Extreme Entertaining
This week might be called extreme entertaining. We have had 11 people for dinner in the last three days and 5 more tonight. It was all scheduled by accident, and since I never look at my calender, we didn’t even remember we were having people over last night until Sunday night, and didn’t remember we were having people over tonight until last night. Thus, instead of shopping for everything at the Saturday greenmarket, I have shopped every day since Friday, but since there’s no convenient greenmarket for me on Tuesdays (and I had to go uptown to pick up a piece of furniture for the Agent’s brother) I went to Fairway for the first time in a while.
It was awesome.
If you’ve never been to the UWS Fairway, I recommend it highly. It’s like “It’s a Mad Mad Mad World” meets crash-up derby meets the best supermarket in the country. Full contact shopping. A lot of the produce is sourced locally, even though they don’t advertise it necessarily and since their volume is so high, the prices are great. A few years ago, the Times did a price comparison on staples like milk, eggs and bread, and Fairway won far and away for quality and price. A nice combo.
When you get in the store, it’s a madhouse of crashing carts and strollers pushed by everybody from tiny UWS old ladies to uber-fashionable stroller moms to middle aged men staring at nutritonal information with an almost numb intensity. The first half of the store is more or less gourmet and includes all the refrigerated items except meat. The probably have the best cheese selection in the city in a supermarket, and among the best with cheesemongers included. The staff are curt, efficient, knowledgeable and don’t have any time for your shit. A sign over the deli counter advises you to fret less about the specific fat content of what you’re eating and ‘push yourself away from the table and go for a walk for cryin’ out loud’ (close, but not necessarily directly quoted).
Anyway, there will be four meals to catalogue for you, and I will get right on it as soon as the fourth has been cooked. I will leave you with a quick recommendation: Eve’s Cidery, West side of Union Square greenmarket Fridays and Saturdays. Their Autmn’s Gold cidery rocks, not too dry, but not really sweet, I can’t say enough good things about it. The Agent said he wanted to be sweeter, but it was just right for me.
Meanwhile, go to your local [greenmarket](http://cenyc.org/site/) or [farmers' market](http://www.localharvest.org/) and vote with your dollars!
Listening: [NPR](http://www.npr.org/)
