Manicotti, Snow, Fake Meat & Friends

Last night we took Jerry's mom out for dinner for Italian food. I like Italian food but I rarely choose to eat it so I was looking forward to some manicotti with a glass of red wine. As it turned out, the restaurant we ended up at didn't have their liquor license and that put a damper on my enjoyment. I indulged myself in chocolate torte for desert to make up for it. One thing I did enjoy though was that when you order "man-nah-got" in Jersey they don't correct your pronunciation and say, "yes, man-ne-kawt-tee" like they do in California.

My inner clock is still on California time. My usual bedtime is somewhere around 11:00 pm and 7:00 am. Now I'm going to bed at around 2:00am getting up around 10:00 am. It seems to be working except I want to get up early tomorrow to head into NYC. We are meeting my eldest brother for lunch in The Village where he works. I last saw him 4 years ago and I had only met him once in my life before that when I was 21 years old. He is my half brother, my father's oldest child. I grew up with a picture of him in our family photo album but had never met him. Well, I had never met my father either for that matter until I was 17 years old. He and my mother had divorced when she was pregnant with me. I think I've blogged about that before. Anyway, this brother was looking for our father as he hadn't seen him since he was a young child and when he found him, he discovered that rather than being an only child, he actually had 4 siblings. These would be my father's two youngest sons along with my brother and myself. Several years after I met my father this brother came to Chico and I remember making him a big vegetarian Indian food feast. I don't remember much about our initial visit except that he had long curly blond hair and I thought he was quite good looking and sexy. I think he and his girlfriend stayed for a couple of hours. After that we lost contact for almost 30 years. Then we hooked up again 4 years ago and Jerry and I met him and his wife for lunch in NYC. He is a psychotherapist like I am but what really amazed me is that I have a picture of him and me sitting together from that day and I swear if I shaved my head the two of us would look like twins!

In my last post I mentioned the snow flurries. This morning we woke up to 5 inches of white covering everything! These are pictures of our rental car, my footprints and the trees outside my mother-in-law's apartment.





We drove into Weehawken today and visited with our good friend Alice and her family. It was a nice visit and I would have loved to stay and eaten dinner with them (her homemade, baked macaroni and cheese) but we already had a dinner date with an old friend of Jerry's who he hadn't seen in 30 years. He wanted to take us out to dinner and Jerry had already warned him that we eat vegetarian (although we've been eating a little fish for the last 4 years or so). Anyway, when he was diagnosed with diabetes awhile back he had drastically changed his diet, started exercising and lost 80 pounds. He is totally into vegetarian food so he knew right where to take us--one of his favorite restaurants called Veggie Heaven in the town of Teaneck.

He had described this restaurant to Jerry as vegetarian; Chinese; Buddhist; and Kosher. Chinese food is usually one of my very least favorite foods but this place sounded interesting. Interesting it was. And odd. Never in my wildest dreams... Here are the names of a few (out of probably over 100 offerings) on the menu. Mango Chicken; Sizzling Beef with Black Pepper Sauce; Beef Noodle Soup; Chicken, Shrimp & Scallop Noodle Soup; Five Flavored Crispy Golden Eel; Almond Chicken; Curried Chicken Noodle Soup. The menu went on and and on like this. Not only were the number of choices daunting, the names of the dishes put up a roadblock in my mind. This place is 100% vegetarian but is totally based on fake meat products! I've tended to avoid the fake meat products for the over 30 years that I've eaten vegetarian (really, the tofurky is a quirk.) I finally ordered something called a Green Boat. For the appetizer, our host ordered 10 different types of sushi rolls. Organic brown rice sushi with these big hunks of fake fish arrived at our table. I wish I would have thought to take pictures of this stuff! When my meal arrived it was really quite yummy and although the portions were very large, I eat all of it. It consisted of crispy green fried noodles with vegetables and seitan. Seitan is something I'm familiar with and rather than being like some of the other fake meats that have the consistency and taste of meats like ham and pork, this is more like tofu or tempeh and is quite normal for me. After I finished this off I ordered some mango pudding for dessert. Our meal and visit with Jerry's old friend was pleasant and unique and I really appreciated his gracious effort to feed and please us. He was a very sweet man and we headed home with full bellies and happy hearts.