All My Love To Long Ago

"I might have to wait. I'll never give up. I guess it's half timing and the other half's luck. Wherever you are, whenever it's right, you'll come out of nowhere and into my life... I just haven't met you yet." -- Michael Buble

Old things fascinate me and I've spent most of my life trying to figure out why. Is it the byproduct of growing up in a disposable culture? Is it sentimental? Is it part of the engineering mindset to appreciate things designed to withstand the test of time? Is it a consequence of always wondering "why?" Am I just an old soul? Whatever it is, I can't walk around an antique structure without thinking of people treading the same path a century earlier, and I spent far too much of my childhood and adolescence poring through Historical Society records, microfilm, and old photographs to learn about the origins of some of my favorite pieces of New York City.

Imagine my excitement, then, when I discovered that the aerial map on New York City's official website gained a new layer last week. You can now type in any address, district, or place of interest in the five boroughs to see what it looked like in 2008, 2006... or 1924.

Sure, I know when all the city's major landmarks were built -- most self-respecting history buffs have a general idea of timelines -- but it's still difficult to envision the way things looked without them. Well, it's all there in black and white on the NYC.gov website. I spent hours of my Friday poring over every inch of Jazz Age New York City, and the ways in which it's changed since then blew my mind. Half of the city's bridges didn't exist in 1924. (How the hell did people get to Staten Island?!) My place of employment looks like a row of tenements. Flushing Meadows Park, site of two World's Fairs and one of my favorite places to think myself back into the past, looks like F. Scott Fitzgerald's valley of ashes -- a barren wasteland covered in cinder. The Metropolitan Museum of Art was half its current size. And the location of my favorite building on the planet, Eero Saarinen's TWA Flight Center at JFK International Airport, was completely undeveloped:

I then decided to punch in the addresses of three places I've called home. First was my high school, situated at the intersection of four major highways in one of the busiest parts of Queens:

Next came the Seeley W. Mudd building, which houses my college's engineering department:

Last was the apartment house where I grew up:

The building's current foundations are outlined on each map in red... but the outline is merely a hint of what's to come. I've spent most of my life inhabiting those three places, and only eighty-five years ago, they were someone's backyard, an empty lot, and the middle of the freaking wilderness. It certainly puts my surroundings into perspective -- and makes me wonder what New York City will look like when I'm eighty-five years old.

Gnocchi

"Here's the cushion. I'm putting it on the sofa. Now, watch me! I'm sitting down, and what do I do on my final approach? I... oop! Move the cushion! You see? It's not involved! It's not part of the whole sitting process! It just lies there! It's fat litter! It's a sofa parasite!" -- Steven Moffat, from Coupling

It's been cold and dreary in New York City these past few weeks. The skies are grey, the wind is howly, the streets are covered with dirty ice from last month's snowstorm. It's the sort of weather that encourages you to do nothing except wrap yourself in a Snuggie and curl up on the couch with a stack of DVDs. Every good hibernation requires a good meal, though -- and in my estimation, there's nothing more filling or satisfying on a cold winter's day than a big steaming bowl of potato gnocchi drenched in delicious sauce. Supermarket gnocchi are too heavy for my stomach to appreciate, so I use a few simple ingredients and a little intuitive technique to make them from scratch. The trick to making light, pillowy gnocchi is twofold: remove as much water from the potatoes as possible, then use only enough flour to hold them together.

Here's my recipe for homemade potato gnocchi, followed by a recipe for the easy bolognese sauce I made to accompany them last weekend. If you don't have time to make fresh tomato sauce, use Mario Batali's brown butter and sage sauce on the gnocchi instead -- it's super-quick and insanely delicious.

Gnocchi di Patate

(NYO-kee dee pa-TAHD)

1 lb (2 large or 3 medium) russet potatoes

1/4 cup coarse salt

1 egg, beaten

1/2 cup flour, plus a little more for dusting and rolling

1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Scrub your potatoes, then repeatedly jab at each potato with a fork so the skin is covered in holes. Spread the salt in a thick layer on the bottom of a baking pan, place the potatoes on top of the salt, and bake for once hour, turning occasionally. Your goal here is to remove as much moisture from the potatoes as possible -- the holes aid in evaporation and the salt acts as an absorbant.

