My Little Cookie

So, we should talk. Yes, I've been gone for eight months, but I've been thinking about you the whole time. I swear. There haven't been other blogs. It's just that, well, once you spend a few months away, suddenly you feel the need to be perfect when you return, and then a little more time passes and then it's so awkward. How do you apologize? How do you start over?

Give me another chance?

This past year has been full of growth and change, a small handful of unwanted surprises, and some really great times spent reconnecting with old Colorado family and friends. There have been deaths, marriage (mine!), running injuries (also mine!), career pursuits, family reunions, a little travel, and lots and lots of wise-acre observations that I haven’t shared in this space. I know, it hurts that you missed it. If you promise to come back and read again, I promise to dish up some more.

What brought about this sudden return? A funny thing, really. I’ve been on the hunt for a good Black and White cookie. They were a late-night-after-too-many-beers-duck-into-a-deli-and-buy-something-that’s-terrible-for-you favorite of mine in New York, and I have been amazed at how difficult they are to find in Denver.



Mmmm. Hello, RECIPE!


For those of you who don’t know them, Black and Whites are the perfect combination of vanilla cake and both chocolate and vanilla frosting, split on the top like the yin/yang symbol. And much like the famous symbol, the cookies walk a careful balance: the frosting is usually too sweet, the cake a little plain, but somehow together they make you feel like you’re five years old and eating something they will probably take away from you if they catch you.

Now, lest you think I'm about to disparage Denver, I must say that in the past year I’ve been pleasantly surprised to be able to find nearly everything here that I could in New York. Denver in 2011 is a very different place than the Denver of my childhood.

However, oddly, I've also found dill to be a difficult score in the Mile-High State: you can pay $3 for a tiny sprig of it at any local grocery store--or you can be smart like me and figure out that the thrifty Russian population in Glendale is not going to pay $3 for a sprig of something they use in every dish. And lo! and behold! Heading to visit the delightful Russian markets, I was awfully pleased (with myself) to find it in huge bunches, like oases for the dill-deprived.

Now, before you feel foolish for not having thought of this yourself, you transplants who are dying for fistfuls of dill, spare a moment to think of my poor husband, who had to tolerate my complaints about there being no dill at the store--on a weekly basis--until a flashbulb went off in my head and I concocted the aforementioned plan. But hey, in my defense, this realization only took me a few months. And to his credit, he hasn't divorced me yet.

Now where was I? Ah, yes. The beloved Black and White cookies.

At a New York-style deli a few weeks ago I ordered a B & W at the counter, only to be told by a very disappointed deli employee that they don’t carry them, because “nobody knows what the heck they are out here and they just end up going to waste.” Tongue is apparently another thing that falls into this category, but I was in no danger of ordering that for lunch. He seemed a little disappointed that I was only half in his court on this one.

So this brings us to this past Friday, when I was stuck in I-25 traffic coming back from a meeting,  and decided to hop off on Hampden to escape the crush. “Isn’t there a New York deli around here?” I thought to myself.

Ah yes, there is. An oasis in this New York comfort food desert: The New York Deli News, opened by former New Yorkers who just might have a little Manhattan Special soda water running in their veins. This may be the only place west of, well, Chicago, where one can buy bialys!



Not to be confused with the NY Daily News!


And they have black and white cookies.

And boy were they good!

What? You want I should wait? Pffft! I started eating it in the car!

Verdict:
New York: 1 point
Denver: Also 1!

NYC v. Denver: The Five Senses (part 1)

When I think about some of the changes in my life occasioned by my move from Brooklyn to Denver, beyond missing my friends and my wonderful job many of the differences seem to gather around sensory experiences.

Yes, the Big Apple tastes different, and life Out On the Range is a heckuva lot quieter.

How do they stack up? Well, let’s start with two of the senses today: taste and sound.

Taste:
New York City, the gourmand’s dream, is chock-full of restaurants and bars and street carts and food trucks serving anything you can imagine. There are thousands of self-proclaimed foodies, and innumerable culinary blogs.

One can eat like a king, without having to fork over a princely sum.

