Matt and I did some driving during Christmas break. Quite a bit, actually. We finally, after almost 10 years, moved out of NYC. It involved not only an anticlimactic exit culminating in hours of Jersey traffic, but also countless hours packing our car chock full of everything we felt was worthy of making the trip. It was a liberating and slightly nauseating experience.

We drove 2,300 miles through PA, Ohio, and Missouri, narrowly missing the snowstorm I’m sure covered many of you back east. We then met up with the Mother Road, Historic Route 66 and drove through the heartland, across the Panhandle and into the Southwest. Our little car and all our worldly possessions headed up the mountain to Santa Fe, New Mexico on Tuesday, December 22rd. The following day we surprisingly found an adorable adobe house, were all starry-eyed at how this would never have been possible on Christmas Eve in NYC, and settled in for a dry, snowy Christmas.

Spicebush

I ate an acorn today and it tasted terrible. I had already worked my way through the shell and pulled out a bit of the meaty inside. As I bit in I could feel the astringency filling my mouth, and immediately I realized – I know what this tastes like! Of course this prompted spitting and cursing on the ground. I have been reading Stalking the Wild Asparagus, a foraging book by survivalist Euell Gibbons from 1962 to get back to my roots as a kid digging in the dirt and eating rotten acorns. So far so good.

If you haven’t been to the High Line yet I highly recommend going. Check out my recently published article in the Huffington Post.

Happy New Year! Holidays behind us (and soon resolutions as well), I am busying myself with my college final, set for Inauguration Day. Two days following I will be shipping off to Tokyo for two weeks! This somehow excuses my lack of updates.

The last time I posted I was making Christmas dinner. After Christmas we went on a road trip with friends from New York down to Tennessee, and celebrated New Year’s Memphis-style. There was The King, blues, luscious barbecue, and good company.

I was looking down the barrel of yet another totally blown afternoon at a second-hand in Brooklyn, this time at the Brooklyn Flea. Apparently hipsters in this borough are made not born, because their rejects certainly aren’t worth the elbow deep rummaging in BO and stale cigarette smoke. I will reserve my thrifty shopping to up-or-out of state.

The last five days for me have been filled with programmers, Mickey Mouse, gators, and guns in where else but the sunny, now blue state of Florida. Matt’s RubyConf in Orlando gave me the opportunity to revisit as an adult the place where dreams are made. After three days of theme parks and visits backstage at Disney, I’d had my fill of screaming children, long lines, and well, sugar. On our last day we headed out of Orlando to find some of the more backwater Florida entertainment. Simply put: guns and gators.

I enjoy being one of the youngest in a room. I enjoy being one of five in a room who decided against wearing black. I further enjoy it when the person who one-ups me is a woman wearing a pink Egyptian-cotton button down (that ends up amazingly being an old Gap purchase), and a pair of bright red corduroys. I also love food (oh yeah?), chefs who go to great pains to source local and fresh ingredients, and as many small appetizer portions as I would like in no particular order. Dessert mid-meal? Sure, knock yourself out. So we did. In case it isn’t obvious by now, this is my idea of a meal saved up for.

Short answer: Probably. For me saving money usually means something along the lines of learning the ins and outs of egg certification to liberate myself from the daunting task of selecting a carton and not getting ripped off. I have never been an out-of-my-way (as in fight to the death) bargain shopper. At Costco, you don’t need to.

Five Points has been a mainstay almost since its inception. It has all the makings of a classic – a dynamic couple at its helm, a warm, unique and lively interior, and a daily (sometimes seasonally) rotating menu of fresh (and when possible local and organic) ingredients prepared by passionate and inspired hands. The duo is restaurateur and chef Mark Meyer and wife and partner Vicki Freeman.

The restaurant opened in 1999 with a daily rotating menu. At the time, local was a new menu concept in New York. As Five Points gained popularity, the menu was scaled back to a seasonal rotation. A couple years ago the owners revived the daily change-up, perhaps due to neighborhood competition and the increasing popularity of market-driven fare. The new menu’s staples remain the same (cavatelli, burgers, and baked pasta) but are refreshed with inspiration from the nearby Greenmarkets.

If you like food, live in a walking city, feel personally punished by the illusion of good quality and diverse produce, despise Whole Foods and other overpriced Organic marts, and long for your childhood pick-n-patch, you’ve considered visiting a pick your own. OK. That was my own personal moment. More likely it sounds novel and fun.

What do you imagine? My visual goes something like this: sweeping hills, quaintly terraced vegetable patches, produce so beautiful, flavorful, and cheap you feel like you’re stealing the farmer’s children, and trees with sagging limbs under the weight of sweet, plump fruit. Growing up I picked a lot of fruit from our local farm in sub-rural Connecticut, and would leave red-faced from eating raspberries off the bush and dragging a bag full of apples. I decided to test the fruit and vegetable landscape in upstate New York.