Prediction for 2009

Tomorrow, friends are coming over for brunch. I won't give away too many surprises, but I boiled 2 cans of sweetened condensed milk to make dulce de leche, which will be turned into a caramel ice cream. I made a small batch of hummus and a small amount of Israeli salad, two things that taste better when left to develop overnight. I also whipped a cup of heavy cream into butter -- a c-school, they warned if you walked away from a mixer while whipping cream, it would turn into butter....but never demoed it. So I put the cream in and walked away....and when I came back, the fat had separated from the liquid into pale yellow curds, and the whey left behind kind of looked like skim milk. I rolled the curds into a little tube of parchment paper.

AM SNACK: 8:30am, chug of apple cider, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5

BREAKFAST: 10:30am, veggie burger, fries, water, 1.25 bowl, hunger 4/5

LUNCH: 3:30pm, small bowl of homemade rice & beans, half a brownie, apple cider, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5

DINNER: 7pm, sausage onion mushroom pizza, assorted antipasto, 1/3 of a slice of chocolate cake, 1 glass prosecco, water, 1.5 bowl, hunger 4/5
Last dinner of 2008 should serve as a warning. B, a couple of friends and I went to Little Frankies for dinner on 1st Ave and 1st St. It's Italian enoteca style, with brick-oven trad style pizzas. Undercooked, overtopped, got flibbidy flobbidy within seconds of presentation, a real lack of chew OR snap. The only thing that stood out as above average was the house-made sausage. Pizza has been trendy for a while now in NYC, and sooo many gourmet pizza places have opened and are about to open. Well, it's places like this that are going to break the trend's back and shake out shitshows like these.