Nature, Food & Culture - What Else Do You Need?

Kevin just left this morning for a few days in Detroit, so I'm bracing myself for three days of non-stop kids.  I did have the foresight to sign the kids up for an all-day camp on Wednesday so I'd have some recovery time.

I made it to a favorite spot, Symphony Space, a couple times this week.  On Wednesday night a friend and I saw Brandon Stanton of Humans of New York speak.  Several actors (from shows like Orange is the New Black, The Americans, Sex and the City) read posts from his latest book.  In case you don't follow Humans of New York on Facebook, Brandon walks around the city everyday taking photos of New Yorkers.  What makes his work really great though is that he also talks to them for a little while and posts a quote from them, always very touching or funny or provoking.  He also recently spent a few weeks in Syria covering the refugee crisis.  I highly recommend following him.

 

Then I made it back to Symphony Space this weekend with the kids and Kevin to see Fantasia (the 1940 Disney movie set only to classical music) on the big screen.  For 30-plus years I thought I had seen the movie but it turns out that I had only seen the part with Mickey Mouse as sorcerer, which apparently is only a small portion of the entire film.  We were all really impressed and loved seeing it in a theater with loud surround sound.

 

After another great Friday night at the Met (Kevin and I sat in on an interview with designer Todd Oldham while the kids were in Mythology class), I was really feeling the weight of the city and needed a nature fix.  We didn't have time on Saturday to get all the way out of the city so we did the next best thing - found a big park.  We wanted to explore somewhere new so we took the subway up to the top of Manhattan to Fort Tryon Park, site of a big battle during the Revolutionary War.  We enjoyed a couple hours of hiking around and absorbing the last of autumn before heading back downtown to Holden's soccer game.  It doesn't take much effort to make you feel like you're out of the city.

That's the Hudson River to the left.

They never follow directions.

And finally, our fall CSA (farm box) started this week.  I think I may have bitten off more than we can chew :)

 

You may be surprised to hear that we actually just about made it through all of this amazing food from Lancaster Farm in Pennsylvania in one week.  I made squash soup, creamed spinach, smoothies, pasta with roasted cauliflower and broccoli, fresh scrambled eggs almost every morning with three different kinds of fresh cheeses, roasted potatoes, collard green chips (like kale chips) and many incredible salads (I even used the celery greens).  The kids loved having ants-on-a-log for the first time and the sourdough bread was gone in 24 hours.  Can't wait to see what we get today!