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LJ and I just spent 3 days in New York, and except for the heat/humidity, it was glorious.  We arrived at the Mansfield Hotel on Wednesday afternoon.  It’s a wonderful little boutique hotel on 44th Street across from the Algonquin between 5th Avenue and 6th (or Avenue of the Americas).  It is a prime location being equidistant from prime shopping and the theatre district, and I plan to partake of a little of both.  The room is roomy (for New York) and the bathroom is great.

Mansfiel Hotel

In the M Bar

After drinks, we go to dinner at Osteria al Doge.  It’s a wonderful little Italian place on 44th that is really busy for a Wednesday night.   I had Salmon alla Griglia which was perfectly cooked, and LJ ahd Ravioli Spinaci.  He said it was wonderful. 

After dinner we walked to Grand Central Station and got our Metro cards so we could take the subway like locals while we’re here.  We jumped on and went downtown to 86th to our favorite little bar in NY where the wait people sing Broadway tunes between slinging drinks.  It was fun, but we called it a fairly early evening after all the travel and hubbub of the first day.

Thursday morning we had breakfast at a little restaurant called Un, Deux, Trois.  It was a pretty little place, but breakfast was really pedestrian and cost a fortune.  I think we’ll find a more down home place tomorrow.  We then head uptown and shopping at the MOMA store.  We roam Rockefeller Plaza and go into the NBC store so I can buy a 30 Rock t-shirt.  As we walk back down 5th Avenue, I decide I haven’t brought the right shoes, so I go into Nine West and buy another pair.  I know, we have Nine West in Dallas.  But it just feels different in New York!

It’s time to have lunch at Le Bernardin.  I have been anxiously waiting for this for months.  Eric Ripert is one of the finest chefs in the world, and this is going to be a world class experience.  And it doesn’t disappoint!  Lunch is a prix fixe, 3 course meal.  My first course was barely seared shrimp with mache and wild mushroom salad with shaved fois gras and white balsamic vinaigrette.  LJ had barely cooked slivered scallops in a lime coconut sauce with cilantro.  They were both simply magic.  I could have stopped there and been happy.  But, no.  My main course was baked wild striped bass with a corn canneloni in a light perigord sauce.  Everything was so light it fairly floated.  The flavors just sort of lingered on the tongue.  LJ had crusted red snapper with zucchini, mint and coriander compote in a rich citrus broth.  Finally, desserts were so elegant and delicious.  They are titled by the food that is featured.  I had “Pear” and LJ had “Hazelnut.”  Pear consisted of a cinnamon caramel parfait, liquid pear, smoked sea salt, and fromage blanc sorbet.  Amazing!  I have no idea how it was done, but the “liquid pear” was a little grape looking thing that when you bit into it, there was a pear explosion in your mouth.  “Hazelnut” was a gianduja cream with Oregon hazelnuts (which was kind of like a hazelnut mousse) and honey banana brown butter ice cream.  I don’t think words can do it justice.

After that lunch, it seems like nothing could top the day, but we are seeing Denzel Washington and Viola Davis in Fences that night.  It was amazing, devastating, the best play I’ve ever seen, which is saying a lot considering I’ve see Ian McKellan and Helen Mirren on stage.  I have never cried so hard watching a play.  I’m sure Viola will win a Tony.  What a day we’ve had! 

Friday morning we slept a little later and did a little more walking around town before getting ready for lunch at Bobby Flay’s Mesa Grill.  Mesa Grill has a really fun vibe with colorful walls and table linens and a moderately noisy atmosphere.  We start with Margaritas - LJ has the Mesa Grill Margarita and I have a White Peach Margarita.  Yummy.  Our appetizer is Rough Cut Tuna Nachos with Habanero Mango Hot Sauce and Avocado Crema.  It was really like a tuna tartare with gorgeous raw tuna with the two sauces and homemade tortilla chips on the side.  Wonderful!  LJ’s main course was Cornmeal Crusted Chile Relleno with roasted eggplant, manchego cheese, sweet red pepper sauce and balsamic vinegar.  I had a Pressed Roasted Pork Sandwich with grilled red onion, arugula ancho mayonnaise and Southwestern fries.  For dessert we shared a blueberry tart which consisted of lime custart in a very crisp shell topped with whipped cream and a crushed fresh blueberry sauce.  Outstanding!  All I can say is it’s a good thing you walk 5 miles a day in New York.

After lunch we went to Chelsea Market.  This market is like a New York mall with lots of stores under on roof covering a couple of city blocks.  It was bustling and the stores were wonderful.  We particularly liked the Italian food market.

  After spending a couple of hours wandering Chelsea Market we head back to the hotel to rest up before going to see Stacey Kent.

Birdland is a great place to see jazz!  It’s an intimate club but it serves full dinners (if you want and you haven’t just eaten everything in sight at Bobby Flay’s) or just a cheese plate or snacks.  We were seated right at the edge of the stage.  Stacey was, as usual, impeccable.  She did about half of her songs in either French or Portuguese.  Her new CD is called Reconte-moi and is done entirely in French.  It’s just lovely, but harder to relate to when you can’t understand the lyrics.  Still, she is an amazing singer and we loved it.

We leave on Saturday after having been excited, entertained, and exhausted by New York.  But we know we’ll be back!

