restrictions (masks, social distancing, vaccination cards etc) and still have as much fun as similar city trips we have taken in the past.

Gorgeous Boy

October 5, 2021

When we were in Salem back in the summer, we visited a tiny shop selling collectibles and rare toys and in a basket found two 1980s Boy George scrapbooks. They contained original cuttings from magazines and newspapers glued onto the pages with occasional comments. They looked a bit like this (although were much more impressive):

We were both quite taken by these since they were so well made and the creator obviously loved Boy George. I asked the shop owner if she knew anything about the person who had sold them and to our surprise she said they were hers!

Even more astonishingly, she told us an incredible story about how she, as a teenager (she was about our age), actually met Boy George! I forget the details but she went into a ladies bathroom (at a hotel? Restaurant?) in a major US city (New York?) and he was in there. She was starstruck and asked him what he was doing in the ladies bathroom and he replied “The same thing you’re doing!” 🙂

I felt very strongly that she shouldn’t sell the scrapbooks, and told her as much. My opinion is that they were an important part of her personal history, and the short-term gain of a few dollars would never be worth their loss.

She said no one in her family cared about them (including her kids) but admitted she herself had never even looked through them in years. I dared her to look through them and not be overcome with happy memories and nostalgia, and I think she got my message. Before we left, she said she was going to remove them from sale at least long enough to read them again.

I hope she kept them, because they were both amazing. If I had made those scrapbooks, I would have liked to still have them today.

Let’s Cook Desserts!

October 3, 2021

Yesterday we made these:

It was fairly easy says KLS, who did most of the work. The box contained only three things: the meringue powder, an icing pen and a bag for piping. The power was mixed with egg white and whipped until fluffy:

Then the meringues were piped onto oven paper:

Here they are before cooking:

We then baked them on lowish heat (200F) for 75 minutes, then iced them before eating:

And they were – in a word – terrible! They tasted like the glue I used to eat as a child, and the aftertaste was even worse. My happy memories of melt-in-your-mouth meringues from my youth have now been corrupted by these sticky, inedible travesties!

But there was a secret! We chose the alternate cooking method which involved the addition of tonic water. This is basically sparkling water that contained quinine, which phosphors under UV light:

Apparently adding a tiny bit to the mix makes the meringues ‘glow in the dark’! Did it work? Judge for yourself:

Robot Claw