food

Welcome (again) to New York

| patmcg

Fresh off of Claire’s spring college break to Atlanta (TODO link), I had two days in Austin, and then it was off to NYC with Molly on her high school spring break.

We spent two full days camped in a tiny but pleasant hotel room SoHo, which we kept accidentally calling Austin’s own SoCo. The hotel had a rather large balcony, with a view of the World Trade enter Center, some lawn furniture, and an outdoor shower!

Day 1

On day 1, we walked nine miles of Manhattan. We got the world’s best bagels from Popup Bagels and enjoyed them in a brisk Washington Square Park. We checked out music spots Electric Lady Studios and 23 Cornelia Street, plus the nearby Friends apartment building. We trekked up to Little Island park, explored the High Line, and dining at Chelsea Market. The server was definitely an actor on the side. Also, finding the Apple Store for an ๏ฃฟย Pencil tip, thank you very much. We headed back towards our “home” in SoHo and skipped over to Chinatown to get a Bahn Mi, which somehow Molly had never had?!? Whose daughter is this? She loved it.

Finally, inspired by the Friends apartment building, we got last-minute tickets to an off-broadway Friends musical parody, Molly confessed that she loved musicals, which I did not know. We had been walking and taking the subway everywhere but settled for an Uber from Hell’s Kitchen back home to SoHo late that night.

Day 2

Day 2 got us another nine miles on foot, the time like Washington’s Army, crossing briefly into Brooklyn! We hit the Museum of Illusions (not the Museum of Allusions, which would have been really boring). Then our favorite sport just about anywhere, Central Park. We came across Strawberry Fields and someone singing Let It Be. Followed by ice cream on the Upper West Side, obviously. We were determined to walk the Brooklyn Bridge and see a Broadway show before we left, so we hurried back to SoHo, refreshed a bit, and headed out to Brooklyn on the subway, which took forever because basically all the trains were express and most distinctly not the other side of Brooklyn Bridge.

Somewhere along the line, I bought tickets to The Book of Mormon for that night.

We hurried back on foot and had a quick pizza at our favorite spot next door to the hotel, LTD Pizza. Exhausted, we changed clothes and headed uptown for our real freakin’ Broadway play, The Book of Mormon. I had bought on my phone somewhere along the line between Central Park and the Brooklyn Bridge.

The show was amazing; Molly really wants to see more musicals! The crowds in Times Square insane, so we walked to Hell’s Kitchen for a thinner (but still thick) crowd and an Uber back to SoHo.

We braved the hour-long subway ride to JFK airport the next morning and got home exhausted but happy.

Best fajitas in town

| patmcg

Molly is an unabashed Tex-Mex connoisseur. And funnily enough, and quite understandably, she does not like melted cheese. Some people who are not familiar with Tex-Mex may find that to be a contradiction, but Molly knows better.

Her favorite food of any kind currently is chicken fajitas – pass on the cheese.

We’ve been low-level looking for the best chicken fajitas in town, and at the moment the leader of the pack is El Mercdo on South First. So good to get that steamy plate on a cold, cozy day.

New Orleans โ›ช๏ธ

| patmcg

I had long promised to take the kids to New Orleans, one of my favorite cities and a place I thought the girls would really like. With Claire almost off to college, this spring break was one of the last chances to take both girls on a trip, at least as “kids”.

Moly has turned into a bit of a Francophile, learning French in school, so New Orleans should be extra fun for her.

So off we went on a five-day road trip to the glorious crescent city.

We decided to stay in Houston for a night on the way since Molly had wanted to see the Galeria shopping center, which was apparently famed at her middle school. Despite many visits to see my parents in House, we had never set aside time to really “do” the Galleria. So we did it right this time – dinner at La Madeline (to match the French trip theme) next to the skating rink and taking our time to gawk at all the fancy stores. We all agreed it was certainly the most celebrated shopping center in Texas, at least. ๐Ÿคท๐Ÿปโ€โ™‚๏ธ

Once in NOLA, we enjoyed some surprisingly cool weather and settled into our AirBnB on Magazine Street in the lovely Lower Garden District. I told Molly that New Orleans had a New York feel to it, and she was happy surprised to see how diverse and cosmopolitan it was.

We caught the swamp tour south of town. Despite the non-swampy, we saw more than a few big gators, who were friendly enough. The tour guide recruited Molly as a “volunteer” to jump into the swamp and find some small gators for everyone to bring home. He promised we’d come back to get her in an hour. ๐Ÿ˜† Molly was a good sport about the whole ordeal and calmly stayed in the boat.

We explored the Lower Garden District and are a lot of delicious food, including Korean BBQ, Vietnamese, old-school and pizza in our neighborhood. Somehow we discussed World War 2 during our entire pizza outing. It started with, “Dad, can you tell us about World War 2?” ๐Ÿ˜† And of course we hade the long-promised beignets in the French Quarter. The beignets took about an hour, but it was worth the wait.

