The Weekend Roundup...

Bits and pieces and scraps and sharing.

If you read last week’s paid post (or the free teaser) you’ll know that I had to move out of my apartment, temporarily, while my floors and ceiling are repaired. I’m in a furnished temporary rental for the next four to six weeks, courtesy of my insurance company. Thanks, Chubb! It’s only a few blocks from my home and I’m now fully moved in, unpacked, and enjoying my 29th floor respite from traffic noise, and freedom from my stuff. The contractors arrived this morning to begin tearing out the circa1979 faux parquet wood floor tiles which every summer for the last twenty-eight years have buckled from the humidity like a 3-d topographic map of the Andes. This will be my first summer of fully flat floors, if all goes accordingly. Let’s hope so! I hop around pressing them down every year, like a kid jumping on bubble wrap (so fun!)

Since they don’t make that flooring anymore, I am entitled to a new floor of my choice, so I chose six-inch wide, light maple hardwood to match my kitchen cabinets, which you all know well from my content. You will likely never see the floors in any videos, but just know that now we can all rest easy knowing the floors match the kitchen, and are fully secured and flat. I know you were all concerned about that, and also about there not being a ceiling in my bathroom for the last eight months and about me having to pee staring up into an abyss of loose wires and ninety-year old scary peeling paint chunks that waft down on me from when the building was a laxative factory, and freaky burned-off rebar ends. It looks like a post-apocalyptic scene from a movie. When Soph came to visit at Christmas she said she was scared to go in there.

It’s really kind of shocking when you remove the thin facade of walls or ceilings from a room, to see what’s really behind them. We truly live in theater sets, the reality of the inner guts of buildings barely concealed behind a half-inch of gypsum sheetrock. Seeing behind the walls and ceiling reminds me of the first time I had a peep of a backstage area of a theater, I was shocked at how different it felt from what you saw on stage from the audience’s seats. It was during my first ballet recital, I was maybe four or five? It was my first time going from audience to performer and getting to see what was back there, literally behind the curtain. It was so technical and industrial feeling, so raw, it didn’t feel like theater at all, there was no fantasy left, no illusion. I had the same experience the first time I walked through the swinging doors of a restaurant dining room and into the kitchen; the instant, jarring switch from carefully decorated, softly lit dining room to harsh, bright, utilitarian kitchen. That really felt like the theater experience to me too. Walking through the set to the backstage was a real shocker.

Many of the units in the building have been extensively and expensively renovated over the years, since it was converted from a laxative factory (and before that, a brewery) to lofts in ‘79 or ‘80. There are only a tiny handful that still have the original decor that the corrupt developer installed, as cheaply as possible. So cheaply in fact, that the original shareholders had to sue him over it. I bought mine sixteen years later, in 1996, and it was a fully intact original. Aforementioned wood tile flooring, particle-board and formica-coated cabinets, original stove, leaky, broken-framed windows, the works.

I didn’t care, I thought it was luxurious and huge and I loved it and it was all mine and it was SO CHEAP, even for me who was making $28k a year as a sous chef in a three-star restaurant. I’d had a dream of living in a loft ever since my father took me to visit someone in Soho when I was a kid. The Soho of the 70’s, not the upscale influencer-teeming mall of today. The friend was an artist who lived in a converted industrial building. We entered on the ground floor into a freight elevator and emerged from the elevator RIGHT INTO THE APARTMENT. I was probably eleven or twelve years old and this BLEW ME AWAY. The elevator opened into the apartment! It was a massive, sprawling place filled with art including a huge old Pegasus sign from probably the 40’s that had to be at least eight feet wide. Do you remember that, the Mobil Pegasus logo?

Very strangely, down the street from the school where I teach which is right on the edge of Soho, is a residential loft building and in their lobby is the exact same Pegasus sign. I wonder if it’s the same piece? Maybe it made its way through the neighborhood over the decades. Once I saw that loft, and the artist lifestyle of the era, I was sold. That’s what I wanted, and through a crazy combination of timing and luck, I got it.

I got a ridiculous bargain on the apartment through a combination of a mid-1990’s micro-era of a depressed real estate market, Brooklyn still seen as a less desirable place to live, (not anymore!) a clueless seller who’d moved abroad, and a kind realtor who took a liking to me and tipped me off to the other offers that had been made. Let’s just say I got very, very, VERY lucky and I could never afford to live in that building today. It’s so fancy now. It’s my retirement account.

