Pumpkin pie is not the only thing you can make with a pumpkin... Expand your cooking skills and think about Calzones, pumpkin pie tarts and lasagna! That's what we are videoing today !
Photographer/Videographer: Steve Giralt
Food Stylist: Liz Jezrow
Assistant Food Stylist: "Lauren"
Assistants: John Duarte and Susan Lee
This was found on the floor of a "L" subway car in NYC.Unfortunately, I was away and didn't have access to the Internet... if you did not know... the San Gennaro festival is happening now until Sept. 26, 2010 in Little Italy, New York...
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Sept. 16 – The Feast of San Gennaro (aka San Gennaro Festival) be here again starting Sept. 16 through Sept. 26th. The festival has been in Little Italy for more than 80 years and every year, particularly on the weekends, the streets are jammed pack with tourists and residents alike who walk on Mulberry Street to participate in the festivities - cannoli eating competition, dining at the cafe/restaurants, eating at the sausage booths and more. So, bring your cash and enjoy the Italian festival in Little Italy.
Excerpts from the San Gennaro Website are below:
"... more than one-million people from the four corners of the globe to the streets of Little Italy to participate in the annual Salute to the Patron Saint of Naples.
Although this is an annual celebration of faith, the Feast of San Gennaro is known the world over for its festive atmosphere, an 11-day event featuring religious processions and colorful parades, free musical entertainment every day, a wide variety of ethnic food delicacies, charming restaurants and cafes and even a world-famous cannoli-eating competition! The central focus of the celebration takes place every September 19th, the official Saint Day when a celebratory Mass is held in Most Precious Blood Church, followed immediately by a religious procession in which the Statue of San Gennaro is carried from its permanent home in the church through the streets that comprise Little Italy."
"This Feast of San Gennaro holds a special place in the place of Italian people everywhere,” says Joseph Mattone, President of Figli di San Gennaro, Inc. "It is a festive period of faith and redemption, a time for remembrance and reconciliation, and a time for celebration. The delicious food, the free musical entertainment that reflects Italian-American culture and heritage are all there. The Feast brings the world to Little Italy and Little Italy to the world.”
Photo taken late night at Mad for Chicken (K-town) with ambient light
Things I realized as I assisted on this shoot ... A food shoot can run more smoothly if you have the right people doing the prop styling, food styling and allowing the photographer to be ... the photographer ...
I have had shoots when I am all three and it is too stressful to manage three jobs when all you should be doing is photographing the food. This usually occurs when budgets are small ! So this food shoot was certainly a refreshing change of pace and hope my future food shoots will be like this one!
Mental notes:
For the love of food photography! yippee!
Below is the press-release for the Malaysian Night Market in the Meat Packing District
With colorful tents, umbrellas and lanterns inspired by the open-air markets of Kuala Lumpur and Penang, the Malaysian Night Market in the Meatpacking District will offer an array of traditional Malaysian street grub. From roti canai to curry laksa and nasi lemak (a tasty rice dish served with spicy curry chicken or beef rendang), offerings draw upon Malaysian cuisine's Malay, Chinese and Indian influences. Participants include Betel, Café Asean, Fatty Crab, Laut, New Malaysia, Nyonya, Spice Market, and the upcoming Asian restaurant with consultants Todd English and Ian Chalermkittichai.
Besides delicious street food, the event will feature engaging Malaysian cultural dances on a dedicated stage. All food will be on sale for $4 to $8.
The location, the Chelsea Triangle, is an outdoor plaza situated on 14th St. between 9th Ave. and Hudson St., at the tip of the trendy Meatpacking District. The plaza faces high-end fashion retail stores and restaurants, and will be bustling with trendsetters and fashionistas in town for Fashion Week.
About Malaysia Kitchen for the World
Malaysia Kitchen for the World is a global initiative of the Malaysian government that aims to educate and inform consumers about Malaysian cuisine and Malaysian restaurants throughout the world. The New York campaign seeks to boost interest among American food lovers to try Malaysian cuisine and visit Malaysian restaurants in the New York metropolitan area as well as in other locations in the United States. The program also seeks to facilitate local chefs and restaurateurs to introduce Malaysian cuisine at their establishments. Visit malaysiakitchennyc.com for more information.