As we ate at the chef’s counter at St. John, I was sitting between Claire and Molly. Somehow they invented a game where Claire spoke Spanish and Molly spoke French, and I had to translate between the two. Claire kept getting stumped on the phrase “slow metabolism”. ๐Ÿ˜†

We also enjoyed a crowded streetcar ride down St. Charles to Canal. Claire was drawn to the paranormal on this trip, first hit a voodoo store, which was more of an Apothecary & Botรกnica store. I almost bough some Tabasco cologne but didn’t quite feel it. Claire got her tarot professionally read in the French Quarter while Molly and I had a coffee and Italian soda across the street. Claire’s results were apparently helpful but not discussed with us. ๐Ÿ˜‰

We left with plenty more to see in New Orleans, but I am so happy to have brought them to this beautiful and unique city just the next state over. Molly added it to her list of possible places to move because she liked the active, urban vibe. ๐Ÿ™‚

Not bad for a quick trip. ๐Ÿ‘

Heart-Shaped Hands

| patmcg

Claire has been pretty into making a “heart” shape with her hands like this lately.

She’ll spring it on you. Suddenly there’s just this heart-shaped hand in front of you, and it’s like “whoa!” and she wants you to complete the heart. ๐Ÿ˜† Apparently I’m the worst at it. Claire’s like “That’s so ugly, Dad!” ๐Ÿ˜‚

Hamburgers and Philosophy

| patmcg

With Claire off at a camp, I had Molly to myself tonight. We stopped by Wataburger at her special request and took it for a picnic on the way home.

At the Whataburger, Molly launched two riddles at me.

The first was “Are there more wheels or doors?” I asked, “Do you mean, like, in the whole world?”. “Yep!” she said.

Looking out at the parking lot and street, I initially said, “It’s got to be wheels.” But Molly pointed out that while every car has four wheels, it has four doors too. And the office building across the streets easily had hundreds of doors. And cabinets. Also, something about legos. ๐Ÿคท๐Ÿปโ€โ™‚๏ธ

I was convinced. Doors it is!

At the park, Molly asked if water is wet.

Again, my initial instinct was wrong. ๐Ÿ˜†. “Of course it’s wet. It’s water.” After some discussion and demonstrations on the picnic table and sidewalk, we decided that water is not wet because “wet” describes a liquid sticking to a solid. Since water is already a liquid, it cannot be wet.

We googled it and found that “Liquid water is not itself wet, but can make other solid materials wet.” ๐Ÿคฏ

Finally, I attempted to “get” Molly with the Dichotomy Paradox, which basically says that in theory, you can never walk from one point to another because no matter how far you go, you always still have halfway to go. ๐Ÿคท๐Ÿปโ€โ™‚๏ธ Real-world experiments showed that this is obviously false in the real world but true in math. Hmm. ๐Ÿค”

Anyways, it was fun goofing around talking philosophical ๐Ÿ’ฉ with Molly on this beautiful spring evening.

If life gives you lemons, make wheatgrass shots

| patmcg

When the Great Polar Blast of 2021 hit back in February, all the bushes out front froze to death. Buy August, I had finally accepted the loss and asked the yard guys to cut the dead bushes down without mercy.

Left with a small but barren patch of yard with nothing but dirt and the nubs of dead bushes, I decided to make use of the land (and the automated drip irrigation) to grow some food. I had always wanted to do an urban vegetable garden, and now it was basically thrust upon me, waiting directly outside the front door, teasing me to make it so.

Of course, I could never leave Molly, our curious little naturalist, out of such a plan. She would definitely make it fun and bring new ideas to the table.

So Molly and I went to Sledd Nursery on a Saturday morning to consult with the local experts. We left Sledd with $70 worth of seeds for a “fall” crop and two bags of basically fancy dirt.

At the last minute, Molly added in some wheatgrass starters because she wanted to make wheatgrass juice. ๐Ÿคท๐Ÿปโ€โ™‚๏ธ. I asked her, “Have you ever had wheatgrass juice?” She said no but she had “seen it on YouTube” and it “looked good”. Why not? I’m trying to say yes to my kids whenever I can, to encourage their confidence and curiosity.

We went home and planted patches of broccoli, squash, corn, parsley, and arugula. I crossed my fingers. ๐Ÿคž

After a couple of weeks, the wheatgrass was doing better than anything else out there.

So we trimmed some wheatgrass (it’s indistinguishable from “regular” grass), tossed it in the blender with some water, and strained the juice. The resulting juice was supposedly healthy but had the bright fluorescent green color of lime Jello.

And it tasted like… grass water. One step away from dirt water.

Molly had a couple of sips and called it a day. “It’s gross, Dad.”

I added salt and Tabasco. That upgraded it to spicy ocean water. ๐Ÿ˜‹ I think the rest of the wheatgrass is for me. But thank you, Molly, for the cool idea. Let’s see how you like arugula later.

Watermelon Bowl๐Ÿ‰

| patmcg

Molly enjoying a watermelon bowl, noting:

  1. The watermelon is bigger than her head
  2. This is “the only natural way to eat a watermelon”
  3. She has no idea how this whole thing fits in her stomach
  4. A yet Molly persisted and ate the whole thing, while Claire only ate half of hers (and gave the rest to me ๐Ÿ˜‹).