Good Old days part I and Princeton

So its been a while since I last posted. Its been a wonderful couple of weeks with friends around in the city and Princeton. Princeton is a beautiful campus with old castle like buildings all over the campus. The other good thing about the university is the downtown area. A place where you can find everything, starting from branded clothes to different kind of restaurants (cheap and chic), and bars. Even though it was summer time, you could see plenty of people walking around enjoying the sunny day. It was great few days that I spent there walking around the campus and enjoying the atmosphere. Here are few pictures from the trip.

Wandering around stony brook

I have been busy for past week or so doing some random wandering around people. One of those wandering took me to "Gargiulose", a famous Italian bakery place right by the St. James train station. I love going to bakery stores, especially the smell and the variety of colors always fascinate me. They had a very good collection of baked stuff and at least from the look of it they were delicious. Anyways, I ended up having apple strudel, a generous treat by my friend D. It was okie and I have had better strudel in past. May be it was just that piece or may be it was just that one dish and I shouldn't be basing my opinion only on one that strudel. Anyways its for people to go and decide for themselves.

Another of those wandering was on bike around Stony Brook village on a beautiful bright sunny day. Sitting in front of the lake under the tree shades with warm breeze and a huge cup of melting butter pecan ice cream was simply peaceful. Flipped through pages of "the book". There were many other family and couples enjoying nice sunny weather. One old couple were having lunch and they had gotten entire dinner set and even a flower pot, the one that we keep on the dining table. It was nice and at the same time hilarious.  

 The day ended with nice chicken pasta with rosemary and white wine.

Brooklyn Flea and Food walk

Last saturday, I helped my friends move to a new place. It was a nice experience, driving in the back of Uhall and hiding from the passerby, tiring but at the same time good for rusted bones/muscles. Sunday  was the day of  another adventure to the city. Though it took me a while to get out of the bed in the morning coz my body was still paining from the last days labor. Anyways, it was just a matter of pushing myself out of the bed. So in couple of hours I was there in the city  with my camera, music, cash and my phone (with GPS). So the first destination was Brooklyn Flea market in Williamsburg. It mostly features hundreds of top vendors of antique and repurposed furniture, vintage clothing, collectibles and antiques, as well as a tightly curated selection of jewelry, art, and crafts by local artisans and designers, and not to forget some of the most delicious fresh food and drinks. When I walked out of the subway it was sweltering hot and way to bright for my eyes. Next time sunglasses and sunscreen. Anyways walking around the market was a lot of fun. Looking at some of the antique pieces and work of art was extremely fascinating. Some of things that really attracted my attention was maps of city and boroughs, old furnitures, glass frames, and old records. I would have bought some of the stuffs only if they were bit affordable. Just to give you an idea, an old stool which could barely handle the weight of a book was priced for 48 dollars. Having said that if you are a collector and walk around with loads of dough then you might want to visit Brooklyn Flea. 

So the whole round of the market took me barely 30 minutes and the things that kept me busy for another couple of hours was food. The market has number of food stalls selling from hot dogs and pizza to different kinds of drinks. I started with "Asiadog", one of the most famous hot dog place with an assian/tropical twist to it. I had chicken hotdog with mango, marinated onion and peanut topping. It was blend of sweet and sour tastes and definitely way better than just traditional hotdogs without toppings. I cooled off myself with homemade raspberry lemonade while I chucked down the hotdog. 

The next was roasted garlic bread. So basically they had roasted whole garlic which they squeezed on to a slice of home baked bread and added a  drizzle of olive oil on top. Even though I don't like garlic that much it was simply delicious. I never knew just roasted garlic and bread would taste this great. By this time I was a bit full so I decided to lay down for some time to settle the food down. In the meantime I flipped through the pages of "circle of reason" by Amitav Ghosh. 

The next round of food was roasted corn with chili flakes and butter. I was having corn after such a long time. Last time I had corn was during my first visit to India way back in 2006. Anyways it wasn't as great as the one I had at home which my aunt baked in real fire, and not the artificial oven. 

Before coming here, people highly recommended me to have Porchetta sandwich. Porchetta is boneless pork roast of  italian culinary tradition. I had the first bite and the first word that resonated in my head was awesome. The savory and moist taste of pork was something that I had never tasted before. I took my time enjoying the taste and imprinting it in my memory.

To end the food marathon, which by the way was taking a toll on my stomach, I went for the the Dolce De lechewith donut with almond crust by "Dough from Bed-Stuy".

 It was sweet and creamy something that I was looking for to wash down my palate. By this time I was all tired, a bit dehydrated and was looking for a place to just enjoy the breeze. So the place to visit was Pier 17 at Fulton Street.

Pier 17 is south street seaport with a great view of Brooklyn bridge and definitely crowded by number of bars with great atmosphere if you are in the mood to just chill. So there I was sitting with a glass of Stella with a great view of Brooklyn bridge and nice cold breeze. It was a bit crowded with tourists but it didn't affect me a lot. A nice place to unwind yourself from the sweltering summer with cold drinks. In the meantime I flipped through few pages of "The Book". Time flew by very quickly and before I could have realised it was 5 in the evening. 

By this time I was energised enough to go for another round of walk around the Chelsea market. Honestly, I was started to feel like having some ice cream. So from fulton street to 14th street and couple of blocks walk before I was in chelsea market. A nice feeling as they have arrays of places serving various kinds of food, from seafood to italian to different kinds of baked food. I finally ended up having hazelnut ice-cream from L'arte del gelato. From my experience, it wasn't one of the best ice-cream that I had considering the amount of money I ended up paying for it. It was "just" decent. I have realised that food from vendors and small restaurants are way much better than that from expensive and chic restaurants. You pay fortune and what you get is not what I would appreciate. The food connoisseur may differ. I am a foodie and I love food and for someone like me vendors, roadside restaurants are great place to visit and eat.

Walked back to Pennstation and took 7:25 train back to Stony brook. I would have like to stay longer.