About MATRADE
The Malaysia External Trade Development Corporation (MATRADE) is Malaysia's national trade promotion agency. Established in March 1993 as a statutory agency under the Ministry of International Trade Industry (MITI), MATRADE is responsible for assisting Malaysian companies to succeed in the international market by developing and promoting Malaysia's exports to the world.
About LUCKYRICE Festival
From rich online content to live events, LUCKYRICE aims to be a consumer guide to the Asian culinary world. The inaugural LUCKYRICE Festival, an 11-day celebration of Asian food and culinary culture around New York City, launched successfully in April 2010.
Found on Elizabeth street between Grand and Broome.
-- Mobile upload
Primehouse: Steakhouse Burger
Excellent Pork Chop House:When you're in Chinatown and have to eat fast -- you can be sure to get your food quick at Excellent Pork Chop House -- this restaurant is among my top food places in Chinatown and it has been for many many many many years -- Excellent Pork Chop house serves my comfort food -- and I need comforting! :D
I personally love the pork chop over rice ($5.50). You can add a boiled soy-sauce egg for $0.60, which I do every now and then. What I love about this simple dish is the preserved vegetables and minced pork sauce that is draped over the rice (yes you can ask for more sauce if you'd like)... and the not-so-greasy pan-fried pork chops. The pork chops are usually plentiful for a meal; however, if I'm hungry, I tend to order a side appetizer of dried bean curd ($3.50). If you're adventurous, you can mix the dried bean curd with other small appetizers all for the same price. On this recent trip I mixed the dried bean curd with jelly fish, but you can also mix it with garlic cucumber or seaweed. It all depends on your flavor and desires.
I also recently tried their shaved ice -- yum. They don't have any extravagant toppings -- just the traditional - condensed milk, red bean, taro, tapioca balls, pineapple chunks, black jelly among other things ... I ordered my shaved ice with condensed milk (a definite must), red beans and black jelly ($3.50) and it was good... Simple, but tasty. For additional toppings, its another $0.50. Not bad compared to $5.50 at Just Sweet in LES.
The restaurant has been in New York for a long time and originated from Taiwan (its part of a chain there). So you can expect Taiwanese style pork chops here (not the deep fried that some of my Taiwanese friends enjoy, but the pan-fried ones). However, if you are looking for the deep-fried pork chops, you can try Wah Mei Pork Chop Fast Food on Hester Street between Baxter and Mulberry. I personally am still a fan and an advocate of Excellent Pork Chop House!
Excellent Pork Chop House is located at 3 Doyer Street and is directly across from the post office. Definitely make a stop by this place for its "Excellent Pork Chops" over rice ...
For a look at their menu, click here
Note: Closed on Tuesdays.
Happy Eating!
Joanne Mitchell, 60, and an acquaintance panhandle at a subway entrance at Union Station.
What would happen if, instead of spare change, you handed a person in need the means to shop for whatever they needed? What would they buy? Can you spare your credit card, sir?
In New York City, an advertising executive recently handed over her American Express Platinum Card to a homeless Manhattan man after he had asked her for change. The man, who had been without home after losing a job, used the card to buy $25 worth of deodorant, water and cigarettes. And then he returned the card.
Concerns over the wisdom of sharing of credits cards and credit card fraud aside, the unlikely encounter became a talking point — a feel-good story about, as the New York Post put it in a headline: “A bum you can trust — honest!”
Is that such a surprise?
Over the past two weeks, I wandered Toronto’s downtown core with five prepaid Visa and MasterCard gift cards, in $50 and $75 denominations, waiting for people to ask for money.
When they did, I asked them what they needed. A meal at a restaurant, groceries, a new pair of pants, they said. I handed out the cards and asked that they give them back when they’d finished shopping. I either waited at a coffee shop while they shopped or — in the case of those who could not buy what they needed nearby or were reticent about leaving their panhandling post — I said I’d return on another day to pick up the card. That’s when I would reveal that I was a journalist.
