All about food...

When I first moved to Manhattan, lots of things surprised me. One of them was that people would live with no consideration to where to buy food. In a city where most people don't have cars, I would think people would want to live in walking distance for a supermarket, but plenty of people don't even live in walking distance to bodegas (those small, expensive corner stores, with a huge array of products that never seem to have the one item you want.)

Fresh direct seemed to fill that void. It opened in 2002 or 2003, and you would order on line and it would bring everything to your door and carry all those heavy items upstairs for you. I was very grateful. But like all things you come to rely on, then they go and change. They've been hit hard by Wholefoods opening in Tribeca, and are consequently shrinking their range.

We now have a wealth of food stores in the area - the forlorn Food Emporium (2 separate people have now complained to me that their chicken was off, and had to be returned. I myself bought bad milk from them. I don't know what's going on there, it's winter, outside is refrigerator temperature, how could food go off and still be in it's use by date?) The glamorous and yes, more expensive Wholefoods (though I totally buy their argument that their product is better)

Fresh direct has now taken two of the products that I know and love (and now that I look down my list, quite a few are in that ghostly grey implying that they are no longer available) and if they don't keep their range wide and varied, they'll start to be used like the bodegas - for emergencies only, rather than for staples.

That's my whinge for the day, I'm sorry that the fabulous Kansas burgers are no more. If only they had warned me, I could have cribbed the ingredient list and had a better chance of recreating them... well, it's back to the cookbooks...

Friday the 13th

This is the second Friday the 13th we've had this year. I know because the last one was the day I was flying back from Sydney to New York. I told my mother that my hope was that the flight would be emptier as the superstitious would stay home, but it turns out the sceptics were out in force, because the plane was full!

This Friday we flew no where, but stayed in the city. I was in a room that was so air conditioned that I was shivering, (What an waste of power!) listening to the very first performance of a show my husband is working on. I've never sat in on a reading so early in the piece that was interesting, and makes me want to see how it grows and where it goes. Although needing refinement, the bones were really good, and I was moved.

And then I had that oddly unsettling experience of going to an unfamiliar Wholefoods. I know the products they sell, but they were all in the wrong order, in the wrong place, so I could find nothing I wanted. I still manged to spend $58 on one meagre bag. I did buy one of their cloth bags which is designed to be reused. It has excellent long handles so you can carry the bag on your shoulder if you want and cost $1. They also said they'll give a 10 cent discount every time you bring it in. That's very generous and will encourage people to bring it back. I'll definitely be using it again.