My horoscope yesterday said I was "no stranger to being strange." I guess that is so.


I had a little blizzard of busy-ness last week. I have so much to catch up on! I spent Saturday & Sunday in NYC with my friend I met when I was a Bob's Big Boy waitress at age 17. We were in each other's weddings and, despite our distance, have managed to stay in touch for 25 years. Cool, huh?

My friend, L, was born in Hong Kong and speaks fluent Cantonese, making her the perfect friend to go to Chinatown with. She had her list and an empty roller suitcase to tote her haul of shopping. She is an amazing shopper, haggling, finding better deals. Her heritage and bilingualism got us into back rooms for better deals on the knock-off merchandise lining Canal & Mott Streets.

She took me into the Wen-Wah Market where she was planning to pick up some delicacies. I was amazed with the things that are considered normal to eat by the Chinese. I saw sea cucumbers, which are kinda creepy looking, and bins of baby octopi and teeny tiny shrimp. There were piles of featherless wings and heads and duck feet. There were beef tendon balls and tongue. Other items, labeled in Chinese, were equally curious and queasy to me as a very American gastronomer.

We ate breakfast in the surprisingly large Grand Harmony and ate shrimp rice crepes, pork dumplings, and steamed roast pork buns, which were all delicious. I'd never been in a Chinese restaurant for breakfast and had never considered how their breakfast foods might be different from their lunch and dinner foods. There was little difference that I perceived.


The night before we considered a variety of other ethnicities for dinner, mostly all on 9th Avenue: Pakistani, Thai, Turkish, Spanish, Brazilian, Italian, Korean, Japanese, Mexican, and Indonesian. I had Mexican for lunch, so we passed on that. We were planning on Chinatown in the morning, so I only glanced over the Asian options. I'm saving my first Brazilian restaurant experience for another party. And while we were standing on the corner debating, the John-Corbett-look-alike bass player from the zydeco band in The Delta invited us in. So Cajun it was - and delicious too.

The cutie bass player stopped by our table on his break and introduced himself, Skip. He and I both went to Kent State in the 80's. He is scheduled to appear on David Letterman on the 26th of this month playing bass with Steve Martin on banjo. We told him we expected a shout out on the show. So if you see him, let me know, would you have followed him into The Delta for a margarita?