Some were unbelieving at first. All were grateful. Some declined the offer. Some who accepted didn’t come back, but those that did had stories to tell.
Early afternoon on Queen Street West. A young man with a short orange Mohawk haircut and a Superman tattoo on his left shoulder sat alone on the sidewalk, a skateboard at his side. A song by Michelle Shocked comes to mind, in which she asks: “What’s it like to be a skateboard punk rocker?”
Tight.
His panhandling sign read: “Too ugly to prostitute. Spare some change.”
I asked him what he needed.
“Food would be nice.”
“Can I trust you with this?” I said, handing him a $50 card and telling him to buy what he needs, but that I need it back when he was done. He nodded and scrambled to his feet. He said he would be back in a half-hour.
He came back right on time, slurping from a large McDonald’s soft drink cup — root beer — and with sweat on his brow. He wanted to have pork and rice from a Vietnamese noodle joint on Spadina but they wouldn’t take the card. So, he scrambled to McDonald’s. Lunch was a double quarter-pounder with cheese.
He handed over the gift card, having spent $8.69.
His name is Jason. He’s 28, has brown eyes, a wide smile and good teeth. He has been on and off the streets of Toronto since he was 14. He grew up in Northern Ontario. His mother, he said, is a drinker and his dad died last year.
Now, he is homeless, living with friends or at a “secret spot” on the streets, but is waiting on an apartment. “I just got a POA for welfare,” he said. That’s a promise of address. He wants to get his driver’s licence and a job as a courier.
On a good day, he takes in $40 to $50 through panhandling, most of which he spends on communal food for friends. Of his most effective panning signs: “Like Obama, I like change,” and “Smile if you masturbate. Spare change if you like it.” He carries his belongings in a knapsack — just a bit of clothing and toiletries.
I handed the $50 card back to Jason to spend the rest as he likes. We shook hands and he went back to his spot on Queen.
A man sitting on a suitcase at Bay and King Streets was suspicious of the offer. “Can I buy groceries with it?” he asked. It was peak panhandling time and he did not want to leave his post. “Take care,” he said, turning down a $50 card. “But thanks a lot.”
This happened a number of times.
Another young man, James, was selling newspapers for the homeless in Yorkville. He said he was living with his sick and jobless father. “Truthfully, I’m okay. I have a roof over my head.” He turned down a $75 card.
Mark , who appeared to be in his early 30s and wore his hair in dreads, worked people outside the St. Lawrence Market. He walked up and asked if I could spare change.
“No,” I said, as I reached into a pocket, “but I have . . . ”
“A million dollars?” he grinned.
Mark said he was hungry for a meal at a restaurant. I gave him a $50 card and he asked if I would come with him. No, I said, go get what you need. I said I was meeting a friend and would be at a nearby coffee shop. He could bring the card back there.
Ninety minutes later, there was no Mark.
A record of the card transactions shows that Mark spent $21.64 on a meal at The Corner Place restaurant at Jarvis and Front Streets. The next day, Mark spent $15.50 at the LCBO.
There was a hot sauce promotion underway outside Union Station. Commuters grabbed two free bottles at a time. The vast majority walked past the panhandlers without a word.
“I need pants,” said Joanne, who squatted at the entrance to the subway, her right arm in a sling. But, no, she wouldn’t have time to leave her post to buy them and get back to hand over the $75 card I offered. I left it with her and said I would come back another day. She thanked me and smiled.
Same deal with Al, who stood around the corner, holding a sign that read “Hungry and Homeless.” He said he needed jeans and shoes. “Thank you kindly,” he said, taking a $50 card. “I’ll be here.”
Despite a few visits, I didn’t see Al again.
At time of writing, it had not been used.
A few days later, Joanne was back at her spot, looking rougher. She had a cough. She was panhandling with an acquaintance, a man who had appeared with a can of beer and poured half into her paper cup.
