Content about Brooklyn
May 20, 2010
The SIP method of urban gardening
I've long been drawn to the idea of urban farming. When I lived in Brooklyn, I had two plots in two community gardens, in addition to three massive tomato plants on the back deck. Planting seeds and growing vegetables was an unlikely pleasure. For me it was connected to good eating: I loved to cook and eat the freshest vegetables I could find. Getting to the source is something we often explore on The Paupered Chef--from seeking out how...
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February 6, 2009
It sounds like an easy question to answer, but sometimes even I have a hard time remembering where Blake is half the time (Don't even get me started on what time zone he lives in). I can only imagine what casual readers might think. In the past three years we've both lived in a combined total of 9 or so apartments, which doesn't include Blake's month of couch surfing, which might bring the total closer to 13. Of course, ...
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September 1, 2008
A couple days ago Elin and I went to our community garden plots to asses things after a two and a half week absence from New York. When we left, our garden was thriving with tomatoes, kale, collard greens, beets, carrots, corn, and peppers. Despite our best efforts to screw things up, the Brooklyn soil continues to sprout edibles.
We returned to find out tomato plants brown, drooping, and shriveled. Yet as they had started to die,...
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July 9, 2008
It was the most fantastic feeling in the world--especially for someone who has no idea how to grow food, like me. A bunch of seeds Elin and I planted months ago in a nearby community garden--tomatoes, kale, peppers, cucumbers, snap peas, beets, radishes, onions, lettuce, and corn--had been growing into large green bushy things that we hoped weren't weeds. Were they healthy and sated with water and getting just the right sunshine? Did they...
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March 14, 2008
Photo from Flickr user Flatbush Gardener
I didn't see this coming. I didn't imagine that suddenly, aged 25, living in a city, I'd want to be a gardener. Gardening does not seem cool. Nobody thinks gardeners are trendy. It's as old and musty a hobby as any. Yet there I found myself this past Saturday, spending seven hours of my weekend at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, where a large crowd of urban gardening...
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July 12, 2007
At the Red Hook Community Farm, a farm literally on top of a parking lot. Read here, and see here.
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Since moving to Boerum Hill, groceries have been tough. We used to live steps away from a B61 bus stop, which takes you directly to Fairway, where almost any food or ingredient can be bought, and at reasonable prices (though their produce isn't always the best). But now going to Fairway truly is a hassle, and I don't think we've since been. Shopping in Manhattan is fine in small doses, but the prices truly make it prohibitive...
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June 6, 2007
Bushwick, named by the Dutch Boswijk for “town in the woods,” is no longer a town in the woods—it is a rapidly gentrifying section of Brooklyn southeast of tragically hip Williamsburg. Once one of the most blighted areas in town after the blackout lootings of 1977--at that time, it was characterized by empty lots, drugs, and arson, and the majority of residents who could leave, left—it is now an uneasy mix of...
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By some miracle, my girlfriend and I have recently moved into a beautiful, spacious, freshly painted apartment with a backyard, a washer/dryer, and a dishwasher: three luxuries that most New Yorkers offer up onto the pyre of compromise very early on. It’s simply assumed: you won’t have those things. You live in the city because the people that live here are interesting, and there are opportunities, and it’s...
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May 24, 2007
Lest you all forget my infatuation with the pickled cabbage, it is powerful. When I worked in Manhattan, the attraction to the stuff had me trudging over to the Korean buffet at least once a week. But I no longer work in Manhattan, and while I'm very happy with my new job, I do miss my kimchi.
I’m not sure why it never occurred to me until now to secure my own stash. Like a lot of ethnic foods, I always wanted to place...
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November 12, 2006
Mark Iacono, chef and owner of Lucali's, began making pizza publicly 4 weeks ago. "I didn't even tell my family that I was opening this place," he claims. When he pulled the brown paper down off the windows on Day 1, he was hoping a few neighbors might be curious, and he'd have a few weeks of experimenting and tinkering with the pizza formula before he officially opened.
Literally 30 minutes after the brown paper came down...
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September 19, 2006
This wasn't one of those Manhattan street fairs that blocked traffic on random weekends and offered the same tired stand of roasted corn, corn dogs, and grease laden elephant ears, block after block. Brooklyn's Atlantic Antic (rated number one street festival by Time Out!) was as hodge podge as Atlantic Avenue always is, except now the music spilled onto the streets and so could the beer (sort of).
And, sure, there were loads of wonderful...
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August 24, 2006
By Blake Royer
It's difficult, sometimes, to make Brunch plans. They usually happen in a haze at 1:30 in the morning, when everyone's hungry, a bit tired, and getting very sentimental. "Oh, let's all wake up and have a big intimate meal together tomorrow!" It's a way of ensuring, in hopeful and vague way, that the night never has to end--just after a short nap, we'll all get together again and the only difference is that the sun will be...
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August 22, 2006
I was out for a "guys night," which is what happens when your girlfriend goes out with her friends and you're expected to go out with exact same people you always do. But when your friends are a fellow paupered chef and Jason, guys night doesn't quite mean poker and beer. Instead, we all met at the little restaurant that was getting some big press: the Good Fork.
There is a top-hatted fellow outlined in the door, which is probably the last...
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August 18, 2006
We christened him Kurt and set about trying in vain to keep him alive. The ride back from Fairway was not long, but we needed some wine, and the car was quite stuffy and hot. Blake, strangely, began developing an affection for the creature, and cared for him so deeply he wouldn't leave him in the car alone. So we carried him into our liquor store, LeNell's, and asked the owners what wine would best go with him. And with two...
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August 2, 2006
On Saturday morning, at the bright and early hour of noon, my phone began ringing. I vaguely remembered excited pronouncements the evening before about going for a bike ride out to Red Hook to visit the infamous ballfields, where soccer and baseball games unfold throughout the weekend, and outdoor food vendors set up shop on Bay St. to serve cheap, fresh food from south of the border (all the way to South America, in fact). As I answered,...
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July 6, 2006
**It saddens me to point out that Schnack has closed. What is detailed below is a great restaurant. Hopefully they will reopen someday.**
Like many, many people this week, Blake and I had better things to do. He's living the good life traveling around Northern Europe right now, eating voisilmapulla and trying to get around in Estonia with only a passable pronunciation of three words. And I spent the whole weekend packing...
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All content copyright Nick Kindelsperger and Blake Royer.