But, there are a few people in apartments with the old floors and tonight they’re all coming over to take some of mine to keep for patching and repairs. I love this. I’m happy to share the discarded tiles and keep them out of landfill or wherever old construction materials get dumped. I doubt there’s a resale market for 70’s flooring but they also don’t make it anymore, so mine are a precious commodity. Let’s keep the parquet alive!

All of this is to say that sometimes the scraps and leftovers and old bits can be really useful, and have a second life if you only give them a chance. We all know this is technically a newsletter about food and cooking, even though it often seems as if I’ve forgotten that. I haven’t. And you all should know by now how strongly I feel about minimizing food waste as much as possible, so let’s talk about the weekend. Let’s round it up, shall we?

Let me begin by saying that I am someone who has no problem eating the same thing every day, for many days throughout the week. If I make a soup or chili I’ll eat it every day for a week, I really don’t mind. I like my cooking and I appreciate me doing it. Thanks, me!

So up at Tiny Bungalow this past rainy weekend (it’s rained for some portion of the last TEN weekends here like some cruel-god joke, with another one predicted this week) I felt like I had to stick to my commitment about making this the Summer of Beans, which you’ll remember from last week’s paid post. As I wrote about, we have a stockpile of beans from the last few years and I want to eat them. So on Friday night I decided it was taco night. I cooked some onions and garlic with a bunch of spices (cumin and pimenton and some blend I never labeled but smelled pretty close to what I was feeling) and then added a can of Ro-Tel. Do you know Ro-Tel? It’s canned, diced tomatoes with green chilies. I learned about it from a friend from South Dakota, who used it to make what he called, simply, “queso”. Which apparently is a midwestern thing where you melt Velveeta with a can of Ro-Tel to make a dip. Now, while I ate my share of processed American cheese slices as a kid, Velveeta never entered our home. It was too processed, too trashy, too, well, goyishe (look it up) I mean, what even is Velveeta? I draw the line there.

But I learned about Ro-Tel from Mory and his dip and I have to say, it’s pretty great (the Ro-Tel, not the dip). I cooked the Ro-Tel down a bit, then added two cans of black beans and let the whole thing cook down until it was nice and thick. We ate that with corn tortillas, Trader Joe’s tomatillo salsa verde (highly recommend, sorry Annabel!) some mashed up avocado, crumbled feta, cilantro and a quickie slaw I made from a bag of TJ’s pre-shredded slaw mix. It was a damn fine meal, I must say. Thanks again, me!

The next morning we ate more tortillas, leftover beans, a fried egg on top and more salsa. Another winner, courtesy of the night before and some savvy repurposing.

Saturday night was “potluck” night with our friends, where everyone contributes a course of the meal. I offered to grill some fish, since you know, I got the skills. But I needed a sauce for it. Now if you’re a longtime reader, you know about “The Sauce” The Sauce is something I make a lot, especially in the summer when I’m grilling. It’s yogurt-based, and usually has preserved lemon, garlic and turmeric in it. I vary it based on what I have, but odds are good that if the grill is fired up, there’s Sauce to be eaten.

Since this was only my second weekend at TB this season due to travel and covid, and being deep in the moving shit here in Brooklyn, I haven’t gotten the kitchen really fully stocked. I had yogurt, of course, my favorite TJ’s goat’s milk yog which I consume daily, and a little of the leftover avocado, and the salsa verde. Hmm. I whisked the avocado mash into the yogurt, added some salsa, some chopped cilantro, a squeeze of lemon, a bit of cumin and mystery spice blend, and WOW. Genius. This could be Son of Sauce. Sauce II. I was shocked at how good it was. It’s a keeper, and it was made from bits and pieces and scraps. Exactly how I like to do it. Roll it over, keep it going, use it up.

Then, for lunch the next day, we ate the rest of the beans, and I took the rest of the sauce and mixed it with the leftover slaw, to brighten it up a little. Throw on some crumbled feta and holy crap, another winner, fully constructed from leftovers and old floor tiles. Same thing. But much tastier.

See my friends? Just because I’m a chef doesn’t mean I’m cooking something new and different every day, as people imagine cheffy lives to be. I cook at home like I did in restaurants. With a big eye on thrift, economy and minimizing waste. Why toss that two tablespoons of mashed avocado and half-cup of beans when you can make some more magic out of it? I got forty-five years out of a crap floor, I can get three meals out of a weekend. Just be a little creative, and cheap, and hop around on the little peaks all summer. That’s how you do it. And share it with friends, it’ll taste so much better.

See ya later this week for the paid video post. Maybe think about upgrading to a paid subscription? That way I can afford to buy another jar of salsa.