Joanne appeared sober. She remembered me. She had doubts the card was legit. An ex-boyfriend, she said, stole it. She hadn’t seen a penny of it, which her friend confirmed. “I couldn’t fight him,” said Joanne, lifting her broken arm.
A history of transactions on that card shows it was used nine times over two consecutive days for purchases at McDonald’s and the LCBO.
Joanne Mitchell is her full name. She’s 60, has one daughter and seven grandchildren, who she seldom sees. She worked for Bell Canada as a service rep but got “fed up.” She’s been panhandling on and off for 10 years and lives in subsidized housing. She broke her arm June 25 while trying to hang a picture and has been losing weight ever since. She was down to about 115 pounds, she said.
Joanne owned two pairs of pants. The pair she was wearing, green capris, were dirty and damp. “We could have done a lot with the money,” said her acquaintance. “Could have also bought some groceries with that.”
I promised I would be back another day with another card, to spend as she wished.
“I’ve been looking for you,” said Laurie, smiling. I’d left her with a $75 card a few days earlier at her spot outside the south entrance to the Eaton Centre. She’s there most afternoons, in her motorized wheelchair.
“Here’s your card,” she said, pulling it from her wallet.
She bought groceries that would keep her diabetes under control. She put $15 on a pay-as-you-go cellphone. She confessed to buying cigarettes. She usually rolls her own but treated herself. She did all of her shopping at a gas station convenience store, spending all but 39 cents
I explained myself.
“I’ve been wondering when a reporter might find me,” she said, bright green eyes sparkling behind bifocal glasses.
Laurie, 44, is living on the streets in the west-end and couch surfing with friends, including her ex-husband. In addition to diabetes, she takes medication for manic depression and has been diagnosed as having fibromyalgia. She must use the chair to get around and takes about 30 pills a day. She’s on a list to get into a co-op.
She has two daughters in university. One hopes to be a doctor, the other something to do with math. On a good panhandling day, Laurie will spend money in an Internet café and Skype with her girls. On a “super-duper” good day, she’ll book herself into a cheap motel and watch TV.
Each morning, she works on her resume and sends it out to prospective employers. She has computer programming skills and can type “95 words a minute, at 98 per cent accuracy,” she said.
Her last job was about 10 years ago. Before she had to start using a chair to get around. She was a waitress at a greasy spoon in King Street. Since then, she has lived off benefits.
In March, she said, she slipped into a diabetic coma, and had it not been for her ex-husband who found her and called 911, she probably would be dead.
“I’m a very positive person and things can always be worse,” she said. And then she quoted a line from Joni Mitchell’s song, Big Yellow Taxi: “Don’t it always seem to go,” said Laurie, “you don’t know what you got ’til it’s gone.”
Card 1: $50, handed to Jason. Spends $8.69 at McDonald’s. Returns card.
Card 2: $50, to Mark. Spends $21.64 at The Corner Place restaurant. Doesn’t return. Later spends $15.50 at the LCBO.
Card 3: $75, to Joanne. Card is stolen. Over two days, $24.95 spent at McDonald’s, $38.35 at the LCBO.
Card 4: $50, to Al. Card unreturned. Balance remains at $50
Card 5: $75. Laurie buys $74.61 worth of food, phone minutes and cigarettes at a gas station convenience store. Returns card.
Photos: Courtesy of Frank
I wish I could attach a flavor to this email but we are not quite there yet. I have to say it was quite delicious.
I was surprised to find the Chinese string beans at a local Ralphs market!
I had to substitute Sriracha for the hot pepper paste and Sake rice wine for the Michiu cooking wine, but it worked out well.
I was cooking in only one pan and the green beans with the sake rice wine deglazed the pan from the good pork bits which worked out pretty great.
Thanks for the recipe!
-- Frank
NEW YORK—At 4:32 p.m. Tuesday, every single resident of New York City decided to evacuate the famed metropolis, having realized it was nothing more than a massive, trash-ridden hellhole that slowly sucks the life out of every one of its inhabitants.
