Ghosts on National Train Day

Last Saturday, after a disappointing afternoon running errands in Manhattan, we descended into the subway system at Times Square to head home, and stumbled on an antique subway train on the tracks. The three-car train represented three different moments in the city’s subterranean history, and was full to brimming with excited passengers waiting for the doors to close and the journey to Grand Central Terminal on the shuttle line to begin. E and I deliberated for a moment before deciding a trip onboard was worth a slight detour from our route, and jumped into the R10 model car.

 Saturday was National Train Day, and we had gone to Grand Central that morning hoping to see the “Parade of Trains,” a gathering of antique trains on some of the tracks in the station, including the 20^th Century Limited. When we got there, the line to see the trains was 2-3 hours long, and they reportedly had to cut the line early to ensure that people in line would be able to get in. The antique subway train on the shuttle line was part of the festivities, but not a well-publicized one.

These chance encounters with historical objects are successful because they are surprising. In a city with as many layers of history as New York, it’s easy to forget about everything that has happened on the spot where you stand before you got here. Every day I walk on streets and work in buildings and ride through tunnels that are many, many decades old, and yet most of the time I’m more focused on what I need to pick up for dinner than I am thinking about the human drama that has played out on this set. And then I see a subway car from another era in a station that I regularly pass through, and it jars me out of the mundane.

Riding on a train allows you to understand it, and how it works, much better than looking at pictures, reading about them, or even boarding a train as it stands still. The conductors on Saturday were focused on running the trains, and there wasn’t any additional interpretive layer. Still, riders learned things firsthand: without air conditioning, subways were hot; they were noisy, because the windows were usually open to try to generate a breeze; for the same reason, they smelled; and riders in the past had a much more intimate experience with the subway tunnels thanks to those open windows.

At the New York Transit Museum (one of my favorite museums in a city of wonderful museums), you can board any of the trains I rode on Saturday as they stand inert on the tracks of a disused subway station-turned-museum. It’s a fun and interesting way to spend an afternoon, but it sort of feels like visiting ghosts in a forgotten place. Trains come alive when they are in motion. True, without interpretive labels you didn’t have the benefit of knowing when the trains were in service, or particulars about their design, technology, and construction, but most of those facts are immediately forgotten by all but the most devoted of train enthusiasts.

The NYTM takes several opportunities throughout the year to roll its stock onto the active tracks of the subway system and delight MTA riders. I have boarded the holiday “nostalgia train” in December, letting modern trains pass me on the platform while I waited anxiously for it to arrive, brandishing my camera gleefully as I rode to Rockefeller Center for some classic NYC holiday fun. But then, I planned my trip, and I felt like I was in on the joke. I loved watching the reactions of people on the platform as this ghost clambered into the station and people boarded a train they may have recognized from their childhoods. On Saturday, I got to experience that surprise and delight along with many of the other people on board the train.

I didn’t get to see the assembled trains at Grand Central, but I still got to celebrate National Train Day, and it was a lot of fun.

An Evening at the [Little] Orchestra: Disney’s Fantasia

Over the weekend, we went up to Lincoln Center to see the Little Orchestra Society performance of selections from Disney’s Fantasia with live orchestral accompaniment. My nephew (who alerted me to the upcoming show a few weeks ago) and his friend came into town on Friday and we headed uptown to Avery Fisher Hall.

I hadn’t heard of the Little Orchestra Society before this performance, but was impressed by their mission: “to build future audiences by presenting innovative concerts that incorporate multiple art forms to foster a deeper understanding and enjoyment of music.” They do a series of kid-friendly orchestra performances every year, and this New York City premiere of Fantasia was part of their 65-year legacy.

They played 6 pieces in total, with selections from both the 1940 animated film and the 2000 attempt. The orchestra was seated onstage with a large projection screen above them with the film spots playing. The conductor, Philip Mann, introduced each selection and gave some structure to the event, drawing comparisons between the composer’s and animator’s creative acts. It was wonderful to see the familiar scenes of centaurs, sorcerers, and firebirds combined with the force of a live orchestra backing them.

