home for the holidays

I'm getting a jump start on one of my New Year's resolutions: to post regularly in my blog again. Starting with today's entry, What I Did On My Christmas Vacation.

We drove. Traffic was bad on the way up to Delaware before Christmas, easy up to Staten Island on Christmas Day, and a slice of hell coming home yesterday. Some of the worst traffic I have ever seen. It was so bad that eventually we pulled out the map and left I-95, and found the state road just as backed up. Probably it was full of other people fleeing 95 just like us. We expected to get home about 8:30 and actually got in just before midnight.

We saw snow! Both Delaware and Staten Island had had heavy snowfalls a few days before we got there -- 17 inches in DE! -- and there was still plenty of snow on the ground when we arrived. It got warm and rainy and all melted off while we were up there, but still. That was the first "white Christmas" I've seen since I can remember.

We ate Sri Lankan food. It's a lot like Indian, with a lot of coconut. Apparently there's a Sri Lankan community on Staten Island. (For those nearby, the Sri Lankan restaurants are all together on Victory, in walking distance of the ferry.) The place we went to, called Dosa Garden, served mostly Indian with a Sri Lankan page at the back of the menu. I read on chowhound that they specialize in dosas. Thus the name, I suppose. We had pittu, cakes of dark brown rice with coconut, served with hot spiced coconut milk. And chicken kothu roti, which was chicken, onion and a dosa, all chopped together and sauteed, and served with sambal. We didn't realize the chicken had a dosa in it, so we also got a dosa. I'm pleased to report that the dosa at Spice & Curry or Green Leaf are just as good as at Dosa Garden in NY. Go Triangle!

We saw Sita Sings the Blues on the big screen at the IFC center in Manhattan. We didn't spend much time in the city; just rode the ferry in, went up to the movie theater, then took the ferry back to Staten Island. We spent way more time in transit than we did at the movie, which must be breaking some kind of rule of city life. I didn't mind, it was great to see the movie like that (even with the Amazing Talking Audience, this time perpetrated by two chatty old ladies who I think knew the director somehow). And just walking to and from the subway we got to see a few blocks of Manhattan.

We learned that lots of New Yorkers have the same gripe with the iPhone map that we did: you can't fine tune the directions, for instance it may try to put you on a bus and you can't make it give you subway directions instead. So it's very frustrating if you know basically what you want to do but can't remember some detail, like the location of the subway stop (or the exit number you want off the turnpike, and it keeps sending you a different way). On the bright side, the phone has the subway schedule with times, which was a big help. And it even has rudimentary drawings of buildings -- just the basic shapes -- which I think would be really really useful if I were lost in the city.

We went back to the Russian grocery near Georg's mom's house. There must be a sizeable Russian community on Staten Island because the store is a full sized supermarket. At least as big as the Red & White on Club & Roxboro in Durham. We went once before and didn't buy anything, I just took photos. This time we had a cooler so we stocked up. We bought:

• cheese pierogies (the sign said pierogies but the receipt calls them "vareniki with farmer cheese")
• pork & beef dumplings
• lamb dumplings (the receipt says "manti handmade 10 pieces")
• lithuanian cheese (the receipt says "kastromskoy"). We have no idea what it's going to taste like, there was a whole case of cheese named after former Soviet countries & we picked one at random.
• fresh crepes and farmer cheese to make blintzes. They had a wide variety of farmer's cheese, many of them labeled "Amish." Are the Amish known for farmer's cheese? They also had a huge variety of yogurt, kefir and feta cheese. We didn't buy any because we can get all that back home (even the same brands of yogurt).
• a couple of items from the amazing wall of sausage If you count bologna there had to be 50 different kinds. We got "kielbasa moskovskaya" which I guess means Moscow-style kielbasa. And a little tube of goose liver pate.
• a couple of teas for a friend who always serves tea to his guests & clients, and I think he will have fun offering people Russian tea. We got chamomile and one called "linden" on the signage and receipt, but "lime" on the tiny English-language sticker on the box. The picture on the box doesn't look at all like lime. Who knows what it actually is.
• a package of bialys. Which aren't Russian at all, but we always bring bialys back from NY and we didn't have time to go to a bakery.

We also looked at these beautiful frozen cakes with lots of layers, but decided that if we were getting the blintzes, we didn't need cake too. And we skipped the horseradish soda because we only wanted to buy things we genuinely wanted to eat. I do have a desire to try horseradish soda, but they only sell a big bottle. And besides, I don't even like regular soda very much.

While I was browsing the teas, trying to figure out what to get for my friend, a short, rotund old lady kind of pushed me out of the way (no physical contact was made but she definitely took over the space) and started grabbing boxes of tea while muttering to herself in Russian. It sounded like she was reminding herself of the kinds of tea to get. Mostly she got rose hip. She must have taken 6 boxes. It was kind of cute. I guess she really needed tea.