Atlantic Avenue and Stuffed Grape Leaves

Photograph courtesy of PD Photo.org

Among the brick pots, buckets, and rakes
A row of inverted grape leaves climbs to a pale green
“The Sea-Garden, “ Fanny Howe,  Selected Poems
My grandmother and my Lebanese aunts did lots of traditional cooking, but my mom didn’t.  So we made periodic trips to Atlantic Avenue to eat at Julia W’s Lebanese restaurant where we’d [...]

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Roman Egg Drop Soup, Gluten Free

Photograph of chickens from PD Photo.org

Photograph by M. Chambers via Wikipedia under GNU free documentation license.

Yet another luxurious farmers’ market haul with a few veggies from a friend’s garden.

The finished product, La Stracciatella (Roman Egg Drop Soup), wheat-and-gluten free and chock full of vegetables. 

From time immemorial, soups and broths have been the worldwide medium for utilizing what we call [...]

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Mambo For Your Dinner

Dean Martin singing Mambo Italiano
Our Friday night hangout: Louisa’s Restaurant on 90th and Fort Hamilton Parkway in Brooklyn. Yum! Baked Stuffed Clams, Pasta, Salad, Garlic Bread, Bisque Tortini, Hoffman’s cream soda, and Dean on the jukebox. For years I thought you had to drink cream soda with Italian food because that’s what we [...]

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Minest, Classic Brooklyn-Italian Soup

Photograph of fresh Greens via Wikipedia under GNU Free Documentation License
“this clutter of soup pots and books—”, Tree by Jane Hirshfield, Given Sugar, Given Salt: Poems
* * * * * * * * * *
Minest: It’s unlikely that you will find this recipe in a cookbook or even on-line.  It’s classic Brooklyn-Italian, great winter comfort food, a soup lush [...]

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The House In Watchung

Photograph from the Borough of Watchung, New Jersey official website.
“The Borough of Watchung was organized on April 20, 1926 and covers an area of approximately 6.2 square miles.  Watchung was settled in the early eighteenth century and grew slowly until recent years.  In 1960 the population was 3,312 and in 2000 it was 5,613.” 
Trips to New Jersey [...]

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A Writer’s Instrument

Picture from Public Domain Clip Art
“There’s something poetic about grasping a writing instrument and feeling it hit the paper as your thoughts flow through your fingers and pour into words.”Writing Instruments Manufacturers Association
“National Handwriting Day” flitted past my radar, January 23, thanks to an announcement on KDFC by Hoyt Smith.  I’d never heard of it before, but it [...]

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GF Chinese: NY Cantonese-style Shrimp in Lobster Sauce

Photograph of grocery in Chinatown, Manhattan by Momos via Wikipedia under GNU Free Documentation License
Recommended reading: Chinatown, A Portrait of a Closed Society by Gwen Kinkead

“An ancient Chinese saying goes like this ‘Food is the nearest thing to Heaven’”. 
Cooking Secrets of the Oldest Civilizations in the World, The-ChineseFood.com
Soy sauce, which is ubiquitous in Chinese and other Asian cuisines, [...]

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The City That Never Sleeps

Photograph: Mulberry Street, NYC, 1900s via Wikipedia, U.S. Public Domain Picture
New York was dubbed “the city that never sleeps.”  One wonders if coffee consumption could have a just a little bit to do with that?
“Coffee’s power changes over time. [Italian composer Gioacchino] Rossini has personally experienced some of these effects as, of course, have I. ‘Coffee,’ Rossini [...]

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In the Still Silken Silence of the Morning, A Prose Poem

Photograph from New York Public Library Collection
“THERE WAS A CHILD WENT FORTH EVERY DAY,
And the first object he looked upon and received with wonder or
     pity or love or dread, that object he became,
And that object became part of him for the day or a certain part of
     the day  . . [...]

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There is a field . . .

Edit Ebbets Field. Brooklyn Public Library Collection.
“Beyond this place of wrong doing and right doing there is a field, I will meet you there.” Rumi 
Ebbets field is only a memory and the Dodgers have moved, but the game plays on. Right about now, you just might be missing a day on [...]

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