We started the day with breakfast at a little neighborhood boulingerie on King’s Road-coffee and ham and cheese croissants.  We then made our way to the tube to Waterloo Pier to buy tickets to a riverboat cruise down the Thames to Greenwich.  The weather was picture perfect, partly sunny and a cool breeze.  The tour guide gave us the history of London on The Thames as we motored slowly down the river.  I liked the Mayflower Pub which commemorates the place where the Mayflower ship launched for America.  We de-boated in Greenwich about lunch time.  We found a local pub and had fish & chips and a cold lager. (They actually serve it cold now.)

After lunch we took the boat back and got off at the Tower of London stop.  We had done the Tower tourist stuff on our first trip to London years ago, so we just took a couple of photos and tubed back to Sloane Square.  We stopped at a market and bought food for the flat - eggs and streaky bacon, beer and wine.  All of the essentials. 

We also stopped in a stationary store and bought a card to write a message to Stacey Kent and Jim Tomlinson.  She is a great jazz singer and he is a sax and flute player and their music is what caused us to make this particular trip.  We’ll see them perform tonight in celebration of our 40th wedding anniversary.  We wrote a note in the card saying how happy we were to be able to be here in London seeing them on our special occasion, and we asked them to play our song, “Never Let Me Go.”

We took the tube one full hour to Hornschurch and then walked another 25 minutes to the Queen’s Theatre.  We were pretty glowing by the time we arrived, but boy was it worth it!  Stacey and Jim and group were truly awesome!  They were more improvisational than the last time we saw them in the States.  And the highlight of the evening was when Stacey made a beautiful tribute to us and sang our song.  We both sat with tears running down our faces.  What a miraculous evening.  We made the tube trip back in a kind of romantic haze.

Oh, by the way, we heard on our walk home from the tube station that Michael Jackson has died.

It’s new year’s eve, and I’m finishing out the year exactly where I want to be - with LJ at the lake. It’s sunny, in the 50’s, and just beautiful. I’ve been pondering the year soon to be past, and like the others, there have good times and not so good.

We started the year on a very sad note, with our life-long friends Dot and Neill English dying within one day of each other in January. It was unexpected, untimely, and heartbreaking. They were only in their 70’s, and it was ironic that they died one day apart. They were inseparable in life; it’s only fitting that their end was the same.

In March, we celebrated my brother’s birthday with him and his wife here at the lake. It was a lovely weekend and made me very aware of how it seems Steve and I grow closer each year. It’s nice to have that kind of relationship with a brother.

April brought a huge thrill for LJ and me. One of our favorite jazz singers, Stacey Kent, and her husband, jazz saxophonist Jim Tomlinson, came to Edmond, Oklahoma. They headline Ronnie Scott’s in London and Birdland in New York City, and here they were coming to the University of Central Oklahoma of all places! We grabbed reservations and hightailed it. And they did not disappoint. They put on a beautiful show, and we met them and got CD’s signed after the show. If you’re not familiar with them, I highly recommend them.

In May, we took one of the trips a lifetime to Italy with LJ’s sister, Janet. We went to Rome, Tuscany and Bellagio. It was a beautiful journey and it was really good to spend it with Janet. I loved Rome, but San Gimignano and the surrounding area is still my favorite. I will say, though, that my only disappointment with Bellagio was that I didn’t run into Mr. Clooney. I’m sure he’s disappointed, too.

June brought our 39th wedding anniversary. We spent it at the lovely W Hotel with dinner at Lola. I still can’t believe it’s been that long. In some ways it only seems like a few years. I’m ready for many more.

October was a huge month. First, you know if you read this blog that October brought Hurricane Ike which wiped out Bolivar Peninsula and Crystal Beach. It still makes me tear up to think about it. However, we went with the Barnetts to Lake Murray, Oklahoma and had a wonderful time with them like we always do. We’re already talking about trying to get back to Galveston next year even though Crystal Beach is gone. And finally, we had the Hawkins cousins’ reunion at Country Woods Inn in Glen Rose. What a blast. And what a month!

November brought the best news of the year - the election of Barack Obama and Joe Biden. Even though the economy is tanking and the Middle East is teetering on annihilation, there is hope for the future.

I am finishing the year bittersweet. We spent Christmas with my family in Kansas City. While it was really wonderful to be with my Mom and my sisters and their families to celebrate, it is just too difficult to witness how Alzheimer’s destroys a human being from the core out. My Dad is no longer a person I know. It is painful to have your father ask what your name is and whether or not you finished college. I can only hope that this doesn’t drag on for long. As he said when we were there, “I am lost.” I don’t think he’ll be found again on this earth.

But life goes on, and tomorrow will be a new year. It will bring good and bad as it did this year, but it always brings new hopes. And that’s what keeps us all going. HAPPY NEW YEAR, EVERYONE.

My favorite new year’s dinner, Chili and Cornbread.

Beef Chili

3 T. vegetable oil
3 lb. ground chuck
3 yellow onions
8 garlic cloves
1 jalapeno
1/2 cup chili powder
2 T. cumin
1 T. oregano
2 t. coriander
1 1/2 cups lager beer
2 1/2 cups beef broth
1 can (28 oz.) crushed tomatoes
1 can kidney beans (rinsed and drained)
1 can pinto beans (rinsed and drained)

Brown ground chuck in 2 tablespoons oil. Drain thoroughly. While meat is draining, saute onions, garlic and jalapeno in remaining oil. Add meat back to pan and add remaining ingredients (through beans) and stir completely. Simmer over low heat for at least one hour or more if desired.