There was one technical hiccup: during “Pastoral Symphony”, the video reached a certain moment about 3 minutes in and restarted from the beginning. Twice. The orchestra, of course, kept playing, so we got to see the first three minutes of the animation 3 times with different music each time. It was annoying, yes, but also accidentally cool to see how the animation could work (sometimes really well!) with a different score. (As an aside, if you’d like to read about a character Disney has purposely excluded from recent releases of Fantasia, click here: Sunflower, the Centaur Disney Wants to Forget)

From what I can tell, this weekend’s performances were the Little Orchestra Society’s only planned Fantasia performances, but check out their 2013-2014 season for other interesting upcoming events.

Happy birthday, New York World’s Fair!

Today marks the 49th anniversary of the opening of the inaugural season of New York’s most recent World’s Fair, which ran for two seasons in 1964 and 1965. The fairgrounds also hosted the 1939-40 World’s Fair, and were earlier an ash dumping ground mentioned in The Great Gatsby.

The former fairgrounds (and the remnants they contain) remain one of my favorite places in the city, and the fair continues to fascinate me and capture my imagination. Soon I hope to get out to the ‘grounds and do a Now and Then comparison post, but for now, I’d like to recommend this promotional piece from Disney about their involvement in the fair (“It’s a Small World” was originally created for the Pepsi/UNICEF pavilion at the fair… and now you’ve probably got the song in your head. Sorry about that.), and this disappointingly watermarked footage from the fair.

If you like looking at old photos from theme parks and fairs, I’d also recommend Gorillas Don’t Blog, my go-to spot for a daily fix of such things.

Winter Winery Visits in Connecticut

This past weekend, E and I had plans to visit friends in Connecticut for dinner on Saturday. E likes to escape from the city — to “decitify,” as he says — regularly, and since we hadn’t disappeared since Christmas, we booked a hotel room and hopped in the car.

To kill time before we were due for dinner on Saturday, we decided to punctuate our drive north with visits to two wineries. For such a tiny state famous for its crappy soil, Connecticut has an unexpectedly robust wine industry. For my bachelerotte party, I was lucky enough to spend a day in a limo touring wineries with friends, and since then I’ve visited a bunch of other vineyards. This Saturday, we tried one new-to-us winery and revisited another.

The first place we stopped was McLaughlin Vineyards in Newtown. The property is a few miles off the highway in the middle of a residential area, but we found it pretty easily. We did a tasting ($10, with souvenir glass) and sampled 5 different wines, all good. The woman conducting the tastings told us about all of the classes, concerts, and programs at the winery. On Sundays in the summer they have live music under a tent in the fields, and people bring picnics and drink wine, which sounds like a pretty awesome use of a Sunday to me. She was very excited to support other Connecticut businesses (she served one of the reds we tried with a Connecticut-made chocolate, and had soda from a tiny soda company based in my hometown for sale in the shop). We also got to meet Misha, the winery dog, who seemed to have a pretty awesome life: sleeping by the fireplace, following her owner around, and making lots of [tipsy] new friends.

Unfortunately they were out of the Chardonnay we both liked until March. We took home a bottle of Vista Muse, a Seyval Blanc, instead, which I am pretty excited to enjoy with some seafood once the days are a little longer.

Our second stop was a return visit for me. We popped into the bustling tasting room at Haight-Brown Vineyards in Litchfield. We opted for the basic tasting ($9, no glass), since my companion can eat neither cheese nor chocolate, and grabbed a seat at the bar on the second floor. The servers here were a bit overwhelmed, and we had to wait a long time between samples. Everything we tried was good, we just ran out of time before we got to the end (and we weren’t super excited about the fruit wines, anyway). They felt bad that we didn’t have time to try everything and didn’t charge us for one of the tastings, which was nice.

We left with two bottles of the Picnic Red, which folks at dinner enjoyed, and a few bars of decent dark chocolate, because why not?

The rest of our weekend in Connecticut was spent hanging out with friends and their families, wandering through very old graveyards, and sleeping in at The Litchfield Inn, which had most of the charm of a New England bed and breakfast, but with private bathrooms and no forced communal meals (so it was great for me).

I’d like to turn more of our trips north into mini-vacations, and this was a good start to that. Next time we go to a winery, though, I’d rather have a picnic outside than have to huddle inside by a fireplace. Soon enough!

