Summer Days

Today was a lovely sunny day in the low 80s. We got up early and went to the beach at Jacob Riis national park. I don't know how I've lived in NYC so long and never went here. It's a beautiful, clean beach, which doesn't get overly crowded until the afternoon.

Tonight will still be warm, so I'm going to serve gazpacho with small, red new potatoes. I boil the potatoes and then sautee them in olive oil and butter until golden brown. Then I put some sea salt and pepper on them. They are so sweet, that they don't need anything else.

The gazpacho recipe I make is adapted from Moosewood's first cookbook.

4c Tomato juice
1 small onion
1 med bell pepper
1 T honey
1 Cucumber
1/2 lemon, juice of
1 lime, juice of
1 t tarragon
1 t basil
1/2 t cumin
2 T olive oil
2c diced tomatoes (can used canned, but fresh are better)

I put the onion in the food processor first, pulse, then add the bell pepper and pulse, cucumber, pulse, and diced tomatoes with all of the spices and pulse until it is the consistency you like. We like pretty chunky gazpacho. Then add to the tomato juice and chill for at least 2 hours.

Eat with a yummy crusty bread and you have a great meal.

A happy Day!

After years of being engaged, it took almost losing their health insurance to prompt our friends Dennis and Maria Christina to tie the knot. They invited us to be witnesses at their City Hall wedding. Once we realized that we were at City Hall in Manhattan and they were at City Hall in Brooklyn, the day got better. Dennis was beaming, Maria Christina was gorgeous, and their 5 month old baby Joachin was an angel.

It's amazing that all of the nervousness, all of the emotion and all of the euphoria of getting married are present at a City Hall wedding. Everyone was beaming at them during the ceremony, which probably lasted all of 4 minutes.



Afterwards we went to Balthazar in Manhattan for a delicious brunch. We all decided that drinking champagne in the morning was a very civilized way to start the day.



Their friend brought this beautiful cake decorated with tulips, which was a lovely nod to Dennis' Dutch heritage.