Back in Civilization

Yay! We're back in Brooklyn, where the temperature's a balmy 27 and the residual curbside snow piles can be climbed easily even in high-heeled suede boots. K. and I blithely left our snowboots upstate, and so far, the sunny weather is as happy as can be.

Lucky for you, the wifi was down in the Syracuse airport on Thursday, otherwise you'd still be digging out of a mountain of hour-by-hour commentary on the hell that was JetBlue air travel that day. The flight: 45 minutes. The wait: 10+ hours. K. was sanguine, though, having been through much worse during the past year. "At least we're not carrying rockets," she pointed out, and I couldn't disagree.

But now we're here, and oh joy, I can walk to the supermarket, walk to the all-night diner on Smith St where we ended our traveling ordeal with 2am eggs and toast, walk to Chestnut, where we had our welcome-back dinner and where we got not only Daniel's off-the-menu grandma cooking (split pea soup with ham) but also the tasty leftovers from Wednesday's Valentine tasting menu, including smashing fresh Dungeness crab (rolled with cilantro and shredded red cabbage in translucent, Vietnamese-style rice-paper rolls) in tamarind-peanut sauce and a dessert lagniappe of four chocolates (meyer lemon, hazelnut, blueberry in white chocolate and meyer lemon again). The standout was the Turbodog special, spoon-soft short ribs braised in brawny Abita Turbodog ale, served over a rutabaga-potato mash with Satur Farms (Long Island) baby carrots (actual small carrots, that is, not the carved-up little supermarket fingers) and a dusting of horseradish.

B. and his pal Gaby stopped by for dessert, and we all slurped down cups of thick Mexican hot chocolate with freshly made, feathery light cinnamon-sugar churros. Churros became the topic du jour for a while; turns out a guy sells churros down in the bowels of the 6th Ave subway station, near the L train, according to Gaby. You can also get them at the Santa Cruz Boardwalk, Northern California's Coney Island.