Fierce competition in the gustatory category tends to push out the drab and the flavorless, and the constant influx of residents from the world over guarantees variety. As illustration, years ago a friend visited me for a week, and we achieved our goal of eating a different national cuisine with every meal. Granted, we counted Mars 2112 as Martian food, but nonetheless we could have continued this challenge for weeks without having to revisit a country we’d already tasted our way around.

Some of my personal favorite places included Venezuelan arepas, Vietnamese pho, Belgian beer (and Flemish, and Norwegian, and German, and English, and you get the point), vegetarian Tibetan, and weekend brunch (here, here and here). And yes, in New York brunch is a food category all on its own.

In contrast, apart from the benefit of Mom’s Home Cooking, I am finding the Denver food scene less enticing. Following so many of my meals here I feel I’ve visited only one foreign locale: the Sahara. For some unknown reason, many Mile High restaurants seem to overdo the salt. My theory was this was due to a less versatile skill-set with spices; my father proposed Denverites need a salt lick to help them retain some water in this desert environment.

Salt Lick

 I’m also finding that restaurants in Denver tend to suffer from a direct relationship between cost and taste: the tastier the food, the more expensive, and vice versa. While there are clearly exceptions to this Colorado rule, this problem is rarely the case in New York.

The one cuisine for which New York can’t hold a candle to Colorado is Mexican, for which I am immensely grateful. If I’m stuck with only one national cuisine that is both tasty and affordable, Mexican is the ideal choice. Consolation for the stranded foodie.

And to add insult to injury, I haven’t been able to find my favorite beer anywhere in the Denver Metro area. Wostyntje Mustard Ale, people! Keep your eyes peeled!

Verdict: New York wins this one. Pass the potatoes.

Sound:
Ah, the lovely sounds of a warm summer weeknight. Lying in bed, slowly drifting off to sleep and hearing the sweet lullaby of SCREECH! HONK HONK! WHAT THE H*LL, YOU (deleted expletive)! RING RING! HEY, MIKE, THROW DOWN THE KEYS! TIFFANY! TIFFANY! COME DOWN HERE! *Sounds of autotune-abused pop music BLARING out the windows as a car passes down the street.*

Yes, the summer sounds of my block in Brooklyn, usually around, oh, 10 until 2 in the morning. It would generally get quiet after that, only to pick up again with the 4:00 a.m. drunken flirting, catcalls and fights that inevitably followed the closing of the neighborhood bars for the night.

Ah, the barely-awake calls to 311, complaining about noise pollution...to which the police generally never responded, because they are given somewhere around 8 hours to address a noise complaint. Yeah, right.

A few weeks before moving, I had one of those act-before-you-think New York moments, wherein I stuck my head out the window and yelled down to the guy parked at the curb blaring his stereo, “Are you SERIOUS? It’s 4 a.m.!”

As I woke up a little, I realized maybe this might not have been such a good idea. After all, he can tell which apartment I’m in. And my screaming at him is not going to sweetly convince him to let us all sleep. Fortunately, he just stuck his chin up at me in a gesture of defiance, leaned against the car, and sat out there with the stereo going until 6:00.

Neighborhood jerk: 1, Laura: 0.

Granted, this was only a summer phenomenon, and more prevalent when the high school kids were out on vacation. Winters tended to be serene and tolerable.

And yes, you may argue, there are neighborhoods that are much more peaceful and less obnoxious than Williamsburg, however I will counter that with “HONK HONK!”

What? That wasn’t someone you knew blaring their horn as you were walking peacefully along the sidewalk? Of course not! They were honking at the cabbie cutting them off...you just happened to be standing close enough to jump out of your skin.

And in contrast, in Denver I am occasionally woken from the absolute silence reining over the wee hours by faint, ghostlike sounds of train whistles coming from several miles away.

It’s a beautiful reminder of the history of the city, and although I know they’re freight trains, I can’t help but envision women in bustles and lace and silk, sitting in a train rolling into Union Station, waiting to meet their mining millionaire and begin their life at the foot of the Rocky Mountains. And then I fluff my pillow, turn over, and go back to sleep.


Verdict: Denver


Total count: This one’s a tie! Check back soon for how NY and CO compare with the rest of the senses.