A Blizzard and Creamy Roasted Cauliflower and Potato Soup

We were supposed to visit a friend in Philadelphia this weekend, but a little storm called Nemo foiled our plans and canceled our bus. It was bittersweet — we were really looking forward to the trip, but a little forced downtime at home isn’t a bad thing.

Plus, stormy weather usually provides a perfect opportunity to try some recipes that otherwise might be too time consuming or complicated. This snow day, I decided to roast a bunch of vegetables I had in the fridge and try my hand at a creamy cauliflower soup. E always says that our soups all tend to be variations on minestrone, so I really wanted to break the mold.

It was definitely a success! This soup is rich, hearty, and perfect for cold, dark winter evenings. And, since you can roast up and puree basically any vegetables to serve as the base for it, it’s easy to sneak in some yummy nutrition AND clean out your fridge at the same time. I roasted the vegetables and made the soup the same day, but you could roast the veggies one night and make the soup the next if you wanted to do it on a weeknight.

Ingredients

• 1/2 an eggplant, cut into 1″ cubes
• 1/2 a zucchini, cut into 1″ cubes
• 3 carrots, cut into 1″ sections
• 3 red potatoes, cut into 1″ cubes
• 1 bulb of garlic
• 1/2 onion, chopped
• 5 cups of chicken or vegetable broth
• 1 head of cauliflower, chopped
• 2 Bay Leaves
• Parsley
• 4 tablespoons butter or margarine
• 2 cups of milk
• 6 tbsp of flour
• 1/2 cup of sour cream
• Olive Oil
• Salt and Pepper

Directions

1. Roast your vegetables. Heat your oven to 300° F. Cube your zucchini, eggplant, carrots, and potatoes*, toss them with olive oil, spread them on a foil-lined baking sheet, and sprinkle them with salt. Place the baking sheet in the oven. Wrap your bulb of garlic in tin foil and place in the oven as well. Bake for 1-1.5 hours, stirring periodically, until the vegetables are really soft. Remove from oven, and puree the eggplant, zucchini, and carrots in a food processor. Remove the garlic from its skin and set it aside with the potatoes.
2. Prepare your soup on the stovetop. Pour a little olive oil into a soup pot, and add the chopped onions to the pot. Cook on Medium for 2 minutes until the onions have some color. Add the chopped cauliflower and cook for 3 minutes. Add your broth, and the potatoes, garlic, and pureed vegetables from step 1. Add bay leaves and a generous amount of parsley, either fresh or dried. Bring to a boil and then reduce heat, simmering for about 30 minutes.
   
3. Prepare your cream sauce. While the soup is cooking, whisk together milk and flour. In a small saucepan, melt 4 tablespoons of butter or margarine, and then stir in the milk and flour mixture. It should thicken quickly. Add this sauce to the soup pot while it simmers.
4. Temper sour cream and serve. A few minutes before the soup is done boiling, spoon your sour cream into your serving dish. Ladle a few scoops of soup on top and stir so that the sour cream warms up without seizing up. When you’re ready to serve the soup, pour it into the serving dish and stir well.
5. Enjoy!

*We had leftover homefries from breakfast that we used instead of roasting fresh potatoes, but either would work.

A Return

With the temperatures finally dropping back into reasonable ranges, the last few weeks have been even busier than our frantic summer, with activities crammed into every weekend and a fair few weeknights. I am not complaining, but rejoicing in being motivated to do things for reasons other than Well-But-They-Have-Air-Conditioning. 

With the flurry of activity in my offline life, I’ve also found myself missing writing here. This space has been my notebook for daily goings-on and more momentous occasions alike, and I miss not only the act of writing but its product. 

So, I am back, just as the seasons change and I start spending more time inside. I’ve got a lot to fill you in on.

One year ago today…

We stood with family and friends to make each other promises and jump headfirst into the future. The year’s been hard, but not without its rewards. This week, we’re also celebrating our sixth dating anniversary, which is sort of crazy. We’ve come a long way together, and have many journeys yet to make. Here’s to them, and here’s to us.

All photos by Hart & Sol Photo.