When the potatoes are just cool enough to handle, slice them in half and run the halves through a potato ricer. (The ricer will press the flesh clean off the skin -- no peeling necessary! If you don't have a potato ricer, you can use a lot of upper-body strength to press the potatoes through a mesh strainer or sieve.) Dump the salt off your baking sheet, spread the riced potatoes on it, and let them stand for 20 minutes so they can cool (and so more moisture can evaporate).

Sprinkle the parmesan cheese, half the beaten egg, and half the flour over the potatoes. Flour your hands and gently mix the ingredients, adding more flour until the dough is workable, pillowy, and not sticky.

Divide the dough in half. Flour a work surface -- I use the baking sheet again for this -- and roll out each half into a long log 1" in diameter. Cut each log into 1" segments, then sprinkle flour over each segment and gently roll it across the tines of a fork to make ridges. Arrange finished gnocchi on a plate and refrigerate until your sauce is cooked.

No-Time Bolognese

1/2 white onion, diced

4 cloves garlic, minced

1/2 cup wine -- I used white, though any wine works

1 12-oz can diced tomatoes

1/2 lb -- a good-sized hamburger's worth -- of chop meat

1/2 tsp oregano

1/2 tsp dried basil or 4 large shredded basil leaves

Pinch of salt and pepper

Brown chop meat in a large skillet, then add garlic and onion and cook, stirring often, until onion is transparent. Add wine, tomatoes, and spices, cover, and cook on medium-low heat for one hour, stirring occasionally.

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Drop gnocchi into the water a few at a time -- they'll sink to the bottom, then bob near the surface, then float to the surface and stay there. Scoop them out of the water with a slotted spoon when they float to the surface and stay there for at least ten seconds. Toss the cooked gnocchi into the sauce as you make them.

When all of your gnocchi are cooked and transferred to the sauce, give it a good stir and cook it on low heat for another ten minutes. Serves four as a first course -- double the recipe if you're making a meal out of it.

Better Sound Through Research

"Oh honey, you turn me on. I'm a radio." -- Joni Mitchell

I had you once. I was so much younger back then, but the songs are old and I'd played them all before. I'd felt bass lines pound through me and I'd soared along with the treble, but I didn't realize how powerful and thrilling the experience could be until I unwrapped you and slipped you in for the very first time.

And god, I didn't know what I was missing. Suddenly, the whole world gained another set of dimensions. Highs climbed higher, lows dipped lower, rhythms resonated through every cell in my body and every crescendo seemed more powerful than the last. I knew our relationship couldn't last forever, that I'd have others in the future and even in the present, but I couldn't imagine ever enjoying an experience as perfect as the one I shared with you. I wanted to hold on to you for as long as I possibly could.

We made beautiful music together for close to two years. Then things began to fray. And split. And crack. I clung to you for as long as I could, desperately trying out every repair I could think of, but deep down I knew our time was coming to an end. You became detached, and after a while, I just couldn't hear a word coming out of you any more.

I cast you aside and I moved on. I jumped from replacement to replacement, but they either hurt me or didn't satisfy me or failed me or flat-out didn't fit. As time passed, I realized that you were irreplaceable.

I resisted for a while -- after all, you could only be returned to me for a steep price -- but I couldn't resist forever. So I made a move and waited for you to arrive.

And all of a sudden, there you were. Your features were the same, but unlike the broken-down wreck I once wished goodbye, you were shiny and new and full of potential. I was afraid to touch you at first, afraid to handle something so perfect with any semblance of roughness, but you connected with the same ease as ever and I relaxed. Then you slipped into me as if you were made to mold to the shape of my body. You began to whisper things I hadn't heard since you left me, and it just felt right. Now that we're back together again, I'm never letting you go.