With audible murmurs of "This is no way to live," "What the hell am I doing here—I hate it here," and "Fuck this place. Fuck this horrible place," all 8.4 million citizens in each of the five boroughs packed up their belongings and told reporters they would rather blow their brains out with a shotgun than spend another waking moment in this festering cesspool of filth and scum and sadness.
By 5:15 p.m. there was gridlock traffic on the outbound sides of the Holland and Lincoln tunnels, and the area's three major airports were flooded with New Yorkers, all of whom said they wanted to go anyplace where the pressure of 20 million tons of concrete wasn't constantly suffocating them.
"I always had this perverted sense of pride because I was managing to scrape by here," said Brooklyn resident Andrew McQuade, who, after watching two subway rats gnawing on a third bloody rat carcass, finally determined that New York City was a giant sprawling cancer. "Well, fuck that. I don't need to pay $2,000 a month to share a doghouse-sized apartment with some random Craigslist dipshit to prove my worth. I want to live like a goddamn human being."
"You see this?" added McQuade, pointing at a real estate listing for a duplex in Hagerstown, MD. "Two bedrooms, two baths, a den—a fucking den—and a patio. Twelve hundred a month. That's total, not per person."
According to residents, the mass exodus was triggered by a number of normal, everyday New York City events. For Erin Caldwell of Manhattan, an endlessly honking car horn sent her over the edge, causing her to go into a blind rage and scream "shut up!" at the vehicle as loud as she could until her voice went hoarse; for Danny Tremba of Queens it was being cursed at for walking too slow; and for Paul Ogden, also of Queens, it was his overreaction to somebody walking too slow.
Other incidents that prompted citizens to pick up and leave included the sight of garbage bags stacked 5 feet high on the sidewalk; the realization that being alone among millions of anonymous people is actually quite horrifying; a blaring siren that droned on and fucking on; muddy, refuse-filled puddles that have inexplicably not dried in three years; the thought of growing into a person whose meanness and cynicism is cloaked in a kind of holier-than-thou brand of sarcasm that the rest of the world finds nauseating; and all the goddamn people.
In addition, 3 million New Yorkers reportedly left the city because they realized the phrase "Only in New York" is actually just a defense mechanism used to convince themselves that seeing a naked man take a shit on a park bench is somehow endearing, or part of some shared cultural experience.
New York City "I was sitting on my stoop, drinking coffee, and out of nowhere this crazy-looking woman just starts screaming, 'I am inside all of you,' over and over," Bronx resident Sarah Perez, 37, said. "Then, we both had this moment where we looked at each other and realized, okay, we have to get out of here."
"This place sucks," Manhattan resident Woody Allen, 74, told reporters. "It just fucking sucks."
When fleeing New Yorkers were asked if they would miss the city's iconic landmarks, most responded that Central Park is just a pathetic excuse for experiencing actual nature, that the Brooklyn Bridge is great but it's just a fucking bridge, that nobody goes to the Met anyway, and that living in a dingy, grime-caked apartment while exhaust fumes from an idling truck seep through your bedroom window isn't worth slightly bigger bagels.
"This is no place to raise a kid, that's for sure," said 32-year-old Brandon Rushing, a lifelong New Yorker. "I grew up here and I turned into a giant asshole. Why would I want that for my son?"
"Plus, we're the place most likely to get nuked by a dirty bomb in a terrorist attack," he added. "So that's great. Also, it smells like shit here, and I'm not exaggerating. You'll just be walking around and it starts smelling like human shit, and it just fills your nostrils and you breathe in shit for like 20 seconds."
Before departing by private helicopter, Mayor Michael Bloomberg spoke with members of the media to address the situation.
"You know what the greatest city in the world is?" Bloomberg asked reporters. "Scottsdale, Arizona. It's clean, it's not too big, it's got a couple streets with shops and restaurants, and the people there aren't fucking insane. This place is fucking insane. And by the way, that's not a reason to like it. Anyone who says that is a delusional dirtbag."