NYC v. Denver

As an urban explorer and visitor from another planet, I plan on posting occasional observations on trivial cultural differences between NYC and Denver, with a strong emphasis on the “trivial” part. Think of it as a WWF match, in which both sides put up a lot of bluster, everyone screams, and the results are usually rigged.

I. To begin: Cars.

Out here in Denver everyone has a car. Most families have at least two. And they use them to go EVERYWHERE: they drive to work, to the store, even to the park to go for a run!

Case in point: a certain Someone Who Shall Remain Unnamed suggested we go out to a restaurant for dinner. We chose a place three blocks away from their house, and this someone suggested we take not one, but TWO cars, so that we could leave directly after and go our separate ways.

Remember the scene in the movie L.A. Story, where Steve Martin gets in his car to coast to the end of the block? Ahem. Meanwhile, in New York, I would consider a restaurant up to a mile and a half away to be within walking distance.

On the other hand, in NYC, it sometimes took me 45 minutes to ride the subway 5 miles home from work. I could run home faster: I know, because sometimes I did.

Verdict: It’s a draw. While NY’s solution is better for the health and environment, Denver’s transportation options spare one the “delight” of sitting next to the lady clipping her fingernails on the subway.

II. Next item up for consideration: Grocery store clerks.

The checkout clerks in NY are admittedly rather brusque and often don’t exchange a single word with their patrons, shoving change at you in a pile with nary a glance. When I first moved to NY, I thought this rather rude. Now I appreciate it for what it allows me to do: get in, buy my groceries, and get out in under 20 minutes. No small-talk required.

Last night at the store we had a very jovial fellow as a clerk, who slowed down our transaction to tell me about the conspiracies associated with each organic and/or unusual food product I was buying. Apparently, my purchases alone may have been enough to topple the U.S. government. This added at least 5 minutes to our interaction, which in NYC would be considered an eternity.

Verdict: Colorado wins. How awesome it is to have a quirky human being to sell you your produce! Hey, let’s be honest: I don’t have anywhere to be this instant, anyway.

III. And finally: Construction crews.

In New York, construction projects take a phenomenally long time to complete. I blame bloated, corrupt unions and the MTA (I have little idea if these are the actual culprits, but that’s whom everyone always blames for delays, and besides, it’s always a good idea to blame the MTA. Who would argue with you?).

As illustration, at one point in my sojourn in the NY metro area, I was living in Harrison, NJ. Most of my friends had newly moved to Brooklyn, so on my jaunts in to visit them I would take the NJ PATH train to the NYC subway system, wishing I could make my transfer at the then-shuttered Cortlandt (read: WTC) subway station. 

Admittedly, the city has bigger problems with that site than a closed subway station, but at the time of discussion its construction had yet to balloon out into The Forever, and there were posted signs advertising the station was to “open in September 2005.”

This closure added at least 30 minutes to my trip, which seemed like a Denver grocery store eternity, but was even more agonizing when September arrived and new signs went up…delaying the opening another few months. And then more appeared, delaying until the next season, and finally they stopped putting dates on the signs altogether. Eventually, I gave up and moved to Brooklyn myself, which was actually a rather bright idea. Especially since the WTC station IS STILL NOT OPEN.

Much like the 2nd Avenue subway line, which is now about, oh, 80 years overdue, I have a feeling the WTC site and station will be awkward and unfinished for years to come.

And in comparison? Downtown Denver is undergoing construction, tearing down the old State Judicial Building and Colorado History Museum/Historical Society (which I lovingly think of as “The Table,” and “A Great Skate Park” in my head).

"A Great Skate Park" and "The Table," both now gone.

The Judicial Building was dismantled piece by piece recently, leaving only a standing skeleton, and then officially demolished this past Sunday. I stopped by on Monday to take a photo, and on my drive by on Tuesday I saw the cleanup crew had already cleared out about half of the debris. The demolition project looks like it could be completed within the month. Glad I got my photo when I did!

And glad these guys got in their fun while they still could:

Fun in the Snow!

Meanwhile, the new History Colorado Center is going up swimmingly. In the few months since I noticed their having begun construction, one can see an actual building going up! Can you imagine? New Yorkers can't!

Verdict: Colorado. Hands down.

So our tally? Colorado: 2, NYC: 0, tie: 1.

Hey, I TOLD you this would be trivial.