I wish I can share my happiness with you, readers, but I'm afraid that it's something you'll have to obtain for yourself. I encourage you to do so, and there's no time like the present -- the subject of this blog entry, Bose's unparalleled Triport in-ear headphones, are currently on sale for $89.00.

Coming Clean

"Lift up your head. Wash off your mascara. Here, take my Kleenex -- wipe that lipstick away. Show me your face clean as the morning. I know things were bad, but now they're okay." -- from Little Shop of Horrors

Though my Sephora bills may claim otherwise, I don't wear a lot of makeup. I love experimenting with colors and contouring and shading, but frankly, I don't have the time to transform myself into a bombshell before work every day. I normally favor a natural look -- a little concealer under my eyes, blush, mascara, and lip gloss. Though I add cat-eye liner or red lipstick on certain days, I've always believed that my efforts are, for the most part, pretty invisible.

I didn't have enough time for even my minimal makeup routine yesterday morning, so I washed my face and ran out the door. I entered my building at 8, left my meeting at 9, and promptly got cornered in the hallway by two of my colleagues.

"Do you feel okay?" I said I was fine. "Are you sure?" I told them I was. They pointed out the shadows smudged under my eyes, the tiredness of my expression, and the sallowness of my skin. I then realized what they were driving at and revealed that I wasn't wearing any makeup.

"Oh." Pause. "Sorry."

I found some blush in my handbag, swiped it on, then asked for a second opinion. "Much better! You looked sick before!"

In a cruel twist of fate, this article was waiting for me on my RSS feed when I checked it later in the day.

New New Year

"Stay with me! You can do it! Stay with me! Come on! You and me, one last time!" -- the Tenth Doctor

I've always loved science fiction, but in recent years, one corner of the genre owns my heart above all others: the BBC's Doctor Who. Unlike every other sci-fi franchise in existence, Doctor Who has never relied on sequels, prequels, rebooting the franchise, rewriting history, or changing the linearity of the plot to keep things going. Incredibly, the series has followed the adventures of one character (a 900 year-old time-traveling alien named "the Doctor") since its inception in 1963.

To accomplish this, the show's writers gave the Doctor the ability to change every cell in his body when mortally wounded -- and thus gave themselves the freedom to swap out actors every few years. This "regeneration" process has allowed eleven different men to play the role, and for sanity's sake, fans distinguish them using their number on the roll call rather than the ubiquitous character name.

Thanks to the miracle of YouTube, I'm familiar with all of the Doctors even though most predate my years. And, of course, I have a favorite. Though I feel like a bandwagon jumper and/or a squealing fangirl by admitting this, the Tenth Doctor -- played by the incomparable David Tennant -- is my preferred incarnation by a long shot. Ten is brilliant, geeky, witty, wounded, confident, insanely hot, selfless, sensitive, and a total asshole all at once, which pretty much makes him the perfect man in my estimation.

My one-sided love affair with Ten has gone on for five years. All of that changed at the end of today's episode of Doctor Who, though, when Ten regenerated into Eleven. The Doctor is now played by an actor who, though incredibly talented, is fresher, younger, and far less sexy than his predecessor. I might grow to love him, but I'm still in mourning.

I spent the first day of '10 observing the last day of Ten, so I decided to honor both with a Top Ten list.

Ten Things I've Learned from the Tenth Doctor

10. High-top Converse Chuck Taylor All-Stars are proper attire for any outfit and any social situation.

9. Nothing feels better than bantering with someone whose mind is a perfect match for yours.

8. Keeping life in balance often involves a little sacrifice.

7, Don't offer too many second chances.

6. Dance.

5. You can save the universe if you have the right people standing next to you.

4. Too much scientific knowledge is never a bad thing.

3. Sometimes, it takes more courage to let go than to hold on.

2. You don't need to say "I love you" out loud to really mean it.

1. You can wear glasses and still look sexy.