First flowers but not in my yard

What I'm cooking - Salmon with warm lentil and arugula salad

My boss, both of my bosses actually, are obsessed with my eating habits and quite frankly, I am sick of it. But one of them is on a lentils kick and there were a few recipes with lentils in my magazines over the past few months so I tried this one from Real Simple. The salmon was perfect. The dressing for the lentil salad was a little bland for my taste but added a little salad dressing the next day and it was better.

Hot chocolate and a new ceiling?

I went to a reading at Boston Public Library about a new book on Sacco and Vanzetti. It was in a room I'd never been in before (Orientation Room). Reading was kind of meh...subject obviously interesting but it felt very term paperish. First thing I noticed was the ceiling and kept getting distracted by it during one of the sections of endless quotes the author was reading. Remember that from college? You'd basically string all these quotes together with a sentence or two in between of your own thoughts. We didn't go out for a cocktail afterwards; just grabbed coffee and hot chocolate at Dunkin Donuts. Yummy.

Upper Crust Pizza

Best ever. This is from Newburyport branch - mushrooms, sun-dried tomatoes and garlic. I don't know what these people do to the crust but you can eat half a small pizza and don't feel like you did. You can get slices of cheese, pepperoni or pizza of the day for about $3.50. This small pizza was about $11; all drinks (except beer and wine) are $1.

Krumkake

You need a special device to make these lovely little Scandanavian version of a pizzelle. They are thinner and lighter in texture than pizzelles.

I am lucky enough to have found my device in an antique store several years ago and got the recipe from my mother. We are Italians so don’t ask me how she got her machine, much less ever heard of these things.

Anyway, the recipe is very simple – flour, sugar, eggs, butter. milk and flavoring (I used almond for these). You always end up throwing the first one out since it preps the surface a bit for the rest of the cookies but almost always falls apart when you remove it from the iron. You have to experiment with how long you leave it over the heat (recipe says 1-1.5 minutes but I ended up at 2-2.5 to get the darker color. My smoke detectors are super sensitive so, of course, they all started screeching at some point.

These came out a little thicker and heavier but I think a little more milk would solve that problem.

City Bar, Lenox Hotel, Boston

You know this is a good sign, right? I don't usually do much enhancing on my photos but did turn this one into black and white.

But on to the report on The City Bar, 61 Exeter Street, Boston. When we first walk into City Bar on a Wednesday night, it is jam packed with 30-somethings. Hostess tells us it’s a private party that should be breaking up soon. So we swim through the crowd towards the bar getting these dismayed looks from men who will barely move an inch to let us pass even after we say “Excuse me.”

Man, oh, man. It was just hours after I read the suggested maximum daily intake strong spirits is 1.5 ounces and the disclaimer that you cannot save up your servings for the weekend and I get the big gulp manhattan. Come on, it’s prepared it a large iced tea sized glass; what else can you call it? It’s binge drinking any way you look at it. But folks, the manhattan on the menu lists Old Overholt Rye and sweet vermouth as the ingredients so how can I quibble. There are even a few (two?) non-vodka martinis but there are the usual chocolate martini type concoctions in abundance.

No snaps of the food which is a shame. I get yakking with my friend and get presented with the fig/duck flatbread and all that silly stuff is forgotten. This just might be the best cacaphony of flavor (sweet fig, salty duck) and texture (gooey fig and chewy duck) that I've had in a while (until two nights later when I get the polenta with wild mushrooms from Tavalo in Dorchester (not even a photo of the cocktail from that outing). Prices are reasonable for the 'hood ($11-12 cocktails and appetizers were about the same.

Wow, it really is pretty.

How did this happen? I opened the window at work the other day; yes, dead of winter and I have to open the windows at my office because it's been 80 degrees in there for several weeks and no one cares enough to do anything about it. I'm not exaggerating. I call the boiler room and tell them where my office is and they say they know and tell me the temperature on their monitors. So I've been opening the windows in rain and sleet and hail and snow. And low and behold, the tree outside my window has just a dusting of snow on the branches and, even though these pictures don't really do it justice, it almost took me breath away.